SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION USING W3C STANDARDS

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. Primary support for the subproject and the subproject's principal investigator may have been provided by other sources, including other NIH sources. The Total Cost listed for the subproject likely represents the estimated amount of Center infrastructure utilized by the subproject, not direct funding provided by the NCRR grant to the subproject or subproject staff. The advent of the web has had a significant and lasting impact on the practice of Science. Data, results, procedures, and scientific information can be downloaded, or viewed as text with static images. To view graphical data interactively on the web has required special plug-in technologies or Java applets which increase the complexity and hurdles to access. Recent standards activities by the W3C promise to ameliorate these hurdles through a rich declarative graphical language similar to HTML called Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). SVG is already widely implemented in graphics packages such as Visio, Photoshop, and Illustrator, but has not been available through a web browser without the addition of a plug-in. Through collaboration with the open-source web-browser development community, we are extending the functionality of the Mozilla-based browsers (e.g., Firefox, Mozilla) to support the use of SVG for visualization of graphical data. With the release of SVG as a native component of Firefox, text and images within HTML will be able to be mixed with scalable vector graphics described via SVG. This will be used to enhance the access to scientific resources and information provided by RBVI. For example, we plan to implement a chromatogram viewer for the display of DNA sequence "traces" directly within a web-browser. This will directly benefit two collaborative projects within the RBVI, the Pharmacogenetics of Membrane Transporters (PMT) and BayGenomics, as well as be very useful to the general DNA sequencing community.