When solving a mathematical problem, in spite of mastering knowledge and formula necessary for the solution, we sometimes encounter a situation where we cannot reach the correct answer. The reason can be contributed to the lack in metacognitive abilities. Metacognitive abilities consist of comparing the difficulty of problem with own ability, proper plan of solution process, and conscious monitoring and control of solution process. The role and importance of metacognitive ability in mathematical problem solving of permutations and combinations was explored. Participants were required to solve five problems related to permutations and combinations. For each problem, the solution process was divided into (1) recognition of mathematical problem, (2) plan of solution, and (3) execution of solution. Participants were required to rate the anticipation whether they can solve it or not, and to rate the confidence of their own answer. According to the total score of five problems, the participants were categorized into the group of the higher test score and the group of the lower test score. As a result, at the plan and the execution processes, statistically significant differences were detected between the high and low score groups. As for the rating on the anticipation of result and the confidence of own answer, no significant differences were found between both group. Moreover, the relationship between the score of plan process and the score of execution process was statistically correlated. In other words, the more proper the plan process was conducted, the more proper solution the participants reached. In such a way, the importance of metacognitive ability in the solving process, especially the plan ability was suggested.

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The metabolic syndrome has become a significant problem in the world, and health checkup and guidance targeted on it has started from 2008 in Japan. In order to support this large undertaking from the side of information technology, we introduce ideas based on Bayesian networks in data mining technology. The Bayesian network has emerged in recent years as a powerful technique for handling uncertainty in complex domains and is expected to be an appropriate method in the health checkup domain that requires analyzing the results with medical knowledge. In this work, we constructed a Bayesian network scheme connecting the information of physical examinations and questionnaire on daily life style. By applying this network model to the field data of 12,230 subjects, the proposed method was found to provide better performance and show its potentiality for the system of specific health checkup.

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Plastic surgeons create of external noses based on their kansei. The outcome of the rhinoplasty depends on the surgeons' technique and artistic sense. We consider that reconstructing an external nose by using a template would solve the inconsistency of the outcome. However, there are few studies about curves of outlines of external noses. Thus, the aims of our study were to analyze curves of outlines of external noses of 84 normal subjects and to classify the curves in order to create templates as a guide for total nasal reconstruction. Concretely, we took photographs of 84 subjects' external noses and abstracted the curves of their profile outlines of external noses from the photographs by image processing. Next, we analyzed characteristics of the curves by using those profiles of curvature and classified the curves into 5 types of curves. Lastly we made innovative 380 (= 5 types × 76 sizes) nose templates based on our study in order to express the individual subtle differences of the reconstructed new nose.

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This paper aims at a development of a system which generates theatrical effects fitting to adjectives representing producer's impressions of story scenes. The system generates music, lyrics, and lighting patterns based on impressions of story scenes using the models representing relations between impressions and three media in order to convey producer's impression of a story to audiences. Three types of subject experiments are performed to verify the usefulness of the system. The first is the evaluation from the viewpoint that the system generates theatrical effects fitting to story scenes appropriately or not. The second is the evaluation from the viewpoint that the system generates theatrical effects giving producers and audiences the same impressions of generated theatrical effects or not. The third is the evaluation from the viewpoint that the system generates theatrical effects making a story more interesting or not.

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This study investigated how the several factors of BGM (Background music) affected the time estimation . We composed 28 original music tunes with different tempo and notes. Twenty undergraduates estimated one minute by the use of the method of production while listening to a BGM. Results showed that participants underestimated the duration while listening to a tune with a slow tempo, whereas they overestimated while listening to the tunes with fast tempo. The participants overestimated the duration with the increment of the number of the notes per unit time and variety of a note. In addition, the music experiences influenced the auditory time estimation.

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The concept of entropy which was introduced as a thermodynamic property has been extended to the economics theory, information theory, and others. Even though “entropy” is used in many fields of science, it is not easy to understand the concept of entropy, as well as describing it by words/terms. We assume that one of the causes of such difficulty is the gap between psychological quantity caused by words/terms used in explaining the concept of entropy and actual entropy value. In this report, we investigated the correlation between the entropy and the psychological quantity obtained by showing binary dot pattern images to participants, and examined the correlation between the entropies calculated by several different algorithms and the psychological quantity by three verbal expressions. We have found that the entropy calculated by means of measuring the length between each black pixel has highest correlation to psychological quantity.

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Extracting keywords from a target text data is essential for an analysis to describe substance characteristics of message content. We picked a use of a stopword filter from among alternatives because the method has the advantage that it is simple yet effective way. The filter we present was made up of non-content words and low-content words. Non-content-bearing words consisted mainly of function words and were gotten rid of by using part-of-speech (POS) tag information. High occurrence rate words in remaining had prospects of being keywords, however usually there were some low-content words like delexical verbs and so on. This article presents a stopword list obtained to come up with low-content words by sensuous manual procedures carried out using 40 text files from the CASTEL/J database and establishes it in the view of general versatility.

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Corporate website should disseminate the latest and accurate corporate/business information. Therefore, it is needed to incorporate the updating and improvement mechanisms that can be updated in response to changing conditions inside and outside the company, on the development, management and operation processes. The purpose of this study is to present the methodology for “integrated website management” that is considered essential to develop, manage and operate the sophisticated design of large-scaled corporate website. Through the research and analysis in the case study of management situation of the research object company's website, we decided to compile the effective methodology in an integrated manner. More precisely, we conducted it based on the investigation of internal documents and interviews with relevant parties of the research object company. As a result, we propose the application of the combination of more than one management systems including HCD (Human-Centered Design process), with PDCA cycle.

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We evaluated the usability of cosmetic puff in order to design cosmetic puffs with high usability. The usability in this study means the easiness to hold it in a hand and to rub face with it, easily. From the results of preliminary experiments with eight cosmetic puffs in the marketplace, we found that the edge angle and thickness of cosmetic puff had an effect on the usability. Thus, twelve puffs with varied angle and thickness were prepared as samples. A series of sensory test was performed using the samples, by rubbing the nose and cheek of a head model. Two types of holding methods were used for the testing. From our results, we found that the cosmetic puffs with edge angle of 65° - 75° were concluded as easier to hold and to rub nose than ones with other angles. We also found that the preferred thicknesses of the samples were variable depending on the preference of subjects. Finally, we could derive the design guidelines of cosmetic puffs in consideration of the preferred angle and thickness for obtaining the high usability.

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Children with deafblindness have impairments in both vision and hearing. However, owing to the low incidence of this disability, few programs have been implemented to address the unique learning needs of these infants and toddlers and the specific concerns of their families. The majority of such children have additional problems, such as physical disabilities and/or medical disorders. Thus, infants and toddlers with deafblindness and their families are in urgent need of a suitable support program. For development of the affective support program, we identified the parent's obstacles nurturing congenital deafblind infants and toddlers. Concretely, we conducted an interview survey to parents of infants and toddlers with deafblindness by reminiscing back to upbringing time. The survey revealed that such parents have difficulties related to the evaluation of their children's acuity of vision and hearing, communication with family members, and lack of information about nurturing infants and toddlers with deafblindness.

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It has been reported that performing actions such as beat tracking or imagining while listening to music gives us more pleasure than simply listening to music without performing such actions. We performed EEG measurements to investigate how information is processed in the brain during three scenarios: (1) only listening to music, (2) imagining the music without listening to it, and (3) simultaneously listening to and imagining the music. We used both known and unknown musical pieces. Results showed that, for known music, the visual cortices are activated when imagining and listening to music. For unknown music, however, although the visual cortices are also activated when imagining the music with and without listening to it, the frontal and auditory cortices are more dominantly activated. This result is similar to the brain activity while beat tracking and is expected to lead to clarification of the reason for pleasure of performing music.

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