The author has been developing a system called PREX which supports beginners who try to understand how to program. This paper describes the functions of PREX and the features of PREX, that is, the line editor and structure editor which doesn't require students to enter statements through keyboard and COPS value which stands for “complexity of program structures.” COPS value is also used to represent the degree of students' understanding. Finally, various problems to be resolved to enhance the usefulness of PREX are discussed.

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Observation of the inner ear is necessary for the diagnosis of dizziness and hearing difficulties. It is, however, hard to judge its shape from two dimensional computer tomography (CT) images. Since the inner ear is a small and anatomically complex shape that is conjugated by three semicircular canals, it is difficult to confirm its shape from one fault surface of the human head. Many researchers address this problem using image processing methods. Recently, the usefulness of the region growing method has been reported for 3D reconstruction of human tissue. Since the semicircular canals of the inner ear area partly composed of thin tissue, it is difficult to extract the whole shape of the inner ear from a general region growing method. In this paper, we propose a modified region growing method for 3D reconstruction of the inner ear. To facilitate region growing, removal of regions adjacent to the inner ear is performed as a preprocessing process. As a result, we can make an accurate three dimensional model of the inner ear and calculate the angle of the semicircular canals.

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Die-bonding films (reaction-induced polymer alloy films) are useful to the 3D Package, which are suitable for compact electronic products with high calculating speed like smart phones. Properties of the films are widely changed by the ratio of epoxy resin, acrylic polymer and inorganic filler contents. To optimize the properties of the die-bonding films, the relationship between the materials formulation and properties of film was examined, and calculated optimum formulation by using the weak conditioned combinatorial linear programming and user-friendly software. We also proposed material design system in which experimental results ware stocked two databases and reused. The software is applicable not only to semiconductor related materials but also to any formulation such as paint, medicine, food.

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Art students make their works by a personal computer today. In spite of it, it is not general for them to build a computer program. But it’s necessary for them to have knowledge of programming to control interactive art works. So, I have a seminar for programming of Lego Mindstorms at Faculty of Art and Design, University of Toyama. "Lego Mindstorms education" is a teaching material for robotics with an intelligent block including microprocessor and its name is "NXT". Each student of the exercise must make one works. NXT-G Language, which is included in the teaching material, is used as a programming language. As a result, there was more variety of works made with paper than the works were not made with it. Therefore, because of easy processing of paper, it can be useful for robotics beginner, especially programming, that to use paper as a material.

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