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Introduction: The continual evolution of dental education, dental practice and the delivery of optimal oral health care is rooted in the practice of leadership. This paper explores opportunities and challenges facing dental education with a specific focus on incorporating the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Methods: Using the model in Bolman and Deal's Reframing Organizations, the Four Frames model serves as a road map for building infrastructure within dental schools for the adoption of AI. Conclusion: AI can complement and boost human tasks and have a far‐reaching impact in academia and health care. Its adoption could enhance educational experiences and the delivery of care, and support current functions and future innovation. The framework suggested in this paper, while specific to AI, could be adapted and applied to a myriad of innovations and new organizational ideals and goals within institutions of dental education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of the following papers is to explore plausible alternative futures for dental education. The COVID‐19 pandemic, challenges emerging from racism in the US, and social unrest were the precipitating factors leading to this consideration of academic dentistry in approximately 5 years. Methods: In 2020–2021, five teams of six individual followed a seven‐step process to develop five different scenarios of dental education in 2026. Four of these scenarios are constructed by considering a range of uncertainties associated with economic sustainability and educational innovation. A fifth scenario describes the optimal case for dental education's role should another pandemic occur. Results: Each scenario is presented as a narrative in three parts: scenario highlights (summary), life in the scenario (fictional case), and scenario details (a description of significant factors within the envisioned future of the scenario). As a strategic tool, these scenarios will assist leaders, institutions, and stakeholders to anticipate and prepare for different futures, identify key indicators that a particular future is emerging, and guide decision‐making to create the most desirable future in a changing environment. Conclusion: Institutions are encouraged to incorporate these scenarios into their strategic and contingency planning efforts and to use them to generate dialogue during faculty development initiatives. This study provides institutions with a process and model they can follow to create scenarios at the institutional level. The final paper in this collection is a guide that provides ideas and instructions for using the scenarios in curricular and extracurricular activities with faculty members and students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human body communication (HBC) is being recognized as a new communication technology for mobile and wearable devices in a body area network (BAN). This paper presents co-channel interference experienced by HBC supporting the physical layer in the IEEE 802.15.6 BAN standard. To analyze the co-channel interference, a co-channel interference model is introduced, and spacedomain and time-domain parameters representing an interference environment are generated using the cochannel interference model. A new signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) parameter depending on the peak amplitudes of the data signals causing co-channel interference is defined; co-channel interference can be easily analyzed and modelled using the newly defined SIR. The BER degradation model derived using the co-channel interference model and SIR in this paper can be effectively used to estimate the performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous vehicle technology based on information technology and software will lead the automotive industry in the near future. Vehicle localization technology is a core expertise geared toward developing autonomous vehicles and will provide location information for control and decision. This paper proposes an effective vision-based localization technology to be applied to autonomous vehicles. In particular, the proposed technology makes use of numerical maps that are widely used in the field of geographic information systems and that have already been built in advance. Optimum vehicle ego-motion estimation and road marking feature extraction techniques are adopted and then combined by an extended Kalman filter and particle filter to make up the localization technology. The implementation results of this paper show remarkable results; namely, an 18 ms mean processing time and 10 cm location error. In addition, autonomous driving and parking are successfully completed with an unmanned vehicle within a 300 mx 500 m space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single carrier‐frequency‐division multiple access (SC‐FDMA) has been adopted as the uplink transmission standard in fourth‐generation cellular networks to facilitate power efficiency transmission in mobile stations. Because multiuser multiple‐input multiple‐output (MU‐MIMO) is a promising technology employed to fully exploit the channel capacity in mobile radio networks, this study investigates the uplink transmission of MU‐MIMO SC‐FDMA systems with orthogonal space‐frequency block codes (SFBCs). It is preferable to minimize the length of the cyclic prefix (CP). In this study, the chained turbo equalization technique with chained turbo estimation is employed in the designed receiver. Chained turbo estimation employs a short training sequence to improve the spectrum efficiency without compromising the estimation accuracy. In this paper, we propose a novel and spectrally efficient iterative joint‐channel estimation, multiuser detection, and turbo equalization for an MU‐MIMO SC‐FDMA system without CP‐insertion and with short TR. Some simulation examples are presented for the uplink scenario to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retrieval engines are widely used as a means for users to acquire information satisfying their requirements from the large amount of diversified Web information on the Internet. However, retrieval engines cannot be useful unless the requirements from the user are explicitly represented in terms of keywords. Consequently, information recommendation systems are attracting attention as a means of providing information which is likely to interest the user. This paper proposes a competitive information recommendation system, which recommends information to the user by competitive interaction of multiple agents, each having an individual character, with the user. In the competitive information recommendation system, if the agent simply recommends the information autonomously, information desired by the user may not be recommended, or many interactions may be needed before the user acquires the desired information. Therefore, this paper proposes a rational recommendation method in which the utility for the user that can be obtained from the recommended information is represented by a multi-attribute utility function, and the agent recommends only information desirable to the user while learning the weight for each attribute. Then the best profit strategy, in which the profit of the agent has priority, and the best learning strategy, in which learning of the utility to the user has priority, are presented as information recommendation strategies for the agent. An evaluation experiment shows that the best profit strategy is better. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 38(9): 74–84, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10662 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonbinary information (m-ary symbol information) is often used in information input systems based on character recognition or keyboard entry. It is known that single-symbol errors and adjacent two-symbol transposition errors occur in such systems. This paper proposes a code construction method that can correct nonbinary single-symbol errors and also adjacent two-symbol transposition errors. The codes proposed in this paper consist of check symbols on integer rings and prime fields. These check symbols are converted to m-ary symbols and the code word is constructed by adding the result to the information symbol. The proposed code is better than the conventional code in terms of code length. When m=10, for example, the code length is more than twice that of the conventional code. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 38(8): 54– 60, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10516 Copyright © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors propose a robust background estimation algorithm, which is a technique for adaptively estimating background in response to changes in the environment based on robust statistics, and a technique for automatically adjusting the adaptation rate in response to changes in the environment. In monitoring systems and the like using stationary cameras, it is necessary to detect moving objects from the captured image series, and recognize and identify the detected subject. The most simple and representative method for moving object detection, which is used in many fields, is the background subtraction method for detecting moving objects by the difference between the background image and the current scene. This method requires a background image which does not include a moving object. However, it is difficult to acquire a background image under conditions in which moving objects are continually included in the scene. Also, when the environment changes, adaptive revision must be performed in response to the changes in the background image. Furthermore, in an environment where sections of the background change over time in different ways, it is important to determine the appropriate number of frames needed to estimate the background. In this paper, therefore, the authors propose a method for adaptive background estimation using M-estimation, a known robust statistics technique. Also, the authors propose a technique for adjusting the number of frames necessary for background estimation by varying the adaptation rate to the environment using robust template matching. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 38(7): 98– 108, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10612 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As information technology (IT) capabilities increase, manufacturing businesses are realigning their information systems infrastructure to remain competitive. This has resulted in substantial increases in IT use in technical areas of the business. Nevertheless, conventional paper-based information systems are still common at the shop floor. Hence, manufacturers need to understand whether there is benefit in extending IT functionality to the shop floor. By evaluating the impact of hypermedia information systems on the independent decision-making and communication capabilities of computer numerical control (CNC) machinists, this research aims to identify the shop floor benefits of replacing existing paper-based systems with this relatively new technology in this context. The research findings have wide-ranging implications for further research into the strategic implementation of shop floor IT and for future work structures in the metal cutting industry. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 17: 299–314, 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how the communal sharing norms of the community function in the information society, by using an agent-based simulation of an artificial society. Our simulator TRURL consists of a set of agents provided with individual functions of decision-making and communication. Furthermore, the mechanisms for social evolution by genetic algorithm and a solution search function are prepared. Studies of the emergence and functions of the communal sharing norm have been presented in sociopsychology, using evolutionary game simulations. Interesting phenomena such as the collapse or persistence of norm have been reported. According to the analysis of the net news society in this paper, considering information as property, it is concluded that the appearance of free riders does not lead to the collapse of norms. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 36(6): 102–112, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10111 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors propose a scheme for using simulation techniques to evaluate organizational knowledge sharing. Currently, trials for sharing knowledge within the organization have been undertaken at various corporations, but their effects are not sufficiently understood. Although the objectives for knowledge sharing vary from company to company, if attention is focused only on the reuse of knowledge, its effectiveness can be evaluated from an efficiency standpoint. In this paper, the authors limit the purpose of knowledge sharing to the reuse of knowledge and represent knowledge sharing within an organization hypothetically by modeling the acquisition, storage, and reuse of knowledge. Using this model, they introduce conditions for the superiority of the codification strategy or personalization strategy, which are forms of knowledge sharing. In addition, they propose an application model in which organization-specific conditions are represented and add a detailed analysis to it. Finally, they extend the discussion by taking into consideration the properties of knowledge, and from the results that are obtained, they refer to points that should be considered when looking at IT-driven knowledge sharing, which has been popularized in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the simulation of facial changes after removing some part of a bone in the face. It uses a spring network model in order to represent the facial tension after surgery. It is shown that a spring network model works better when node distances in the model are uniformly equal. The first part of the paper describes how to allocate nodes at equal distances using a bubble-mesh scheme, which has been utilized in CAD/CAM. Nodes should move along the facial surface continuously. But the first technique utilized was to let the nodes move only on a limited number of discrete points. The second technique was to start with an overcrowded initial condition and to reduce excess nodes so as to reduce computation time. Using the network model, we successfully performed a surgery simulation experiment and produced a facial image which was quite similar to that of an actual patient after facial surgery. © 2000 Scripta Technica, Syst Comp Jpn, 32(1): 1–9, 2001 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In connection-oriented data transport services, data loss can occur when the service experiences a problem on its end-to-end path. To promptly resolve the problem, data transport systems providing the service should quickly modify their internal configurations, which are distributed at different places within each system. This is conducted through a series of problem (event) handling procedures carried out by multiple control processors in the system. This paper proposes a provisioning-to-signaling method for inter-control-processor messaging to improve the time efficiency of the event processing. This method simplifies the runtime event sharing and minimizes the time variability caused by the event data, resulting in a decrease in the latency time and an increase in the time determinacy in processing global events. The proposed method lessens the latency time of global event processing by about 50% compared with general methods for 4,000 internal path changes, and reduces the impact of event data on the event processing time to about 30%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, cognitive radio and simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) are effectively combined to design a spectrum-efficient and energyefficient transmission paradigm. Specifically, a novel SWIPT-based primary-secondary cooperation model is proposed to increase the transmission rate of energy/spectrum constrained users. In the proposed model, a multi-antenna secondary user conducts simultaneous energy harvesting and information forwarding by means of power splitting (PS), and tries to maximize its own transmission rate under the premise of successfully assisting the data delivery of the primary user. After the problem formulation, joint power splitting and beamforming optimization algorithms for decode-andforward and amplify-and-forward modes are presented, in which we obtain the optimal PS factor and beamforming vectors using a golden search method and dual methods. Simulation results show that the proposed SWIPTbased primary-secondary cooperation schemes can obtain a much higher level of performance than that of non-SWIPT cooperation and non-cooperation schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose an emergency wake-up alert system (EWAS) for providing accurate and rapid emergency information. The proposed system can provide an emergency wake-up alert service without an additional frequency allotment by utilizing the guard band of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) Terrestrial Digital Television (DTV) system. The design target of the proposed system is to match the indoor reception coverage of EWAS with the outdoor reception coverage of the ATSC DTV system. To achieve this, the proposed system should be about 35.65 dB more robust than the ATSC DTV system. The simulation results show that the proposed system offers an emergency wake-up alert service supporting a data rate of up to 23 bps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A self-stabilizing algorithm is a distributed algorithm that achieves its intended behavior regardless of the initial configuration. This paper discusses the self-stabilizing algorithm for the ring orientation problem (ROP). ROP is a problem where all processors on a ring network are to be oriented either clockwise or counter clockwise. It is known up to now for the network composed of an even number of processors that there does not exist a deterministic self-stabilizing algorithm to solve ROP under the D-daemon or the R/W daemon. On the other hand, a probabilistic self-stabilizing algorithm is known for ROP on a ring network with an arbitrary size under the D-daemon. This paper also presents a self-stabilizing algorithm for ROP on a ring network with an arbitrary size under the C-daemon. The result indicates that the classes of problems that can be solved by the C-daemon and the D-daemon, respectively, are substantially different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the case where the geometrical model for a 3-D object is given, and discusses the solution of the problem to cover the rotation of the object from a single (monocular) view image. The rigid body is represented by a set of vectors and the joint is represented by a unit vector corresponding to the rotational axis. For each rigid object, the connecting joint is included. The inner product between unit vectors as well as the scalar triple product are assumed as known. Using such a model, not only the rigid body which has widely been discussed, but also the object composed of rigid bodies and joints with the rotational degree of freedom can be handled by the same framework. In the previous paper, it was shown that such a problem to determine the rotational posture of the object can be represented by a graph, and the solvability of the problem is discussed. The basic problem represented by the tree structure is formulated. This paper defines anew the concept of connection index, and classifies the tree-structure basic problems. For the basic problem with the connection index being 0 and 1, an algorithm is proposed which can estimate the rotations of the rigid subobject. The algorithms have the common structure for each connection index, and can be easily be constructed by defining the geometrical inference inherent to each basic problem. The usefulness of the algorithm is demonstrated through the individual experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most serious problems in a highly multiple parallel processing system involves memory access contention. In the hierarchically structured access mechanism, the number of simultaneous access paths ins creases with degree of parallelism. Consequently, it is considered as a configuration suited to a highly multiple parallel system. This paper uses a queue model to analyze the hierarchical routing bus (H-R bus), which is an access mechanism with a hierarchical structure. The paper further makes a quantitative evaluation of the locality in data access. Based on the derived theoretical expressions and measured results obtained by executing several test programs on the H-R bus-connected parallel computer, the H-R bus performance is evaluated. The results obtained in this paper are as follows: (1) Low external data access rates (i.e., external data access tine/processing time) indicate that the H-R bus-connected multiprocessor system operates with high efficiency even under high multiplicity. (2) Under sufficient access locality, even high external data access rates do not unduly impair efficiency. Although the above properties have qualitatively been known before, this paper derives theoretical expressions for the properties, supported by experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In MIMD highly parallel processing systems, such as parallel computers and data flow computers, their capability, cost, and implementability are dependent largely on the implementation of their access mechanism. This paper proposes a hierarchical routing bus (H-R bus) which is useful as an access mechanism for such systems. In the H-R bus, 3-port bus switches, called t switches, are connected in a hierarchical fashion. This bus has the following characteristics: (1) a modular structure, thus yielding high expandability, and when many modules are added, its access multiplicity increases; (2) when a system becomes large, its average access distance does not increase greatly; (3) in case of an access contention and collision, distributed arbitration is possible without a deadlock; (4) it requires a small amount of hardware, and a simple interface. It is known that any hierarchy-structured multiprocessor system contains a bottleneck, which causes a problem for highly parallel processing. This paper considers this issue and shows that the bottleneck effect is not so large in memory-shared multiprocessor systems of fast access time. Finally, a method of removing the bottleneck of the H-R bus by using 4-port bus switches (called π switches) is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new type of collision attack on first-order masked Advanced Encryption Standards. This attack is a known-plaintext attack, while the existing collision attacks are chosen-plaintext attacks. In addition, our method requires significantly fewer power measurements than any second-order differential power analysis or existing collision attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information identification with image data by means of low-level visual features has evolved as a challenging research domain. Conventional text-based mapping of image data has been gradually replaced by content-based techniques of image identification. Feature extraction from image content plays a crucial role in facilitating content-based detection processes. In this paper, the authors have proposed four different techniques for multiview feature extraction from images. The efficiency of extracted feature vectors for content-based image classification and retrieval is evaluated by means of fusion- based and data standardization-based techniques. It is observed that the latter surpasses the former. The proposed methods outclass state-of-the-art techniques for content-based image identification and show an average increase in precision of 17.71% and 22.78% for classification and retrieval, respectively. Three public datasets -- Wang; Oliva and Torralba (OT-Scene); and Corel -- are used for verification purposes. The research findings are statistically validated by conducting a paired t-test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of augmented reality technologies, commercial optical see-through-type wearable displays have difficulty providing immersive visual experiences, because users perceive different depths between virtual views on display surfaces and see-through views to the real world. Many cases of augmented reality applications have adopted eyeglasses-type displays (EGDs) for visualizing simple 2D information, or video see-through-type displays for minimizing virtual- and real-scene mismatch errors. In this paper, we introduce an innovative optical see-through- type wearable display hardware, called an EGD. In contrast to common head-mounted displays, which are intended for a wide field of view, our EGD provides more comfortable visual feedback at close range. Users of an EGD device can accurately manipulate close-range virtual objects and expand their view to distant real environments. To verify the feasibility of the EGD technology, subject-based experiments and analysis are performed. The analysis results and EGD-related application examples show that EGD is useful for visually expanding immersive 3D augmented environments consisting of multiple displays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent innovation trends, one notable feature is the merging and overlapping of technologies: in other words, technological convergence. A key technological convergence is the fusion of biotechnology (BT) and information technology (IT). Major IT advances have led to innovative devices that allow us to advance BT. However, the lack of data on IT-BT convergence is a major impediment: relatively little research has analyzed the inter-disciplinary relationship of different industries. We propose a systematic approach to analyzing the technological convergence of BT and IT. Patent analysis, including citation and co-classification analyses, was adopted as a main method to measure the convergence intensity and coverage, and two portfolio matrices were developed to manage the technological convergence. The contribution of this paper is that it provides practical evidences for IT-BT convergence, based on quantitative data and systematic processes. This has managerial implications for each sector of IT and BT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a low-cost, low-power, and highcapacity optical-electrical-optical-type reach extender that can provide 3R frame regeneration and remote management to increase the reach and split ratio with no change to a legacy time division multiple access passive optical network. To provide remote management, the extender gathers information regarding optical transceivers and link status per port and then transmits to a service provider using a simple network management protocol agent. The extender can also apply to an Ethernet passive optical network (E-PON) or a gigabit-capable PON (G-PON) by remote control. In a G-PON, in particular, it can provide burst mode signal retiming and burst-to-continuous mode conversion at the upstream path through a G-PON transmission convergence frame adaptor. Our proposed reach extender is based on the quad-port architecture for cost-effective design and can accommodate both the physical reach of 60 km and the 512 split ratios in a G-PON and the physical reach of 80 km and the 256 split ratios in an E-PON. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capabilities of information technology (IT) have advanced precipitously in the last fifty years. Many of these advances have enabled new and beneficial applications of IT in dental education. However, conceptually, IT use in dental schools is only in its infancy. Challenges and opportunities abound for improving how we support clinical care, education, and research with IT. In clinical care, we need to move electronic dental records beyond replicating paper, connect information on oral health to that on systemic health, facilitate collaborative care through teledentistry, and help clinicians apply evidence-based dentistry and preventive management strategies. With respect to education, we should adopt an evidence-based approach to IT use for teaching and learning, share effective educational content and methods, leverage technology-mediated changes in the balance of power between faculty and students, improve technology support for clinical teaching, and build an information infrastructure centered on learners and organizations. In research, opportunities include reusing clinical care data for research studies, helping advance computational methods for research, applying generalizable research tools in dentistry, and reusing research data and scientific workflows. In the process, we transition from a focus on IT--the mere technical aspects of applying computer technology--to one on informatics: the what, how, and why of managing information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-dimensional (3D) memories using through-silicon vias (TSVs) as vertical buses across memory layers will likely be the first commercial application of 3D integrated circuit technology. The memory dies to stack together in a 3D memory are selected by a die-selection method. The conventional die-selection methods do not result in a high-enough yields of 3D memories because 3D memories are typically composed of known-good-dies (KGDs), which are repaired using self-contained redundancies. In 3D memory, redundancy sharing between neighboring vertical memory dies using TSVs is an effective strategy for yield enhancement. With the redundancy sharing strategy, a known-bad-die (KBD) possibly becomes a KGD after bonding. In this paper, we propose a novel die-selection method using KBDs as well as KGDs for yield enhancement in 3D memory. The proposed die-selection method uses three search-space conditions, which can reduce the search space for selecting memory dies to manufacture 3D memories. Simulation results show that the proposed die-selection method can significantly improve the yield of 3D memories in various fault distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If keywords or key phrases that characterize a query or a document are replaced and expressed by identifiers within a conceptual hierarchy such as a thesaurus, excellent searches can be expected by taking conceptual query-document relations of the identifiers into consideration. If, however, judgments to check for matches in the extracted documents take time, the efficiency of the entire system will decrease. In order to deal with this problem, a method is required to easily understand what type of relations exist between the queries and document as well as what the document is referring to. This paper will initially discuss how to handle document expressions that can clearly point out the manner in which the conceptual relations between the queries and documents generate while contributing to improvements in the retrieval efficiency. A method will then be shown that simplifies document expressions when there are many identifiers within a document expression. The effectiveness of this proposed method was ascertained through experiments using test collections for retrievals. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 38(9): 97–106, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10349 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors propose three new excitation codebook search methods for suppressing the selection of an excitation code vector that has a high likelihood of producing pulse-like degraded sound in a low-bit-rate CELP coder that uses a pulse-like excitation code vector. The proposed methods are (1) adaptive weighting for coding distortion based on the state of the input speech, (2) weighting for coding distortion due to amplitude distribution distortion in the time direction, and (3) setting an upper limit for the coding distortion rate for pulse-like excitation codebook searches. Although an excitation code vector with large coding distortion is selected if these proposed methods are set from the coding distortion minimization standard that is used in a conventional CELP excitation code vector search, there is an improvement in the quality that is perceived by the sense of hearing. The authors applied the proposed methods to a 4-kbps CELP coder to verify their effectiveness according to subjective quality evaluation experiments. The results verified the effectiveness of the proposed methods by showing that the introduction of the proposed methods improved the MOS value by approximately 0.3 for clean speech and by approximately 0.4 for noise-added speech. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 38(8): 1–10, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.20739 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although information technology is expanding in the university environment, there are still problems, such as the difficulty of performing registration accurately due to the extremely complex rules in a registration system. In order to make such determinations with a high degree of precision, databases with a variety of information and programs that precisely describe the rules are needed, resulting in an expensive system. As a solution to this problem the authors introduce a framework which allows for submitting registration requests even when there is an error in the registration. As a result, a screening mechanism that can efficiently narrow down and clarify the various problems present in the system can be created while at the same time academic affairs staff can check the content of the submitted registrations. As is the case with paper-based registration, staff can take a look at problematic registrations submitted by students, and then can give precise guidance to each person based on the student's individual information. In addition, the authors provide specific operational data such as the access count for when registration was allowed from outside the school, the number of submissions during the registration period, and the load averages for the server when access peaked while running the system for about 3200 students during 2002 and 2003. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 37(10): 69–80, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.20477 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Electronic Patient Record (EPR) or "computer-based medical record" is defined by the Patient Record Institute as "a repository for patient information with one health-care enterprise that is supported by digital computer input and integrated with other information sources." The information technology revolution coupled with everyday use of computers in clinical dentistry has created new demand for electronic patient records. Ultimately, the EPR should improve health care quality. The major short-term disadvantage is cost, including software, equipment, training, and personnel time involved in the associated business process re-engineering. An internal review committee with expertise in information technology and/or database management evaluated commercially available software in light of the unique needs of academic dental facilities. This paper discusses their deficiencies and suggests areas for improvement. The dental profession should develop a more common record with standard diagnostic codes and clinical outcome measures to make the EPR more useful for clinical research and improve the quality of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rollback recovery is a well-known technique to recover the system from failures for fault-tolerant properties. There may be a domino effect when this method is applied to multiprocessor systems. In this paper, we discuss the method that restarts from consistent checkpoints without message loss in the whole system, when failure occurs under the assumption that the processors are connected with reliable communication. Furthermore, we present a method to obtain checkpoints by using temporal logic to roll back rapidly in each processor from the current renewal checkpoints and communication. © 2000 Scripta Technica, Syst Comp Jpn, 31(11): 24–30, 2000 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the system called Takealook, which personalizes information presentation according to the user's interests and knowledge. The system infers the user's interests from her/his question-and-answer interactions and the information presenters' conceptual spaces by using the related method of collaborative filtering. It then provides additional information about current contents and also recommends other related contents. The user's interests are represented by her/his own individual conceptual space (i.e., a set of related keywords) which is adapted to her/his preferences. In this paper we describe a method for personalizing the information presentation, implementating the system at reviewing an exhibition, and experimental results. © 2000 Scripta Technica, Syst Comp Jpn, 31(10): 41–55, 2000 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information systems have been widely been used due to a combined effect of the information infrastructure and the convenience of the information systems. Increase in the number of people who cannot benefit from these systems (e.g., disabled people) has been a social problem. This paper proposes a system which has auditory input and output, so that visually handicapped people or visually unusable systems can be improved. The proposed system has an input interface using a five-degree-of-freedom nonlanguage voice (previously developed by the authors), and an output of three-dimensional sound. The proposed system was designed, constructed, and evaluated for example by measuring the speed of users' selection of the output of the system. Unlike visual communications, generally an auditory interface can hardly communicate multiple data at a time. Considering this point, the proposed system shows relatively good characteristics. It will be possible to apply the system to “virtual reality,” notably an interface in a three-dimensional acoustic space. © 1999 Scripta Technica, Syst Comp Jpn, 30(11): 77–84, 1999 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many network intrusion detection systems detect intrusions by concentrating all logs of target systems in a server and having the server subsequently analyze these logs. At the Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA), we have been developing an alternate type of network intrusion detection system called IDA (Intrusion Detection Agent system), which detects intrusions with mobile agents that act by gathering information related to intrusions from target systems on a network. The mobile agents autonomously trace the origin of the break-in without the intrusion-detection server's control and also gather information from target systems. Consequently, network traffic between the target systems and the server is reduced. This paper describes how the mobile agents migrate from machine to machine within a network and details how they trace intrusions and gather and exchange information efficiently. © 1999 Scripta Technica, Syst Comp Jpn, 30(2): 31–37, 1999 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When parallel discrete event simulation is applied to actual problems, the virtual time synchronization algorithm which has been studied for a long period and mapping the simulation model onto a parallel computer pose serious problems. For these problems, since accurate performance measurements in the execution of parallel simulation are not available, few effective solutions have been proposed. If we can estimate the performance of a parallel simulator precisely, then virtual time synchronization algorithms can be implemented and mapping can be done efficiently. This paper studies the synchronous conservative algorithm, in which parallel simulation is performed using barrier synchronizations and a mathematical model is constructed by assuming that complicated events are generated with intervals that follow an exponential distribution. As a result of comparing the estimated execution time obtained in this model with the execution time of a parallel computer simulation, we found that the execution time can be estimated with high accuracy. Using this estimation model, the overhead of the algorithm is analyzed and important points concerning algorithm implementation and mapping are discussed. © 1998 Scripta Technica, Syst Comp Jpn, 28(10): 40–49, 1997 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progress in device design and implementation technologies will change the structure of bus-connected multi-processors and allow them to be implemented on a single chip. In such an implementation, the speed of the bus inside the chip is far faster than that of the backplane bus, and data transfer between the chip and external devices will become a bottleneck. Many studies on snoop cache protocols have been made, but they generally assume that the cache memory is on a printed circuit board. In this paper, we first classify the snoop cache protocols in terms of accesses to off-chip shared memory, which will be the principal cause of performance degradation, and then compare them quantitatively. Evaluations are made with an instruction-level multiprocessor simulator and practical parallel applications, varying the cache size or the access latency of shared memory. The results show that an I/N/C protocol that actively uses the line transfers between caches achieves the highest performance under all conditions. © 1997 Scripta Technica, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 28(2): 62–72, 1997 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A responsive system, which serves to unify a fault. tolerant system and real-time system, must have flexible real-time fault recovery capability. Of the multi- processor systems in which the number of active processors changes dynamically due to failures and repairs of processors, those with the reconfiguration capability to isolate faulty processors from the system and recon- fleet repaired processors to the system, in addition to the ability to process tasks in real-time, are examples of responsive systems. Normal task processing operations may be interrupted by reconfiguration and tasks requiring real-time processing may miss their deadline as a result. A modeling method on a stochastic reward net is proposed in this paper to represent the failure-repair behavior of a system and changes in external environments (including fluctuations in the task arrival rate). This method explicitly considers the possibility of missed deadlines. As a result of performance evaluation using the proposed model, it is shown that system performance can be improved by controlling the timing of the system reconfiguration, thus minimizing the effects of system reconfiguration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the hypercrossbar network which has high flexibility and extensibility as a massively parallel computer network. Its performance is evaluated in nonroutine processing by computer simulation and theoretical analysis. To improve its performance, an implementation method of adaptive routing based on dynamic path determination is proposed, and its performance is evaluated by computer simulation. It is verified that the hypercrossbar network with adaptive routing has about 45 percent of the peak throughput at random transfer. Furthermore, its effectiveness is extremely high for applications with hotspot. It can attain about 8 times throughput compared with fixed routing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of computer-network routing methods, there has been less research on fixed routing systems than on adaptive ones. However, there are a great many fixed routing systems in use on actual networks because they are simple. In fixed routing, a principal issue is which method should be used for switching to alternate routes in cases where damage to links or nodes blocks off primary routes. In the majority of cases, routing is changed by switching the links over which the packets are sent (called outgoing links). However, the methods have not yet been perfected—ping pong, looping, and other erroneous-routing phenomena arise occasionally. This paper presents a distributed algorithm to solve these problems. An algorithm will be given for restoring the original routes after recovery from damage. Finally, it will be proved that erroneous routing will not arise even when multiple chains of operations based on the algorithms presented are in progress at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a method for efficiently removing redundant elements using properties of undetectable faults obtained by test pattern generation. Lines of redundant elements have undetectable single stuck-at faults. We classify undetectable faults into three categories according to the test pattern generation process, and then assume that some redundant elements can be removed concurrently. Our method produces a nonredundant circuit efficiently by using these properties and generates test patterns with high fault coverage. Some experimental results for ISCAS '85 benchmark circuits are also shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes new load-sharing algorithms for parallel database processing. There is a trade-off between overhead and load unbalance in ordinary algorithms. The proposed algorithms solve the tradeoff by varying the number of tasks allocated at one time, which is fixed in ordinary algorithms. Performance evaluations show that the proposed algorithms achieve fair load sharing with low overhead, independent of database size, the number of processors and data distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a picture is to be generated in a multiprocessor system for image processing, the picture generation time can be reduced by dividing the picture into several subpictures, which are then assigned to the processors for parallel processing. In such a scheme, there exists a trade-off relation between the parallelism of the subpicture processing and the overhead for assignment. When the number of subpictures is increased, the parallelism is enhanced, while the time of the subpicture assignment is increased. By contrast, when the number of subpictures is small, the time for the subpicture assignment is reduced, while the parallelism is decreased. This paper discusses this tradeoff relation. In other words, discussions are made of the effect of the number of processors composing the multiprocessor system for image processing and the number of subpictures to be processed by the system, on the time for picture generation and the system efficiency. First, a discrete approximate solution for the picture generation time is derived using the Markov process. Then an approximate solution by the queuing network theory is presented. Those methods are applied to actual examples to derive numerical solutions, indicating that there exists the optimum number of subpictures minimizing the picture generation time. A simulation was performed, and the result indicated that the two methods of analysis agree well, further indicating the validity of the approximations introduced in the course of the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the recent remarkable development of VLSI technology, the study and the experimental development of multiprocessors composed of a large number of processors have actively been performed. A serious problem in such systems is the contention (conflict) in communication. A clustered system is proposed as a means to ameliorate the problem, where processors are grouped into several units. This paper derives a theoretical expression for the processing efficiency of the clustered multiprocessor system. An experimental system was constructed, which is composed of 32 processors, being grouped into 4 clusters, each of which is composed of 8 processors. The design of the software and the result of implementation are described. As a practical example, the summation of a series and the solution of a system of linear equations are considered. The processing efficiencies of the clustered and nonclustered systems were measured and compared. It is shown as a result that the clustered system can improve the system efficiency considerably by adding a small amount of hardware. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous multiple access protocols have been proposed aiming at an efficient utilization of transmission channels. Among those, the tree-type protocol is one of the multiple access protocols which provide a stable throughput, Various studies have been made on the tree-type communication protocols. This paper is concerned especially with the analysis of the throughput of the reservation protocols with tree-type reservation channel. In the proposed system, the tree-type protocol is employed to reserve the data slot, providing stable and high throughput. There are two types of tree-type protocols: the blocked-access tree protocol which inhibits the transmission of a new packet in the collision resolution interval; and the free-access tree protocol which does not inhibit the transmission. The reservation protocols employing these two protocols are discussed. Through the analysis, the optimum frame structure for each type is obtained. The maximum throughput of CCA proposed by Lee and Mark, as well as the optimum number of the small reservation slots, are obtained analytically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The computer network and multiprocessor system have been developed and studied. They are based on a network composed of nodes containing processors, aiming at the improvement of performance by distributed processing as well as the improvement of reliability by resource distribution. To realize high system performance, adequate routing and flow controls are required in the communication of information among nodes. This paper proposes a new routing control scheme to be used in the packet communication in the computer network or multiprocessor system. The scheme is called potential routing, which models the computer network by an electric circuit, and the packet routing from the source node to the destination node is performed to the potential difference between the adjacent nodes. The node potential is determined first by Kirchhoff's law and is modified dynamically according to the traffic situation during the routing procedure, providing an adequate criterion for the routing. The proposed scheme has a feature in that ping-pong and loop phenomena, which cause traffic congestion, are not produced in principle. It was verified by simulation that the transmission delay is reduced when the traffic is high or unbalanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the automatic mounting system, which mounts electronic parts on a printed board, a problem is that the object printed circuit board is becoming of higher density and the parts have a fine lead structure. It is necessary that the positions of the part and the printed board should be detected with a high accuracy. It also became important to cope with the diversified parts with different shapes. This paper proposes a new practical method of automatic position detection to solve those problems. The proposed system is composed of the position detection process for the part and the position detection process for the printed board. In the process for position detection of parts, the positions of more than one lead are detected by the pattern matching, determining the similarity between partial images, and the position and the inclination of the part are calculated based on the result of matching. The viewing field is set so that only several leads are observed by the TV camera, and the object lens is moved to X and Y directions so that the viewing field can be shifted to any desired position. In the position detection of the printed board, the positions of the two marks printed on the board are detected, and the position and the inclination of the printed board are calculated based on the mark positions. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, the position detection experiment was performed for the actual part and printed board, indicating that the position can be detected with a high accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the process assignment problem in the multiprocessor system with communication contentions due to interprocess communication (IPCs). As a model for the multiprocessor system, a system is considered in which the processing elements (PEs) with local memory (LM) are connected through a communication network (CN). As a model for the distributed-type algorithm realized on such a system,a scheme is considered in which the process assigned on a PE is executed with IPC with other processes. Based on these models, a problem is formulated where a set of processes is assigned on the multiprocessor system so that the overall processing time is minimized. Especially, for the problem where a single common bus is used as the CN and the processes are assumed as uniform, the optimum number of PEs is determined by introducing an approximation to the waiting time for the CN. the strict solution obtained by exhaustive search is compare with the approximate solution, and the validity of the approximate solution is evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]