Collaborative causal inference on distributed data

The development of technologies for causal inference with the privacy preservation of distributed data has attracted considerable attention in recent years. To address this issue, we propose a data collaboration quasi-experiment (DC-QE) that enables causal inference from distributed data with privacy preservation. In our method, first, local parties construct dimensionality-reduced intermediate representations from the private data. Second, they share intermediate representations, instead of private data for privacy preservation. Third, propensity scores were estimated from the shared intermediate representations. Finally, the treatment effects were estimated from propensity scores. Our method can reduce both random errors and biases, whereas existing methods can only reduce random errors in the estimation of treatment effects. Through numerical experiments on both artificial and real-world data, we confirmed that our method can lead to better estimation results than individual analyses. Dimensionality-reduction loses some of the information in the private data and causes performance degradation. However, we observed that in the experiments, sharing intermediate representations with many parties to resolve the lack of subjects and covariates, our method improved performance enough to overcome the degradation caused by dimensionality-reduction. With the spread of our method, intermediate representations can be published as open data to help researchers find causalities and accumulated as a knowledge base.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

わが国サービス企業における原価計算・原価管理の成功モデルに関する実証的研究

科学研究費助成事業 研究成果報告書：若手研究(B)2014-2017課題番号 : 2678024

Building a New Theory of Service Target Costing: Based Mainly on Empirical Researches

科学研究費助成事業(科学研究費補助金)研究成果報告書：若手研究(B)2009-2011課題番号：2173036

空間移動を表す動詞の分析 : 構文特性・アスペクト特性・タクシス特性に基づいて

獨協大学／拓殖大学Dokkyo University/Takushoku University空間移動を表す動詞『あるく』『いく』『もどる』『すすむ』『のぼる』『おりる』『わたる』『とおる』は,名詞「(場所)を」と結合し,その「(場所)を」に経由地の意味を与える,経由性を持つ動詞である。このうち『あるく』は「(場所)まで」とも結合可能な経由(+範囲)性動詞,『いく』『もどる』『すすむ』『のぼる』『おりる』は「(場所)まで」「(場所)に」とも結合可能な経由(+範囲)＝到着性動詞,『わたる』は「(場所)に」とも結合可能な経由(一範囲)＝到着性動詞,『とおる』は経由(一範囲)性動詞である。一方,『のぼる』『おりる』『わたる』は常に到着によって終わる移動を示すわけではなく,『とおる』と共通した面を持つ。過程性・結果性(アスペクト特性)・完結性(タクシス特性)を導入することによってこれらの動詞のより詳細な記述が可能となり,『いく』『もどる』が結果性を,『すすむ』が過程性・結果性を持つ動詞となるのに対し,『のぼる』『おりる』『わたる』は過程性・完結性を持つ動詞となる。Some Japanese verbs denoting spatial movement can be combined with nouns denoting place, using "o." These verbs mean "place passed" when combined with "place-o," e.g., \u27aruku,\u27 \u27iku,\u27 \u27modoru,\u27 \u27susumu,\u27 \u27noboru,\u27 \u27oriru,\u27 \u27wataru\u27 and \u27tooru.\u27 Such verbs have passage as a syntactical semantic feature (i.e., semantic feature that appears as syntactical behaviour). In addition to "place-o," \u27aruku\u27 can be combined with "place-made," so we can call \u27aruku\u27 a passage (+range)-verb; \u27iku,\u27 \u27modoru,\u27 \u27susumu,\u27 \u27noboru\u27 and \u27oriru\u27 can be combined with "place-made" and "place-ni," as passage (+range)-arrival -verbs; \u27wataru\u27 can be combined with "place-ni" as a passage (-range)-arrival -verb; \u27tooru\u27 can be combined only with "place-o," and is a typical passage (-range) -verb. In addition, though \u27noboru,\u27 \u27oriru\u27 and \u27wataru\u27 have arrival, they can refer to the middle-stage of longer movement that continues, in common with \u27tooru.\u27 It is effective to describe the lexical meaning of these verbs in terms of three more semantic features. There are two aspectual features: 1) Process: when the verb is used in "(-si)teiru, "then the verb refers to the process of movement; 2) Result: when the verb is used in "(-si)teiru, "then the verb refers to the stay at the destination. A feature of taxis is Completion: a description of the terminal point can be followed after "(-suru) to" of that verb. (Arrival entails completion.) \u27Iku\u27 and \u27modoru\u27 have result. \u27Susumu\u27 has result and process. \u27Noboru\u27, \u27oriru\u27 and \u27wataru\u27 have completion (as a basis of arrival) and process. \u27Aruku\u27 and \u27tooru\u27 have process, but not completion

地域健康政策へのベイジアンネットワークの応用

要旨ありサービス科学の今研究ノー

Highly Efficient Ultracentrifugation-free Chromatographic Purification of Recombinant AAV Serotype 9

Recombinant adeno-associated virus serotype 9 (rAAV9) can specifically transduce muscle and neuronal tissues; thus, rAAV9 can potentially be used in gene therapy. However, rAAV9 is the most challenging rAAV serotype to purify. Traditionally, rAAV9 has been purified by ultracentrifugation, which is not scalable. We recently described a chromatographic purification protocol for rAAV1; this protocol can achieve scalable purifications. In this study, we attempted to optimize this protocol for purifying rAAV9 preparations, and we developed a novel, effective method for high-yield purification of rAAV9 using quaternary ammonium anion exchangers and size-exclusion chromatography. The final purified rAAV9 contained mainly three capsid proteins, as observed by SDS-PAGE. Furthermore, negative-stain electron microscopy demonstrated that 96.1% ± 1.1% of rAAV9 particles carried the viral genome containing the EGFP transgene, indicating that impurities and empty capsids can be eliminated with our purification protocol. The final rAAV9 titer obtained by our protocol totaled 2.5 ± 0.4 × 1015 viral genomes produced from ∼3.2 × 109 HEK293EB cells. We confirmed that our protocol can also be applied to purify other varied AAV genome constructs. Our protocol can scale up production of pure rAAV9, in compliance with current good manufacturing practice, for clinical applications in human gene therapy

Discussion on a Vehicle–Bridge Interaction System Identification in a Field Test

For infrastructures to be sustainable, it is essential to improve maintenance and management efficiency. Vibration-based monitoring methods are being investigated to improve the efficiency of infrastructure maintenance and management. In this paper, signals from acceleration sensors attached to vehicles traveling on bridges are processed. Methods have been proposed to individually estimate the modal parameters of bridges and road unevenness from vehicle vibrations. This study proposes a method to simultaneously estimate the mechanical parameters of the vehicle, bridge, and road unevenness with only a few constraints. Numerical validation examined the effect of introducing the Kalman filter on the accuracy of estimating the mechanical parameters of vehicles and bridges. In field tests, vehicle vibration, bridge vibration, and road unevenness were measured and verified, respectively. The road surface irregularities estimated by the proposed method were compared with the measured values, which were somewhat smaller than the measured values. Future studies are needed to improve the efficiency of vehicle vibration preprocessing and optimization methods and to establish a methodology for evaluating accuracy