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Telling NASA's Tales With Hollywood's Tools
Space Center Uses Pixar's Palette To Artfully Explain Scientific Data
By Michael S. Rosenwald
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 21, 2006; D01
[We are lucky to be working with world class data visualizers and animators. This article in the Washington Post is one of the best print stories I've seen on the folks who are on the front lines of translating our science and making it accessible to our many audiences.]
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/20/...
Every once in a while when a new movie with mind-blowing special effects or oh-my-gosh-it-looked-so-real animation opens, a nondescript office at NASA Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt will mysteriously empty of employees during matinee hours.
Before an investigation is launched into the whereabouts of these workers -- particularly, say, around last year's opening of "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" -- understand that they are not blowing off work. The absentee employees are animators, NASA staffers and contractors who use the same software Pixar Animation Studios uses to tell stories about talking cars to instead tell stories about the Earth. They just want to see what their counterparts in Hollywood have been up to.
There is the occasional did-you-see-that elbow nudge, but in their case it's about craft, not cinematic delight, said Horace Mitchell, project manager at the space center's scientific visualization studio. Mitchell is a NASA employee, but the studio is staffed primarily by animators working for Global Science & Technology Inc., a government contractor in Greenbelt. The company uses the Hollywood software, including Pixar's RenderMan and Autodesk Inc.'s Maya, to translate complicated data into animated movies that illustrate what is happening in and around Earth. The videos often end up on the evening news.
The crucial difference in NASA's use of the software is that Hollywood uses it to spin inspiring, happy-ending stories about love and courage and friendship and hope, while the animators in Greenbelt are often telling stories about bad things happening in the atmosphere, such as last year's hurricane season. In their chilling short film "27 Storms: Arlene to Zeta," set to Vincenzo Bellini's eerie music, viewers can watch the ocean heat up, helping fuel one storm after another -- thanks to the same Pixar software used in the upcoming version of "Charlotte's Web."
NASA oceanographer Gene Carl Feldman frequently collaborates with the Global Science studio. He studies the ocean from space.
"Visualization is that link between the flood of data coming down from space and the ability of the human mind to interpret it," Feldman said. "That's the crux of the story. Better than most other groups in the world, they are able to take this fire hose of data coming down and turn it into images -- visual animation -- that then allows the general public to see this data in ways their brains can interpret and study."
The Hollywoodization of NASA data is in part the result of Pixar's success in creating real-life worlds from fantasy stories. People have come to expect that even the most fantastical of ideas -- a talking, curmudgeonly Mr. Potato Head -- can look and feel exceedingly real. "They don't expect to see crudity," Mitchell said. "They expect to see sophistication because they see it everywhere. In order for us to tell the story, we have to be sophisticated about telling stories and we have to use sophisticated technology to tell them."
Pixar was spun off from George Lucas's film company, and its early days were spent selling animation software and hardware -- a way to pay the bills until computer technology caught up with the firm's vision of making the incredibly life-like films that it produces today.
Today, anyone can purchase versions of RenderMan online, for $995 to $3,500.
Global Science, a private company that employs about 250 people, is definitely not a movie studio. It was founded in 1991 by Chieh-san Cheng, a former employee of an aerospace and technology company with advanced degrees in technical management and meteorology. Global Science provides services in applied science and research, geospatial standards, engineering services, and information technology. The firm's contract with NASA is a small part of its business, contributing about $650,000 a year to about $45 million in revenue.
Global Science and Pixar know about each other, but interaction between the staffs is generally limited to animation conferences and trade shows. But the Global Science staff does feel a strong bond with Pixar, particularly when watching one of its movies.
Jim Williams, a Global Science animator, said, "I'll go into it thinking I'm going to look at the technical stuff and then I'll get completely sucked into the story."
This happened during Pixar's recent hit, "Cars."
"I'm watching it, I'm totally into the story, and they get to the end and they go into that stadium, and there's tens of thousands of cars in there and I drop out of the story and think, 'Wow, that must have been a pain in the butt to get that right.' And then I'm back into the story," he said.
The difference between the storylines is that Pixar is trying to get laughing cars right and Global Science is trying to get the atmosphere right. The way in which Global Science uses RenderMan is not easy. Here's one way of looking at it: This article has been typed on a word processor. The computer received the data -- in this case, they looked like letters -- and displayed them on a screen. The lines were long, containing dozens of words. Those words needed to appear in the newspaper, and to do that a graphic designer used another program to render and squeeze the words into narrow columns of newsprint, with black type, a font, and italics , and so forth so the words appear in the paper as they do now. That's essentially what RenderMan does for data -- whether it be information about Buzz Lightyear's appearance or atmospheric models of hurricanes. RenderMan is the mechanism by which data are translated. Another program, Maya, acts as the word processor.
Global Science translates scientific data this way. Recently, one of its animators sat behind a computer monitor in a dark room with an image that could have appeared as a backdrop in a Van Gogh painting. But it was a depiction of aerosols moving across the atmosphere, a way of illustrating air quality. Yellow represented dust, the green was sulfates produced by humans, the blue was sea salt. Altogether, it was sort of beautiful but apparently not good news for the atmosphere.
Like their Hollywood counterparts, the Global Science animators typically refer to their finished products as releases, but the scripts are composed of data and the script writers are some of the world's most brilliant scientists. The creative process generally works like this: A scientist or a public affairs officer will ask the animators to illustrate a concept or data set. It can be as simple as ocean temperatures or as complicated as a collection of satellite images. A discussion with the scientific team and public affairs officer ensues over the best way to illustrate the data, and the animators get to work.
Feldman, the NASA oceanographer, studies oceans from space because, as he said: "Oceans are really, really, really big and they change very, very quickly. You can't track that from a ship. What a satellite sees in a minute would take a ship a decade." Feldman is particularly interested in the relationship between the changing environment and ocean life, which he pursues by studying the first level of life in the ocean, or microscopic plants, through ocean color.
The only problem is that satellites collect a very large amount of complicated data. The visualization studio helps him make sense of it. Feldman has made animations of what happened to the ocean during the transition between El Niño and La Niña -- "it was the biggest phytoplankton bloom in the world ever observed," he said. He has animated Lake Michigan's microscopic plant blooms and a dust storm the size of Spain that blew across the ocean in the past few years. He has animated autumn in Boston, which roughly translates into, as he put it, "how life follows the sun."
If Cheng, chief executive of Global Science, has his way, NASA scientists wouldn't be the only people relying on his firm's handling of Hollywood software to explain complicated subjects. Cheng would like to use the software to better explain the human body to doctors. He said the company is finalizing plans for a medical-imaging division and is exploring the possibility of a partnership with Maryland universities.
"What we could do is use movie techniques to give the doctor and medical staff more dynamic and accurate images to make a diagnosis," he said.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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Regardless of whether you take the boat ride or go down thru the tunnels, you really appreciate the raincoats they give you.
And now that the new tour operator is using red raincoats, you get a choice of blue or red for the boats and the yellow ones you can see in at the lower right edge of the falls by the tunnel entrance.
A team of researchers from Adelaide University, ESA (European Space Agency) F-lab, Thales Alenia Space, and the SmartSat Cooperative Research Center in South Australia has successfully uploaded and demonstrated NASA and IBM’s open-source Prithvi Geospatial artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model aboard two in-orbit platforms, making it the first geospatial foundation model to be deployed in orbit. Trained on 13 years’ worth of data, Prithvi can facilitate a wide variety of Earth observation tasks.
By uploading a compressed version of Prithvi to the South Australian government’s Kanyini satellite and to the Thales Alenia Space IMAGIN-e (ISS Mounted Accessible Global Imaging Nod-e) payload aboard the International Space Station, the researchers tested the model’s flood and cloud detection performance across two different orbiting platforms and computing environments.
Developed by a team of data scientists from IBM and NASA’s IMPACT AI team within the Office of Data Science and Informatics at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, the Prithvi Geospatial model was trained on the Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 dataset. This dataset compiles over a decade of global geospatial data from NASA’s Landsat and ESA (European Space Agency) Sentinel-2 satellites. Prithvi can be adapted for tasks such as mapping flood plains, monitoring disasters, and predicting crop yields.
In this image, Florida is seen from the International Space Station. A NASA geospatial AI foundation model was deployed to a platform aboard the space station for the first time, unlocking new opportunities for Earth observation.
Credit: NASA
#NASA #Prithvi #ScienceData #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #science #NASAMarshall
More about the NASA’s AI foundation models and other AI tools for science
MRS, a St. Louis landmark, will be a fallen flag in a matter of days. As such, we were quite pleased to see them running in nice light with a pro-foamer crew.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis
St. Louis is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers, on the western bank of the latter. As of 2020, the city proper had a population of around 301,500, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which extends into Illinois, had an estimated population of over 2.8 million, making it the largest metropolitan area in Missouri, the second-largest in Illinois, the seventh-largest in the Great Lakes Megalopolis, and the 20th-largest in the United States.
Before European settlement, the area was a regional center of Native American Mississippian culture. St. Louis was founded on February 14, 1764, by French fur traders Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent, Pierre Laclède and Auguste Chouteau, who named it for Louis IX of France. In 1764, following France's defeat in the Seven Years' War, the area was ceded to Spain. In 1800, it was retroceded to France, which sold it three years later to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase; the city was then the point of embarkation for the Corps of Discovery on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In the 19th century, St. Louis became a major port on the Mississippi River; from 1870 until the 1920 census, it was the fourth-largest city in the country. It separated from St. Louis County in 1877, becoming an independent city and limiting its own political boundaries. St. Louis had a brief run as a world-class city in the early 20th century. In 1904, it hosted the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the Summer Olympics.
A "Gamma" global city with a metropolitan GDP of more than $160 billion in 2017, metropolitan St. Louis has a diverse economy with strengths in the service, manufacturing, trade, transportation, and tourism industries. It is home to nine of the ten Fortune 500 companies based in Missouri. Major companies headquartered or with significant operations in the city include Ameren Corporation, Peabody Energy, Nestlé Purina PetCare, Anheuser-Busch, Wells Fargo Advisors, Stifel Financial, Spire, Inc., MilliporeSigma, FleishmanHillard, Square, Inc., U.S. Bank, Anthem BlueCross and Blue Shield, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Centene Corporation, and Express Scripts.
Major research universities include Saint Louis University and Washington University in St. Louis. The Washington University Medical Center in the Central West End neighborhood hosts an agglomeration of medical and pharmaceutical institutions, including Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
St. Louis has three professional sports teams: the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball, the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League, and the St. Louis BattleHawks of the newly formed XFL. In 2019, the city was awarded a Major League Soccer franchise, St. Louis City SC, which is expected to begin play upon the completion of a 22,500-seat stadium in the city's Downtown West neighborhood in 2023. Among the city's notable sights is the 630-foot (192 m) Gateway Arch in the downtown area. St. Louis is also home to the St. Louis Zoo and the Missouri Botanical Garden, which has the second-largest herbarium in North America.
Source: racstl.org/public-art/the-mural-mile-floodwall/
The Mural Mile is located along the Riverfront between Victor and Chouteau Avenues, south of the Gateway Arch. Started in 1997, the project became an annual event held every labor day weekend. Organized by the organization Paint Louis, more than 250 graffiti artists from around the country came to St. Louis to add to this mural on the Mississippi River floodwall.
Aerial photograph of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency by Trevor Paglen. Commissioned by Creative Time Reports, 2013.
Today I went with my team to a half day presentation at the Google Enterprise Geospatial Summit 2011 because the company I work for uses their applications.
Geospatial refers to the Google Earth and mapping and all its features.
Most people would be aware of and use the public face of Google, but there is actually a business side to the company called Enterprise.
It was actually a very interesting 4 hours enhanced with some lubrication.
There were presentations by the Google Earth founder himself Brian McClendon, and some high level Google Product and Development executives.
I won't bore you with too much detail in case you don't normally get excited by this stuff.
Brian McClendon was a founder and inventor at Keyhole, a start up company purchased by Google in 2004.The geospatial data visualization tool developed by Keyhole later came to be known as Google Earth.
He made his childhood home of Lawrence, Kansas the default center point of early releases of Google Earth.
The Google people spoke about some of their ideas and developments, but if I told you, I would have to kill you. In fact they can touch on some topics, then back off and say they can't comment.
The advantage of mapping is people easily visualise concepts and information, rather than reading lists of information where they nod off.
Some examples brought to demonstrate were . . . . well, rather interesting, such as -
NY Times HOMICIDE map.
Here the number of homicides is mapped, and you can filter on weapons, gender, age, ethnicity etc. You get the idea. If you are looking at buying an apartment in Brooklyn, this site is a must see.
You will love THIS one.
Flush Tracker is a map of the local sewer system and reveals information like speed and distance for a flush to travel. Local Flushes are shown on the map and then the path of flow is drawn on the map... very clever and no doubt useful to the local sewer authority.
When I opened the site, I was watching a "deposit" travel alongside a road in Germany.
Japan quake PERSON-FINDER
Efforts to bring missing persons and friends and relatives together.
CRISIS RESPONSE grew out of an idea following the Haiti earthquake. Many government departments had collected information about different aspects of the quake aftermath, but weren't sharing it, resulting in a flawed recovery outcome.
Google Crisis Response makes critical information more accessible around natural disasters and humanitarian crises such as hurricanes and earthquakes. This initiative is a project of Google.org, which uses Google's strengths in information and technology to build products and advocate for policies that address global challenges.
They have responded to Australian floods, Australian cyclone Yasi, Christchurch quake and Japanese quake, to name a few.
Enough already. I hope that this gives you a better idea of what Google is involved in besides your Google search page.
Sorry, it is a bit long TODAY
Leadership Award - GEOSPATIAL BUSINESS LEADER 2012: Raymond O’Connor, President & CEO, Topcon Positioning Systems
Leadership Award - LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Prof. Gottfried Konecny, Professor Emeritus, IPE, Leibniz University of Hanover
Leadership Award - GEOSPATIAL ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR 2012: Melker Schörling, Chairman of the Board, Chairman of Remuneration Committee - Hexagon
Leadership Award - NATIONAL MAPPING ORGANISATION 2012: National Administration of Surveying Mapping and Geoinformation, China
Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaks to Robert Cardillo, Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Oct. 24th 2016. The NGA delivers world-class geospatial intelligence that provides a decisive advantage to policymakers, warfighters, intelligence professionals and first responders. DoD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro
This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:
www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-193
GEOSPATIAL DATA: Progress Needed on Identifying Expenditures, Building and Utilizing a Data Infrastructure, and Reducing Duplicative Efforts
Note: Other agencies include the Departments of Labor and the Treasury, National Science Foundation, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
geospatial@online am 06. Juli 2017 an der NaWi der Universität Salzburg.
Bilder: Hans-Christian Gruber
Geographic Information Science as a science and Geoinformatics as its methodology are not focused on any particular subject domain, but rather on a perspective. As a transversal discipline, an explicitly spatial view is applied to economy, society and the environment. Across traditionally “spatial” subjects, such as planning, resource management and logistics, GIS have long been established. Others, such as the humanities, currently experience the additional benefit of a “spatial turn”. Geoinformatics today provides an increasingly integral and highly important approach far beyond the typical “geo-disciplines”, by generating added value to information and knowledge through the spatial perspective, thus enabling better decision-making processes.
GI_Forum provides a platform for dialogue among geospatial minds, creating an informed GeoInformation Society, hoping to contribute to a more just, ethical and sustainable society. Prominent keynote speakers will highlight new developments, offer visionary insights into trends and developments, and at the same time be individually accessible for our Young Researchers.
GI_Forum is organized by the University of Salzburg, under the coordination of the Department of Geoinformatics – Z_GIS and in cooperation with the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and runs concurrently with the highly regarded German language conference on Applied Geoinformatics – AGIT. The two symposia share the innovative AGIT EXPO exhibit and stimulating social Events.
Photographs: H.-Chr. Gruber.
Sanjay Kumar, CEO, Geospatial Media and Communications thanking General V.K. Singh for presenting the awards
Creator: Unidentified.
Location: Unknown. No geospatial location data available.
Date: 1916.
Description: 11 servicemen are inside a dressing station, one can be seen dressing the head wounds of another, whilst in the background 3 men work together to apply a splint to the leg of a wounded soldier.
Number 17 of the 'Our Boys at the Front' series of postcards. From official photographs by special permission of the Department of Defence. Proceeds to the Australian Comforts Fund. (Printing on verso of postcard)
A series of official war photographs of Australian service personnel in France and Belgium, which the Australian Comforts Fund turned into postcard to sell for fund raising purposes.
Learn more about this image at the State Library of Queensland: hdl.handle.net/10462/deriv/2267
Information about State Library of Queensland’s collection: www.slq.qld.gov.au/resources/picture-queensland
Joe Mercer, Arlington's lead cemetery representative discusses routing for a burial service with Dexter Johnson, a cemetery representative. On March 12, 2012 Arlington National Cemetery will use an Army-designed geospatial mapping system to manage cemetery operations. Arlington is the first national cemetery to use this technology. The mapping system is linked to Arlington's interment scheduling system, which allows allows schedulers to assign gravesites electronically and assigns procession routes. It also alerts Arlington staff of other activities in the area.
This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:
www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-193
GEOSPATIAL DATA: Progress Needed on Identifying Expenditures, Building and Utilizing a Data Infrastructure, and Reducing Duplicative Efforts
Created by Professor Alasdair Rae using OS OpenData. Find out more at: www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/2020/05/scottish-highlands-...