The Future of Socionetwork Strategies

In the first stage of creating technological improvements for a democratic society, the leaders of the Society of Socionetwork Strategies have conducted statistical research on the effect of information and communication technology on the global economy. In the second stage, younger professors, based on their Positive Studies, have leapt into a multi-agent simulation of Grid Computing. In the third stage, a terra-bite scale of social data-collecting and the mining of large-scale data in our real world will be next. The next generation of scientists will share knowledge and intellectual inquiry in the fields of statistics, mathematics, and the social sciences with the help of computers connecting such scholars from all over the world.     

An Exploratory Look at Supply Chains in Japan from Multiscale Network Perspectives

In social network analysis, advances in social networking and computing techniques have increasingly become a popular approach for extracting features and rules of real-world networks. The network language—\(G=\{V, E \}\) provides a common representation of various networks, where G, V, and E denote the system, components, and interactions, respectively. In this study, we employ this emerging technique to discuss supply chains in Japan. We construct the supply network (i.e., system) based on the firms (i.e., components) and their transactional relationships (i.e., interactions). In comparison with the traditional approaches of industrial sectors and regional clusters, this study represents an exploratory look at supply networks, and investigates different scales of supply networks from three perspectives. (1) In the macro-scale perspective, we evaluate the “small-world” separation of supply networks using average path length. (2) In the meso-scale perspective, we detect communities of the supply networks, which can be marked for cross-location and cross-industry features. (3) In the micro-scale perspective, we investigate the “scale-free” nature of supply networks and each community using node degree-prior connections, which can find “hub” firms and simultaneously estimate the robustness of supply networks using a sequential elimination choice strategy of these hubs.     

Bookmarks Recommendation in Bibsonomy using Community Detection

Several academic social networks have emerged to help researchers who need to search for documents relevant to their interests. The recommendation has been adopted in many websites to suggest relevant documents to users according to their profiles. However, many academic social networks and digital libraries still lack recommendations. In this paper, we propose a new document recommendation approach for the academic social bookmarking website: Bibsonomy. In our method, we use a community detection technique to identify related users. Then, for each target user, the recommended documents are selected from their learning communities. Experimental results show that the proposed method performs better than state-of-the-art recommendation methods.     

Research Note: A Cooperative Discussion Support System through Visualization of Participants' Contributions to a Discussion

This paper proposes a new discussion support system. The proposed system supports participants in cooperative discussions, evaluates the contributions of participants to a discussion, and visualizes the contribution points in a ranking list. We have developed the proposed system and evaluated it in an evaluation experiment. Experimental results show that the proposed system supports cooperative discussions.     

A Statistical Analysis Between Consumer Behavior and a Social Network Service: A Case Study of Used-Car Demand Following the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011

When a large-scale disaster hits a community, especially a water-related disaster, there is a scarcity of automobiles and a sudden increase in the demand for used cars in the damaged areas. This paper conducts a case study of a recent massive natural disaster, the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 to understand those car scarcities and demand in the aftermath of the catastrophe. We analyze the reasons for the increase in demand for used cars and how social media can predict people’s demand for used automobiles. In other words, this paper explores whether social media data can be used as a sensor of socio-economic recovery status in damaged areas during large-scale water-related disaster-recovery phases. For this purpose, we use social media communication as a proxy for estimating indicators of people’s activities in the real world. This study conducts both qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis. For the qualitative research, we carry out semi-structured interviews with used-car dealers in the tsunami-stricken area and unveil why people in the area demanded used cars. For the quantitative analysis, we collected Facebook page communication data and used-car market data before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011. By combining and analyzing these two types of data, we find that social media communication correlates with people’s activities in the real world. Furthermore, this study suggests that different types of communication on social media have different types of correlations with people’s activities. More precisely, we find that social media communication related to people’s activities for rebuilding and for emotional support is positively correlated with the demand for used cars after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. On the other hand, communication about anxiety and information seeking correlates negatively with the demand for used cars.     

An Interactive Independent Topic Analysis for a Mass Document Review Service

In this paper, we propose an interactive constrained independent topic analysis in text data mining. Independent topic analysis (ITA) is a method for extracting independent topics from document data using independent component analysis. In this independent topic analysis, the most independent topics between each topic are extracted. By extracting the independent topic, managing documents with a large number of text data is easy with document access support systems and document management systems. However, the topics extracted by ITA are often different from the topics a user requests. For the system to be of service to users, an interactive system that reflects the user’s requests is necessary. Thus, we propose an interactive ITA that works for the user. For example, if there are three topics, i.e., topic A, topic B, and topic C, and a user choose the content from topics A and B, a user can merge those topics into one topic D. In addition, if a user wants to analyze topic A in more detail, a user could separate topic A into topics E and topic F. To that end, we define Merge Link constraints and Separate Link constraints as user requests. The Merge Link constraint is a constraint that merges two topics into one topic. The Separate Link constraint is a constraint that separates two topics from one topic. In this paper, we propose a method for extracting a highly independent topic that meets these constraints. We conducted evaluation experiments on our proposed methods, and obtained results to show the effectiveness of our approach.     

The Effect of Changes in Nuptiality Behavior after the 1980s on the Poverty Rate for the Elderly in Japan -Analysis Using a Dynamic Microsimulation Model-

The social security system in Japan was developed under the premise that postwar families represented the most common type of family. A “postwar famil” refers to a family in which: (1) men and women are married; (2) husbands work as regular employees and wives are dependent homemakers; and (3) husbands and wives seldom get divorced. Therefore, the social security system is particularly generous towards dependent wives and widows. However, these premises are no longer valid because Japanese nuptiality behavior has completely changed since the 1980s. Marriage rates have decreased and divorce rates have significantly increased. Nevertheless, society still suffers from a wage inequality between men and women. As a result, the number of never-married or divorced elderly women will increase, and these women might face a serious poverty risk in the future. In this study, the author makes simulations of the living arrangements and poverty rates for the elderly in Japan and evaluates the effect of changes in nuptiality behavior on these poverty rates using a dynamic microsimulation model. The simulation results indicate that changes in nuptiality behavior will affect the poverty rate for elderly women, but not for elderly men.     

A Practical Teacher–Robot Collaboration Lesson Application Based on PRINTEPS

To support elementary school teachers in teaching by encouraging active learning while maintaining the interest of pupils, this study focuses on supporting teaching, learning, and monitoring the progress of students through a Teacher–Robot collaboration lesson application using not only laptops and tablets, but also robots and sensors. Since developing a lesson application is time consuming for teachers, we have developed an integrated intelligent application development platform named PRactical INTElligent aPplicationS (PRINTEPS) to aid Teacher–Robot collaboration. However, several functions and interfaces for education are missing. Therefore, in this study, we extend several functions for education to PRINTEPS. In addition, since it is necessary in learning and monitoring the progress of students to present learning content suitable to each pupil’s level of understanding, we also have provided support through the use of a tablet quiz system based on ontologies and rule bases. In the case study, we developed a Teacher–Robot collaboration lesson application and conducted lessons for sixth-grade pupils at an elementary school. From the case study, we have confirmed the effectiveness of our platform and the application.     

Agent-based simulation approach for disaster rescue using active RFID

After the 2004 earthquake in Japan’sNiigata Prefecture, there were many difficulties finding the victims. The earthquake caused a wired network disconnection. In addition, fixed-phone and cell-phone service systems crashed due to the rapid increase in the volume of communications. The systems’ collapse was due to the large number of users who were worried about the safety of their relatives. The same situation happened during Hurricane Katrina in the USA. Reflecting on these situations, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is trying to adopt several methods to correct these communications problems. Although these methods have not been disclosed precisely yet, we think that a predominant goal of one of the methods is most likely to find victims using RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identification) with computer sensors. To do this, the RFID method would have to be incorporated in the following ways: 1) by scattering sensor devices from helicopters when a large-scale disaster such as an earthquake occurs, 2) by making RFIDs self-organized into a network, and 3) by making the self-organized network pinpoint the position of victims. A certain amount of field-testing may be necessary to confirm the effects of this plan. However, such testing requires a great amount of time and high costs. Therefore, we adopt an agent-based simulation for such a test. In this paper, we pay specific attention to a simple and assured algorithm for discovering victims using RFIDs. First, we explain our method to confirm the location of victims. Second, we explain our method for pinpointing the position of victims using trilateration. Finally, we present our simulation results.     

The Effects of Proposals for Basic Pension Reform on the Income Distribution of the Elderly in Japan

The aging of the population in Japan is a serious problem, and the reform of the public pension scheme is a major political issue. Although the 2004 pension reform was enforced to ensure a sustainable pension system in such an aging society, people remain quite apprehensive about the pension system. Consequently, various sectors have created new proposals for pension reform to overcome these problems, and it has become a recent policy debate. The objective of this article is to prepare projections for the income distribution of households containing elderly people using the Japanese microsimulation model, INAHSIM (Integrated Analytical Model for Household Simulation), and to evaluate the effect of the proposals on the living standards of the elderly. According to the simulation results, the problem of very low pension amounts for the elderly does not appear to be growing. However, changes in co-resident families of the elderly, such as the increase in the number of people living alone, may cause a decline in their standard of living. The author points out the problems of the previously proposed reform plans and proposes an alternative reform plan based on the perspective used in this paper.     

Research Note: The Paradox of Cloud Computing in Japan

Cloud Computing is defined as computer usage delivered as a service over the Internet. This cloud computing is classified as public computing, private computing, or hybrid computing. Public cloud computing is open to any customer who pays service charges. On the contrary, private cloud computing is used by a member of a company who has constructed a cloud computing system over a restricted domain on that company's information infrastructure. Hybrid cloud computing is a mix of both the public and private. Which type of cloud computing is popular in Japan? To answer this question I mailed questionnaires to 2,284 enterprises listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Market in 2012 and 2013. I analyzed the relationship between these answers and financial indexes using a multinomial logistic regression model. I concluded that the total assets was the most effective factor in the decision to introduce the public cloud, and the accumulated profit was one of the most effective factors in the decision to introduce the hybrid cloud. These findings are not consistent with orthodox price theory.     

Social Network Rebuilder: A Tool to Estimate a Social Network of Financial Crisis Propagation

The objective of this paper is to find a new method to estimate real social networks based on observed data collected by questionnaire surveys. Studies on social networks have been increasing in order to analyze social phenomena from a micro viewpoint. Most social phenomena can be explained by micro-level interactions among people. Spread of rumor and pandemics are typical example of micro interaction? However, there has not been much work on an analysis of real social networks based on observed data. This study tries to establish a methodology that exploits a genetic algorithm to rebuild a social network based on the data observed indirectly from real social networks. This paper introduces our proposed method, which allows us to rebuild a social network to some extent from degree distributions of a target real social network.     

Simulation Analysis of a Dynamic Reallocation-based Routing Functionality for SAGE Application

A large amount of scientific data is generated through computation and analysis. Also, today’s scientific research necessitates an aggregation of diverse expertise from experts with different backgrounds. Therefore, visualizing and sharing these data among scientists in an intuitive and easy manner is of more importance in scientific collaborative research than ever. We have focused on SAGE, a middleware that realizes a large-scale remote visualization leveraging network streaming technique as a promising building block technology. However, no advanced network control function for efficient use of the network is equipped with SAGE although SAGE relies on a network streaming techniques. Our previous research integrated a functionality that detected network failures avoided such failure by rerouting network flows of SAGE into the functionality. Nonetheless, a network congestion avoidance functionality to adapt a collection of network flows generated by SAGE to the underlying network has not been developed yet. In this paper we explore the feasibility of a reallocation-based dynamic routing functionality for SAGE, with which all network flows on the network are rearranged. For feasibility research, we perform simulation experiments to observe the behavior of the functionality. The evaluation confirms that our proposed functionality works correctly and brings better throughput for each flow.     

Facebook Content Strategies and Citizens’ Online Engagement: The Case of Greek Local Governments

This paper analyzes the communication strategies used by Greek local governments through the utilization of Web 2.0 technologies, specifically Facebook, and the effectiveness of these strategies in relation to citizens’ online engagement. More specifically, it examines Facebook communication strategies and levels of citizens’ engagement. For this purpose, we conducted a content analysis on the active and official Facebook pages of local municipalities in Greece from January 2017 until the end of September 2017. Our results suggest a rise in the percentage of active Facebook pages maintained by local governments in comparison to our 2014 study. Our results also show that local governments in Greece are using Facebook in a predominantly top-down manner to promote events organized by the municipality and to push one-way information to citizens about their services and actions. Local authorities have, however, made significant progress in relation to posts that support transparency and accountability and that enhance or mobilize citizens’ participation. Our evaluation of local government Facebook strategies indicates that marketing the municipality to external public, such as tourists, and providing information about services are effective strategies that drive citizens’ online attitude expression (liking), engagement (commenting), and advocacy behavior (sharing). According to our analysis, local governments in Greece prefer the strategies that we found to be the least engaging. In addition, our study provides interesting details of how specific characteristics and modes of Facebook messages (photos, videos, URLs, hashtags, and mentions) impact on citizens’ engagement. Finally, our results provide valuable insights for social media managers in local government who aim to increase the impact of their municipal Facebook pages.     

Married Women’s Lifestyles in Japan: Disparities Based on the Number of Children

In order to explore the complex mechanisms of married women’s decisions in matters of childbirth, we studied empirically the relations between family size and aspects of lifestyle through a questionnaire survey administered in 2006 to married women living in the city of Suita, Japan, a suburb of Osaka. Lifestyle was taken as a complex of mutual relationships among individual (biographical, psychological) and social (socioeconomic, social support) factors, and our aim was to clarify differences in Japan in lifestyle among married women based on the number of their children. Analysis of 495 respondents showed mothers with only a single child were more self-reliant: they tend to give birth at a late age, enjoy cooperation with their husbands in family finances, be psychologically at ease, and not seek help from others in child rearing. Mothers with three or more children embody more of the traditional role for Japanese women: they tend to give birth at an early age, be reliant on their husbands financially, be less at ease psychologically, and seek others’ help in child rearing. These differences suggest that more focus on psychological, not just economic support in government policy to counteract declining fertility is an important issue for future consideration.     

Integrating Smart Glasses with Question-Answering Module in Assistant Work Environment

Recently, smart glasses have been applied in the field of maintenance, with which a worker goes well during work by contacting a support operator from a remote location. The worker, however, cannot go well if the support operator is not there. To solve the issues, this paper discusses how a work system should be developed by integrating smart glasses with a question-answering module. We design the work knowledge acquired from skilled people and manuals as a workflow for when type of question, rule base for how, goal tree for why, domain ontologies, and its RDF data for what. Workers can receive answers from the question-answering module incorporated with multiple knowledge bases for four types of question. The authors conducted a demonstration experiment and found that workers could perform the work more autonomously by importing the system.     

Spam mails impede economic growth

We estimate labor losses caused by spam mails and input these estimated values into a production function, while also estimating damage to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Japan. As a result, we have found that spam mails decreased the Japanese GDP by about 500 billion yen in 2004. This marginal negative effect of spam mail to the GDP increased with the progress of broadband in 2000. Moreover, from the result of a social simulation conducted by the authors, the amount of damage is projected to reach 1% of the Japanese GDP by 2010, unless adequate countermeasures are taken against spam mails. This projection provides a statistical fundamental to several theoretical analyses of spam mails.     

Sales Strategy Mining Support with Visualization of Moving History

Strategic usage in data mining of sales data has come under increased focus as a result of the growth of data mining studies using electrical data, such as Point of Sale (POS) data. However, many of these mining systems only output results such as frequently appearing patterns, while, instead, they should be aimed at people who mine data. In this paper, a framework for leading and supporting new ideas from data is introduced. Based on this framework, a system that supports strategic usage in the data mining of sales data is proposed. The system deals not only with POS data, but also with the moving history of each customer. The system visualizes POS and moving history data, so that an analyzer inputs conditions to narrow down customers and acquires customer features. In addition to the ordinal outputs of a mining system, the analyzer interprets the meaning of his/her input and output to create a new strategy based on the framework. According to the experimental results, new strategies derived from the moving history were created.     

The Effectiveness of Social Media for Business Activities in Japanese Firms

A large number of firms use social media for various business activities. This paper clarifies how social media has become effective to sales in Japanese firms. To this purpose, the following are addressed: (i) whether social media is useful for company activities, (ii) what kinds of business activities are affected using social media, and (iii) how social media improves the final outcomes of sales for firms. This study uses data of business activities and social media conducted in 2014. Probit analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) are employed. Probit analysis clarifies the relationships between the effects of social media and its use in sales. The SEM model clarifies the relationships among the effects of social media use in business. In the SEM, a model is examined by taking sales caused by use of social media as an explained variable, while the explanatory variables are the first and intermediate effects of social media. The results indicate that social media is effective for business activities such as promoting sales. This study may help to promote social media in Japanese firms.