Tadao Ichikawa – författare

As a collection of vignettes containing thoughts, impressions and experiences derived from years of observing life in the universities, industry and the world outside, this offers a unique insight into Japan's academic and industrial institutions and their relationship to society. There are also interesting cultural comparisons from the author's visits to other countries. Informative and thought-provoking yet light-hearted and humorous these articles spotlight different aspects of contemporary society. The articles stimulate ideas and the ability to see every-day events from alternative points of view. They provide perceptive, up-to-date insights into the minds of today's students and educators, employees and employers, civil servants and the government; and the influence they have on Japan's future educational and industrial structures. This highly enjoyable book is of great value to readers wanting an insight into the social and cultural structures behind today's industrial productivity in Japan.

This book contains articles on advanced topics in language architectures and programming environments. The chapters are written by distinctive leaders in their respective research fields. The original articles and reprints are enhanced by the editors' descriptions which are intended to guide the reader. The book will be of immense use to computer science students, computer system architects and designers, and designers of programming environments, requiring a deep and broad knowledge of these fields.

This book discusses the application of some Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to database systems. The integration of AI technology and database management has developed into an important research topic, and many AI methods, such as logic programming, natural language understanding, knowledge-bases, etc., have been applied to the development of intelligent database systems capable of deduction, natural language query understanding, cooperative query answering, and substantial query guidance. In this book, the authors review some knowledge-base assisted database access techniques, incorporating techniques to form a new kind of database front-end. The results of these applications are summarized and explained.

This book is a collection of true-to-life essays which offers the reader various ways to view the socio-cultural state of the modern world as seen through the eyes of the author — a somewhat cynical but ethical Japanese professor. Through journeys in various cultures, these stories break numerous stereotypes, from the failure of higher education in Japan to the mysteries of using various types of toilets in Mediterranean Europe. The author narrates brief encounters with all aspects of society, from radical students to conservative academicians, from old-style street merchants to modern business people, from government agencies to independent artists. These stories also include lessons which, the author believes, people and society as a whole can and should learn from such encounters. The episodes highlight what is rapidly being lost across cultures in an era of globalization and the shrinking number of differences that once made every culture independent of the others.The book will captivate those who enjoy seeing another's view of the world, observing many unique ‘windows’ from which to view global change on a personal level. Also of interest will be the cynical but ethical assessment of the future of Japanese universities which have lost their educational principles at this critical time of survival, and the approaching IT society.