Takao Furukawa

Quantitative analysis of collaborative and mobility networks

This study proposes a quantitative analysis of researcher mobility (i.e. transfer from one institution to another) and collaborative networks on the basis of author background data extracted from biographical notes in scientific articles to identify connections that are not revealed via simple co-authorship analysis. Using a top-ranked journal in the field of computer vision, we create a layered network that describes various aspects of author backgrounds, demonstrating a geographical distribution of institutions. We classify networks according to various dimensions including authors, institutions and countries. The results of the quantitative analysis indicate that mobility networks extend beyond the typical collaborative networks describing institutional and international relationships. We also discuss sectoral collaboration considering the mobility networks. Our findings indicate a limitation of collaborative analysis based on bibliometric data and the importance of tracing researcher mobility within potential networks to identify the true nature of scientific collaboration.

Drape formation based on geometric constraints and its application to skirt modelling

Drape is a characteristic behaviour of flexible cloth, so it is important in modelling cloth. The paper introduces a novel method to model drape using a few shape parameters, predicted according to the pattern structure and mechanical properties of cloth. The technique is used to visualize the 3‐D drapeability of cloth and is then extended to simulation of a skirt. The general shape of a flared skirt of large deformation is predicted based on several shape parameters. Moreover, the constructed skirt model is used as pre‐draped initial shape for the popular physically‐based model – particle system. Kawabata Evaluation System (KES) plots of cloth are applied for accurate mechanical calculation. The simulated results show good agreement with actual cloth materials.

3D Clothes Modeling from Photo Cloned Human Body

An important advantage of virtual reality technology is that real 3D objects including humans can be edited in the virtual world. In this paper, we present a technique for 3D clothes modeling based on a photo cloned human body. Photo cloning is an efficient 3D human body modeling method using a generic body model and photographs. A part segmentation technique for 3D color objects is applied for the clothes modeling, which uses multi-dimensional mixture Gaussians fitting. Firstly, we construct a 6D point set representing both the geometric and color information. Next, the mixture Gaussians are fitted to the point set by using the EM algorithm in order to determine the clusters. This approximation gives probabilities for each point. Finally the probabilities determine the segmented part models corresponding to the clothes models. An advantage of this method is that the clustering is unsupervised learning without any prior knowledge as well as integrating geometric and color data in multi-dimensional space.

International mobility of researchers in robotics, computer vision and electron devices: A quantitative and comparative analysis

We investigated author information in scientific articles by approximately 7,000 researchers for a quantitative analysis of researchers’ international mobility. From top journals, we traced the movements of more than 2,200 researchers in the research domains of robotics, computer vision and electron devices. We categorized countries’ characteristics for the balance between the inflow and the outflow of researchers moving internationally. Flow patterns of international mobility confirm that the United States, China and India exhibit the greatest global flows of researchers, with Singapore and Hong Kong attracting remarkable numbers of researchers from other countries. International mobility focusing on institutions reveals that universities in Singapore receive as many foreign researchers as do research universities in the United States. Furthermore, firms and international collaborative research institutes act as alternative receivers to the universities in the electron devices research domain.

Dynamic clothing simulation based on skeletal motion of the human body

Describes the construction of an interactive apparel design system using the Word Wide Web. The system permits end‐users to design clothes reflecting their tastes. Variable renderings of the human body and of clothing within environmental modules simulate apparel design in the virtual world. Proposes a simulation of the human body’s skeletal motions for displaying the dynamic shape‐changes in clothes. Suggests that this method of created animation, though more complex than static representation, nonetheless is more accurate in depicting the actual shapes of clothing.

Temporal network analysis of emerging technologies: Topic transition in World Wide Web (WWW) conferences

This paper proposes the use of temporal network analysis of conference sessions to examine the evolutionary process of emerging technologies as significant information for strategic R&D decision-making. This study examines the emerging processes of rapidly growing web-based technologies by analyzing World Wide Web (WWW) conferences over the latest decade. Temporal networks are demonstrated through scientific and technical streams relating Social Network and Monetization. In particular, the transition from E-community in 2006 to Social Networks in 2008 strongly affects later research. Monetization originates from the Auction and E-Commerce session in 2002 and is derived from Advertisements & Click Estimation and Sponsored Search. The conference session titles can be considered as conceptualized meta-knowledge created by the scientific community. The proposed method has the advantage of not requiring any prior knowledge in conceptualization compared to bottom-up clustering techniques used in citation analysis and text mining.

Global trends and the rapid growth of East Asia in IEEE publications

We organized a database of IEEE Periodicals from a period of over 15 years for quantitative and collective analysis. We found that the IEEE experienced globalization and more active international competition. East Asian countries and regions have grown dramatically and become major players in the IEEE during globalization over the last decade, and: 1) East Asia surpassed North America in research related to electrical and electronics fields; 2) China has the most balanced and rapidly increasing number of articles in all fields; 3) Taiwan specializes in circuits, systems, and electronic devices; 4) South Korea specializes in consumer electronics, broadcasting, and communications; and 5) Singapore owes much to the existence of two research universities.

On global diffusion of electrical and electronics engineering research #x2014; An extensive quantitative analysis of IEEE publications (1980#x2013;2008)

To provide further insight into globalization of research and development (R&D) activities, this study examines the nature of electrical and electronics (E&E) and information communication technology (ICT) research, and identifies the global shifts that have occurred in publication activities under the assumption of a definite correlation between research activities and publication activities. This study analyzed the technical and publication activities of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE), the largest professional engineering association and the most influential academic publisher in engineering. We first constructed an original comprehensive database of periodical (journal and magazine) articles and conference proceedings published by IEEE between 1980 and 2008, which comprised approximately 355,000 periodical articles and 1.14 million conference proceedings. We analyzed the transitions in technical innovations from two perspectives: (1) trends within individual countries, specifically those within the country represented by the first author listed in each IEEE publication, and (2) trends within specialized fields represented in IEEE societies and technical councils. The number of published periodical articles increased fourfold between 1980 and 2008, while that of published conference proceedings increased more than tenfold since 1988. In particular, the number of conference proceedings published by China has increased dramatically since 2002, even exceeding the number published by the U.S. in 2008. As technologically emerging countries have increasingly contributed to article production, IEEE has increasingly moved away from its U.S.-centered origins to literally become the #x201C;electrical and electronics association of the world.#x201D; The proportion of articles published by authors in North America, Europe, and East Asia has become increasingly balanced, leading to the formation of a tri-polar structure of IEEE technological activities. Within this structure, North America focuses on the field of ICT, Europe focuses on the fields of ICT and E&E, and East Asia focuses on the field of E&E. This comprehensive analysis of IEEE publications over a period of almost 30 years revealed that with the emergence of more active international competition, glocalization is occurring among the publications and research activities of IEEE, and that the nature of E&E and ICT research is under a system in which the U.S. sets an agenda for technical innovation that stimulates research activities in each country.

Quantitative trend analysis of luxury fashion based on visual impressions of young Japanese women

ABSTRACT This study aims to quantify chronological changes in the fashion trends of luxury brands by evaluating young Japanese women’s impressions of ready-to-wear product photographs. As an objective and quantitative method, we conducted a cluster analysis on pairs of adjectives to determine a set of 14 semantic differential (SD) scales. These scales were then used to measure the impressions of the images. The SD analysis was applied to 128 sets of images, comprising designs from four luxury brands for two seasons in each year from 2000 to 2015. Chronological changes in SD scores reveal the dynamics of luxury fashion brands during the 16 years since 2000. Furthermore, the factor analysis of the SD data reveals four main influencing factors: colour, orthodoxy, decorative, and girlish. The results show significant differences among these luxury brands as measured by the visual impressions of female ready-to-wear products that correspond to their fundamental design identity from past to future.

Visualizing the evolution of bioinformatics: Chronological networks created by textual analysis of intelligent systems for molecular biology 1998-2006

This study aimed to uncover the evolutionary processes behind the developments in the field of bioinformatics by analyzing prestigious conference presentations reflecting the prominent research in the field. Bioinformatics was selected as a representative interdisciplinary research field. Textual analyses on the abstracts of proceedings papers produced chronological networks of conference sessions. In those networks, divergent session nodes corresponded to practical papers that proposed fundamental technologies promoting new research. Convergent session nodes corresponded to papers that combined various theories and methodologies proposed in the past. The convergent session nodes play a significant role in innovation, which brings together complementary knowledge derived from different backgrounds. A joint chronological network shows a differentiation between pure scientific research and applied research, contributed to the benefit of the general public. These findings were obtained by assessing the chronological networks that reflect future perspectives on session titles in scholarly communities.