Forum for Science, Industry and Business

New direction for chance discovery?

The issue on chance discovery (volume 11, issue 5) is guest edited by Akinori Abe and Yukio Ohsawa. Since 2000, invited sessions on chance discovery have been organized in KES conferences (www.kesinternational.org). In this issue, nine papers which are extended version of sessions' paper and newly submitted are selected.

A full list of contents can be read further on, but as a whole, the keywords for this issue are ‘interaction’, ‘visualization’ and ‘abduction’ that are contributive to the basic methodologies of chance discovery. And, for application, the management and discovery of risks, in which stock price movements are to be included, are appeared as core issues.

The real lives of humans are complex and the future is not predictable. In order to have better –or the best- benefits, it is necessary to predict the future trends. In the usual case, data mining techniques provide us with satisfactory enough results for doing good business. However, there are exceptional events where simple data mining techniques and statistical analysis don’t suffice.

If the risk can’t be predicted, the result may be serious. There are implicit (not noticed due to the rarity or the novelty) events which can be signs for fatal, or sometimes for an extremely beneficial, scenario. Because these signs are novel, and hard to be related to the result, it has been difficult to catch them for making a suitable decision at a suitable time. It is important to determine implicit symptoms to risks or benefits (opportunities). Accordingly, Ohsawa proposed chance discovery in 2000.

Astrid Engelen | alfa
Further information:
http://www.iospress.nl

Im Focus: Temperature-controlled fiber-optic light source with liquid core

In a recent publication in the renowned journal Optica, scientists of Leibniz-Institute of Photonic Technology (Leibniz IPHT) in Jena showed that they can accurately control the optical properties of liquid-core fiber lasers and therefore their spectral band width by temperature and pressure tuning.

Already last year, the researchers provided experimental proof of a new dynamic of hybrid solitons– temporally and spectrally stationary light waves resulting...

Im Focus: Overdosing on Calcium

Nano crystals impact stem cell fate during bone formation

Scientists from the University of Freiburg and the University of Basel identified a master regulator for bone regeneration. Prasad Shastri, Professor of...

Im Focus: AchemAsia 2019 will take place in Shanghai

Moving into its fourth decade, AchemAsia is setting out for new horizons: The International Expo and Innovation Forum for Sustainable Chemical Production will take place from 21-23 May 2019 in Shanghai, China. With an updated event profile, the eleventh edition focusses on topics that are especially relevant for the Chinese process industry, putting a strong emphasis on sustainability and innovation.

Founded in 1989 as a spin-off of ACHEMA to cater to the needs of China’s then developing industry, AchemAsia has since grown into a platform where the latest...

Im Focus: First real-time test of Li-Fi utilization for the industrial Internet of Things

The BMBF-funded OWICELLS project was successfully completed with a final presentation at the BMW plant in Munich. The presentation demonstrated a Li-Fi communication with a mobile robot, while the robot carried out usual production processes (welding, moving and testing parts) in a 5x5m² production cell. The robust, optical wireless transmission is based on spatial diversity; in other words, data is sent and received simultaneously by several LEDs and several photodiodes. The system can transmit data at more than 100 Mbit/s and five milliseconds latency.

Modern production technologies in the automobile industry must become more flexible in order to fulfil individual customer requirements.

Im Focus: Sharp images with flexible fibers

An international team of scientists has discovered a new way to transfer image information through multimodal fibers with almost no distortion - even if the fiber is bent. The results of the study, to which scientist from the Leibniz-Institute of Photonic Technology Jena (Leibniz IPHT) contributed, were published on 6thJune in the highly-cited journal Physical Review Letters.

Endoscopes allow doctors to see into a patient’s body like through a keyhole. Typically, the images are transmitted via a bundle of several hundreds of optical...