Panasonic Technologies is recruiting scientists for a new fundamental-research lab, the Panasonic Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) in Princeton, NJ. Particular emphases are in computer architectures, distributed systems, database management systems, and real-time graphics. Contact Dr. Richard Lipton, Panasonic ITL, P.O. Box 3289, Princeton, NJ 08543-3289. [Computer, 5/91.]

Tim Finin (finin@prc.unisys.com) reports that Microsoft's proposed $10M software R&D center in Tokyo will focus on multimedia software. The new center will also conduct research for software applications in high-definition television, liquid- crystal displays, compact disk drives, and satellite communications.

Microsoft has also hired away three applied computational linguists from IBM and has released plans for its first research center, according to a NY Times article. (Tim and I suspect that this is not the Tokyo center.) The center will study areas such as speech recognition, grammar checking, natural-language (NL) database access, and NL interfaces for searching email messages.

Tim also says that Mitsubishi is building a research lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two fairly senior Research Associates from the MIT AI Lab have been hired to help set things up -- Chuck Rich and Dick Waters. The goal is to have a CS lab with about 50 researchers. [Is this the one where MIT is helping the Japanese start their own Media Lab?]

In the back of the May IEEE Computer, Clifford Pickover asks what effect it would have had if a modern IBM PS/2 had been dropped at Harvard in 1900. Suggested answers range from improvements in power supplies and packaging technology to the loss of World War II. Tim and I wonder what would happen if someone showed us today a next-generation computer -- and its only character set was Kanji?