A study on effects of market systems in an artificial market

In an artificial market approach with multi-agent systems, the static equilibrium concept is often used in market systems to approximate continuous market auctions. However, differences between the static equilibrium concept and continuous auctions have not been discussed in the context of an artificial market study. In this paper, we construct an artificial market model with both of them, namely, the Itayose and Zaraba method, and show simple characteristic differences between these methods based on computer simulations. The result indicates the further need to model the market system by studying artificial markets. Hidenori Kawamura, Ph.D.: He received Ph.D. degree from Division of Systems and Information Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Japan in 2000. He is currently an instructor in Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Japan. His research interests include multiagent systems, mass user support, artificial intelligence, complex systems, and tourism informatics. He is a member of IPSJ, JSAI, IEICE, ORSJ, JSTI and AAAI. Yasushi Okada, Ph.D.: He is a master course student in Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Japan. He studies multiagent systems. Azuma Ohuchi, Ph.D.: He received his Ph.D. degree in 1974 from Hokkaido University. He is currently the professor in Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University Japan. His research interstes include systems information engineering, artificial intelligence, complex systems, tourism informatics and medical systems. He is a member of the IPSJ, JSAI, IEEJ, ORSJ, Soc. Contr. Eng., Jap. OR Soc., Soc. Med. Informatics, Hosp. Manag., JSTI and IEEE-SMC. Koichi Kurumatani, Ph.D.: He received his Ph.D. Degree in 1989 from The University of Tokyo. He is currently a leader of Multiagent Research Team in Cyber Assist Research Center (CARC), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan. His research interests include multiagent systems and mass user support. He is a member of JSAI, IPSJ, JSTI and AAAI.     

S-Club: an overlay-based efficient service discovery mechanism in CROWN Grid

Information service plays a key role in grid system, handles resource discovery and management process. Employing existing information service architectures suffers from poor scalability, long search response time, and large traffic overhead. In this paper, we propose a service club mechanism, called S-Club, for efficient service discovery. In S-Club, an overlay based on existing Grid Information Service (GIS) mesh network of CROWN is built, so that GISs are organized as service clubs. Each club serves for a certain type of service while each GIS may join one or more clubs. S-Club is adopted in our CROWN Grid and the performance of S-Club is evaluated by comprehensive simulations. The results show that S-Club scheme significantly improves search performance and outperforms existing approaches. Chunming Hu is a research staff in the Institute of Advanced Computing Technology at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China. He received his B.E. and M.E. in Department of Computer Science and Engineering in Beihang University. He received the Ph.D. degree in School of Computer Science and Engineering of Beihang University, Beijing, China, 2005. His research interests include peer-to-peer and grid computing; distributed systems and software architectures. Yanmin Zhu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He received his B.S. degree in computer science from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, in 2002. His research interests include grid computing, peer-to-peer networking, pervasive computing and sensor networks. He is a member of the IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society. Jinpeng Huai is a Professor and Vice President of Beihang University. He serves on the Steering Committee for Advanced Computing Technology Subject, the National High-Tech Program (863) as Chief Scientist. He is a member of the Consulting Committee of the Central Government’s Information Office, and Chairman of the Expert Committee in both the National e-Government Engineering Taskforce and the National e-Government Standard office. Dr. Huai and his colleagues are leading the key projects in e-Science of the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and Sino-UK. He has authored over 100 papers. His research interests include middleware, peer-to-peer (P2P), grid computing, trustworthiness and security. Yunhao Liu received his B.S. degree in Automation Department from Tsinghua University, China, in 1995, and an M.A. degree in Beijing Foreign Studies University, China, in 1997, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. degree in computer science and engineering at Michigan State University in 2003 and 2004, respectively. He is now an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research interests include peer-to-peer computing, pervasive computing, distributed systems, network security, grid computing, and high-speed networking. He is a senior member of the IEEE Computer Society. Lionel M. Ni is chair professor and head of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Lionel M. Ni received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, in 1980. He was a professor of computer science and engineering at Michigan State University from 1981 to 2003, where he received the Distinguished Faculty Award in 1994. His research interests include parallel architectures, distributed systems, high-speed networks, and pervasive computing. A fellow of the IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society, he has chaired many professional conferences and has received a number of awards for authoring outstanding papers.     

Edge detection with reaction-diffusion equations having a local average threshold

The present paper proposes an edge detection algorithm with the FitzHugh-Nagumo reaction-diffusion equations. The authors previously found that the discretized version of the reaction-diffusion equations organizes a static pulse at an edge position for a binary image or for a binarized image with a fixed threshold level. By finding static pulses from the result of the discretized version, we can detect edges. The algorithm proposed here furthermore detects edges from a gray-scale image. In order to handle the gray-scale image, the proposed algorithm computes a local average level of image brightness distribution with a simple diffusion equation and simultaneously utilizes the average level as the threshold level of the reaction-diffusion equations. That is, the local average level obtained by the simple diffusion equation modulates the threshold level of the reaction-diffusion equations. The proposed set of the reaction-diffusion equations coupled with the simple diffusion equation causes a pulse at a true edge position and also a pseudopulse at a pseudoposition. Thus, we additionally propose an algorithm that eliminates the pseudopulse and extracts the true one. We apply the proposed algorithm and a previous representative algorithm to well-known test images for confirming the validity of the proposed algorithm. The text was submitted by the authors in English. Atsushi Nomura, born in 1966, obtained his Doctor of Engineering degree from Yamaguchi University, Japan, in 1994. Since 2001 he has been an associate professor of Faculty of Education at the university. His fields of research are image processing and computer vision. He is an author or coauthor of two book chapters and 13 research papers. He is a member of the Information Processing Society of Japan; the Physical Society of Japan; the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers; and the Optical Society of America. Makoto Ichikawa, born in 1965, obtained his Ph.D. degree from Osaka City University, Japan, in 1994. He was a post-doctoral fellow at Centre for Vision Research, York University, Canada. In 1998, he joined Faculty of Engineering, Yamaguchi University, Japan. Since 2006 he has been an associate professor of the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Letters, Chiba University, Japan. His fields of research are spatiotemporal aspects of perception, and integration processing in perception and cognition. He is the author or coauthor of five books and 20 research papers. He is a member of the Japan Society of KANSEI Engineering, the Japanese Psychological Association, Vision Society of Japan, and Vision Sciences Society. Rismon Hasiholan Sianipar, born in 1977, obtained his Master of Engineering degree from Mataram University, Indonesia, in 2002. In 2004, he entered Yamaguchi University as a research associate. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Yamaguchi University, Japan. He is the coauthor of one book chapter and 2 research papers. His fields of research are signal and image processing. Hidetoshi Miike, born in 1948, obtained his Doctor of Engineering degree from Kyushu University, Japan in 1976. In 1976, he joined Faculty of Engineering, Yamaguchi University. Since 1991, he has been a professor of the university. His research interests include nonlinear sciences and fluid dynamics. He is a coauthor of 5 books and more than 100 research papers. He is a member of the Information Processing Society of Japan, the Physical Society of Japan, IEEE Computer Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.     

Public opinion channel for communities in the information age

In this paper, we propose as a new challenge a public opinion channel which can provide a novel communication medium for sharing and exchanging opinions in a community. Rather than simply developing a means of investigating public opinion, we aim at an active medium that can facilitate mutual understanding, discussion, and public opinion formation. First, we elaborate the idea of public opinion channels and identify key issues. Second, we describe our first step towards the goal using the talking virtualized egos metaphor. Finally, we discuss a research agenda towards the goal. Toyoaki Nishida, Dr.Eng.: He is a professor of Department of Information and Communication Engineering, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo. He received the B.E., the M.E., and the Doctor of Engineering degrees from Kyoto University in 1977, 1979, and 1984 respectively. His research centers on artificial intelligence in general. His current research focuses on community computing and support systems, including knowledge sharing, knowledge media, and agent technology. He has been leading the Breakthrough 21 Nishida Project, sponsored by Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, Japan, aiming at understanding and assisting networked communities. Since 1997, he is a trustee for JSAI (Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence), and serves as the program chair of 1999 JSAI Annual Convention. He is an area editor (intelligent systems) of New Generation Computing and an editor of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. Nobuhiko Fujihara, Ph.D.: He is a fellow of Breakthrough 21 Nishida project, Communications Research Laboratory sponsored by Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, Japan. He received the B.E., the M.E., and the Ph.D. in Human Sciences degrees from Osaka University in 1992, 1994, and 1998 respectively. He has a cognitive psychological background. His current research focuses on: (1) cognitive psychological analysis of human behavior in a networked community, (2) investigation of information comprehension process, (3) assessment and proposition of communication tools in networking society. Shintaro Azechi: He is a fellow of Breakthrough 21 Nishida project, Communications Research Laboratory sponsored by Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, Japan. He received the B.E. and the M.E. of Human Sciences degrees from Osaka University in 1994 and 1996 respectively. He is a Doctoral Candidate of Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University. His current researches focus on (1) human behavior in networking community (2) social infomation process in human mind (3) development of acessment technique for communication tools in networkingsociety. His approach is from social psychological view. Kaoru Sumi, Dr.Eng.: She is a Researcher of Breakthrough 21 Nishida Project. She received her Bachelor of Science at School of Physics, Science University of Tokyo. She received her Master of Systems Management at Graduate School of Systems Management, The university of Tsukuba. She received her Doctor of engineering at Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo. Her research interests include knowledge-based systems, creativity supporting systems, and their applications for facilitating human collaboration. She is a member of the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI). Hiroyuki Yano, Dr.Eng.: He is a senior research official of Kansai Advanced Research Center, Communications Research Laboratory, Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. He received the B.E., the M.E., and the Doctor of Engineering degrees from Tohoku University in 1986, 1988, and 1993 respectively. His interests of research include cognitive mechanism of human communications. His current research focuses on discourse structure, human interface, and dialogue systems for human natural dialogues. He is a member of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, the Association for Natural Language Processing, and the Japanese Cognitive Science Society. Takashi Hirata: He is a doctor course student in Graduate School of Information Scienc at Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST). He received a master of engineering from NAIST in 1998. His research interest is knowledge media and knowledge sharing. He is a member of Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), Japan Association for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI) and The Institute of Systems, Control and Information Engineers (ISCIE).     

Image hiding scheme using modulus function and optimal substitution table

The simple least-significant-bit (LSB) substitution technique is the easiest way to embed secret data in the host image. To avoid image degradation of the simple LSB substitution technique, Wang et al. proposed a method using the substitution table to process image hiding. Later, Thien and Lin employed the modulus function to solve the same problem. In this paper, the proposed scheme combines the modulus function and the optimal substitution table to improve the quality of the stego-image. Experimental results show that our method can achieve better quality of the stego-image than Thien and Lin’s method does. The text was submitted by the authors in English. Chin-Shiang Chan received his BS degree in Computer Science in 1999 from the National Cheng Chi University, Taipei, Taiwan and the MS degree in Computer Science and Information Engineering in 2001 from the National Chung Cheng University, ChiaYi, Taiwan. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Information Engineering at the National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan. His research fields are image hiding and image compression. Chin-Chen Chang received his BS degree in applied mathematics in 1977 and his MS degree in computer and decision sciences in 1979, both from the National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. in computer engineering in 1982 from the National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. During the academic years of 1980–1983, he was on the faculty of the Department of Computer Engineering at the National Chiao Tung University. From 1983–1989, he was on the faculty of the Institute of Applied Mathematics, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan. From 1989 to 2004, he has worked as a professor in the Institute of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan. Since 2005, he has worked as a professor in the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science at Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan. Dr. Chang is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of IEE and a member of the Chinese Language Computer Society, the Chinese Institute of Engineers of the Republic of China, and the Phi Tau Phi Society of the Republic of China. His research interests include computer cryptography, data engineering, and image compression. Yu-Chen Hu received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Information Engineering from the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan in 1999. Dr. Hu is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Providence University, Sha-Lu, Taiwan. He is a member of the SPIE society and a member of the IEEE society. He is also a member of the Phi Tau Phi Society of the Republic of China. His research interests include image and data compression, information hiding, and image processing.     

GigaE PM: a high performance communication facility using a Gigabit Ethernet

A high performance communication facility, called theGigaE PM, has been designed and implemented for parallel applications on clusters of computers using a Gigabit Ethernet. The GigaE PM provides not only a reliable high bandwidth and low latency communication, but also supports existing network protocols such as TCP/IP. A reliable communication mechanism for a parallel application is implemented on the firmware on a NIC while existing network protocols are handled by an operating system kernel. A prototype system has been implemented using an Essential Communications Gigabit Ethernet card. The performance results show that a 58.3 μs round trip time for a four byte user message, and 56.7 MBytes/sec bandwidth for a 1,468 byte message have been achieved on Intel Pentium II 400 MHz PCs. We have implemented MPICH-PM on top of the GigaE PM, and evaluated the NAS parallel benchmark performance. The results show that the IS class S performance on the GigaE PM is 1.8 times faster than that on TCP/IP. Shinji Sumimoto: He is a Senior Researcher of Parallel and Distributed System Software Laboratory at Real World Computing Partnership, JAPAN. He received BS degree in electrical engineering from Doshisha University. His research interest include parallel and distributed systems, real-time systems, and high performance communication facilities. He is a member of Information Processing Society of Japan. Hiroshi Tezuka: He is a Senior Researcher of Parallel and Distributed System Software Laboratory at Real World Computing Partnership, JAPAN. His research interests include real-time systems and operating system kernel. He is a member of the Information Processing Society of Japan, and Japan Society for Software Science and Technology. Atsushi Hori, Ph.D.: He is a Senior Researcher of Parallel and Distributed System Software Laboratory at Real World Computing Partnership, JAPAN. His current research interests include parallel operating system. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Waseda University, and received Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo. He worked as a researcher in Mitsubishi Research Institute from 1981 to 1992. Hiroshi Harada: He is a Senior Researcher of Parallel and Distributed System Software Laboratory at Real World Computing Partnership, JAPAN. His research interests include distributed/parallel systems and distributed shared memory. He received BS degree in physics from Science University of Tokyo. He is a member of ACM and Information Processing Society of Japan. Toshiyuki Takahashi: He is a Researcher at Real World Computing Partnership since 1998. He received his B.S. and M.S. from the Department of Information Sciences of Science University of Tokyo in 1993 and 1995. He was a student of the Information Science Department of the University of Tokyo from 1995 to 1998. His current interests are in meta-level architecture for programming languages and high-performance software technologies. He is a member of Information Processing Society of Japan. Yutaka Ishikawa, Ph.D.: He is the chief of Parallel and Distributed System Software Laboratory at Real World Computing Partnership, JAPAN. He is currently temporary retirement from Electrotechnical Laboratory, MITI. His research interests include distributed/parallel systems, object-oriented programming languages, and real-time systems. He received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D degrees in electrical engineering from Keio University. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society, ACM, Information Processing Society of Japan, and Japan Society for Software Science and Technology.     

Algebraic retrieval of fragmentarily indexed video

When dealing with long video data, the task of identifying and indexing all meaningful subintervals that become answers to some queries is infeasible. It is infeasible not only when done by hand but even when done by using latest automatic video indexing techniques. Whether manually or automatically, it is only fragmentary video intervals that we can identify in advance of any database usage. Our goal is to develop a framework for retrieving meaningful intervals from such fragmentarily indexed video data. We propose a set of algebraic operations that includes ourglue join operations, with which we can dynamically synthesize all the intervals that are conceivably relevant to a given query. In most cases, since these operations also produce irrelevant intervals, we also define variousselection operations that are useful in excluding them from the answer set. We also show the algebraic properties possessed by those operations, which establish the basis of an algebraic query optimization. Katsumi Tanaka, D. Eng.: He received his B.E., M.E., and D.Eng. degrees in information science from Kyoto University, in 1974, 1976, and 1981, respectively. Since 1994, he is a professor of the Department of Computer and Systems Engineering and since 1997, he is a professor of the Division of Information and Media Sciences, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kobe University. His research interests include object-oriented, multimedia and historical databases abd multimedia information systems. He is a member of the ACM, IEEE Computer Society and the Information Processing Society of Japan. Keishi Tajima, D.Sci.: He received his B.S, M.S., and D.S. from the department of information science of University of Tokyo in 1991, 1993, and 1996 respectively. Since 1996, he is a Research Associate in the Department of Computer and Systems Engineering at Kobe University. His research interests include data models for non-traditional database systems and their query languages. He is a member of ACM, ACM SIGMOD, Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), and Japan Society for Software Science and Technology (JSSST). Takashi Sogo, M.Eng.: He received B.E. and M.E. from the Department of Computer and Systems Engineering, Kobe University in 1998 and 2000, respectively. Currently, he is with USAC Systems Co. His research interests include video database systems. Sujeet Pradhan, D.Eng.: He received his BE in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rajasthan, India in 1988, MS in Instrumentation Engineering in 1995 and Ph.D. in Intelligence Science in 1999 from Kobe University, Japan. Since 1999 May, he is a lecturer of the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics at Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts, Japan. A JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) Research Fellow during the period between 1997 and 1999, his research interests include video databases, multimedia authoring, prototypebased languages and semi-structured databases. Dr. Pradhan is a member of Information Processing Society of Japan.     

A grid-oriented genetic algorithm framework for bioinformatics

In this paper, we propose a framework for enabling for researchers of genetic algorithms (GAs) to easily develop GAs running on the Grid, named “Grid-Oriented Genetic algorithms (GOGAs)”, and actually “Gridify” a GA for estimating genetic networks, which is being developed by our group, in order to examine the usability of the proposed GOGA framework. We also evaluate the scalability of the “Gridified” GA by applying it to a five-gene genetic network estimation problem on a grid testbed constructed in our laboratory. Hiroaki Imade: He received his B.S. degree in the department of engineering from The University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan, in 2001. He received the M.S. degree in information systems from the Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokushima in 2003. He is now in Doctoral Course of Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokushima. His research interests include evolutionary computation. He currently researches a framework to easily develop the GOGA models which efficiently work on the grid. Ryohei Morishita: He received his B.S. degree in the department of engineering from The University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan, in 2002. He is now in Master Course of Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokushima, Tokushima. His research interest is evolutionary computation. He currently researches GA for estimating genetic networks. Isao Ono, Ph.D.: He received his B.S. degree from the Department of Control Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 1994. He received Ph.D. of Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, in 1997. He worked as a Research Fellow from 1997 to 1998 at Tokyo Institute of Technology, and at University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan, in 1998. He worked as a Lecturer from 1998 to 2001 at University of Tokushima. He is now Associate Professor at University of Tokushima. His research interests include evolutionary computation, scheduling, function optimization, optical design and bioinformatics. He is a member of JSAI, SCI, IPSJ and OSJ. Norihiko Ono, Ph.D.: He received his B.S. M.S. and Ph.D. of Engineering in 1979, 1981 and 1986, respectively, from Tokyo Institute of Technology. From 1986 to 1989, he was Research Associate at Faculty of Engineering, Hiroshima University. From 1989 to 1997, he was an associate professor at Faculty of Engineering, University of Tokushima. He was promoted to Professor in the Department of Information Science and Intelligent Systems in 1997. His current research interests include learning in multi-agent systems, autonomous agents, reinforcement learning and evolutionary algorithms. Masahiro Okamoto, Ph.D.: He is currently Professor of Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences, Kyushu University, Japan. He received his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from Kyushu University in 1981. His major research field is nonlinear numerical optimization and systems biology. His current research interests cover system identification of nonlinear complex systems by using evolutional computer algorithm of optimization, development of integrated simulator for analyzing nonlinear dynamics and design of fault-tolerant routing network by mimicking metabolic control system. He has more than 90 peer reviewed publications.     

An orientation update message filtering algorithm in collaborative virtual environments

Orientation update message filtering is an important issue in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). Dead-reckoning (DR) is a known effective mechanism for update message filtering. Yet, previous deadreckoning techniques mainly focus on the update message filtering for positions. The existing orientation deadreckoning algorithms are based on fixed threshold values. The drawbacks of fixed thresholding for orientations (FTO) are discussed in this paper. We propose a variable thresholding for orientations (VTO) based on average recent angular velocity. The main advantage of the proposed VTO is the ability of balancing the number of state update messages and shift frequency of direction and speed of rotation.     

Multiagent learning towards RoboCup

This article describes the issues in multiagent learning towards RoboCup,^1≈3) especially for the real robot leagues. First, the review of the issue in the context of the related area is given, then related works from several viewpoints are reviewed. Next, our approach towards RoboCup Initiative is introduced and finally future issues are given. Minoru Asada, Ph.D.: He received B.E., M.Sc., and Ph.D., degrees in control engineering from Osaka University, in 1977, 1979, and 1982, respectively. From 1982 to 1988, he was a research associate of Control Engineering, Osaka University. In 1989, he became an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering for Computer-Controlled Machinery, Osaka University. In 1995 he became a professor of the department of Adaptive Machine Systems at the same university. From 1986 to 1987, he was a visiting researcher of Center for Automation Research, University of Maryland, College Park, MD. He received the 1992 best paper award of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS92), and the 1996 best paper award of RSJ (Robotics Society of Japan). Also, his paper was one of the finalists of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society 1995 Best Conference Paper Award. He was a general chair of IEEE/RSJ 1996 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS96). Since early 1990, he has been involved in RoboCup activities and his team was the first champion team with USC team in the middle size league of the first RoboCup held in conjunction with IJCAI-97, Nagoya, Japan. Eiji Uchibe, Ph.D.: He received a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Osaka University in 1999. He is currently a research associate of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, in Research for the Future Program titled Cooperative Distributed Vision for Dynamic Three Dimensional Scene Understanding. His research interests are in reinforcement learning, evolutionary computation, and their applications. He is a member of IEEE, AAAI, RSJ, and JSAI.     

Toward a real-world knowledge medium: Building a guidance system for exhibition tours

We propose a notion of a real-world knowledge medium by presenting our ongoing project to build a guidance system for exhibition tours. In order to realize a knowledge medium usable in the real world, we focus on the context-awareness of users and their environments. Our system is a personal mobile assistant that provides visitors touring exhibitions with information based on their spatial/temporal locations and individual interests. We also describe an application of knowledge sharing used in the actual exhibition spaces. Yasuyuki Sumi, Ph.D.: He has been a researcher at ATR Media Integration & Communications Research Laboratories since 1995. His research interests include knowledge-based systems, creativity supporting systems, and their applications for facilitating human collaboration. He received his B. Eng. degree from Waseda University in 1990, and M. Eng. and D. Eng. degrees in information engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1992 and 1995, respectively. He is a member of Institutes of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan, the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI), and American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Kenji Mase, Ph.D.: He received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Information Engineering from Nagoya University in 1979, 1981 and 1992 respectively. He has been with ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute) Media Integration & Communications Research Laboratories since 1995 and is currently the head of Department 2. He joined the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) in 1981 and had been with the NTT Human Interface Laboratories. He was a visiting researcher at the Media Laboratory, MIT in 1988–1989. His research interests include image sequence processing of human actions, computer graphics, computer vision, artificial intelligence and their applications for computer-aided communications and human-machine interfaces. He is a member of the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), Institutes of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan and IEEE Computer Society.     

RHiNET-2/SW: a high-throughput, compact network-switch using 8.8-gbit/s optical interconnection

We have developed a high-throughput, compact network switch (the RHiNET-2/SW) for a distributed parallel computing system. Eight pairs of 800-Mbit/s×12-channel optical interconnection modules and a CMOS ASIC switch are integrated on a compact circuit board. To realize high-throughput (64 Gbit/s) and low-latency network, the SW-LSI has a customized high-speed LVDS I/O interface, and a high-speed internal SRAM memory in a 784-pin BGA one-chip package. We have also developed device implementation technologies to overcome the electrical problems (loss and crosstalk) caused by such high integration. The RHiNET-2/SW system enables high-performance parallel processing in a distributed computing environment. Shinji Nishimura: He is a researcher in the Department of Network System at the Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi Ltd., at Tokyo. He obtained his bachelors degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1989, and his M.E. from the University of Tokyo in 1991. He joined a member of the Optical Interconnection Hitachi Laboratory from 1992. His research interests are in hardware technology for the optical interconnection technologies in the computer and communication systems. Katsuyoshi Harasawa: He is a Senior Enginner of Hitachi Communication Systems Inc. He obtained his bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Tokyo Denki University. He is a chief of development of the devices and systems for the optical telecommunication. He was engaged in Development of Optical Reciever and Transmitter module. He joined RWCP project from 1997. His research interests are in hardward technology for optical interconnection in distributed parallel computing system (RHiNET). Nobuhiro Matsudaira: He is a engineer in the Hitachi Communication Systems, Inc. He obtained his bachelors degree in Mercantile Marine Engineering from the Kobe University of Mercantile Marine in 1986. He was engaged in Development of Optical Reciever and Transmitter module at 2.4 Gbit/s to 10Gbit/s. He joined RWCP project from 1998. His reserch interests are in hardware technology for the optical interconnection technology in the computer and communication systems. Shigeto Akutsu: He is a staff in Hitachi Communication Systems Inc. He obtained his bachelors degree in Electronics from Kanagawa University, Japan in 1998. His research interests are hardware technology for the optical interconnection technology in the computer and communication systems. Tomohiro Kudoh, Ph.D.: He received Ph.D. degree from Keio University, Japan in 1992. He has been chief of the parallel and distributed architecture laboratory, Real World Computing Partnership since 1997. His research interests include the area of parallel processing and network for high performance computing. Hiroaki Nishi: He received B.E., M.E. from Keio University, Japan, in 1994, 1996, respectively. He joined Parallel & Distributed Architecture Laboratory, Real World Computing Partnership in 1999. He is currently working on his Ph.D. His research interests include area of interconnection networks. Hideharu Amano, Ph.D.: He received Ph.D. degree from Keio University, Japan in 1986. He is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science, Keio University. His research interests include the area of parallel processing and reconfigurable computing.     

AgentTeamwork: Coordinating grid-computing jobs with mobile agents

AgentTeamwork is a grid-computing middleware system that dispatches a collection of mobile agents to coordinate a user job over remote computing nodes in a decentralized manner. Its utmost focus is to maintain high availability and dynamic balancing of distributed computing resources to a parallel-computing job. For this purpose, a mobile agent is assigned to each process engaged in the same job, monitors its execution at a different machine, takes its periodical execution snapshot, moves it to a lighter-loaded machine, and resumes it from the latest snapshot upon an accidental crash. The system also restores broken inter-process communication involved in the same job using its error-recoverable socket and mpiJava libraries in collaboration among mobile agents. We have implemented the first version of our middleware including a mobile agent execution platform, error-recoverable socket and mpiJava API libraries, a job wrapper program, and several types of mobile agents such as commander, resource, sentinel, and bookkeeper agents, each orchestrating, allocating resources to, monitoring and maintaining snapshots of a user process respectively. This paper presents AgentTeamwork’s execution model, its implementation techniques, and our performance evaluation using the Java Grande benchmark test programs. Munehiro Fukuda received a B.S. from the College of Information Sciences and an M.S. from the Master’s Program in Science and Enginnering at the University of Tsukuba in 1986 and 1988. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science at the University of California at Irvine in 1995 and 1997, respectively. He worked at IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory from 1988 to 1993 and taught at the University of Tsukuba from 1998 to 2001. Since 2001, he has been an assistant professor at Computing & Software Systems, the University of Washington, Bothell. His research interests include mobile agents, multi-threading, cluster computing, grid computing and distributed simulations. Koichi Kashiwagi received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Faculty of Science, Ehime University in 2000 and a Master of Engineering degree from the Department of Compter Science, Ehime University in 2002. In 2004 he became a research assistant in Department of Compter Science, Ehime University. His research interests include distributed computing, job scheduling, and grid computing. Shin-ya Kobayashi received the B.E. degree, M.E. degree, and Dr.E. degree in Communication Engineering from Osaka University in 1985, 1988, and 1991 respectively. From 1991 to 1999, he was on the faculty of Engineering at Kanazawa University, Japan. From 1999 to 2004, He was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Ehime University. He is a Professor at Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ehime University. His research interests include distributed processing, and parallel processing. He is a member of the Information Processing Society of Japan, the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan, IEEE, and ACM.     

User-independent gesture recognition by relative-motion extraction and discriminant analysis

We propose a new method for user-independent gesture recognition from time-varying images. The method uses relative-motion extraction and discriminant analysis for providing online learning/recognition abilities. Efficient and robust extraction of motion information is achieved. The method is computationally inexpensive which allows real-time operation on a personal computer. The performance of the proposed method has been tested with several data sets and good generalization abilities have been observed: it is robust to changes in background and illumination conditions, to users’ external appearance and changes in spatial location, and successfully copes with the non-uniformity of the performance speed of the gestures. No manual segmentation of any kind, or use of markers, etc. is necessary. Having the above-mentioned features, the method could be successfully used as a part of more refined human-computer interfaces. Bisser R. Raytchev: He received his BS and MS degrees in electronics from Tokai University, Japan, in 1995 and 1997 respectively. He is currently a doctoral student in electronics and information sciences at Tsukuba University, Japan. His research interests include biological and computer vision, pattern recognition and neural networks. Osamu Hasegawa, Ph.D.: He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Science University of Tokyo, in 1988, 1990 respectively. He received Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tokyo, in 1993. Currently, he is a senior research scientist at the Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL), Tsukuba, Japan. His research interests include Computer Vision and Multi-modal Human Interface. Dr. Hasegawa is a member of the AAAI, the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, Japan (IEICE), Information Processing Society of Japan and others. Nobuyuki Otsu, Ph.D.: He received B.S., Mr. Eng. and Dr. Eng. in Mathematical Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1969, 1971, and 1981, respectively. Since he joined ETL in 1971, he has been engaged in theoretical research on pattern recognition, multivariate data analysis, and applications to image recognition in particular. After taking positions of Head of Mathematical Informatics Section (since 1985) and ETL Chief Senior Scientist (since 1990), he is currently Director of Machine Understanding Division since 1991, and concurrently a professor of the post graduate school of Tsukuba University since 1992. He has been involved in the Real World Computing program and directing the R&D of the project as Head of Real World Intelligence Center at ETL. Dr. Otsu is members of Behaviormetric Society and IEICE of Japan, etc.     

Program transformation system based on generalized partial computation

Generalized Partial Computation (GPC) is a program transformation method utilizing partial information about input data, abstract data types of auxiliary functions and the logical structure of a source program. GPC uses both an inference engine such as a theorem prover and a classical partial evaluator to optimize programs. Therefore, GPC is more powerful than classical partial evaluators but harder to implement and control. We have implemented an experimental GPC system called WSDFU (Waseda Simplify-Distribute-Fold-Unfold). This paper demonstrates the power of the program transformation system as well as its theorem prover and discusses some future works. Yoshihiko Futamura, Ph.D.: He is Professor of Department of Information and Computer Science and the director of the Institute for Software Production Technology (ISPT) of Waseda University. He received his BS in mathematics from Hokkaido University in 1965, MS in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1972 and Ph.D. degree from Hokkaido University in 1985. He joined Hitachi Central Research Laboratory in 1965 and moved to Waseda University in 1991. He was a visiting professor of Uppsala University from 1985 to 1986 and a visiting scholar of Harvard University from 1988 to 1989. Automatic generation of computer programs and programming methodology are his main research fields. He is the inventor of the Futamura Projections in partial evaluation and ISO8631 PAD (Problem Analysis Diagram). Zenjiro Konishi: He is a visiting lecturer of Institute for Software Production Technology, Waseda University. He received his M. Sc. degree in mathematics from Waseda University in 1995. His research interests include automated theorem proving. He received JSSST Takahashi Award in 2001. He is a member of JSSST and IPSJ. Robert Glück, Ph.D., Habil.: He is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen. He received his Ph.D. and Habilitation (venia docendi) from the Vienna University of Technology in 1991 and 1997. He was research assistant at the City University of New York and received twice the Erwin-Schrodinger-Fellowship of the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF). After being an Invited Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), he is now funded by the PRESTO21 program for basic research of the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST) and located at Waseda University in Tokyo. His main research interests are advanced programming languages, theory and practice of program transformation, and metaprogramming.     

Adaptive group scheduling mechanism using mobile agents in peer-to-peer grid computing environment

Peer-to-peer grid computing is an attractive computing paradigm for high throughput applications. However, both volatility due to the autonomy of volunteers (i.e., resource providers) and the heterogeneous properties of volunteers are challenging problems in the scheduling procedure. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a scheduling mechanism that adapts to a dynamic peer-to-peer grid computing environment. In this paper, we propose a Mobile Agent based Adaptive Group Scheduling Mechanism (MAAGSM). The MAAGSM classifies and constructs volunteer groups to perform a scheduling mechanism according to the properties of volunteers such as volunteer autonomy failures, volunteer availability, and volunteering service time. In addition, the MAAGSM exploits a mobile agent technology to adaptively conduct various scheduling, fault tolerance, and replication algorithms suitable for each volunteer group. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the MAAGSM improves performance by evaluating the scheduling mechanism in Korea@Home. SungJin Choi is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Korea University. His research interests include mobile agent, peer-to-peer computing, grid computing, and distributed systems. Mr. Choi received a M.S. in computer science from Korea University. He is a student member of the IEEE. MaengSoon Baik is a senior research member at the SAMSUNG SDS Research & Develop Center. His research interests include mobile agent, grid computing, server virtualization, storage virtualization, and utility computing. Dr. Baik received a Ph.D. in computer science from Korea University. JoonMin Gil is a professor in the Department of Computer Science Education at Catholic University of Daegu, Korea. His recent research interests include grid computing, distributed and parallel computing, Internet computing, P2P networks, and wireless networks. Dr. Gil received his Ph.D. in computer science from Korea University. He is a member of the IEEE and the IEICE. SoonYoung Jung is a professor in the Department of Computer Science Education at Korea University. His research interests include grid computing, web-based education systems, database systems, knowledge management systems, and mobile computing. Dr. Jung received his Ph.D. in computer science from Korea University. ChongSun Hwang is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Korea University. His research interests include distributed systems, distributed algorithms, and mobile computing. Dr. Hwang received a Ph.D. in statistics and computer science from the University of Georgia.     

Discover unknown causes from inferred and visualized Co-occurring events

It is hard to have knowledge including all events which may have caused observed events. This makes it difficult to infer significant causes of observed events. However, unexpected relations detected between known events by a computer suggest unknown events to humans, being combined with the vast human knowledge acquired by rich experience. This paper presents a method to have a computer express “unknown” hidden causes, i.e. not included in the given knowledge. The inference method of the computer, for inferring known causes of observed time-series events, is Cost-based Cooperation of Multi-Abducers (CCMA) here aiming at detecting unexpectedly strong co-occurrences among known events. The detected relations are expressed to user, which makes significant unknown causal events easily understood. The empirical results encourages that the presented method helps in discovering significant unknown events. Yukio Ohsawa, Ph.D.: He is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Systems Management, University of Tsukuba. He obtained his bachelors, masters, and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1990, 1992 and 1995 respectively. He was a research associate in Osaka University from 1995 to 1999. His research interests are in discovering signs of future events affecting human life, from data, based on his background of artificial intelligence. He received the Paper Award from the Japanese Society of Artificial Intelligence in 1999 and some awards for conference papers. He has served on program commitees of several conferences and workshops on AI and agents, currently chairing Multi-agent and Cooperative Computing workshops (MACC99). Masahiko Yachida, Ph.D.: He is a professor at the Dept. of Systems Engineering of Osaka University since 1993. He obtained his B. E., M.Sc in electrical engineering and Ph.D. in control engineering from Osaka University in 1969, 1971, and 1976 respectively. He became a professor of the Dept. of Information and Computer Science of the same university in 1990, and moved to the current department as a professor. He was a research fellow at the Fachbereich Informatik, Hamburg University from 1981 to 1982, and a CDC professor at the Dept. of Computer Science, University of Minessota in 1983. He received several prizes including Ohkawa Publishing Prize, and is presently a Chairman of Technical Committee on Pattern Recognition & Media Understanding.     

An Efficient Support Vector Machine Learning Method with Second-Order Cone Programming for Large-Scale Problems

In this paper we propose a new fast learning algorithm for the support vector machine (SVM). The proposed method is based on the technique of second-order cone programming. We reformulate the SVM's quadratic programming problem into the second-order cone programming problem. The proposed method needs to decompose the kernel matrix of SVM's optimization problem, and the decomposed matrix is used in the new optimization problem. Since the kernel matrix is positive semidefinite, the dimension of the decomposed matrix can be reduced by decomposition (factorization) methods. The performance of the proposed method depends on the dimension of the decomposed matrix. Experimental results show that the proposed method is much faster than the quadratic programming solver LOQO if the dimension of the decomposed matrix is small enough compared to that of the kernel matrix. The proposed method is also faster than the method proposed in (S. Fine and K. Scheinberg, 2001) for both low-rank and full-rank kernel matrices. The working set selection is an important issue in the SVM decomposition (chunking) method. We also modify Hsu and Lin's working set selection approach to deal with large working set. The proposed approach leads to faster convergence. Rameswar Debnath is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan and also a lecturer of the Computer Science & Engineering Discipline at Khulna University, Bangladesh. He received the bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering from Khulna University in 1997 and masters of engineering degree in communication and systems from the University of Electro-Communications in 2002. His research interests include support vector machines, artificial neural networks, pattern recognition, and image processing. Masakazu Muramatsu is an associate professor of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Electro-Communications, Japan. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Tokyo in 1989, master's degree in engineering from University of Tokyo in 1991, and Ph.D from the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in 1994. He was an assistant professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Sophia University from 1994 to 2000, when he moved to the current university. His research interests include mathematical programming, second-order cone programming and its application to machine learning. Haruhisa Takahashi was born in Shizuoka Prefecture Japan, on March 31, 1952. He graduated from the University of Electro-Communications. He received the Dr Eng. degree from Osaka University. He was a faculty member of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology from 1980 to 1986. Since 1986, he has been with the University of Electro-Communications where he is currently professor of the Department of Information and Communication Engineering. He was previously engaged in the fields of nonlinear network theory, queueing theory and performance evaluation of communication systems. His current research includes learning machines, artificial neural networks, and cognitive science.     

Efficient algorithms for NMR quantum computers with small qubits

The security of the RSA cryptosystems is based on the difficulty of factoring a large composite integer. In 1994, Shor showed that factoring a large composite is executable in polynomial time if we use a quantum Turing machine. Since this algorithm is complicated, straightforward implementations seem impractical judging from current technologies. In this paper, we propose simple and efficient algorithms for factoring and discrete logarithm problem based on NMR quantum computers. Our algorithms are easier to implement if we consider NMR quantum computers with small qubits. A part of this work was done while both authors were with NTT Communication Science Laboratories. Noboru Kunihiro, Ph.D.: He is Assistant Professor of the University of Electro-Communications. He received his B.E., M.E. and Ph.D. in mathematical engineering and information physics from the University of Tokyo in 1994, 1996 and 2001, respectively. He had been engaged in the research on cryptography and information security at NTT Communication Science Laboratories from 1996 to 2002. Since 2002, he has been working for Department of Information and Communication Engineering of the University of Elector-Communications. His research interest includes cryptography, information security and quantum computations. He was awarded the SCIS’97 paper prize. Shigeru Yamashita, Ph.D.: Associate Professor of Graduate School of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara 630-0192, Japan. He received his B.E., M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in information science from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 1993, 1995 and 2001, respectively. His research interests include new type of computer architectures and quantum computation. He received the 2000 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems Best Paper Award.     

A data mining approach to database compression

Data mining can dig out valuable information from databases to assist a business in approaching knowledge discovery and improving business intelligence. Database stores large structured data. The amount of data increases due to the advanced database technology and extensive use of information systems. Despite the price drop of storage devices, it is still important to develop efficient techniques for database compression. This paper develops a database compression method by eliminating redundant data, which often exist in transaction database. The proposed approach uses a data mining structure to extract association rules from a database. Redundant data will then be replaced by means of compression rules. A heuristic method is designed to resolve the conflicts of the compression rules. To prove its efficiency and effectiveness, the proposed approach is compared with two other database compression methods. Chin-Feng Lee is an associate professor with the Department of Information Management at Chaoyang University of Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1994 and 1998, respectively, from the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Chung Cheng University. Her current research interests include database design, image processing and data mining techniques. S. Wesley Changchien is a professor with the Institute of Electronic Commerce at National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan, R.O.C. He received a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering (1989) and completed his MS (1993) and Ph.D. (1996) degrees in Industrial Engineering at State University of New York at Buffalo, USA. His current research interests include electronic commerce, internet/database marketing, knowledge management, data mining, and decision support systems. Jau-Ji Shen received his Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering and Computer Science from National Taiwan University at Taipei, Taiwan in 1988. From 1988 to 1994, he was the leader of the software group in Institute of Aeronautic, Chung-Sung Institute of Science and Technology. He is currently an associate professor of information management department in the National Chung Hsing University at Taichung. His research areas focus on the digital multimedia, database and information security. His current research areas focus on data engineering, database techniques and information security. Wei-Tse Wang received the B.A. (2001) and M.B.A (2003) degrees in Information Management at Chaoyang University of Technology, Taiwan, R.O.C. His research interests include data mining, XML, and database compression.