AITEC NEWS No.19
September 14, 1998
Issue #19
(issued on August 24, 1998 in Japanese)

Introduction

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The weather this summer was very abnormal as had been predicted, with much rain and few hot clear days ... autumn has come already.

Another issue this summer was the upper house election, which focused on rebuilding Japan's economy as the nation's most urgent problem. Japan's economy is as bad as the summer.

The TV and newspapers have been closely followed to learn about how the new government plans to restore Japan's battered economy according to political parties and economic specialists. The plans can perhaps be divided into two types, short-range ones and long-range ones.

Information technology, which is our specialty, has been used to improve the productivity of various industries and make life more convenient. IT is also now used to provide more influential systems such as the Internet and Electronic Money. IT is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives and has the potential to radically change economic activity and social structure in the long term.

We must seriously consider the future of the IT industry in the rebuilding of Japan, since the fact is that Japan's IT industry lags far behind that of the US and Europe. What should Japan do?

The Machinery and Information Industries Bureau of MITI recently released a report on how R&D in IT in Japan should be restructured to regain its competitiveness in the world market. AITEC helped to compile this report, by setting up a research team and committees to conduct various surveys such as on R&D schemes and related legal systems of the US and Europe; the results were submitted to MITI for the report. (Our survey reports (in Japanese) are available on AITEC's Web server.)

The MITI report pointed out that the government should invest more and immediately make Japan's IT market more open and competitive.

In parallel with these activities, AITEC has been funding domestic and overseas research groups in academia to stimulate development of advanced software in knowledge processing and parallel symbol processing. AITEC also holds events such as the KLIC programming contest for disseminating the FGCS technology. Although such activities have only a small budget, we hope that they will help boost Japan's IT industry and thus strengthen the economy in the long term.

As everyone is well aware, Japan's economy is in dire straits, and is as abnormal as the summer weather. However, we hope that patient efforts with your support will help restore the IT industry and bear fruit once again.

Let's start with the headlines of AITEC NEWS No. 19.

(Chie Takahashi)

AITEC NEWS Headlines

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1. KLIC Programming Contest Subjects Released

The subjects for the KLIC programming contest 1998 have been announced:

"LIGHTS OUT" is for the Entry category; "SKELETON CONTEST" is for the Speed category.

We especially encourage KL1 novice users to participate in the Entry Category. This will be the final chance to test your programming skills in the contest, so go on and enter the contest!

KLIC Programming Contest Homepage:
http://www.icot.or.jp/AITEC/FGCS/KLICON/main-E.html

(Article No.19-1)

2. The First ICOT OB/OG Reunion Party

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We will announce the first ICOT OB/OG reunion party in October. It is more than three years since ICOT was wound up in 1995, and as you know AITEC has been promoting IFS (FGCS products) since then.

At the end of FY 1998 we will cease promoting IFS, and will conduct only a little server maintenance for IFS delivery and respond to inquiries. This will be done by some professors and researchers at universities and manufacturers on a volunteer basis.

This announcement will also be sent to you by postal mail. If you know anyone who we cannot make contact with and would like to join the party, please forward it to him or her.

We very much look forward to meeting ICOT people again at the party.

Date: October 1, 1998 (Thursday) 18:30 - 20:30
Place: Melparc Tokyo (Yubin-Chokin-Kaikan), Tokyo (Tel: 03-3433-7210)
Charge: 5,000 yen

Please let us know whether you intend to join or not by September 11 (Friday) by email or postal mail.

Email Address: junko@icot.or.jp (Junko Togiishi)

Address: 2F, Tokyo Kaijo Bldg., 2-3-3, Shiba, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-0014

Secretariat: Setsuko Oyama, Tatsuo Okuyama, Junko Togiishi, Mitsuo Komine, Shunichi Uchida

(Shunichi Uchida)
(No Reference Article)

3. MITI Releases Report on Reforming Japan's IT Industry

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As is often mentioned, the IT industry in Japan, especially the software industry, lags far behind the US and some European countries, and this has been affecting the entire Japanese IT industry. The government is developing a policy to address the situation, and holds committee meetings to discuss this issue at the Machinery and Information Industries Bureau in MITI. The committee discusses how R&D on IT in Japan should be reformed to regain competitiveness in the world market, and has released a report.

AITEC provided various survey results and data to the committee for discussion. We have focused on how to reform R&D systems and related legal systems concerning national IT, especially software development, in order to strengthen the international competitiveness of software industry.

The report released by MITI focused on problems such as how the government should efficiently integrate the results of government sponsored R&D with industrial activities.

1) In order to boost competitiveness to a world-class level, the national R&D funding system should:

2) The government should promote R&D themes that will help rebuild the Japanese economy and create new businesses, and should change the scheme of using the government owned intellectual property. We must therefore consider:

An abstract of this report was put up on the MITI Homepage on July 31, 1998 (http://www.miti.go.jp/press-j/f-menu-j.html)(in Japanese).

AITEC survey reports that provided the data for the MITI report can be found at (http://www.icot.or.jp/AITEC/FTS/FTS-home.html)(in Japanese).

(Hiroshi Sato)
(No Reference Article)

4. AITEC's Research Funding Program for Intelligent Software Development
-- Research Themes for FY 1998 Selected

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The AITEC's Research Funding Program, which has grown internationally, will wind up its four years of activities at the end of this fiscal year. Therefore, this fiscal year's program will focus on brushing up IFS and extended IFS to allow use by more researchers and engineers in a wider variety of fields as tools and education materials.

The Research Funding Program for intelligent software has been producing software (based on IFS) mainly related to parallel symbol processing and knowledge processing. Access to such products from many countries is increasing, so we must continue to improve their usability.

For this year's program, we received 15 new proposals from domestic and overseas researchers. As we have 6 continued projects from last year, we evaluated 21 projects in total. As a result, we have selected 19 projects (16 domestic ones and 3 overseas ones) among the 21 projects.

The project titles and principle investigators are listed in Article No. 2.

(Akira Aiba)
(Article No.19-2)

Articles In This Issue

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1. KLIC Programming Contest Subjects Released

The subjects for KLIC Programming Contest for FY 1998 have been released (for Entry category and Speed category).

For details of the subjects, see the Contest WWW page:
http://www.icot.or.jp/AITEC/FGCS/KLICON/main-E.html

The Entry category is for KL1 novice users to enjoy programming, with many chances to win bonus prizes. We hope that novice users as well as experts will enjoy programming in the Entry category.

There are following three categories in the contest:

  1. ENTRY CATEGORY: Subject: "Let's program LIGHTS OUT Game!"
    If your program works correctly, you will win a bonus prize of 20,000 yen A test program to check the correctness of your program is also provided.

  2. SPEED CATEGORY: Subject: "SKELETON CONTEST"
    Faster and better performance programs can win prizes. Test your programming skills and intelligence!

  3. IDEA CATEGORY: Free category: Program anything you like!
    As there have been fewer competitors in this category in the previous contests, you've more chance of winning.

Please register with the Contest Mailing List to receive the latest contest information by email. (You can register from the above contest WWW page.)

Again, we emphasize that this is the last and best chance to try your programming skills. We look forward to receiving your entry!

(Kiyoshi Kaneda)

2. AITEC's Research Funding Program for Intelligent Software
-- Research Themes for FY 1998

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In AITEC NEWS No.17, we called for research themes for FY 1998's Research Program for Intelligent Software. Our FGCS promotion activities will end this fiscal year, and so this Research Program will be the final one.

For this fiscal year, we have called for proposals for brushing up IFS and extended IFS, in order to build software resources and create usable software for engineers and users who are not necessarily in the IT industry.

Brushup IFS and extended IFS means:

In addition to the 6 two-year projects continued from FY 1997, 15 new projects were judged by the refereeing committee, and 19 projects (16 from domestic researchers and 3 from overseas) were selected.

There are various themes in the 19 projects, such as infrastructure like KLIC, applications like legal reasoning and genetic information processing, and collaborative themes with existing technology like Java.

The workshop of the Research Funding Program FY 1998 is scheduled to be held in February 1999, to which we hope to invite overseas researchers who participate in the program.

We will continue releasing IFS and extended IFS for wider use in FY 1999. This year's brushup projects should help make the programs more accessible, easier to use, and useful shared software resources.

-- 19 RESEARCH PROJECT THEMES FOR FY 1998 -- 
1. Distribution Project of IFS Japanese Morphological Grammar
   Hiroshi Sano: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

2. An Improved Threading of KL1
   Hiroshi Nakashima: Toyohashi University of Technology

3. Development of a Java-MGTP System and Advanced Inference Mechanism 
   Ryuzo Hasegawa: Kyushu University

4. Research and Development of a Data Mining Engine DATAGOL 
   by Inductive Logic Programming
   Kouichi Furukawa: Keio University

5. Applying Constraint Logic Programming Languages for Modeling 
   Multi-objective Decision-making under Uncertainty
   John Darlington: Imperial College (UK)

6. Distributed Constraint Solving for Functional Logic Programming
   Bruno Buchberger: RISC Linz (Austria)

7. WEB-KLIC Software
   Enrico Pontelli: New Mexico State University (USA)


8. Visual Interface of klic (Klitcl) and Message Interface 
   of klic and Java (Javaklic)
   Jiro Tanaka: University of Tsukuba

9. Set Constraint Solvers 
   Yousuke Sato: Ritsumeikan University

10. Development of a Legal Reasoning System Based on Goal-Dependent Abstraction
    Tokuyasu Kakuta: Hokkaido University

11. A Programming System for Statistical Modeling: PRISM
    Taisuke Sato: Tokyo Institute of Technology

12. A Drawing Editor Based on Constraint Solving
    Takeo Igarashi: The University of Tokyo

13. DJ: A Java-based Constraint Language and System
    Neng-Fa Zhou: Kyushu Institute of Technology

14. Improving Usability of the Parallel Visual Programming Environment KLIEG
    Etsuya Shibayama: Tokyo Institute of Technology

15. Development of Cooperative Robot Programming Language System
    Fumio Mizoguchi: Science University of Tokyo

16. Static Analyzer of KL1 Programs
    Kazunori Ueda: Waseda University

17. KLIC version 3: Introduction of Generational Garbage Collector
    Takashi Chikayama: The University of Tokyo

18. Application of Parallel Logic Programming for Reconstruction of Molecular 
    Phylogenetic Trees using the Maximum Likelihood Method
    Naruya Saitou: National Institute of Genetics

19. Enhancing and Porting an Efficient Constraint Solver for Hierarchical 
    Linear Systems
    Satoshi Matsuoka: Tokyo Institute of Technology
(Tomoaki Moro, Akira Aiba)

Message From the Editorial Desk

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We have introduced the KLIC Programming Contest and the Research Funding Program in this AITEC NEWS. We look forward to receiving your entry to the KLIC Programming Contest. If you have any questions about the contest, please contact:

klic-contest@icot.or.jp

If you know anyone who might wish to subscribe to AITEC NEWS, or if you have changed your email address, please let us know. Please also feel free to send your comments, opinions and requests to the following address:

aitec-news@icot.or.jp

See you in the next AITEC NEWS. 
                
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*                                                                    *
*      A I T E C   N E W S Issue #19                                 *
*         AITEC NEWS Editorial Team:                                 *
*           Makiko Sato, Chie Takahashi, Akira Aiba                  *
*	    Kazumi Kasai, Kouichi Takeda, Yoshiharu Torii            *
*	    Hiroshi Sato, Shunichi Uchida                            *
*         AITEC NEWS English Version Team:                           *
*	    Masayo Fukushima, Shunichi Uchida                        *
*        Issued on: August 24, 1998 (Japanese Version)               *
*                   September 14, 1998 (English Version)             *
*        By: Research Institute for Advanced Information             *
*            Technology (AITEC), a subcenter of                      *
*	     Japan Information Processing Development                *
*            Center (JIPDEC)                                         *
*  	     2-3-3, Minato-ku, Shiba, Tokyo 105-0013, Japan          *
*	     TEL: +81-3-3456-3191 FAX: +81-3-3455-4877               *
*	     E-mail: aitec-news@icot.or.jp                           *
*	     http://www.icot.or.jp                                   *
*                                                                    *
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