Kang Zhang is a Professor in Computer Science and Director of Visual Computing Lab at the University of Texas at Dallas. He received his B.Eng. in Computer Engineering from the University of Electronic Science and Technology, China, in 1982; and Ph.D. from the University of Brighton, UK, in 1990. He held academic positions in the UK and Australia, prior to joining UTD. Zhang's current research interests are in the areas of visual languages, graphical visualization, and Web engineering; and has published over 130 papers in these areas. He has taught computer graphics and related subjects at both graduate and undergraduate levels for many years. Zhang was also an editor of two books on software visualization.

Visual Information Communication is based on VINCI'09, in Sydney, Australia. Topics covered include information visualization, graphical user-interfaces, visual analytics, and visual languages. This volume brings together established researchers in this field.

Addresses the issues of knowledge discovery, end-user programming, modeling, rapid systems prototyping, education, and design activities

The Physical Visualization of Information: Designing Data Sculptures in an Educational Context.- Visual Analysis of History of World Cup: A Dynamic Network with Dynamic Hierarchy and Geographic Clustering.- From Tree to Graph - Experiments with E-Spring Algorithm.- Visual Navigation with Schematic Maps.- DOI-Wave: A Focus+Context Interaction Technique for Networks Based on Attention-Reactive Interface.- Multi-dimensional Data Visualization using Concentric Coordinates.- Construct Connotation Dictionary of Visual Symbols.- Constructing Confluent Context-sensitive Graph Grammars from Non-confluent Productions for Parsing Efficiency.- Experimental Color in Computer Icons.- Hidden Cluster Detection for Infectious Disease Control and Quarantine Management.- Multi-scale Vortex Extraction of Ocean Flow.- A Novel Visualization Method for Detecting DDoS Network Attacks.- A Pool of Topics: Interactive Relational Topic Visualization for Information Discovery.- DaisyViz: A Model-based User Interfaces Toolkit for Development of Interactive Information Visualization.- A New Interactive Platform for Visual Analytics of Social Networks.- Strategic paths and memory map: Exploring a building and memorizing knowledge.- Information visualization Approach on the University Examination Timetabling Problem.- Making Traffic Safety Personal: Visualization and Customization of National Traffic Fatalities.- Visualizing Table Dependency Relations to Reveal Network Characters in Database Applications.- Visualized Feature Modeling in Software Product Line.- A Useful Visualization Technique: A Literature Review for Augmented Reality and its Application, limitation #x0026; future direction.- Novel Blind Steganalysis for JPEG Images.- A Polarization Restraint Based Fast Motion Estimation Approach to H.264 Stereoscopic Video Coding.- Multi-core Parallel of Photon Mapping.

Visual communication through graphical and sign languages has long been conducted among human beings of different backgrounds and cultures, and in recent decades between human and machine. In today's digital world, visual information is typically encoded with various metaphors commonly used in daily life to facilitate rapid comprehension and easy analysis during the communication process. Visual information communication generally encompasses information visualization, graphical user-interfaces, visual analytics, visual languages and multi-media processing. It has been successfully employed in knowledge discovery, end-user programming, modeling, rapid systems prototyping, education, and design activities by people of many disciplines including architects, artists, children, engineers, and scientists. In addition, visual information is increasingly being used to facilitate human-human communication through the Internet and Web technology, and electronic mobile devices. This manuscript provides the cutting-edge techniques, approaches and the latest ongoing researches in the context of visual information communication. It is a collection of 24 chapters selected from more than 60 submissions to the VINCI'09 - 2009 Visual Information Communications International Conference, that is held in Sydney Australia, September 2009. These chapters were selected through a stringent review process to ensure their high standard in quality, significance and relevance. Each chapter was reviewed by at least two international Program Committee members of VINCI'09. The book covers a broad range of contents in five key sub-areas of visual information communication, including.