Web information visualization method employing immune network model for finding topic stream from document-set sequence

A Web information visualization method based on the document set-wise processing is proposed to find the topic stream from a sequence of document sets. Although the hugeness as well as its dynamic nature of the Web is burden for the users, it will also bring them a chance for business and research if they can notice the trends or movement of the real world from the Web. A sequence of document sets found on the Web, such as online news article sets is focused on in this paper. The proposed method employs the immune network model, in which the property of memory cell is used to find the topical relation among document sets. After several types of memory cell models are proposed and evaluated, the experimental results show that the proposed method with memory cell can find more topic streams than that without memory cell. Yasufumi Takama, D.Eng.: He received his B.S., M.S. and Dr.Eng. degrees from the University of Tokyo in 1994, 1996, and 1999, respectively. From 1999 to 2002 he was with Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. Since 2002, he has been Associate Professor of Department of Electronic Systems and Engineering, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan. He has also been participating in JST (Japan Science and Technology Corporation) since October 2000. His current research interests include artificial intelligence, Web information retrieval and visualization systems, and artificial immune systems. He is a member of JSAI (Japanese Society of Artificial Intelligence), IPS J (Information Processing Society of Japan), and SOFT (Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and Systems). Kaoru Hirota, D.Eng.: He received his B.E., M.E. and Dr.Eng. degrees in electronics from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 1974, 1976, and 1979, respectively. From 1979 to 1982 and from 1982 to 1995 he was with the Sagami Institute of Technology and Hosei University, respectively. Since 1995, he has been with the Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan. He is now a department head professor of Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science. Dr.Hirota is a member of IFSA (International Fuzzy Systems Association (Vice President 1991–1993), Treasurer 1997–2001), IEEE (Associate Editors of IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems (1993–1995) and IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (1996–2000)) and SOFT (Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and Systems (Vice President 1995–1997, President 2001–2003)), and he is an editor in chief of Int. J. of Advanced Computational Intelligence.     

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.     

An architecture for adaptive multimedia content delivery

In this paper, we propose an architecture for multimedia content delivery considering Quality of Service (QoS), based on both the policy-based network and the best-effort network. The architecture consists of four fundamental elements: multimedia content model, application level QoS policy, QoS adaptation mechanism, and delivery mechanism. Applications based on current architecture loses their meaning by drastically degrading quality when network congestion occurs. Despite of this all-or-nothing architecture, applications based on our adaptive architecture can reduce its quality and then negotiate with the network entity, keeping its quality measure as much as possible even when network congestion occurs. We may consider a quality measure for Web pages, total page transmission time, and transmission order of inline objects as a segregation. We then define a language to specify application level QoS policies for Web pages and implement a delivery mechanism and a QoS adaptation mechanism to fulfill these policies. Kaname Harumoto, Ph.D.: He received the M.E. and Ph.D. (Eng.) degrees from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 1994 and 1998, respectively. From 1994 through 1999, he was with the Department of Information Systems Engineering, Grauuate School of Engineering, Osaka University. Since November 1999, he has been an Assistant Professor in Computation Center (currently, the name has changed to Cybermedia Center), Osaka University. His research interests include database systems, especially in advanced network environments. He is a member of IEEE. Tadashi Nakano: He received the B.E. degree from Osaka University in 1999. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University. His current reeearch interests include multimedia content delivery architecture. Shinji SHIMOJO, Ph.D.: He received the M.E. and a Dr.E. degrees from Osaka University in 1983 and 1986, respectively. From 1986 through 1989, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Sciences, Faculty of Engineering Science, Osaka University. From 1989 through 1998, he was an Associate Professor and since 1998, he has been a Professor in Computation Center (currently, the name has changed to Cybermedia Center), Osaka University. He was engaged in the project of object-oriented multimedia presentation system called Harmony. His current interests cover wide diversity of multimedia applications such as News On Demand System, multimedia database and networked virtual reality. He is a member of ACM and IEEE.     

Trends of internet auctions and agent-mediated Web commerce

Electronic Commerce (EC) is a promising field for applying agent and Artificial Intelligence technologies. In this article, we give an overview of the trends of Internet auctions and agent-mediated Web commerce. We describe the theoretical backgrounds of auction protocols and introduce several Internet auction sites. Furthermore, we describe various activities aimed toward utilizing agent technologies in EC and the trends in standardization efforts on agent technologies. Makoto Yokoo, Ph.D.: He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical engineering, in 1984 and 1986, respectively, from the University of Tokyo, Japan, and the Ph.D. degree in information and communication engineering in 1995 from the University of Tokyo, Japan. He is currently a distinguished technical member in NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan. He was a visiting research scientist at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, from 1990 to 1991. His current research interests include multi-agent systems, search, and constraint satisfaction. Satoru Fujita, D.Eng.: He received his B.E. and M.E. degrees in electronic engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1984 and 1986, respectively. He also received his D.Eng. from the University of Tokyo in 1989 for his research on context comprehension in natural language understanding. He joined NEC Corporation in 1989, and is now a principal researcher of Internet Systems Research Laboratories of NEC. He is engaged in research on mobile agents, distributed systems and Web services.     

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).     

Mining user access patterns with traversal constraint for predicting web page requests

The recent increase in HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) traffic on the World Wide Web (WWW) has generated an enormous amount of log records on Web server databases. Applying Web mining techniques on these server log records can discover potentially useful patterns and reveal user access behaviors on the Web site. In this paper, we propose a new approach for mining user access patterns for predicting Web page requests, which consists of two steps. First, the Minimum Reaching Distance (MRD) algorithm is applied to find the distances between the Web pages. Second, the association rule mining technique is applied to form a set of predictive rules, and the MRD information is used to prune the results from the association rule mining process. Experimental results from a real Web data set show that our approach improved the performance over the existing Markov-model approach in precision, recall, and the reduction of user browsing time. Mei-Ling Shyu received her Ph.D. degree from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN in 1999, and three Master's degrees from Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Restaurant, Hotel, Institutional, and Tourism Management from Purdue University. She has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Miami (UM), Coral Gables, FL, since June 2005, Prior to that, she was an Assistant Professor in ECE at UM dating from January 2000. Her research interests include data mining, multimedia database systems, multimedia networking, database systems, and security. She has authored and co-authored more than 120 technical papers published in various prestigious journals, refereed conference/symposium/workshop proceedings, and book chapters. She is/was the guest editor of several journal special issues. Choochart Haruechaiyasak received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Miami, in 2003 with the Outstanding Departmental Graduating Student award from the College of Engineering. After receiving his degree, he has joined the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), located in Thailand Science Park, as a researcher in Information Research and Development Division (RDI). His current research interests include data/ text/ Web mining, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Search Engines, and Recommender Systems. He is currently leading a small group of researchers and programmer to develop an open-source search engine for Thai language. One of his objectives is to promote the use of data mining technology and other advanced applications in Information Technology in Thailand. He is also a visiting lecturer for Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems courses in many universities in Thailand. Shu-Ching Chen received his Ph.D. from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA in December, 1998. He also received Master's degrees in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Civil Engineering from Purdue University. He has been an Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS), Florida International University (FIU) since August, 2004. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor in SCIS at FIU dating from August, 1999. His main research interests include distributed multimedia database systems and multimedia data mining. Dr. Chen has authored and co-authored more than 140 research papers in journals, refereed conference/symposium/workshop proceedings, and book chapters. In 2005, he was awarded the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society's Outstanding Contribution Award. He was also awarded a University Outstanding Faculty Research Award from FIU in 2004, Outstanding Faculty Service Award from SCIS in 2004 and Outstanding Faculty Research Award from SCIS in 2002.     

A quantum algorithm using NMR computers to break secret-key cryptosystems

In this paper, we discuss quantum algorithms that, for a given plaintextm _o and a given ciphertextc _o, will find a secret key,k _o, satisfyingc _o=E(k _o,m _o), where an encryption algorithm,E, is publicly available. We propose a new algorithm suitable for an NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) computer based on the technique used to solve the counting problem. The complexity of, our algorithm decreases as the measurement accuracy of the NMR computer increases. We discuss the possibility that the proposed algorithm is superior to Grover’s algorithm based on initial experimental results. Kazuo Ohta, Dr.S.: He is Professor of Faculty of Electro-Communications at the University of Electro-Communications, Japan. He received B.S., M.S., and Dr. S. degrees from Waseda University, Japan, in 1977, 1979, and 1990, respectively. He was researcher of NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) from 1979 to 2001, and was visiting scientist of Laboratory for Computer Science e of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1991–1992 and visiting Professor of Applied Mathematics of MIT in 2000. He is presently engaged in research on Information Security, and theoretical computer science. Dr. Ohta is a member of IEEE, the International Association for Cryptologic Research, the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers and the Information Processing Society of Japan. Tetsuro Nishino,: He received the B.S., M.S. and, D.Sc. degrees in mathematics from Waseda University, in 1982, 1984, and 1991 respectively. From 1984 to 1987, he joined Tokyo Research Laboratory, IBM Japan. From 1987 to 1992, he was a Research Associate of Tokyo Denki University, and from 1992 to 1994, he was an Associate Professor of Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Hokuriku. He is presently an Associate Professor in the Department of Communications and Systems Engineering, the University of Electro-Communications. His main interests are circuit complexity theory, computational learning theory and quantum complexity theory. Seiya Okubo,: He received the B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees from the University of Electro-Communications in 2000 and 2002, respectively. He is a student in Graduate School of Electro-Communications, the University of Electro-Communications. His research interests include quantum complexity theory and cryptography. 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 interests include cryptography, information security and quantum computations. He was awarded the SCIS’97 paper prize.     

Tools for constructing pseudo-3D space on the WWW using images

Recently, due to advancements in virtual reality and computer graphics technologies, a virtual space that looks as real as a real space has been constructed. Accordingly, there are many studies that employ virtual spaces to support human communication and remote working. Until now, the virtual space employed by these studies has been composed of geometric models. Since the real space is very large and there are a lot of objects in the real world, the cost of modeling the real space is very high. In our previous paper,¹⁰⁾ we proposed a method for building a virtual space using image data, named theimage based non-rendering (IBNR), in order to cut down the cost. In this paper, we explain the design and implementation of the tools which we implemented to construct virtual spaces based on IBNR. With these tools, it is easy to construct and renew a large-scaled virtual space based on the real space. Takefumi Ogawa: He received his B.E. and M.E. degrees in Information Systems Engineering from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 1997 and 1999, respectively. Currently, he is a Research Associate of the Infomedia Education Division, Cybermedia Center, Osaka University. He is a member of IEEE, IEICE, IPSJ, and VRSJ. His research interests include virtual reality systems and augmented reality systems. Masahiko Tsukamoto, Ph.D.: He received his B.E., M.E., and Dr.E. degrees from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 1987, 1989, and 1994, respectively. From 1989 to February 1995, he was a research engineer of Sharp Corporation. Since March 1995, he has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Systems Engineering of Osaka University and since October 1996, he has been an Associate Professor at the same department. He is a member of seven learned societies, including ACM and IEEE. His current research interests include database systems, knowledge-base systems, and distributed computing systems.     

A challenge towards next-generation research infrastructure for advanced life science

Recently, life scientists have expressed a strong need for computational power sufficient to complete their analyses within a realistic time as well as for a computational power capable of seamlessly retrieving biological data of interest from multiple and diverse bio-related databases for their research infrastructure. This need implies that life science strongly requires the benefits of advanced IT. In Japan, the Biogrid project has been promoted since 2002 toward the establishment of a next-generation research infrastructure for advanced life science. In this paper, the Biogrid strategy toward these ends is detailed along with the role and mission imposed on the Biogrid project. In addition, we present the current status of the development of the project as well as the future issues to be tackled. Haruki Nakamura, Ph.D.: He is Professor of Protein Informatics at Institute for Protein Research, Osaka University. He received his B.S., M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 1975, 1977 and 1980 respectively. His research field is Biophysics and Bioinformatics, and has so far developed several original algorithms in the computational analyses of protein electrostatic features and folding dynamics. He is also a head of PDBj (Protein Data Bank Japan) to manage and develop the protein structure database, collaborating with RCSB (Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics) in USA and MSD-EBI (Macromolecular Structure Database at the European Bioinformatics Institute) in EU. Susumu Date, Ph.D.: He is Assistant Professor of the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University. He received his B.E., M.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Osaka University in 1997, 2000 and 2002, respectively. His research field is computer science and his current research interests include application of Grid computing and related information technologies to life sciences. He is a member of IEEE CS and IPSJ. Hideo Matsuda, Ph.D.: He is Professor of the Department of Bioinformatic Engineering, the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University. He received his B.S., M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from Kobe University in 1982, 1984 and 1987 respectively. For M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees, he majored in computer science. His research interests include computational analysis of genomic sequences. He has been involved in the FANTOM (Functional Annotation of Mouse) Project for the functional annotation of RIKEN mouse full-length cDNA sequences. He is a member of ISCB, IEEE CS and ACM. Shinji Shimojo, Ph.D.: He received M.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Osaka University in 1983 and 1986 respectively. He was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Information and Computer Sciences, Faculty of Engineering Science at Osaka University from 1986, and an Associate Professor with Computation Center from 1991 to 1998. During the period, he also worked as a visiting researcher at the University of California, Irvine for a year. He has been Professor with Cybermedia Center (then Computation Center) at Osaka University since 1998. His current research work focus on a wide variety of multimedia applications, peer-to-peer communication networks, ubiquitous network systems and Grid technologies. He is a member of ACM, IEEE and IEICE.     

Efficient discovery of optimal word-association patterns in large text databases

We study efficient discovery of proximity word-association patterns, defined by a sequence of strings and a proximity gap, from a collection of texts with the positive and the negative labels. We present an algorithm that finds alld-stringsk-proximity word-association patterns that maximize the number of texts whose matching agree with their labels. It runs in expected time complexityO(k ^d−1n log ^d n) and spaceO(k ^d−1n) with the total lengthn of texts, if texts are uniformly random strings. We also show that the problem to find one of the best word-association patterns with arbitrarily many strings in MAX SNP-hard. Shinichi Shimozono, Ph.D.: He is an Associate Professor of the Department of Artificial Intelligence at Kyushu Institute of Technology Iizuka, Japan. He obtained the B.S. degree in Physics from Kyushu University, awarded M.S. degree from Graduate School of Information Science in Kyushu University, and his Dr. Sci. degree in 1996 from Kyushu University. His research interests are primarily in the design and analysis of algorithms for intractable problems. Hiroki Arimura, Ph.D.: He is an Associate Professor of the Department of Informatics at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. He is also a researcher with Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology, Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST) since 1999. He received the B.S. degree in 1988 in Physics, the M.S. degree in 1979 and the Dr.Sci. degree in 1994 in Information Systems from Kyushu University. His research interests include data mining, computational learning theory, and inductive logic programming. Setsuo Arikawa, Ph.D.: He is a Professor of the Department of Informatics and the Director of University Library at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. He received the B.S. degree in 1964, the M.S. degree in 1966 and the Dr.Sci. degree in 1969 all in Mathematics from Kyushu University. His research interests include Discovery Science, Algorithmic Learning Theory, Logic and Inference/Reasoning in AI, Pattern Matching Algorithms and Library Science. He is the principal investigator of the Discovery Science Project sponsored by the Grant-in Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Area from the Ministry of ESSC, Japan.     

An approach to discovering risks in development process of large and complex systems

When building a large and complex system, such as satellites, all sorts of risks have to be managed if it were to be successful. For risks in the design of an artifact, various reliability analysis techniques such as FTA or FMEA have been employed in the engineering domain. However, risks exist as well in the development process, and they could result in a failure of the system. In this paper, we present an approach to discovering risks in development process by collecting and organizing information produced during development process at low cost. We describe a prototype system called IDIMS, and show how it can be used to discover risks from e-mail communications between developers. The motivation of our work is to overcome thecapture bottleneck problem, and utilize now wasted information to improve development process. Yoshikiyo Kato: He received his B. Eng. (1998) and M.Eng. (2000) degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from The University of Tokyo. From September 1998 to July 1999, he was an exchange student at Department of Computer Science and Engineering of University of California, San Diego, and worked on software engineering tools. From May 2001 to July 2002, he was a research assistant at National Institute of Informatics (Japan). He is currently a Ph.D. student at Department of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Tokyo. His research interests include knowledge management, CSCW, HCI and software engineering He is a member of AAAI and JSAI. Takahiro Shirakawa: He received his B.Eng. (2000) and M.Eng. (2002) degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from the University of Tokyo. He is currently an assistant examiner at Japan Patent Office. Kohei Taketa: He received his B.Eng. (2000) and M.Eng. (2002) degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from the University of Tokyo. He is currently a software engineer at NTT Data Corp. Koichi Hori, Dr.Eng.: He received B.Eng, M.Eng, and Dr.Eng. degrees in electronic engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1979, 1981, and 1984, respectively. In 1984, he joined National Institute of Japanese Literature where he developed AI systems for literature studies. Since 1988, he has been with the U University of Tokyo. He is currently a professor with Department of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, The University of Tokyo. From September 1989 to January 1990, he also held a visiting position at University of Compiegne, France. His current research interests include AI technology for supporting human creative activities, cognitive engineering, and Intelligent CAD systems. He is a member of IEEE, ACM, IEICE, IPSJ, JSAI, JSSST and JCSS.     

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.     

Real-time classification of variable length multi-attribute motions

Multi-attribute motion data can be generated in many applications/ devices, such as motion capture devices and animations. It can have dozens of attributes, thousands of rows, and even similar motions can have different durations and different speeds at corresponding parts. There are no row-to-row correspondences between data matrices of two motions. To be classified and recognized, multi-attribute motion data of different lengths are reduced to feature vectors by using the properties of singular value decomposition (SVD) of motion data. The reduced feature vectors of similar motions are close to each other, while reduced feature vectors are different from each other if their motions are different. By applying support vector machines (SVM) to the feature vectors, we efficiently classify and recognize real-world multi-attribute motion data. With our data set of more than 300 motions with different lengths and variations, SVM outperforms classification by related similarity measures, in terms of accuracy and CPU time. The performance of our approach shows its feasibility of real-time applications to real-world data. Chuanjun Li is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. His Ph.D. research works primarily on efficient segmentation and recognition of human motion streams, and development of indexing and clustering techniques for the multi-attribute motion data as well as classification of motion data. Dr. Latifur R. Khan has been an Assistant Professor of Computer Science Department at University of Texas at Dallas since September, 2000. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degree in Computer Science from University of Southern California (USC) in August 2000 and December 1996, respectively. He obtained his B.Sc. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh in November 1993. Professor Khan is currently supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Texas Instruments, NOKIA, Alcatel, USA and has been awarded the Sun Equipment Grant. Dr. Khan has more than 50 articles, book chapters, and conference papers focusing in the areas of: database systems, multimedia information management, and data mining in bio-informatics and intrusion detection. Professor Khan has also served as a referee for database journals, conferences (e.g., IEEE TKDE, KAIS, ADL, VLDB) and he is currently serving as a program committee member for Eleventh ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD2005), ACM Fourteenth Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2005), International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications DEXA 2005, and International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS 2005), and program chair of ACM SIGKDD International Workshop on Multimedia Data Mining, 2004. Dr. Balakrishnan Prabhakaran is currently with the Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. B. Prabhakaran has been working in the area of multimedia systems: multimedia databases, authoring & presentation, resource management, and scalable web-based multimedia presentation servers. He has published several research papers in prestigious conferences and journals in this area.Dr. Prabhakaran received the NSF CAREER Award FY 2003 for his proposal on Animation Databases. Dr. Prabhakaran has served as an Associate Chair of the ACM Multimedia’2003 (November 2003, California), ACM MM 2000 (November 2000, Los Angeles), and ACM Multimedia’99 conference (Florida, November 1999). He has served as guest-editor (special issue on Multimedia Authoring and Presentation) for ACM Multimedia Systems journal. He is also serving on the editorial board of Multimedia Tools and Applications Journal, Kluwer Academic Publishers. He has also served as program committee member on several multimedia conferences and workshops. Dr. Prabhakaran has presented tutorials in several conferences on topics such as network resource management, adaptive multimedia presentations, and scalable multimedia servers.B. Prabhakaran has served as a visiting research faculty with the Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park. He also served as a faculty in the Department of Computer Science, National University of Singapore as well as in the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India     

Relational semantics for locally nondeterministic programs

Introducing nondeterministic operators in a conventional deterministic language gives rise to various semantic difficulties. One of the problems is that there has been no semantic domain that is wholly satisfactory for denoting nondeterministic programs. In this paper, we propose an approach based on relational algebra. We divide the semantics of a nondeterministic program into two parts. The first part concerns the angelic aspect of programs and the second part concerns the demonic aspect of programs. Because each semantic function used in these parts is monotonic with respect to an ordering on relations, the existence of the fixed points of recursively defined nondeterministic programs is ensured. Liangwei Xu: His research interests are computational model, program transformation and derivation methodology. He received the B. E. degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1982 and the M.E. degree from University of Tokyo in 1992. He currently joins Mathematical Systems Institute Inc. Masato Takeichi, Dr. Eng.: He is a Professor of Department of Mathematical Engineering. Graduate School of Engineering, University of Tokyo. His research interests are functional programming, language implementation and constructive algorithmics. Hideya Iwasaki, Dr. Eng.: He is an Associate Professor of Faculty of Technology, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. He received the M.E. degree in 1985, the Dr. Eng. degree in 1988 from University of Tokyo. His research interests are list processing languages, functional languages, parallel processing, and constructive algorithmics.     

Agent-based Drivers’ Information Assistance System

“Drivers’ Information Assistance System (DIA system)” is an ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) application framework that provides agent-based information assistance to drivers through car navigation systems or on-board PCs. DIA system enables flexible information retrieval over the Internet using intelligent mobile agent, and incorporates a high-speed event delivery facility that makes real-time information service possible. The goal of the system is to provide up to the minute information and services related to driver needs, such as parking lot vacancy information. Crucial to making this a practical operation is the agent-based ability to access the network while the vehicle is in motion. Masanori Hattori: He is a research engineer in the Computer & Network Systems Laboratory, Corporate Research & Development Center, Toshiba Corporation. His research interests are network computing, human interface, and agent technologies especially in mobile agents, intelligent agents, and physical agents. He received the B.E. and M.E. from the Kyushu University. Naoki Kase: He received the M.S. in computer science from the Keio University, Japan. His research interests are mobile agent and its applications. He has developed an intelligent mobile agent system and its applications on ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) field. Akihiko Ohsuga, Dr. Eng.: He is a senior research scientist at the Computer & Network Systems Laboratory in Toshiba Corporation. Dr. Ohsuga received a B.S. degree in mathematics from Sophia University in 1981 and a Dr. Eng. degree in electrical engineering from Waseda University in 1995. He joined Toshiba Corporation in 1981, worked with the ICOT (institute for New Generation Computer Technology) involved in the Fifth Generation Computer System project from 1985 to 1989. His research interests include agent technologies, formal specification & verification, and automated theorem proving. Shinichi Honiden, Dr.Eng.: He is a chief specialist of Government Division, Toshiba Corporation. He received the B.S., M.S., and Dr. Eng. degrees in electrical engineering from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1976, 1978, and 1986, respectively. Since 1978, he has been with Toshiba Corporation. His research interests include software engineering and artificial intelligence. In these fields, he is the author or coauthor of ten textbooks and has published over 80 technical papers.     

A Semantic Web data retrieval implementation with an adaptive model for supporting agent decision structures

This paper proposes an adaptive learning approach that yields decision models that can be applied by a transactions agent. This model can learn effectively with a variety of data distributions. This research uses the Semantic Web as a data access approach. The Semantic Web is a method that sellers can use to publish semantically meaningful information on Websites so automated applications can reliably access that information. We implemented a Semantic Web composed of 30 vendors’ Web pages and a spider to search those pages to obtain product and vendor information. This information was used to train a learning agent, which then provided a decision model to a transaction agent. James Hansen is J. Owen Cherrington Professor in the Information Systems Department of the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. He is an associate editor for IEEE Intelligent Systems and Information Systems Frontiers. His research is in machine learning and planning as model checking. James B. McDonald is Professor of Economics at Brigham Young University. His research interests are in econometrics and quantitative methods. He has recently published in Econometrica, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Management Science, and Journal of Business Conan C. Albrecht is a professor of Information Systems at Brigham Young University. He teaches classes in enterprise development, middleware, and business programming. Conan researches computer-based fraud detection techniques, ecommerce platforms, and online group dynamics. He has published articles on fraud detection and information theory in The Journal of Forensic Accounting, The Journal of Accounting, The Communications of the ACM, Decision Support Systems, Information and Management, and other academic and professional outlets. Conan is currently working on an open source framework for computer-based fraud detection. The core of this research is detectlets, which encode background and detection information for specific fraud schemes. He is researching with the United Nations and the World Bank to use detectlets to prevent and detect fraud in third world countries. In the next few years, he hopes the system will serve as the foundation of a large, online repository of detectlets about all types of fraud. Douglas L. Dean is an Associate Professor at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. He is also research coordinator for the Rollins Center for E-business. He received his Ph.D. in MIS from the University of Arizona in 1995. Dr. Dean’s research interests include electronic commerce technology and strategy, online communities, requirements analysis, and collaborative tools and methods. His work has been published in Management Science, Journal of Management Information Systems, Information and Management, The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems, Communications of the AIS, Expert Systems with Applications, Group Decision and Negotiation, and IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Bonnie Brinton Anderson is the LeAnn Albrecht Fellow and an Assistant Professor in the Information Systems Department of the Marriott School at Brigham Young University (Provo, UT). She received her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Anderson has published in Decision Support Systems; IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics; Communications of the ACM; Journal of Accountancy, among others. She researches in the areas of knowledge management, information systems security, and intelligent agents.