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.     

Broadband Demand Analysis for Network Building

An increase of broadband demand is forecasted by transitional methods that consider the effect of this increase through many factors, such as customer requirement diversification, and new service introduction and deployment under competition. Broadband demand forecasting has become important for closing the digital divide, promoting regional developments, and constructing networks economically; therefore, a demand forecast model that considers the mechanisms of market structure is necessary. In this paper, a demand analysis method for broadband access combining macro- and micro-data mining is proposed, and the service choice behaviour of customers is introduced as a customer model not only to express the macro trend of market structure, but also to consider area marketing. The proposed method can estimate the potential demand, determine the point at which broadband demand growth peaks in a specified area, and support a decision for ultra high-speed broadband access facility installation.     

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.     

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.     

苏丹：环境艺术设计的狂想家

城市的迅速崛起，带动了环境艺术设计的快速发展。中国从上世纪八十年代末才开始有“装修”的概念。进入九十年代中期以后，中国城市步入极速发展时期，以上海市为例，在过去十年中，新建的摩天大楼，比整个美国西海岸全部摩天大楼的总和还要多。大量建筑的横空出世，让环境艺术设计真正成为全民要求的开始。     

丹枫情怀

山间的丹枫,本不该愤懑,因为它的姿色历来就隐现于婉约的诗句里。然而,它不愤懑就不会血脉湓涌;就不会情志激越,就没有万山红遍,也就没有湖泉似血,诗意盎然。有人说它醉了,似乎不太确切。有湖泉似血,诗意盎然。有人说它醉了,似乎不太确切。有谁曾恩赐过它一滴水酒？有谁曾在万紫千红季节里向它投以深情一瞥？在收获的季节,虽然有仓丰果硕,虽然有菊黄桂香;在明月初照前,极目处尽管有远村暮烟,尽管有归牛宿鸟,也与“她”毫不相干。     

用法律来遏制学术腐败如何？

调查、处理学术腐败,不能只靠科学界和科学家本身的自律,必须要有完善的法律手段作后盾。瑞典、美国、德国等都对学术腐败行为实行刑罚的处罚。如德国处理学术腐败就主要依靠的是法治。     

Globalization of Information Services and the Industrial Structure of the Japanese Economy

Since the late 1990s, ICT has rebuilt organizational networks by connecting value chains and providing communication networks. This made certain types of services tradable, including information services. This change raised the public concern in terms of the effect on employment and innovation capacity in developed economies. The fragmentation of the production network of information services has been led by US firms, but is spreading to East Asia, typically in outsourcing from Japan to China, India and the ASEAN countries. This study empirically assesses the effect of offshore outsourcing on employment in Japan, specifying trading partners. The results show that information services outsourcing affects employment in the manufacturing sector in Japan, but the effect is different depending on trading partners. This study discusses the implications from the viewpoint of industry policy, relating the results to outsourced business processes.     

绿色财富：从名义GDP到绿色GDP

什么是财富？《辞海》对财富的定义是：具有价值的东西。由英国著名经济学家戴维·W·皮尔斯主编的《现代经济学词典》对财富下的定义是：“任何有市场价值并且可用来交换货币或商品的东西都可被看作是财富。它包括实物与实物资产、金融资产。以及可以生产收入的个人技能，当这些东西可以在市场上换取商品或货币时，它们被认为是财富。财富可以分成两种主要类型：     

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.     

Principal Component Selection for Neural Network Classification of Active Ingredients from Near Infrared Spectra

This paper presents results from an investigation into the capability of reflectance Near-Infrared (NIR) spectroscopy in the classification of pharmaceutical tablets based on their active ingredients. The part of the process selected for this study is the packaging step in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals because in older processing lines the product was classified after tablet coating and before blister packaging using visual automatic inspection techniques. However, for 100% conformance, a more discriminating technique is required. In this investigation, NIR spectra (with wavelengths between 400nm and 1100nm) were obtained for samples relating to 3 different types of pharmaceuticals: Quetiapine, Ibuprofen and Paracetamol. The dimensionality of the dataset was reduced using Principal Components and then different combinations of Principal Components were fed into a Neural Network that was configured to classify the tablets based on their active ingredients. The recognition rates achieved in this study were high enough to suggest that NIR spectroscopy is a viable method of ensuring 100% identification of pharmaceutical tablet type prior to packaging for the pharmaceuticals tested.     

梁稳根：2011低调新首富

2011年，55岁的三一集团掌门人梁稳根以财富700亿元成为“2011年中国首富”，这是“胡润百富榜”过去13年中，诞生出的第十位中国首富。     

Graph-Based Entropy for Detecting Explanatory Signs of Changes in Market

Graph-based entropy, an index of the diversity of events in their distribution to parts of a co-occurrence graph, is proposed for detecting signs of structural changes in the data that are informative in explaining latent dynamics of consumers’ behavior. For obtaining graph-based entropy, connected sub-graphs are first obtained from the graph of co-occurrences of items in the data. Then, the distribution of items occurring in events in the data to these sub-graphs is reflected on the value of graph-based entropy. For the data on the position of sale, a change in this value is regarded as a sign of the appearance, the separation, the disappearance, or the uniting of consumers’ interests. These phenomena are regarded as the signs of dynamic changes in consumers’ behavior that may be the effects of external events and information. Experiments show that graph-based entropy outperforms baseline methods that can be used for change detection, in explaining substantial changes and their signs in consumers’ preference of items in supermarket stores.     

做文明路上的“引路人”——“感动海淀”十大文明人物评选揭晓

“感动海淀”的文明人物树立了一批道德榜样,在社会上形成了强大的精神感召力．为海淀区创建首都文明区工作打下了深厚的群众基础。     

用创新、创业的方式反哺祖国母亲——记“2014海外赤子北京行”

当前北京加快转变经济发展方式,努力构建高精尖的经济结构,这为广大海外高层次人才都提供了机会,不断营造良好的创新创业环境,也将为海外人才来京发展提供全方位支持和保障。人才竞争是综合国力竞争的核心,人才资源作为经济社会发展第一资源的特征和作用也更加明显,谁能培养和吸引更多的优秀人才,谁就能在竞争中占据优势。从国际上看世界金融危机以来人才加速流动,一些国家纷纷修改法律,完善政策,出台措施,在引进留住人才上各显神通,这为我们提供了机遇也形成了巨大的挑战。     

Dynamic Microsimulation Modeling for Policy Support: An Application to Belgium and possibilities for Japan

This paper provides an overview of dynamic microsimulation modeling as well as its recent developments. It then discusses in detail a recent trend in microsimulation research, which uses alignment methodologies to simulate microsimulation models in conjunction with macro-economic models. The goal of this ??top down-integrated approach?? is to jointly assess the budgetary costs of demographic ageing and pension reform, as well as their consequences on the adequacy of pensions. This paper then discusses, also in detail, how such an integrated approach using shared demographic and macroeconomic assumptions has been developed in Belgium. It describes the dynamic microsimulation model MIDAS, highlighting how it aligns to the simulation results of the semi-aggregate model MALTESE. Finally, this paper suggests that the joint assessment using the joint application of two similar models might be useful to assess pension reform in the Japanese context.     

Contributions of Econometrics to Public Policy Analysis in the Information Age

In this paper we model U.S. economic growth over the next 25 years. Despite the anticipated aging of the population, moderate population growth will provide growing supplies of labor well into the 21st century. Improvements in labor quality due to education and experience will also continue for some time, but will eventually disappear. Productivity growth for the U.S. economy will be below long-term historical averages, but labor-using technical change will be a stimulus for growth of labor demand. Year-to-year changes in economic activity will be primarily the consequence of capital accumulation. However, the driving forces of economic growth over the long term will be demography and technology. This is a revised version of the keynote speech that I delivered on 16 January 2009 at the 6th International Conference of Socionetwork Strategies, at Kansai University, Japan.     

Mining History of Gamification Towards Finding Expertise in Question and Answering Communities: Experience and Practice with Stack Exchange

Recently, an online Q&A tool has become an essential part of individual communities and organizations of experts on specific topics. Using the answers to questions about specific topics will help such communities work more efficiently in their fields. Currently, Q&A online communities are adopting gamification to engage users by granting awards to successful users. In this paper, we investigate how to mine award achievement histories to find expertise. We propose the use of sequence analysis and clustering techniques. Specifically, we study the history of Stack Exchange, a large Q&A community that employs gamification. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of using award achievement history to find expertise in Q&A communities.     

撤销街道办是财政减负的必须

因为缺少真正意义上的公民自治组织．公民自治精神得不到发育和培养的土壤,民主意识甚至在社区范围内都无法进行像样的实际训练。这将日益造成城市社区的碎片化和居民对公共事务的冷漠化。     

中国,重要的是改造思维形态

＂造反＂与＂起义＂之所以不同,就在于造反的思维是小山寨、小团伙、小打小闹式的,而起义是有理性、有纲领、有信条的大思维。