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Aim: We present the study protocol of a multicenter, retrospective observational study that aims to investigate the efficacy of the actual treatment (the efficacy of conventional and Kampo medicines) of patients with mild to moderate or suspected coronavirus disease (COVID-19) Methods: This study is designed as a multicenter, retrospective observational study Outpatients and inpatients will be recruited from Japanese hospitals The inclusion criteria are as follows: having or suspected to have COVID-19, mild to moderate COVID-19, symptomatic, ≥20 years of age, male or female, able to communicate in Japanese, and treated with conventional and Kampo medicine The exclusion criteria are: unable to provide informed consent due to dementia, psychosis, or psychiatric symptoms, severe COVID-19, or determined unsuitable for this study The sample size is set at 1000, as this number of people can be treated at the collaborating medical institutions during the study period Results: The main outcome is the number of days without fever, with a body temperature of less than 37°C The secondary outcome is set at common cold-like symptoms other than fever (fatigue, cough, shortness of breath, sputum, diarrhea) and severity of illness and hospitalization up to 14 days after the visit Trial registration: The trial was registered in the University Hospital Medical Information Network (Reservation No UMIN000041301) on August 4, 2020 Conclusion: Our study will explore the contribution of conventional and Kampo medicine in the treatment of patients with mild and moderate COVID-19

Associative memory devices using computational morphology as proposed by Ritter are garnering a lot of attention. Ritter proposed two types of memory arrays, M and W, which have considerable levels of erosional noise and dilational noise, respectively. In addition, he has proposed an association method which combines the two memory arrays comprised of kernels when recalling a memory pattern. In this paper the authors investigate the recall rate by implementing the two-stage recall method proposed by Ritter. However, this method cannot readily create kernel patterns when one memory pattern is included in other memory patterns or when a characteristic region for a memory pattern does not exist, and so the kernel pattern must be created by trial and error. Therefore, as the number of memory patterns increases, deciding the kernel pattern becomes more difficult. The authors demonstrate a method for creating kernels automatically for any memory pattern as a way to overcome this problem. It was found that in comparison to the associative memory device proposed by Ritter, the authors' resulting associative memory device could readily create kernel patterns for any memory pattern without relying on trial and error. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 33(7): 85–94, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.1144