Pinoy appointed editor of esteemed int’l journal

Wazzup Pilipinas!?



For the first time in its 77-year history, the esteemed scientific publication Optik: International Journal for Light and Electron Optics will be helmed by a Filipino scientist.


Prof. Percival F. Almoro of the University of the Philippines - Diliman College of Science National Institute of Physics (UPD-CS NIP) was appointed Section Editor of the Optik journal by international scientific publishing house Elsevier as of June 2023.

Established in 1946, Optik is an internationally-renowned scientific journal, having published in its pages works by famous physicists including R. W. Gerchberg and W. O. Saxton, for whom the phase retrieval algorithm is named. It is also the official journal of the German Society for Applied Optics, which counts among its honorary members Nobel Prize winners Stefan Hell (2014, super-resolved fluorescence microscopy) and Denni Gabor (1979, holography). As of 2021, Optik showcased an above-average impact factor of 2.84.

In his new editorial capacity, Almoro will have final responsibility and the last word on the journal’s specialized content in areas ranging from optical metrology and interferometry to phase retrieval.

“This editorship stint is a great honor not just for me but also for all Filipinos,” Almoro said. “It is a recognition on the international stage that researchers in the country can carry out good quality research.”

Sleep Crisis in Southeast Asia: Almost 3 in 4 Southeast Asians are not getting a good night’s sleep

While a deep slumber may help prevent memory loss or the onset of Alzheimer’s disease for older adults, it seems that almost 3 in 4 Southeast Asians are experiencing sleep problems. Milieu Insight, Southeast Asia's leading consumer research firm, has released a sleep tracker study revealing that 46% in Southeast Asia face sleep problems at least a few times a week, with the highest prevalence observed in the Philippines (56%). Several sleep problems are more common among Thais, including excessive daytime sleepiness (46%) and increased movement during sleep (40%). Additionally, the study highlights that 59% of individuals in Southeast Asia sleep for less than seven hours.

The most common sleep problems that respondents picked were: “difficulty falling asleep” (49%); “waking up often at night” (39%) and “Irregular sleep and wake cycle” (38%). Vietnam (80%) and the Philippines (79%) had the largest number of respondents with sleep problems.

The popularity of sleep trackers was highest in Vietnam based on number of users (26%), and regionally, 14% of respondents indicated they were using a sleep tracker. Of those currently using sleep tracker apps, 10% and 47% said that these apps have helped to improve their sleep quality to a “great extent” and “some extent” respectively. In Singapore, users seem to observe less effective results, with 2% and 28% sharing similar sentiments.

Overall, the top 3 functions/data that were used to monitor sleep patterns were sleep duration (61%), sleep quality (i.e amount of uninterrupted sleep) (60%) and sleep phases (i.e light or deep sleep phases) (46%).

Personal privacy was not much of a concern as 89% of respondents were either “very comfortable” or “somewhat comfortable” when asked if they were comfortable to share their sleep actvity data with sleep tracker apps.

Sentiments among Thailand and Vietnam respondents were largely positive and around 3 in 10 indicated that they were “very comfortable” - Thailand (37%) and Vietnam (32%).

In anticipation of the launch of Pokemon Sleep, respondents were asked about their interest in trying Pokemon Sleep to track their sleep patterns and 72% responded positively (20% very interested; 52% somewhat interested). Interest in Vietnam ranked the highest (82%), followed by Thailand (76%) and the Philippines (76%).

Top 5 words that respondents used to describe what they think about Pokemon Sleep:

1. Interesting (51%)
2. Unique (32%)
3. Useful (32%)
4. Fun (28%)
5. Indifferent (13%)

With its captivating premise, Pokémon Sleep is poised to reshape the landscape of sleep tracking with 7 in 10 respondents in Southeast Asia either very/somewhat interested to try the app. There are promising opportunities for other companies to use gamification to drive behavioural change for users to track their sleep data and we expect to usher in a new era of health-conscious technology.

About Milieu Insight Milieu Insight is Southeast Asia's leading consumer research and data analytics company, renowned for its expertise in providing brands and businesses with valuable insights and market research data. Operating in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam, Milieu Insight’s industry-transforming solutions were awarded several prestigious awards, including Campaign Asia’s Market Research Agency of the Year (Gold) and Tech MVP 2022. Its one-stop insights platform, Canvas, offers tools for analysing and visualising consumer opinion data across a multitude of lifestyle topics and sectors, powering businesses to make better, more impactful decisions and strategies. Methodology: Based on Milieu Insight surveys with N=500 respondents each in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, conducted in April 2023.

From Silicon Valley to Cebu: Japanese tech leader on AI’s potential in the Philippines

Wazzup Pilipinas?!




Fujikura is leading Sansan’s expansion into the Philippines and in charge of hiring up to 100 staff at its new Cebu development center by next year



Starting his career at the Silicon Valley (California, USA) subsidiary of Japan’s Osaka Gas Company, Fujikura Shigemoto witnessed first-hand the exciting joint venture projects between Japanese and U.S. companies. He worked on developing cutting-edge technology and bringing it back to Japan, with colleagues who wanted to change the world. It also filled him with a vision of deeply changing the world through technology. He quit his California job and returned to Japan.There, he joined a young innovative startup called Sansan, which has since gone on to become one of Japan’s leading technology companies following a 2019 IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TYO:4443).

As Sansan’s 18th employee, Fujikura worked as an engineer/developer in infrastructure design and server architecture, before being asked to become a manager and then Chief Technology Officer. Today, he is in charge of directing all tech matters at Sansan and was the leader pushing for a global development center overseas as far back as 2019. Then COVID hit, and plans had to be postponed. Fast forward to today, he is leading the company’s expansion into the Philippines via a new development center in Cebu that opened last year. He brings with him a unique international perspective having lived in the US, Japan, and the Philippines, as well as academic excellence with a Master of Science (MSc) in Intellectual Creation Systems from the Kanazawa Institute of TechnologyKanazawa Institute of Technology.

Fujikura Shigemoto, Director and CTO at Sansan Global Development Center, is available for media interviews to expand on the above as well as discuss:Generative AI has been a big change for the industry to grapple with, forcing companies new and old to think about how to use it in their own business processes.

Technology by itself is neutral, and can be used poorly or well depending on leadership. A change of mindset is required if firms are to take advantage of the powerful capabilities, or get left behind. Software engineers will be expected to develop their own AI in-house, so it’s vital for them to understand how to use AI optimally in development.

The Philippines needs to educate its engineering talent pool and new graduates on using AI technology, and universities must take time to incorporate this into their syllabuses. There will be opportunities for government agencies that still rely heavily on paper invoices and contracts to leverage AI to help them go more fully digital. The country’s senate is already actively debating the impact of AI on jobs.

 
Sansan, the listed Japanese tech leader, has been using optical character recognition (OCR) informed by AI to increase contextualization and enable 99.9% accuracy in its document scanning, as a core capability of its cloud platform since day one. Today, AI plays an important role in Sansan understanding the vast amounts of data that exist on its platform.

 
While the company has no immediate plans to develop its own generative AI, its teams in Tokyo have started using GPT4 as a layer running in the background. For example, in its Contract One service, which digitises contracts for SMEs and corporates, Sansan is leveraging generative AI to provide users with better suggestions. In future, Sansan expects to roll out more such capabilities across its invoicing and other services, and its technical team is actively exploring ways to incorporate machine learning to match duplicates in the Sansan contact management and digitally transformative cloud database.