Event satisfaction and interdependent happiness in sports volunteers: focused-on a triathlon event during the COVID-19 pandemic

Sports volunteers play an important role in sports event management. There are various motivations for the participants of sports volunteer activities. In particular, the occurrence of sports events has significantly decreased due to the impacts of COVID-19. At the same time, consideration should be given as to whether it is possible to find value and reward from volunteer activities or not. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between event satisfaction and interdependent happiness in sports volunteers. This research focused on sports volunteers of the 2021 Asia Triathlon Championships Hatsukaichi. The data was collected from 163 participants, with a significant response rate of 48.9%. The average respondent age was 54.0 years old, 123 respondents were male (75.5%), and 40 respondents were female (24.5%). The result of multiple regression was significant (F = 3.28, p < .01) and it accounted for 20% of the interdependent happiness. The predictors of socio-demographics were not deemed significant. On the other hand, event satisfaction was significant (p < .01) with regard to independent happiness. This research utilized the relationship between event satisfaction and independent happiness through structural equation modeling. The result of Structural Equation Modeling was significant at the .10% level. In sum, event satisfaction was significant in regard to independent happiness. This result shows a possibility to help understand the value of sports volunteers. Additionally, sports events in the community are expected to have not only an economic impact, but also, contribute to the sustainable social developments of the community.

Increased frequency of central precocious puberty during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic at a single center in the Osaka Metropolitan Area of Japan

As environmental factors are known to affect the timing of puberty, self-isolation during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic may affect the incidence of central precocious puberty (CPP). This study aimed to evaluate the frequency of CPP during the COVID-19 pandemic at a single center in the Osaka metropolitan area of Japan. We retrospectively analyzed the annual frequency of CPP occurrence before and after the first declaration of COVID-19 state of emergency in Japan at our hospital. We performed an interrupted time-series analysis to investigate the frequency of patients with CPP at our hospital from 2016 to 2021. There was a significant increase in the frequency of patients with CPP before and after the state of emergency declaration, both overall and among females. However, there was no significant increase in the number of males. There were no significant differences in the clinical, auxological, and endocrinological features between those diagnosed before and after the state of emergency. Overall, the frequency of CPP significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic at a single center in the Osaka metropolitan area of Japan.

AxeLatoon - Let's Build an Accelerator at School !

High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) launched an education project for the fabrication of an accelerator named "AxeLatoon" in 2020 together with the National Institute of Technology (KOSEN). This project aims to improve engineering skills of students and foster the next generation of accelerator researchers by providing hands-on training in the field of accelerator science. In the first year, we collaborated with the NIT (KOSEN), Ibaraki College to build an accelerator. Students took the initiative in this extracurricular activity and challenged building an accelerator. From 2021, we expanded this project to other prefectures and four schools are now participating. The design and fabrication of a small cyclotron accelerator is currently underway. Despite the restrictions on activities and the limited mobility of people due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the project continues to educate students about basic technologies and accelerators. We are holding seminars a few times a month utilizing online communication tools. In this report, we would like to share the status of AxeLatoon's activities based on the actual production of students at KOSEN and deepen the discussion on accelerator outreach programs. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

An Improvement of Computer Based Test System Based on TCExam for Usage with A Large Number of Concurrent Users

Computer-based test or assessment has been used widely, especially in the current COVID-19 pandemic, where many schools are conducting distance learning as well as distance examination. The need for a computer or software system to support education is inevitable. A range of solutions, from the free/open source software systems to the paid/proprietary ones have been publicly available. Still, an organization with limited resources prefers to find free or low-budget, while yet demanding reliable solutions. We have reported the use of the computer-based test in a new student recruitment test which is held country-wide. We developed the system based on TCExam, a free and open source computer-based test software, and successfully fulfilled the requirements, but with some tweaks. We found that the TCExam has a performance degradation when used by a large number of examinees concurrently, especially during specific phases during the test. This paper reports the result of our investigation to address the problem and suggests some modifications to the base codes as well as a recommendation of the hardware configuration. We evaluated the modified system in a simulated environment. We successfully achieved up to 56% performance gain using the modified system.

Usage of E-books During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of Kyushu University Library, Japan

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on education and research in universities throughout the world. Many academic libraries have been closed, and users have had to use e-books instead of printed books in libraries. As e-books are not yet commonly used in Japan, this paper examines the impact of the pandemic on the use of e-books in academic libraries in Japan. As a case study, the usage data for each e-book platform in Kyushu University in Japan were analyzed, and the overall trends in each period before and during the pandemic were revealed. The access counts of e-books from January to June 2019 and those for 2020 were examined. The number of total access counts in 2020 was higher than that in 2019 on all nine platforms. The platform that saw the highest access count growth rate was JSTOR, with an 846% increase. The usage of e-books in the Maruzen eBook Library, which holds many Japanese textbooks, was examined in detail. E-books on mathematics, medical science, and programming languages were in constant use both before and during the pandemic. E-books in law and economics started to be used during the pandemic. These results indicate that the pandemic has evoked new needs for e-books in certain fields. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.