Dr. James FLANAGAN, Vice President of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey of the United States, also the Director of the Center for Computer Aids for Industrial Productivity, has accepted the invitation of Dr. Inose, the Director General of NACSIS, to come to Japan again, and spent the beginning ten days of December, 1995 in Tokyo and Kyoto.
He visited NACSIS on December 4th for a whole day. Programs began by watching a 15-minutes video which introduces NACSIS, as well as the supplementary updates by Dr. Hisao Yamada, the Deputy Director, and Dr. Kinji Ono, the Director of Research & Development Department (R&DD), NACSIS. Then, six specific presentations were offered for him to understand the nature of NACSIS R&DD. Dr. Flanagan asked many questions during the sessions to which speakers pushed their arguments further, and eventually, all those present in the sessions had enjoyed extensive discussions. Topics discussed include Science Information Network (SINET) and other on-going networking projects in Japan by Dr. Shoichiro Asano; NACSISÕ plan for a video library and its service system by Dr. Hiromichi Hashizume; database for natural laws by Prof. Teruo Koyama; cache relays using adaptive storage by Dr. Masato Oguchi, a post-doctorate researcher of NACSIS; image segmentation and retrieval by Mr. Fumikazu Kanehara of University of Tokyo; and image processing technology to be implemented in NACSIS' Electronic Library project by Dr. Atsuhiro Takasu. Dr. Flanagan was kind enough to put down and send a report to Dr. Inose commenting on each of these presentations as well as general review of NACSIS R&DD after he returned to Rutgers.
On of the major reasons for NACSIS to invite Dr. Flanagan is to ask him to give a keynote address at the Open Symposium on the Information Superhighway and Accelerated Research, Education and Healthcare, held by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, in December 5-6, 1995 at Nikkei Hall, Tokyo. His subject was "Human Interface Technologies for the Information HighwayÓ, in which he touched on such topics as natural communication with machine; image compression; speech processing; tactile interaction; data networking; integration of multiple modalities, etc. His presentation, using a variety of media for illustrations, with a valuable help of proficient interpretation by Ms. Kazue Kobata for Japanese audience, readily marked the climax of the symposium.
Dr. Flanagan visited also NEC and NTT in Tokyo where he could renew his friendship with those Japanese colleagues with the same aspirations. Dr. Hiroya Fujisaki, a Professor Emeritus of University of Tokyo, now Professor at Tokyo University of Science, and a most close co-worker in acoustics to Dr. Flanagan, held a meeting of Japanese Experts in the field at the University of Tokyo on December 6. Dr. Flanagan was also invited by Dr. Yoichi Tokura, another important co-worker in Japan, the President and CEO of ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories in Kyoto, where he gave a lecture entitled "Modalities in Human/Machine Communication". We do appreciate now that Dr. and Mrs. Flanagan were cooperative enough to follow the itinerary, a bit hard we were afraid, completed their program in Japan, and let us say that all is well that ends well for the traveler on an Information Highway in Japan.