We focus on Internet rumors and present an empirical analysis and simulation results of their diffusion and convergence during emergencies. In particular, we study one rumor that appeared in the immediate aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, which later turned out to be misinformation. By investigating whole Japanese tweets that were sent one week after the quake, we show that one correction tweet, which originated from a city hall account, diffused enormously. We also demonstrate a stochastic agent-based model, which is inspired by contagion model of epidemics SIR, can reproduce observed rumor dynamics. Our model can estimate the rumor infection rate as well as the number of people who still believe in the rumor that cannot be observed directly. For applications, rumor diffusion sizes can be estimated in various scenarios by combining our model with the real data.

We introduce solvable stochastic dealer models, which can reproduce basic empirical laws of financial markets such as the power law of price change. Starting from the simplest model that is almost equivalent to a Poisson random noise generator, the model becomes fairly realistic by adding only two effects: the self-modulation of transaction intervals and a forecasting tendency, which uses a moving average of the latest market price changes. Based on the present microscopic model of markets, we find a quantitative relation with market potential forces, which have recently been discovered in the study of market price modeling based on random walks.

SUMMARYAn Active Mass Driver (AMD) system is proposed to suppress actively the response of a building to irregular external excitations such as earthquakes and typhoons. This system has been introduced to an actual ten-storey office building for the first time in the world. The system controls the motions of a structure by means of an external energy supply. It consists of an auxiliary mass installed in a building and an actuator that operates the mass and produces a control force which counters disturbances to the building. The design method of the AMD system, including the location of the installation and the capacity and stability of the system, is proposed. Simplification of the control algorithm is also described.

To uncover an underlying mechanism of collective human dynamics, we survey more than 1.8 billion blog entries and observe the statistical properties of word appearances. We focus on words that show dynamic growth and decay with a tendency to diverge on a certain day. After careful pretreatment and the use of a fitting method, we found power laws generally approximate the functional forms of growth and decay with various exponents values between -0.1 and -2.5. We also observe news words whose frequencies increase suddenly and decay following power laws. In order to explain these dynamics, we propose a simple model of posting blogs involving a keyword, and its validity is checked directly from the data. The model suggests that bloggers are not only responding to the latest number of blogs but also suffering deadline pressure from the divergence day. Our empirical results can be used for predicting the number of blogs in advance and for estimating the period to return to the normal fluctuation level.

Numerical simulations of the plasma flow and electromagnetic wave around a membraneaeroshell type reentry vehicle were performed using various physical model combinations, and the possibility of radio frequency blackout of transceiver antenna embedded at the rear of the vehicle was investigated. The flow field was assumed to be in thermochemical nonequilibrium, and it was described by the Navier-Stokes equations with a multitemperature model and the equation of state. The simulations were performed for several altitudes including the highest heat flux point according to reentry orbit data. Through these computations, the detailed distributions of the flow-field properties in the shock layer and wake region were successfully obtained. To evaluate possibility of the radio frequency blackout during atmospheric reentry, the distribution of the electron number density around the inflatable vehicle was clarified. A frequency-dependent finite-difference time-domain method was used for simulations of electromagnetic waves, and the physical properties were obtained from the computational results of the plasma flow calculation. Electromagnetic wave behaviors in an ionized gas region behind the inflatable vehicle were investigated. It was found that the number density of electrons was sufficiently small and that the electromagnetic waves can propagate with less reflection and no attenuation. These results suggest that radio frequency blackout may not occur during the atmospheric reentry of the inflatable vehicle.

We introduce a deterministic dealer model which implements most of the empirical laws, such as fat tails in the price change distributions, long term memory of volatility and non-Poissonian intervals. We also clarify the causality between microscopic dealers' dynamics and macroscopic market's empirical laws.

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At-speed test of integrated circuits is becoming critical to detect subtle delay defects. Existing structural at-speed test methods are inadequate because they are unable to supply sufficiently-varied functional clock sequences to test complex sequential logic. Moreover, they require tight restrictions on the circuit design. In this paper, we present a new method for at-speed structural test of ASICs, having no tight restrictions on the circuit design. In the present implementation, any complex at-speed functional clock waveform for 16 cycles can be applied. We present DFT structures that can generate high-speed launch-off-capture as well as launch-offscan clocking without the need to switch a scan enable atspeed. We also describe a method to test asynchronous clock domains simultaneously. Experimental results on fault coverage and hardware measurements for three multi-million gate ASICs demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.