[Society Activities] [Laboratory Activities] [Educational Activities][Private Events] [ver.2010][ver.2009][ver.2008][ver.2007] [ver.2006] [ver.2005] [ver.2004]

 

Dear my friends in the world,

I made this 2011 annual report as my seasonal greeting to my friends.
I have not made ver.2010 yet. let me have time to complete it.

Thinking of you from Japan in early 2012

--- My topics in 2011 ---

 

Hideyuki TAKAGI (Faculty of Design, Kyushu University)
4-9-1, Shiobaru, Minami-ku, Fukuoka, 815-8540 Japan
TEL & FAX <+81>92-553-4555
e-mail   
URL  http://www.design.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~takagi/

Society Activities

Domestic Conferences: As I am serving as a member of Executive member of Japan Society of Evolutionary Computations (JSEC), I attended all three their events and presented one paper at each of JSEC meeting held in March and Sept. and three papers at their EC Symposium. Their contents are acceleration methods of evolutionary computation (EC) and interactive EC, mainly. One exception is interactive EC application for designing emotional haptic vibrations, which corresponding vibration version of emotiocon.

The feature of JSEC is deep discussion. Most paper at their EC Meetings and all papers at their EC Symposium are assigned to single track of poster sessions, and each presenter discuss with participants for more than one hour. About 8 oral presentations at the EC Meetings are as if oral examinations; two commentators receive their papers previously, review them, and make questions and comments for 15 minutes. Their deep and keen comments prepared previously are useful for not only the authors but also audience. All participants to annual EC symposium stay at the same hotel, attend in only one meeting room (single track only), take meal together, and discuss till (or over) midnight with beverages. Students from the same university are not assigned in the same room to make human network with students of other universities. They are unique features that cannot be found at other conferences and societies.

Domestic meeting on Neuro-Computing was held on our campus in October. I served as Local Arrangement Chair and gave one hour talk on Recent Research of Interactive EC.

I attended the below international conferences.


Surprise was a typhoon attacking Kinmen Island during ICGEC2011. As we could not connect other carrier to Japan if we could not move to Taipei as scheduled, we were waiting a flight to Taipei among many cancelled flights one day before scheduled day and could catch one flight and could connected to our scheduled flight to Japan. Chinese doctoral student was going to present one of two our papers but could not obtain visa from Taiwan government and had to cancel to attend the conference, unfortunately.

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Laboratory Activities

My lab in 2011 consists of two D1 students, two M2 students, one M1 student, and three B4 students. Their research topics are categorized into: acceleration methods for EC and interactive EC, application of interactive EC for image processing and others, evolution of StarTrek game player model, and evolutionary multi-objective optimization (EMO).

Besides supervising their research, I have conducted two joint researches: cochlear implant fitting using paired comparison-based interactive differential evolution and combination of interactive EC and EMO. The former is one of interactive EC application for human science, and we aim not only to fit cochlear implant but also to obtain unknown new audio-psychological fact by analyzing the obtained fitting characteristics.

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Educational Activities

My biggest educational event in 2011 was Human Science Summer School held for three weeks in September. I planned it, applied scholarship for participants, and designed its program to promote our Human Science International Course under Graduate School of Design, Kyushu University and collect excellent students from the world. We invited 11 graduate students from 8 countries to the Summer School. The program consists of (a) course lectures of 90 min. * 15 times give our 14 faculty members (we issues 2 credits to those who came from universities having student exchanging program with our university), (b) lab works for three weeks in all afternoon, and (c) cultural program in the weekends including some Fukuoka waking tours and a one-day bus tour. Participants satisfied this Summer School. Problem was financial supports because scholarship was not enough to cover participants' airfares and daily life in Fukuoka. We are applying the same program in 2012.

I have hosted a Master student from a French university having an exchanging student program with our university for a half year since October. I gave him a research topic of co-evolution between the strategy of StarTreck game and that of its game player model. Now, my B4 student is making a rule-based player model and evolving it. He is helping her programming but also will use the player model to co-evolve both the model and the StarTreck game. Good example of co-evolution is competitive relation between developing vaccine and evolving virus, and according to against becoming stronger (i.e. my side becomes weaker), co-evolution makes my side strong not to be beaten.

I gave a course lecture on artificial life and media creation at University of Aizu, Japan, in September and a lecture on combining human sense with engineering at a high school in September. As my tutorial talk in December mentioned in the above is an introduction talk on several EC methodologies, it may be categorized in this educational activity.


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Private Events

We are hosting Taiwanese exchanging high school girl at our home in May, 2011 - January, 2012. This is the second home-stay host following Finish exchanging high school girl in 2009 - 2010.

My wife and I made three-day drive to Shikoku area in February. She is a part-time nursery and works in whole weekdays, so that we decided to go this drive using continuous national holyday and weekends. Car-navigator bought for this trip worked very well.

I have taken complete medical checkup for these 17 years since I moved to a university from a company lab and chose different option check. I took a heart check option this year and found no any heart problem though there are some small cautions or troubles always. It pasted six years since my thyroid was removed due to cancer; the thyroid cancer was found thanks to PET examination at annual medical checkup. I had a slight headache in December (after two-day continuous parties) and went to a neurological clinic near our home. X-ray photos showed that it was herniated cervical and nerves looked to be compressed. Actually, I raise my chin slightly and feel my neck muscle tense when I see a display; I understand that lower part of cervical spine has stress. It may be close to occupational disease. The pain was solved by physiotherapy and controlling the height of my pillow. However, MRA taken at the same time showed the shape as if cerebral aneurysm in my brain. If it is so after detailed examination, I will take an operation by an intravenous catheter in near future. I always feel luck when healthy problems are found before they cause troubles; I felt it last time when thyroid cancer was found and this time.

Final report is that my wife and I will have the 30th anniversary, pearl wedding, in this May.

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