Invasive species are a major cause of ecological damage and commercial losses. A current problem spreading in North America and Europe is the vinegar fly Drosophila suzukii. Unlike other Drosophila, it infests non-rotting and healthy fruits and is therefore of concern to fruitgrowers, such as vintners. Consequently, large amounts of data about infestations have been collected in recent years. However, there is a lack of interactive methods to investigate this data. We employ ensemble-based classification to predict areas susceptible to infestation by D.suzukii and bring them into a spatio-temporal context using maps and glyph-based visualizations. Following the information-seeking mantra, we provide a visual analysis system Drosophigatorfor spatio-temporal event prediction, enabling the investigation of the spread dynamics of invasive species. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach in two use cases.

Tennis players and coaches of all proficiency levels seek to understand and improve their play. Summary statistics alone are inadequate to provide the insights players need to improve their games. Spatio-temporal data capturing player and ball movements is likely to provide the actionable insights needed to identify player strengths, weaknesses, and strategies. To fully utilize this spatio-temporal data, we need to integrate it with domain-relevant context meta-data. In this paper, we propose CourtTime, a novel approach to perform data-driven visual analysis of individual tennis matches. Our visual approach introduces a novel visual metaphor, namely 1-D Space-Time Charts that enable the analysis of single points at a glance based on small multiples. We also employ user-driven sorting and clustering techniques and a layout technique that aligns the last few shots in a point to facilitate shot pattern discovery. We discuss the usefulness of CourtTime via an extensive case study and report on feedback from an amateur tennis player and three tennis coaches.

The vision of cross-domain file systems is becoming a reality; however, issues like ensuring quality of service for bandwidth-intense resource access, especially over mobile network, may still arise. In this paper, we propose a cross-domain shared file system, which enables a real-time experience for delivery of virtualized file systems utilizing a grid approach over NGN. The system allows users to share file systems in real-time, and provides functions to delivery update notification, to ensure access control settings, and to offer real-time streaming access to the virtual resources. We describe the system design, and a file sharing scenario to show the details of the prototyped solution. Finally, we give an outlook on the future improvements that could be made to the system.

The convergence between grid environments and QoS-enabled networks, in particular in the context of next generation networks (NGN), gained research interest in the direction of combining NGN capabilities and IT assets for the creation of future services. Following the ETSI NGN grid standardization activities, this work proposes an OGSA standard compliant NGN grid subsystem architecture to act as a mediator between grid middleware and NGN service stratum. The novel step of this subsystem is the virtualization of NGN endpoints via grid services. We show that the enhancement of the NGN service delivery platform by the integration of grid technologies enables a new way of introducing distributed multimedia services.

The success of future NGN services depends on the ability to adapt and personalize service delivery according to the user's context as well as service and device capabilities. Personalization includes not only respecting explicit user preferences, but also offering optimized multi-device communication. Flexible handling of multiple devices as well as multiple sessions is an increasing demand in the ubiquitous networking environment. In this paper, we describe how user preferences and device capability profiles for multiple devices can be managed and used for personalization. We integrated these methods into our earlier- proposed personalized communication controller (PCC), a service delivery platform component for optimizing multi-device communication through real-time decision-making. Information about related standardization efforts complements the paper.