Remote Work

 

We had come to work at home since the government declared a state of emergency in April. It continues for two months, but I continue to work at home except laboratory seminar and special meeting still now. My teaching course and advising my lab students, five Master students, using web-conferencing. Luckily, we are working in computational intelligence area and do not need special experimental equipment on campus. My students could continue their Master research using their PC at home and get research papers through Internet. We had held laboratory seminars every weeks using web-conferencing smoothly. Since I have used web-conferencing for long years, it was not drastic change for me to switch from live teaching to on-line teaching．

 

On-line teaching has different difficulties than on-line meeting, and we must think out some solutions. For example, (1) I frequently ask course attendees in a class to explain their understanding of each lecture topic that I give to their neighbor students, which aims to let them know whether they really understand the point of given talk. However, this mutual confirmation way is difficult on web-conferencing, and I had to name one or two students and ask to explain their understanding to all other students. (2) Examination is other difficulty. Normal the final examination cannot be used for on-line courses as the same as a live examination because cheating in an on-line examination cannot be checked. I used a test function in the e-learning system that I used and checked their their understanding plus the final report. (3) We used a white board function of a web-conferencing system in my lab seminar, but discussion using it was not easy than that using real white board.

 

On the other hand, on-line teaching has better functions that real teaching in a class does not have. (1) On-line attendance rate increased than that in a class. (2) Recorded video of each on-line lecture helped students to review the course lecture. (3) It is easier for students to raise their hands for Q&A in a web conferencing system than in a real class. (4) Group discussion and group works become easier by combing on-line lecture using web-conferencing with Office 365, OneDrive, and an e-learning system and sharing discussion materials.

 

The teaching policy of Kyushu University is to combine on-line teaching and live teaching. Since the class room for my lecture course is not big enough to keep enough distances among registered students, I have given on-line lectures from my home in whole 2020 FY. My lab students are also doing their Master research at their home. I started live lab seminar on a campus with wearing a mask and opening a window and a door of a seminar room since October to see each face of lab members at least one per a week.

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Renovation for a Study

Home-working and on-line teaching made me decide to renovate the room for my daughter who has been independent of us and made a study. I moved her desk and bed, replaced carpet, and ordered a 3-meter long desk and a long hanging shelf. See the below photo.．

 

The long desk has hidden shelfs to keep electric cord along with the backside of its top plate, so that long electric cord is not seen on a floor. I also replaced the ceiling light in the below photo and added a spot light from a ceiling to make only the PC working space bright and avoid a desk lamp. Now, I can work on a wide space with PC.

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Health Care

(a) Walking

There are many people who were badly influenced by COVID-19; some of them caught COVID-19, and others had mental and/or physical troubles due to long home-stay. At the same time, there are many people who became healthy than before; some of them started exercise and/or home-cooking taking the advantage of home-working. I am one of the latter people.

 

Triggered by home-working from April, I started Nordic walking every day. When I work on campus, the leaving time from my office tends to be late, and it is hard to get motivated to go walking after exchanging business wear and taking dinner at home. It resulted lack of exercise. I had been a member of a gymnasium for some years but gave up to keep the membership because I could find time to use it around three days per month.

 

Since I turned into home-working in April, this situation changed. I became able to go Nordic working in the evening or night without exchanging clothes, walking with classic music did not make me lonely or boring, and especially drastically decrease of my weight and body fat percentage were big my motivation to continue the walking.

 

Nordic walking is the walking with two poles like as skiing on ground. Its exercise effect is high thanks to arm movement, wide step size caused by added arm force, and faster walking speed. Daily walking drastically improved my weight and body fat percentage as shown in the below graph till summer. It seems that my body turns into a winter mode from autumn. If my guess is correct, they will re-start decreasing from the next spring.

The change of my weight (blue lines) and body fat percentage (orange lines) in 2020.

 

Quite interesting point is before and after the lack of recorded data in the latter September. I traveled to Hokkaido for 4-night and 5-day and climbed several mountains for three days. I took carbohydrate intentionally more than usual just before and during climbing days to keep glycogen in my muscle and not to become completely exhausted. I also drunk water in which protein was liquefied during climbing mountains for several hours. As the result, my weight increased and my body fat percentage decreased, which implies that my muscle increased and my body fat was burned. I was surprised to know the big change for just some days.

(b) Osteopathic Clinic

I followed the recommendation of joining a program for correcting round shoulder for three months at the osteopathic clinic that I visited when I hurt my lower back in December, 2019. My body has been quite less softness since I was young, and my round shouldered is its result. The persons whose muscle is too hard cannot keep a stretched form, and their hard muscle becomes further harder. The motion range of my arms, legs, and other body parts became wider and my shoulders became less roundness thanks to 3-month program, and now I feel as if I became taller.

 

Now, I have been admitted to the same osteopathic clinic twice per week to have treatment to become able to sit down on Japanese room floor by putting legs together and kneel (seiza sitting) and/or sitting cross-legged (agura sitting). I could not do it because too hard muscle of my hip and legs cause strong pain when I bend my knee and sit down on tatami mat; repeating of sitting down and standing up was quite hard job for me. Main treatment at the clinic is muscle stretching of my hip and legs. As the result of one year treatment, I became able to put my hip on my heel though it is still not enough for practical seiza sitting and keep my upper body not to fall backward during agura sitting though it is not enough for practical agura sitting, too. I hope my sitting form problem will be solved as the same as the treatment fruit of round shoulder correction program.

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Business Trips

 

All domestic and international conferences were held virtually using web-conferencing systems due to COVID-19 except a few conferences postponed to 2021. As a result, I made no business trip, and main usage of my research budget was only conference registration fees. As I do not renew lab PC's for my last year, 2021 FY, and special equipment and supplies are not necessary for our research, large portion of my 2020 research budget cannot be used out.

 

To collect the latest research information at conferences, chatting with attendees at break time, reception and banquet is more important than oral presentations which information can be obtained from conference proceedings. Such chattering frequently results to plan new conferences, organize sessions, decide invited speaker candidates, and become a trigger of joint research, etc. On-line conferences cannot provide chattering opportunity to collect such type of information but only research information through oral presentations. This is the biggest drawback of virtual conferences. Its second big problem is that it is not easy for some participants in different time zone to attend on-line technical sessions. For example, I chaired a CEC2020 session starting from 11:30 PM JST.

 

On the other hand, letting conference registrants watch recorded oral presentation files on demand, as the solution for the mentioned second drawback, is a big good point of virtual conferences. We could not audit interesting oral presentations at parallel sessions held at the same time at conventional live conferences. On-demand watching recorded presentation files solves this problem of live conferences, and repeated watch of the files with pause for thinking helps our deep understanding. The second advantage of virtual conferences is that no business trip fees is necessary and we can easily advise our students to attend them without caring our research budget for their business trip.

 

I hope that conventional live conferences adopt these good points of virtual conferences when they come to be held after COVID-19 calms down.

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