Thursday, February 14, 2013

Let's Talk about .. The 10th Tokodai Science Cafe

This year, there is the 10th Tokodai Science Cafe at Tokyo Institute of Technology. Tokodai is an abbreviation of Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japanese. This time I am one of the organizer team. I'd like to introduce you to join if you're interested in.


Designed by Natsumi Takahashi


The 10th Tokodai Science Cafe
Theme: さわる 感じる 伝える こころ
Date: Saturday February 16th, 2013
Time: 13:00-15:30 (Door open: 12:45)
Venue: 手島精一記念会議室, Tokyo Tech Front 3rd Floor, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama Campus
Entrance fee: 500 Yen (Including drink and snacks)
Language: Japanese (mainly)
Note: Web register is required




Saturday, August 11, 2012

Let's Talk about .. TJIA 2012

This year I am co-chairperson of the 5th Thailand-Japan International Academic Conference 2012 (TJIA 2012). TJIA 2012 is going to be on October 20th, 2012 at W9 Building, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama Campus, Tokyo, Japan.

It is going to be one of the interesting place to communicate and exchange the ideas among researchers, students, and academicians from Thailand, Japan, and others.



What is TJIA?
The Thailand-Japan International Academic Conference (TJIA) is the annual conference that provides a platform for students, academicians and researchers to present their research results and development activities. This conference not only provides opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and application experiences face to face, but also promotes research collaboration between Thailand and Japan. The TJIA is organized by Thai Students’ Association in Japan under the Royal Patronage (TSAJ) with the goal to promote the collaboration among Thai, Japanese as well as people from other countries regardless of their specialization and nationality. The TJIA conference has evolved from the Thai-Japanese Students’ Academic Exchange Meeting (TJSE) conference held in 2006 and 2007 at Osaka University. Following the success of TJSE, the conference continued being held every year and its scale was extended to be equivalent to international symposium under the name “Thailand-Japan International Academic Conference (TJIA)” starts from 2008, when it was held at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Source: http://tsaj.org/tjia2012/about-tjia/

Let's Talk about .. iRobot


I got the information about iRobot from STeLA, so I went to listen to Colin Angle, Co-founder, chairman & CEO of iRobot in iRobot CEO Lecture at the New Otani Hotel, Tokyo on September 28, 2011.

He talked about his adventure in entrepreneurship after his graduation from MIT.

Nowadays, iRobot has 400 million in 2010 revenue, more than 700 employees located in Hong Kong, China, France, UK, India, and 3 offices in USA. They have shipped more than 1.5 billion dollars worth of robots.

He separated the timeline of his company into 3 phases: Technology development, Robot development, and Robot production. 
He has inspiration to make cool technology. During the technology development, iRobot built cool robots. In the robot development, iRobot built many types of robot including Dinosaurs robot.

He also had many failed business models over time. But he and his company is still keep continuing until they built Roomba-an intelligent FloorVac.

First, because they did not know about how to clean. What they know was only cleaning home was a great application. So, they made a asymmetric strategic partnership to learn how to clean and manufacture using OPM. The concept is that the large company has money, channel, and market knowledge, while small company, like iRobot at that time, has cool technology, and innovation. In fact, the name they gave to Roomba at the first time was "CyberSuck", and then, "DustPuppy", but they are not good to be a commercial product, thus they outsourced the company to create the name, which is "Roomba". One luck they got is the advertisement. Because of the cool innovation, the iRobot were published in many famous media such as Popular Science, National Geographic, etc.

Colin showed the Revised Technology Adoption Life Cycle. The innovators and early adaptor periods are not too hard since the innovation lovers will buy your new cool technological products, but to become the mass product, many factors are needed.

Engineering VS Marketing
Colin described about the vision of engineers and marketers. They are different.

There are 3 rules to make the product:
1. Don't get struck on Oriental carpet fringe.
2. Simple is good.
3. Reliable and Dependable is everything.

iRobot Ava
The new idea, iRobot is doing is the Robot Enabled Home. To be the center of the elements of a home that takes care of everyone, they built the prototype of iRobot Ava. Ava is a Human Interface Robot (HIR). The controller interface is Apple iPad.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Let's Talk about .. Drug Development and Innovations


On August 1st, 2012, I joined the open seminar organized by Global Health Leadership Program (GHLP), the University of Tokyo
The speaker is Dr. Ryo Kubota, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman, President & CEO of Acucela, Inc. The title of seminar is Drug development and innovations driven by bio ventures in the United States.
He described about how to introduce new molecule to the market and innovate as new drug.
FDA or U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the institute that has knowledge of all drugs from overall companies even confidential information, so it is good that all the drug companies let FDA checks the new products or experimental results before coming our to the market.
Process from discover to commercialization
When is the best time to start the drug company? Development phase should be the best time since we have done some amount of experiment until the risk already reduced. However, for him, he started since the beginning period.
There is difference between in Japan and US since Japanese people require quite high level of safety.
The cost of new drugs

The cost of new drugs increase every year. Currently, 2.7 Billion US Dollar is the fundamental cost to create one new drug development. It is capital intensive industry.
Current US health care costs exceed 17% GDP, while Japan is 8.5% GDP (That’s why we cannot see many new drugs come in Japanese market). However, the life expectation is better, so it means other factors that result this outcome in Japan is better than US.
Deep pile

The idea of deep pile shows that in case the drug company failed from one molecule, the company still can operate with other parallel molecule research.

Acucela

"The more diversity you are, the more idea you have", Dr. Kobuta explained that he tries to have multi nationality employees in his company because he believes that when we have any problems, people from difference places have different idea to solve the problem.

Drug development and innovations driven by bio ventures in the United States


Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Let's Talk about .. AOS Smartphone SMS Solution Services

I joined the AOS Smartphone SMS Solution Services event on September 27, 2011. This event is introduced to me by my professor, Prof. Junichi Iijima. It is the event hosted AOS Technologies.









This AOSMobile.com is powered by 3Cinteractive, a company from USA.
Vic Shroff, a director of Sales Department of 3Cinteractive gave a speech talking about his company.
Demonstration.
In this event, the audiences joined the demonstration of this services. First, we typed the code and sent it via SMS to the received mobile phones number. It is free, no matter which carrier you are using. Then, we followed the step they showed. We can type the keyword to get the information to know. It can be adapted into business by showing the special promotion or catalog in the SMS form. The customer can reply according to the menu option the previous SMS said.
I think this business model is great. Sometimes SMS channel is forgotten by many people because e-mail is popular nowadays, but the good points of SMS service are still strong until now such as sending speed (less than 1 minute), no need for mail application, free in some countries' promotion, etc.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Let's Talk about .. Daigo Fukuryu-Maru

On June 10th, 2011, I have a school trip in the course of Comparative Studies on the historical development of sciences under the supervision of Prof. Masanori Kaji and Dr. Yakup Bektas.

Our class went to Shin-kiba Station (新木場駅) to visit Daigo Fukuryu-maru Exhibition Hall.

It is an exhibition hall of Daigo Fukuryu-maru (第五福竜丸) or "Lucky Dragon V".






Daigo Fukuryu-
maru is a ship with 35 km height and 250 km width.






It was 160km far from center of atomic testin
g.On March 1st, 1954, at 6.45 a.m., ship crews saw it like the second Sun from the west side.






They already knew about this test, so they though it was safe.
However, there was no official announcement about the schedule.
7-8 minutes later after they heard the sound, they pulled out the instruments and tried to go away. After 2 hours there was rain, actually it was not they rain but ashes.



It took 4-5 hours to get out from there due to the large size of the instrument. They did not know about t
he situation at all.Their bodies received the radioactive. Even though they washed their bodies by sea water, in the evening, they got ill.
After they came back, they got more symptoms.

The crews got the same level as the Hiroshima-2-km-surrounding-area-of-atomic-bomb victims.
It was helpful that the washed themselves immediately, but the ship was also radioactived and they had to inside the ship for 2 weeks.

When they arrived, they got experiment in the hospital.
There were 28 crews.

The real ashes is shown in the hall.








The tunas were sold out in the market. The next one of the newspaper reported on the incident. It was first report in Japan about it. Then people in other parts of Japan threw out the tuna even in Tsukiji market in Tokyo.

The government checked the tuna at that moment.
The price of tuna and fish went down.
After 2 months people detected radioactive in the rain.
It was not only march 1st testing but also other experiment. The fifth effected japan because of the wind.

There were 856 ship fishing the tuna, 485.75 tons, got radioactive tuna.
Blood production function and Leukemia.

US paid 2 million US Dollar and Japan stopped making any further processes.
The 70% of paid was sent to fishing industry. But, in fact, they suffered three times more than that amount.

20,000 nuclear weapons are still around the world.

Marshall island and people who conducted the experiments also effected.
And because of that, the level of radioactive increased.

Memorial of Maguro (Tuna)




Koboyama last word
"Please make sure I will be the last person who affected by atomic bomb."





Engine inside the ship

Nuclear Explosion Test Affected the World


Messages from children

Thank you very much for the Official guide of the hall, Prof. Masanori Kaji, Dr.Yakup Bektas, and everyone in the class.

Ref.
[1] Tokyo Metropolitan Government, No.5 Fukuryu-maru Exhibition Hall.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Let's Talk about .. Current Currency Situation

Today, Saturday February 19, 2011, I participated the seminar of "Current Currency Situation" organized by the Royal Thai Embassy's Office of Educational Affairs, Tokyo, Japan.

The speaker was Mr.Kittipong Apibalsri, Minister-Counsellor (Economic and Financial), the Royal Thai Embassy, Tokyo.

Mr.Kittipong Apibalsri,
Minister-Counsellor (Economic and Financial)


The following is my summarize from the seminar.

What is money?
It is the medium to exchange the thing. The ratio is around 70% In Thailand, BOT backs up at 100%. The is only one country that can produce money without any backup is USA ( in god we trust)  How can we calculate the value of cross currency? 1.1. Country's status, government's budget (balance:income=outcome) 1.2. Country's status in term of consumer and seller (demand & demand) (We can predict both of the previous factors.) 2. Value of money not in the status of the medium. Someone makes benefit from money exchanging. Benefit comes from margin. 
There are 2 case studies about this issue, 1992 England, and 1997 Asian countries. 
England joined the EU commitment to fix with Deutsche Mark ( On that day, the economy reduced, investors sold short (borrow currency, and return with interest when currency is cheaper) At that time, government tried to increase the interest rate, until England announced to defense their currency. Black Wednesday (the day the Bank of England was broken), two times of increasing their currency value. And England escaped from Euro. George Soros, the man who broke the bank of England, said it's not good to defense since the investor pays the currency by loan from, we cannot do leverage since it's not the exact money amount.
 In Asia, the bubble property made people want to invest in Asian. It's from the fixed rate policy. All of this type of investment is easy to escape from the race, so it's not good to do like that. it's the investment that connotation produce the income. 
And 10 years later, There was a repeating situation, 2007, it's a domino, Subprime Crisis. USA was criticized a lot about it. At that time, the value of US house was too flexible. American people likes to make Mortgage Loan on the real-estate properties. They sold the loan stock from other bank, and also sold the loan stock of the group of loan stocks. It means the amount of properties increases without any real property.
 This is the subprime crisis since everyone realized that there is nothing, so everyone tried to sell as fast as possible. Then US made a subprime market, Credit Insurance Guarantee. Loan stock is B grade, but if they let the credit commercial bank guarantee your loan stock, so the credit will depends on the credit level of the commercial bank. So someone think about making the group of the guaranteed property and be a new property, so there was a case of branesterm.   Case of Lehman Brothers, at the time Lehman Brothers was filling for bankruptcy, each bank had to  announce how much the portion of Lehman they had. It did not effect much to Thailand.  Next crisis, Greece debt crisis. The government hired the company to modify the country's account. Greece entered Greece at 110 million EURO. EU is going to be the guarantee of country-level customer.
 For the current situation, all countries have not much different situation of economy. Even China, people is still concern in case that it's possible that government will establish a new monetary policy.  QE2 (Quantitative Easing) policy of US Federal made dollar became weak. Investors moved from USA to Asia. 
NOTE: Because the size of US market is very large, so for example, if they moved 100% to Asia, it means a lot to invest only 2%. 
Each country has different method to prevent the flow of that investment.
- Singapore controls the rate of interest. - Philippines controls the derivative of banks. - Brazil controls by collect the VAT of incoming currency, consider the money as product. First country to use this economy's theory.
Situation of Japanese Yen 
Japan have 240 appreciation of Yen. Budget of government, 52% from loan, 48% from tax. And a lot is to ODA loan for developing countries, and pension payment. Last year Japan intervened the currency to warn the investor who wants to earn the margin of currency trading. 
Nowadays, Japan has a lot of public debt. so in the future when USA can recover, it's possible that Japan's Yen rate will going back to around 100 Yen/1 USD.  The problem for the investor is even though you trade until you get the benefit, but when you return back to the original currency, the exchange rate may be decreases.  For Asia now the problem may occur if we cannot manage it,the investor will escape out of Asia and at that time the currency will be swing. 
Government said that we can make a currency stable by increasing the saving inside the country. Like in Japan 95% is domestic debt. Japanese saves money at bank, and the banks buy gov bond.. That's why Yen is not swinging. It's the pro from the saving habit of Japanese people. 
The currency problem can be protected. But the problem occurred because of the way government control the money.  For Japan, IMF recommended that Japan should increase Consumption tax to be 20%, but it's impossible since the politician cannot show the advertisement to increase consumption tax. It seems high but comparing to the developed countries, Japan Tax system is si liar to the developing countries. 
Prof. Eisuke Sakakibara, Waseda university, named Mr.Yen, said that the situation of Japan's economy is not good, but better than other countries.