A prototype of a Rapidus 300mm wafer displayed at the Semicon Japan exhibition. The industry ministry has earmarked ¥150 billion for state-backed chip venture Rapidus, bringing the cumulative government investment in the venture to ¥250 billion. The industry ministry is set to nearly quadruple its budgeted support for cutting-edge semiconductors and artificial-intelligence development to about ¥1.23 trillion ($7.9 billion) for the fiscal year starting in April. Overall the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's budget rose by about 50% from the previous year to ¥3.07 trillion, largely due to the jump in chips and AI spending. After Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's Cabinet signed off on it Friday, the government's initial budget plan will be debated in parliament in the new year.

Despite the potential of synthetic medical data for augmenting and improving the generalizability of deep learning models, memorization in generative models can lead to unintended leakage of sensitive patient information and limit model utility. Thus, the use of memorizing generative models in the medical domain can jeopardize patient privacy. We propose a framework for identifying replicas, i.e. nearly identical copies of the training data, in synthetic medical image datasets. Our REpLIca deteCTion (RELICT) framework for medical image generative models evaluates image similarity using three complementary approaches: (1) voxel-level analysis, (2) feature-level analysis by a pretrained medical foundation model, and (3) segmentation-level analysis. Two clinically relevant 3D generative modelling use cases were investigated: non-contrast head CT with intracerebral hemorrhage (N=774) and time-of-flight MR angiography of the Circle of Willis (N=1,782). Expert visual scoring was used as the reference standard to assess the presence of replicas. We report the balanced accuracy at the optimal threshold to assess replica classification performance. The reference visual rating identified 45 of 50 and 5 of 50 generated images as replicas for the NCCT and TOF-MRA use cases, respectively. Image-level and feature-level measures perfectly classified replicas with a balanced accuracy of 1 when an optimal threshold was selected for the NCCT use case. A perfect classification of replicas for the TOF-MRA case was not possible at any threshold, with the segmentation-level analysis achieving a balanced accuracy of 0.79. Replica detection is a crucial but neglected validation step for the development of generative models in medical imaging. The proposed RELICT framework provides a standardized, easy-to-use tool for replica detection and aims to facilitate responsible and ethical medical image synthesis.

The government will allow autonomous driving services on at least 25 public road routes by March next year and on 100 routes at an early date, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Wednesday. In that time period, Level 4 driverless vehicles -- those that are fully autonomous -- will also be seen traveling under specific conditions on some 10 routes after going through a screening process shortened to two months, Kishida told reporters in Taki, Mie Prefecture, where he viewed digital technology-based community development efforts and took a test ride on a self-driving bus. At a ceremony in the town, the prime minster vowed to increase government subsidies to push ahead with a "Digital Garden City" initiative involving Taki and some other towns in the prefecture. Earlier in the day, Kishida visited Kameyama, also in Mie Prefecture, to watch the drilling survey at a candidate location for a station on the planned Nagoya-Osaka section of the Chuo Shinkansen magnetic levitation train line. After the inspection, he said the transport ministry and maglev train operator Central Japan Railway, or JR Tokai, will officially join a group formed by the three western prefectures of Mie, Nara and Osaka to promote the construction of the section.

Developing software projects allows students to put knowledge into practice and gain teamwork skills. However, assessing student performance in project-oriented courses poses significant challenges, particularly as the size of classes increases. The current paper introduces a fuzzy intelligent system designed to evaluate academic software projects using object-oriented programming and design course as an example. To establish evaluation criteria, we first conducted a survey of student project teams (n=31) and faculty (n=3) to identify key parameters and their applicable ranges. The selected criteria - clean code, use of inheritance, and functionality - were selected as essential for assessing the quality of academic software projects. These criteria were then represented as fuzzy variables with corresponding fuzzy sets. Collaborating with three experts, including one professor and two course instructors, we defined a set of fuzzy rules for a fuzzy inference system. This system processes the input criteria to produce a quantifiable measure of project success. The system demonstrated promising results in automating the evaluation of projects. Our approach standardizes project evaluations and helps to reduce the subjective bias in manual grading.

Watching movies is one of the social activities typically done in groups. Emotion is the most vital factor that affects movie viewers' preferences. So, the emotional aspect of the movie needs to be determined and analyzed for further recommendations. It can be challenging to choose a movie that appeals to the emotions of a diverse group. Reaching an agreement for a group can be difficult due to the various genres and choices. This paper proposes a novel approach to group movie suggestions by examining emotions from three different channels: movie descriptions (text), soundtracks (audio), and posters (image). We employ the Jaccard similarity index to match each participant's emotional preferences to prospective movie choices, followed by a fuzzy inference technique to determine group consensus. We use a weighted integration process for the fusion of emotion scores from diverse data types. Then, group movie recommendation is based on prevailing emotions and viewers' best-loved movies. After determining the recommendations, the group's consensus level is calculated using a fuzzy inference system, taking participants' feedback as input. Participants (n=130) in the survey were provided with different emotion categories and asked to select the emotions best suited for particular movies (n=12). Comparison results between predicted and actual scores demonstrate the efficiency of using emotion detection for this problem (Jaccard similarity index = 0.76). We explored the relationship between induced emotions and movie popularity as an additional experiment, analyzing emotion distribution in 100 popular movies from the TMDB database. Such systems can potentially improve the accuracy of movie recommendation systems and achieve a high level of consensus among participants with diverse preferences.

Art objects can evoke certain emotions. Color is a fundamental element of visual art and plays a significant role in how art is perceived. This paper introduces a novel approach to classifying emotions in art using Fuzzy Sets. We employ a fuzzy approach because it aligns well with human judgments' imprecise and subjective nature. Extensive fuzzy colors (n=120) and a broad emotional spectrum (n=10) allow for a more human-consistent and context-aware exploration of emotions inherent in paintings. First, we introduce the fuzzy color representation model. Then, at the fuzzification stage, we process the Wiki Art Dataset of paintings tagged with emotions, extracting fuzzy dominant colors linked to specific emotions. This results in fuzzy color distributions for ten emotions. Finally, we convert them back to a crisp domain, obtaining a knowledge base of color-emotion associations in primary colors. Our findings reveal strong associations between specific emotions and colors; for instance, gratitude strongly correlates with green, brown, and orange. Other noteworthy associations include brown and anger, orange with shame, yellow with happiness, and gray with fear. Using these associations and Jaccard similarity, we can find the emotions in the arbitrary untagged image. We conducted a 2AFC experiment involving human subjects to evaluate the proposed method. The average hit rate of 0.77 indicates a significant correlation between the method's predictions and human perception. The proposed method is simple to adapt to art painting retrieval systems. The study contributes to the theoretical understanding of color-emotion associations in art, offering valuable insights for various practical applications besides art, like marketing, design, and psychology.

Harmony level prediction is receiving increasing attention nowadays. Color plays a crucial role in affecting human aesthetic responses. In this paper, we explore color harmony using a fuzzy-based color model and address the question of its universality. For our experiments, we utilize a dataset containing attractive images from five different domains: fashion, art, nature, interior design, and brand logos. We aim to identify harmony patterns and dominant color palettes within these images using a fuzzy approach. It is well-suited for this task because it can handle the inherent subjectivity and contextual variability associated with aesthetics and color harmony evaluation. Our experimental results suggest that color harmony is largely universal. Additionally, our findings reveal that color harmony is not solely influenced by hue relationships on the color wheel but also by the saturation and intensity of colors. In palettes with high harmony levels, we observed a prevalent adherence to color wheel principles while maintaining moderate levels of saturation and intensity. These findings contribute to ongoing research on color harmony and its underlying principles, offering valuable insights for designers, artists, and researchers in the field of aesthetics.

Large Language Model (LLM) based Generative AI systems have seen significant progress in recent years. Integrating a knowledge retrieval architecture allows for seamless integration of private data into publicly available Generative AI systems using pre-trained LLM without requiring additional model fine-tuning. Moreover, Retrieval-Centric Generation (RCG) approach, a promising future research direction that explicitly separates roles of LLMs and retrievers in context interpretation and knowledge memorization, potentially leads to more Figure 1: Retrieval-Centric Generation (RCG) approach efficient implementation. SimplyRetrieve is an presents an innovative concept that leverages the mutually open-source tool with the goal of providing beneficial interaction between LLMs and retrievers a localized, lightweight, and user-friendly interface for more efficient context interpretation and knowledge to these sophisticated advancements to memorization. Increased clarity in role-separation between the machine learning community. SimplyRetrieve context interpretation and knowledge memorization features a GUI and API based RCG platform, can potentially boost the performance of generative assisted by a Private Knowledge Base AI systems.

Fox News contributor Dr. Marc Siegel weighs in on how artificial intelligence can change the patient-doctor relationship on'America's Newsroom.' Japanese police have admitted that they allowed artificial intelligence (AI) to influence their decision not to provide protective custody to a child who later died in her mother's care. "The AI figures are only for reference," Mie Prefecture Gov. Katsuyuki Ichimi said at a press conference on Tuesday, stressing the importance of the judgment of those in charge. "We are not in a position to draw a conclusion whether the method of utilizing this data used this time was 100% good," indicating he intended to refer the matter to a third-party committee consisting of outside experts to determine further use of the system, Japanese outlet Jiji reported. Police considered the case of a 4-year-old girl in the city of Tsu, running it through an AI program introduced in 2020 and trained with the data of 6,000 to 13,000 cases.

In June, the Mie Prefectural Police arrested the girl's mother, 42, for allegedly inflicting injuries resulting in the girl's death. The AI system, which was introduced in 2020, uses data collected from around 13,000 past cases handled by child consultation centers and shows the proportion of previous cases in which children were taken into temporary custody. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software. Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites. If this does not resolve the issue or you are unable to add the domains to your allowlist, please see this FAQ.