This paper presents a fundamental concept of the active learning system using the National Instruments (NI) myRIO architecture. Hardware and software platform that aims at giving engineering students the ability to design real systems quickly for automation, robotics, data logging or embedded systems are introduced. Then, a student design competition was organized for the students at national college students in Japan. Then, the assessment of active learning system is presented to understand its impact.

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Progress in speech and audio coding is presented, focusing on the technology of linear predictive coding (LPC), which has played important roles in various processing schemes for speech and audio signals in general. From the first, LPC has been used for speech synthesis and telephone bandwidth speech coding, since it was found to be well suited to represent the characteristics of the vocal tract. In contrast, typical audio coding schemes have not used LPC. However, because of the needs of a low bitrate and the unification of speech and audio coding, LPC has come to be used for representing spectral information in audio coding as well. In line with this trend, two new standard coding schemes are introduced: audio lossless coding, MPEG-4 ALS, for digital broadcasting, and 3GPP EVS for recent cellular telephones.

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In this article, we introduce one of the mathematical systems science approaches for gene regulatory networks. A Boolean network is utilized as a mathematical model of gene regulatory networks. First, the outline of Boolean networks is explained. Next, to easily deal with Boolean networks, the matrix-based representation is introduced. The problem of finding details of models from known knowledge is considered, and its solution method using the matrix-based representation is explained. Examples are also presented.

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We consider how soon the final condition of a disaster can be predicted while the disaster is ongoing. Assuming stages when the damage of a disaster increasing, appropriate prediction methodologies are introduced. In the midst of a disaster, predicting when the peak will be over, which is one of the most crucial issues, after the peak has occurred is meaningless. To circumvent such a condition, a variety of methods that can predict the final condition early are demonstrated. In this paper, the spread of infectious disease is mainly dealt with, and effective prediction methods at an early stage and the predicted results are discussed.

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Social big data provide a particularly powerful tool for the quantitative study of human behavior and social phe-nomena, because it enables us to observe the social behaviors of humans in detail. In this paper, we introduce four topics in social science: cooperative behavior, social grooming and social structures, in-group bias, and sexual selection. We introduce previous works and recent studies on social big data analysis in each topic. Additionally, we mention new problems that are arising with the growth of the Web and studies on these problems.

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Multihop wireless networks are mobile communication systems that do not require infrastructure, unlike cellular systems. In the multihop wireless networks, information is sent to a destination node via a connected multihop wireless path between the source and destination nodes. Epidemic communication and information floating are more flexible networking technologies than multihop wireless networks. Epidemic communication delivers information by spatially spreading information through direct wireless communication and the movement of mobile nodes having information. Information floating delivers information to unspecified nodes in a specific area, without the disordered spread of information, by permitting direct wireless communication only in a designated area. These methods of information delivery utilizing direct information exchange between mobile nodes and the movement of mobile nodes carrying information have gathered attention. In this paper, we explain epidemic communication, information floating, and their applications to safety and security focusing on the relationship with the characteristic mobility of mobile nodes in applications to safety/security. We also explain research on information floating from a new viewpoint, considering new factors such as that information floating causes changes in the behavior of mobile nodes, and this change in behavior affects information floating.

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