The Diffusion of Foreign Cultural Products: The Case Analysis of Japanese Comics (Manga) Market in the US

This paper outlines the historical development of the US manga (Japanese comics) industry from the 1980s through the present in order to address the question why foreign cultural products become popular in offshore markets in spite of cultural difference. This paper focuses on local publishers as “gatekeepers” in the introduction of foreign culture. Using complete data on manga titles published in the US market from 1980 to 2006 (n=1,058), this paper shows what kinds of manga have been translated, published, and distributed for over twenty years and how the competition between the two market leaders, Viz and Tokyopop, created the rapid market growth. This case analysis finds two main reasons for the growth of the manga market in the US. First is the path dependency of market growth: without Viz’s pioneering effort in the localization of manga in the 1980s, Tokyo pop’s standardization in the 2000s would not have boosted the market expansion, and vice versa. The second is stigma management by publishers. By selecting proper titles, censoring them, and establishing age rating systems, publishers sought to avoid the stigma attached to American mainstream comics and establish the legitimacy of manga as acceptable entertainment.Manga, comics, foreign influences, Japan

An Interactive Fuzzy Satisficing Method for Fuzzy Random Multiobjective 0-1 Programming Problems through Probability Maximization Using Possibility

In this paper, we focus on multiobjective 0-1 programming problems under the situation where stochastic uncertainty and vagueness exist at the same time. We formulate them as fuzzy random multiobjective 0-1 programming problems where coefficients of objective functions are fuzzy random variables. For the formulated problem, we propose an interactive fuzzy satisficing method through probability maximization using of possibility

Practical Preparation of Epilactose Produced with Cellobiose 2-Epimerase from Ruminococcus albus NE1

A practical purification method for a non-digestible disaccharide, epilactose (4-O-beta-galactosyl-D-mannose), was established. Epilactose was synthesized from lactose with cellobiose 2-epimerase and purified by the following procedure: (i) removal of lactose by crystallization, (ii) hydrolysis of lactose by beta-galactosidase, (iii) digestion of monosaccharides by yeast, and (iv) column chromatography with Na-form cation exchange resin. Epilactose of 91.1% purity was recovered at 42.5% yield

Particle Swarm Optimization Combining Diversification and Intensification for Nonlinear Integer Programming Problems

In this research, focusing on nonlinear integer programming problems, we propose an approximate solution method based on particle swarm optimization proposed by Kennedy et al. And we developed a new particle swarm optimization method which is applicable to discrete optimization problems by incoporating a new method for generating initial search points, the rounding of values obtained by the move scheme and the revision of move methods. Furthermore, we showed the efficiency of the proposed particle swarm optimization method by comparing it with an existing method through the application of them into the numerical examples. Moreover we expanded revised particle swarm optimization method for application to nonlinear integer programming problems and showed more effeciency than genetic algorithm. However, variance of the solutions obtained by the PSO method is large and accuracy is not so high. Thus, we consider improvement of accuracy introducing diversification and intensification

An Interactive Fuzzy Satisficing Method for Multiobjective Stochastic Integer Programming Problems through Simple Recourse Model

Two major approaches to deal with randomness or impression involved in mathematical programming problems have been developed. The one is called stochastic programming, and the other is called fuzzy programming. In this paper, we focus on multiobjective integer programming problems involving random variable coefficients in constraints. Using the concept of simple recourse, such multiobjective stochastic integer programming problems are transformed into deterministic ones. As a fusion of stochastic programming and fuzzy one, after introducing fuzzy goals to reflect the ambiguity of the decision maker's judgments for objective functions, we propose an interactive fuzzy satisficing method to derive a satisficing solution for the decision maker by updating the reference membership levels

A Neural Network Approach for Non-contact Defect Inspection of Flat Panel Displays

AbstractThis paper proposes a neural network-based approach for the inspection of electrical defects on thin film transistor lines of flat panel displays. The inspection is performed on digitized waveform data of voltage signals that are captured by a capacitor-based non-contact sensor by scanning over thin film transistor lines on the surface of the mother glass of flat panels. The sudden deep falls (open circuits) or sharp rises (short circuits) on the captured noisy waveform are classified and detected by employing a four-layer feed-forward neural network with two hidden layers. The topology of the network comprises an input layer with two units, two hidden layers with two and three units, and an output layer with one unit; a standard sigmoid function as the activation function for each unit. The network is trained with a fast adaptive back-propagation algorithm to find an optimal set of associated weights of neurons by feeding a known set of input data. The ambiguity of the threshold definition does not arise in this method because it uses only local features of waveform data at and around selected candidate points as inputs to the network, unlike the existing thresholding-based method, which is inherently prone to missed detections and false detections