We, members of KDE laboratory, extend our heartfelt condolences to all those affected by the devastating disaster and our thoughts go out to those suffering in its aftermath. We do hope that the regions will sustain no further damage and will soon be able to begin the rebuilding and healing process.

Although our university, located in central Japan, has been as usual as before, our laboratory has several current students and alumni coming from those regions. The loss of many human lives and their homes as well as the loss of coastal beauty of north-eastern seashore of Japan are deeply felt. Now more than ever, we believe that accurately gathering, monitoring, extracting, retrieving, predicting, and delivering the genuine information to whom it is required in real time is utmost important. Therefore, we would like to declare that we will conduct truly practical data/text mining and media retrieval technology more extensively from now on.