Academic literature on the topic 'Flour Safety messages'

Wheat flour and baking mix have been associated with foodborne outbreaks and recalls, yet many consumers are unaware of the repercussions of consuming raw flour products. The objective of this study was to evaluate the accessibility of flour safety messages on commercially available packages and to identify consumer barriers to processing these messages. Eye-tracking technology was used to track the eye movements of 47 participants to assess their time to fixation (TTF) on the flour safety messages on 10 commercial packages. Notifications that were longer than one sentence were considered “long” messages, while notifications that consisted of only one sentence were considered short (S1–S5 and L1–L5). Only two participants (4.3%) found messages on all 10 packages. Highly accessible messages did not result in a high preference of presentation among participants. Most of the participants (98%) found the message on the S4 package, which correlated with the lowest TTF of 7.08 s. However, only 15% of those who found the S4 message chose it as their preferred message. Many participants who were interviewed said that they preferred messages that identified the reasoning for the warnings. They also preferred the messages that were well separated from other content on the package. Flour safety messages on the current packages are not effective to convey information and change consumer behavior. More science-based messaging strategies need to be developed to provide guidance for flour safety communication.

Communication strategies in health communication have a direct impact on the messages shared. Further, they influence the target audience in relation to behaviour change. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, many messages have been shared among communities with the aim of changing behaviour to curb the spread of the pandemic. However, despite the increased dissemination of messages on COVID-19 through multiple channels, the infection rates have continued to rise among community members. Further, community members have continued to flout government directives on COVID-19 safety measures. This presented the need to investigate the communication strategies that are available at the community level through which the community members receive COVID-19 messages. The study was conducted in the Vihiga and Busia counties of Western Kenya. Mixed methods research approaches were applied. The study targeted the general public and media practitioners. The results of the study showed that radio, social media and television are the dominating communication strategies being used in disseminating messages on COVID-19. The findings also revealed that apart from the mass media, other communication strategies include community and religious leaders, as well as government. However, the results showed that the audience has no feedback mechanism through which they can channel their views to the media.

Consumers do not consider flour, a low-moisture food product, a high-risk for microbial contamination. In the past ten years, however, flour has been identified as a source of pathogenic bacteria, including Salmonella and E. coli . Online surveys were conducted to study consumers’ flour-handling practices and their knowledge about food safety risks related to flour. The survey also evaluated message impact on three food safety messages in communicating information and convincing consumers to adopt safe flour handling practices. Flour-using consumers (n = 1,045) from the United States reported they used flour to make cakes, cookies, and bread. Most consumers stored flour in sealed containers. Less than 1% kept a record of product identification numbers, like lot numbers, and less than 11% kept brand and use-by-date information. Many consumers (85%) were unaware of flour recalls, or outbreaks, and few (17%) believed they would be affected by flour recalls or outbreaks. If the recall affected the flour they bought, nearly half of the consumers (47%) would buy the same product from a different brand for a few months before they returned to the recalled brand. Among consumers who use flour to bake, 66% said they ate raw cookie dough or batter. Raw dough “eaters” were more difficult to convince to avoid eating and playing raw flour than “non-eaters.” Food safety messages were less impactful on those raw dough “eaters” than “non-eaters.” Compared with the food safety message with only recommendations, those messages with recommendations and an explanation as to the benefits of the practice were more effective in convincing consumers to change their practices. These findings provide insight into effective consumer education about safe flour-handling practices and could assist in the accurate development of risk assessment models related to flour handling.

Vision is one of the powerful sense in all of the senses. Visually challenged people face many problems in terms of obstacles in their mobility in the case of outdoor as well as indoor. For their daily activities, they are always reliant on others. Visually impaired people meet many accidents, they often fall off and they may get lost in some unknown areas due to failure in adapting and identifying the surrounding environment. “Smart Shoes” are designed to provide a better solution for the visually impaired to move safely and independently. It is built using “Internet of Things” technology and the shoes are embedded with various sensors, microcontrollers, buzzer, speaker and vibration motor. The shoe alerts the wearer whenever he or she walks in front of an obstacle. Also, it detects the wet floor and water bodies and gives alert about it. To increase the security and safety of the visually impaired, whenever the person falls down an alert message is sent to the parent’s or caretaker’s telegram bot. Smart shoes are designed to provide a safe and comfortable companion in their daily life activities. As a result, a complete adaptive equipment is being advanced to improve the standard and comfort of life of the visually impaired.

Plan International. As A Boy. Second Story Press, 2016.Plan International is a charity that attempts to end world poverty. It also raises humanitarian concerns through its publications; this one is, seemingly, for children. In it, both gender roles and educational expectations in impoverished countries are explored. Vivid and realistic photographs accompany the text. Preceded by the statement, “…I will be told…to fight, to be brave,” we see a photograph of a boy with a crude toy rifle perched on his shoulder. The image evokes the child soldier. In further photographs, we see both genders at work: boys dragging huge bundles of sticks across the floor of a primitive factory; girls hauling smaller but similar bundles on their backs. Clearly, all of these children are disadvantaged. Having depicted this reality, As A Boy then launches its primary message: because they have the privilege of schooling, boys are luckier than girls. Boys, therefore, must stand up for the right of girls to learn. The message raises a significant question: who is the intended reader?The text could easily be handled by a child reading at the grade two or three level but, surely, one does not enjoin a seven or eight year old child to “stand up” for everyone’s right to an education in defiance of a cultural norm that is centuries old. To whom can a child safely show his defiance? His father? His teacher? The school board? The religious authorities of his community?Clearly, the fight for gender equality has to be led by enlightened adults. They might well be fathers, teachers, religious leaders, and brave, determined women. Most significantly, the leaders must be “insiders,” members of the very community that is struggling toward change. Certainly, in the hands of such “insiders,” As A Boy could be an effective communication tool. Presented by “outsiders,” however, its appeal to little boys to take a stand against tradition could be deeply resented, even seen as an attempt to lead a “Children’s Crusade.”Recommended with Reservations: 2 out of 4 starsReviewer: Leslie Aitken Leslie Aitken’s long career in librarianship involved selection of children’s literature for school, public, special, and university libraries. She is a former Curriculum Librarian for the University of Alberta.

Abstract Background Access to safe drinking water in schools is essential for a good health, wellbeing, learning and dignity of pupils. The rural schools are most frequently connected to the rural water supply system or own water supply source, where the monitoring of drinking water quality is scarced. The study was conducted in the rural regions in Serbia in 2016, aiming at assessing drinking water quality and sanitary conditions of school water supply facilities. Methods In total 238 school facilities, including 108 in Šumadija and 130 in Pomoravlje District were investigated using laboratory testing of drinking water and sanitary inspection. Results Study revealed that 32% of analysed samples showed microbiological faecal contamination with bacteria E. coli, while 52% of samples showed physico-chemical non-compliance with the national standards, where higher nitrates were the most common cause. Overall non-compliance of drinking water from school rural water supply systems amounted to 66% of tested water samples. This study also showed the main technical shortcomings of school water supply facilities and distribution networks such as the lack of fencing of the water source, damaged or absence of drainage channels from the well concrete floor and poor construction characteristics of wells. Conclusions The results of this study, particularly presence of E. coli in drinking water may affect pupils’ health and is a consequence of poor sanitary conditions and maintenance of small rural drinking water supply systems and individual wells. It is necessary to provide continuous disinfection of water available in schools and to undertake measures for technical improvements in order to provide better sanitary protection of water sources and other water supply facilities in rural schools. Key messages • Drinking water quality in schools is vital for children public health. • Raise awareness of local community on drinking water safety and enforce continuous monitoring of drinking water quality in small rural water supply systems in schools.

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to highlight the safety of OnabotulinumtoxinA (BTA) injections, with or without concurrent pudendal nerve block, in treating women with myofascial pelvic pain (MFPP). DESIGN: This was a retrospective cohort study. SETTING: Tertiary care academic center PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS: We conducted a chart review of patients who were diagnosed with MFPP and treated with BTA with or without pudendal nerve block between January 2010 and February 2022. METHODS: BTA was injected transvaginally into the pelvic floor muscle group. The primary outcomes were adverse events after BTA injections, and the secondary outcome was the effect of concomitant pudendal nerve block at the time of BTA injections. RESULTS: The cohort included 182 patients; 103 (56.6%) received BTA injections with pudendal nerve block, and 79 (43.4%) received BTA alone. There were no significant demographic differences between the two groups. Post-treatment complications of BTA administration included worsening of pelvic pain (11.5%), constipation (6.6%), urinary tract infection (2.7%), urinary retention (3.8%) and fecal incontinence (2.7%). No statistical difference was noted in the number of phone calls, patient-initiated electronic messages, emergency room visits, or clinic visits for both groups within 30 days post-treatment. The mean number of total injections was 1.6 in the BTA-only group and 1.7 in the BTA with pudendal block group (p=0.421). Median time to re-intervention with a second BTA injection was 6.0 months; 5.6 months in the BTA with pudendal block group and 6.8 months in the BTA-only group; p=0.46. There were 63 re-intervention events after BTA injections. LIMITATIONS: Limitations of our study include the retrospective design making it vulnerable to missing or incomplete data available for review CONCLUSION: OnabotulinumtoxinA is beneficial in treating women with MFPP; with a duration of therapeutic effect of approximately 6 months. The use of a concurrent pudendal nerve block did not impact clinical outcomes.

Abstract Background In recent decades, the celiac disease showed a gradual increase in prevalence. Therefore, there was a raised demand of gluten-free products. EU Reg. 1169/2011 states that 20 mg.kg-1 (ppm) is the maximum gluten content in food for celiac people, and that “gluten-free” labelling must be put on compliant food packages. This work is a study on different food categories, aiming at verifying the safety of analyzed samples. Methods Totally, 4615 gluten-free-labelled specimens were collected from January 2019 to April 2022 (pasta, 2944; cured meat, 566; flours/bakery, 489; sweets, 125 and other matrices, 491). A commercially available E.L.I.S.A. kit, according to the AOAC 2012.01-2016 method, was used to quantify gluten. Results In 97% of samples (4475) the gluten content was <5 ppm (lower LOD), and in 2.4% (112) it was between 5 ppm and <20 ppm. In the remaining 0.6% (28), the gluten concentration was ≥20 ppm. Of these, 0.32% (15) were between 20 and <80 ppm (upper LOD), and 0.28% (13) ≥80 ppm. Conclusions The increased prevalence of celiac disease and the consumers’ perception that a gluten-free diet gives benefits, lead to a greater demand of gluten-free products. In this study, 99.4% of samples were compliant with the gluten-free labelling and safe for celiac consumers. The 0.32% had a gluten content between 20 and 80 ppm, still considered “compliant”, according to the EU Reg. 828/2014 that defines as very low gluten containing (thus edible for some celiac groups), those products with a gluten content <100 ppm. Only 0.28% of samples was non-compliant (≥80 ppm). However, the authors accounted irregular those foods with ≥20 ppm. Considering the importance of these products in the daily diet, and the increasing probability to get sick by individuals, the study of their compliance to the law limits results to be important. Key messages • A continuous surveillance of gluten-free-labelled food products is very important to prevent risks for celiac consumers. • The foodstuffs distributed in the two considered regions are mainly safe for celiac patients.

If the home is traditionally considered to be a space of safety associated with the warm and cosy feeling of the familial hearth, it is also continuously portrayed as a space under threat from the outside from which we must secure ourselves and our families. Securing the home entails a series of material, discursive and performative strategies, a host of precautionary measures aimed at regulating and ultimately producing security. When I was eleven my family returned home from the local fruit markets to find our house had been ransacked. Clothes were strewn across the floor, electrical appliances were missing and my parents’ collection of jewellery – wedding rings and heirlooms – had been stolen. Few things remained untouched and the very thought of someone else’s hands going through our personal belongings made our home feel tainted. My parents were understandably distraught. As Filipino immigrants to Australia the heirlooms were not only expensive assets from both sides of my family, but also signifiers of our homeland. Added to their despair was the fact that this was our first house – we had rented prior to that. During the police interviews, we discovered that our area, Sydney’s Western suburbs, was considered ‘high-risk’ and we were advised to install security. In their panic my parents began securing their home. Grills were installed on every window. Each external wooden door was reinforced by a metal security door. Movement detectors were installed at the front of the house, which were set to blind intruders with floodlights. Even if an intruder could enter the back through a window a metal grill security door was waiting between the backroom and the kitchen to stop them from getting to our bedrooms. In short, through a series of transformations our house was made into a residential fortress. Yet home security had its own dangers. A series of rules and regulations were drilled into me ‘in case of an emergency’: know where your keys are in case of a fire so that you can get out; remember the phone numbers for an emergency and the work numbers of your parents; never let a stranger into the house; and if you need to speak to a stranger only open the inside door but leave the security screen locked. Thus, for my Filipino-migrant family in the 1990s, a whole series of defensive behaviours and preventative strategies were produced and disseminated inside and around the home to regulate security risks. Such “local knowledges” were used to reinforce the architectural manifestations of security at the same time that they were a response to the invasion of security systems into our house that created a new set of potential dangers. This article highlights “the interplay of material and symbolic geographies of home” (Blunt and Varley 4), focusing on the relation between urban fears circulating around and within the home and the spatial practices used to negotiate such fears. In exploring home security systems it extends the exemplary analysis of home technologies already begun in Lynn Spigel’s reading of the ‘smart home’ (381-408). In a similar vein, David Morley’s analysis of mediated domesticity shows how communications technology has reconfigured the inside and outside to the extent that television actually challenges the physical boundary that “protects the privacy and solidarity of the home from the flux and threat of the outside world” (87). Television here serves as a passage in which the threat of the outside is reframed as news or entertainment for family viewing. I take this as a point of departure to consider the ways that this mediated fear unfolds in the technology of our homes. Following Brian Massumi, I read the home as “a node in a circulatory network of many dimensions (each corresponding to a technology of transmission)” (85). For Massumi, the home is an event-space at the crossroads of media technologies and political technologies. “In spite of the locks on the door, the event-space of the home must be seen as one characterized by a very loose regime of passage” (85). The ‘locked door’ is not only a boundary marker that defines the inside from the outside but another technology that leads us outside the home into other domains of inquiry: the proliferation of security technologies and the mundane, fearful intimacies of the home. In this context, we should heed Iris Marion Young’s injunction to feminist critics that the home does provide some positives including a sense of privacy and the space to build relationships and identities. Yet, as Colomina argues, the traditional domestic ideal “can only be produced by engaging the home in combat” (20). If, as Colomina’s comment suggests, ontological security is at least partially dependent on physical security, then this article explores the ontological effects of our home security systems. Houses at War: Targeting the Family As Beatriz Colomina reminds us, in times of war we leave our homelands to do battle on the front line, but battle lines are also being drawn in our homes. Drawing inspiration from Virilio’s claim that contemporary war takes place without fighting, Colomina’s article ‘Domesticity at War’ contemplates the domestic interior as a “battlefield” (15). The house, she writes, is “a mechanism within a war where the differences between defense [sic] and attack have become blurred” (17). According to the Home Security Precautions, New South Wales, October 1999 report conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 47% of NSW dwellings were ‘secure’ (meaning that they either had a burglar alarm, or all entry points were secured or they were inside a security block) while only 9% of NSW households had no home security devices present (Smith 3). In a similar report for Western Australia conducted in October 2004, an estimated 71% of WA households had window security of some sort (screens, locks or shutters) while 67% had deadlocks on at least one external door (4). An estimated 27% had a security alarm installed while almost half (49%) had sensor lights (Hubbard 4-5). This growing sense of insecurity means big business for those selling security products and services. By the end of June 1999, there were 1,714 businesses in Australia’s security services industry generating $1,395 million of income during 1998-99 financial year (McLennan 3; see also Macken). This survey did not include locksmith services or the companies dealing with alarm manufacturing, wholesaling or installing. While Colomina’s article focuses on the “war with weather” and the attempts to control environmental conditions inside the home through what she calls “counterdomesticity” (20), her conceptualisation of the house as a “military weapon” (17) provides a useful tool for thinking the relation between the home, architecture and security. Conceiving of the house as a military weapon might seem like a stretch, but we should recall that the rhetoric of war has already leaked into the everyday. One hears of the ‘war on drugs’ and the ‘war on crime’ in the media. ‘War’ is the everyday condition of our urban jungles (see also Diken and Lausten) and in order to survive, let alone feel secure, one must be able to defend one’s family and home. Take, for example, Signal Security’s website. One finds a panel on the left-hand side of the screen to all webpages devoted to “Residential Products”. Two circular images are used in the panel with one photograph overlapping the other. In the top circle, a white nuclear family (stereotypical mum, dad and two kids), dressed in pristine white clothing bare their white teeth to the internet surfer. Underneath this photo is another photograph in which an arm clad in a black leather jacket emerges through a smashed window. In the foreground a black-gloved hand manipulates a lock, while a black balaclava masks an unrecognisable face through the broken glass. The effect of their proximity produces a violent juxtaposition in which the burglar visually intrudes on the family’s domestic bliss. The panel stages a struggle between white and black, good and bad, family and individual, security and insecurity, recognisability and unidentifiability. It thus codifies the loving, knowable family as the domestic space of security against the selfish, unidentifiable intruder (presumed not to have a family) as the primary reason for insecurity in the family home – and no doubt to inspire the consumption of security products. Advertisements of security products thus articulate the family home as a fragile innocence constantly vulnerable from the outside. From a feminist perspective, this image of the family goes against the findings of the National Homicide Monitoring Program, which shows that 57% of the women killed in Australia between 2004 and 2005 were killed by an intimate partner while 17% were killed by a family member (Mouzos and Houliaras 20). If, on the one hand, the family home is targeted by criminals, on the other, it has emerged as a primary site for security advertising eager to exploit the growing sense of insecurity – the family as a target market. The military concepts of ‘target’ and ‘targeting’ have shifted into the benign discourse of strategic advertising. As Dora Epstein writes, “We arm our buildings to arm ourselves from the intrusion of a public fluidity, and thus our buildings, our architectures of fortification, send a very clear message: ‘avoid this place or protect yourself’” (1997: 139). Epstein’s reference to ‘architectures of fortification’ reminds us that the desire to create security through the built environment has a long history. Nan Ellin has argued that fear’s physical manifestation can be found in the formation of towns from antiquity to the Renaissance. In this sense, towns and cities are always already a response to the fear of foreign invaders (Ellin 13; see also Diken and Lausten 291). This fear of the outsider is most obviously manifested in the creation of physical walls. Yet fortification is also an effect of spatial allusions produced by the configuration of space, as exemplified in Fiske, Hodge and Turner’s semiotic reading of a suburban Australian display home without a fence. While the lack of a fence might suggest openness, they suggest that the manicured lawn is flat so “that eyes can pass easily over it – and smooth – so that feet will not presume to” (30). Since the front garden is best viewed from the street it is clearly a message for the outside, but it also signifies “private property” (30). Space is both organised and lived, in such a way that it becomes a medium of communication to passers-by and would-be intruders. What emerges in this semiotic reading is a way of thinking about space as defensible, as organised in a way that space can begin to defend itself. The Problematic of Defensible Space The incorporation of military architecture into civil architecture is most evident in home security. By security I mean the material systems (from locks to electronic alarms) and precautionary practices (locking the door) used to protect spaces, both of which are enabled by a way of imagining space in terms of risk and vulnerability. I read Oscar Newman’s 1972 Defensible Space as outlining the problematic of spatial security. Indeed, it was around that period that the problematic of crime prevention through urban design received increasing attention in Western architectural discourse (see Jeffery). Newman’s book examines how spaces can be used to reinforce human control over residential environments, producing what he calls ‘defensible space.’ In Newman’s definition, defensible space is a model for residential environments which inhibits crime by creating the physical expression of a social fabric that defends itself. All the different elements which combine to make a defensible space have a common goal – an environment in which latent territoriality and sense of community in the inhabitants can be translated into responsibility for ensuring a safe, productive, and well-maintained living space (3). Through clever design space begins to defend itself. I read Newman’s book as presenting the contemporary problematic of spatialised security: how to structure space so as to increase control; how to organise architecture so as to foster territorialism; how to encourage territorial control through amplifying surveillance. The production of defensible space entails moving away from what he calls the ‘compositional approach’ to architecture, which sees buildings as separate from their environments, and the ‘organic approach’ to architecture, in which the building and its grounds are organically interrelated (Newman 60). In this approach Newman proposes a number of changes to space: firstly, spaces need to be multiplied (one no longer has a simple public/private binary, but also semi-private and semi-public spaces); secondly, these spaces must be hierarchised (moving from public to semi-public to semi-private to private); thirdly, within this hierarchy spaces can also be striated using symbolic or material boundaries between the different types of spaces. Furthermore, spaces must be designed to increase surveillance: use smaller corridors serving smaller sets of families (69-71); incorporate amenities in “defined zones of influence” (70); use L-shaped buildings as opposed to rectangles (84); use windows on the sides of buildings to reveal the fire escape from outside (90). As he puts it, the subdivision of housing projects into “small, recognisable and comprehensible-at-a-glance enclaves is a further contributor to improving the visual surveillance mechanism” (1000). Finally, Newman lays out the principle of spatial juxtaposition: consider the building/street interface (positioning of doors and windows to maximise surveillance); consider building/building interface (e.g. build residential apartments next to ‘safer’ commercial, industrial, institutional and entertainment facilities) (109-12). In short, Newman’s book effectively redefines residential space in terms of territorial zones of control. Such zones of influence are the products of the interaction between architectural forms and environment, which are not reducible to the intent of the architect (68). Thus, in attempting to respond to the exigencies of the moment – the problem of urban crime, the cost of housing – Newman maps out residential space in what Foucault might have called a ‘micro-physics of power’. During the mid-1970s through to the 1980s a number of publications aimed at the average householder are printed in the UK and Australia. Apart from trade publishing (Bunting), The UK Design Council released two small publications (Barty, White and Burall; Design Council) while in Australia the Department of Housing and Construction released a home safety publication, which contained a small section on security, and the Australian Institute of Criminology published a small volume entitled Designing out Crime: Crime prevention through environmental design (Geason and Wilson). While Newman emphasised the responsibility of architects and urban planners, in these publications the general concerns of defensible space are relocated in the ‘average homeowner’. Citing crime statistics on burglary and vandalism, these publications incite their readers to take action, turning the homeowner into a citizen-soldier. The householder, whether he likes it or not, is already in a struggle. The urban jungle must be understood in terms of “the principles of warfare” (Bunting 7), in which everyday homes become bodies needing protection through suitable architectural armour. Through a series of maps and drawings and statistics, the average residential home is transformed into a series of points of vulnerability. Home space is re-inscribed as a series of points of entry/access and lines of sight. Simultaneously, through lists of ‘dos and don’ts’ a set of precautionary behaviours is inculcated into the readers. Principles of security begin codifying the home space, disciplining the spatial practices of the intimate, regulating the access and mobility of the family and guests. The Architectural Nervous System Nowadays we see a wild, almost excessive, proliferation of security products available to the ‘security conscious homeowner’. We are no longer simply dealing with security devices designed to block – such as locks, bolts and fasteners. The electronic revolution has aided the production of security devices that are increasingly more specialised and more difficult to manipulate, which paradoxically makes it more difficult for the security consumer to understand. Detection systems now include continuous wiring, knock-out bars, vibration detectors, breaking glass detectors, pressure mats, underground pressure detectors and fibre optic signalling. Audible alarm systems have been upgraded to wire-free intruder alarms, visual alarms, telephone warning devices, access control and closed circuit television and are supported by uninterruptible power supplies and control panels (see Chartered Institution of Building Service Engineers 19-39). The whole house is literally re-routed as a series of relays in an electronic grid. If the house as a security risk is defined in terms of points of vulnerability, alarm systems take these points as potential points of contact. Relays running through floors, doors and windows can be triggered by pressure, sound or dislocation. We see a proliferation of sensors: switching sensors, infra-red sensors, ultrasonic sensors, microwave radar sensors, microwave fence sensors and microphonic sensors (see Walker). The increasing diversification of security products attests to the sheer scale of these architectural/engineering changes to our everyday architecture. In our fear of crime we have produced increasingly more complex security products for the home, thus complexifying the spaces we somehow inherently feel should be ‘simple’. I suggest that whereas previous devices merely reinforced certain architectural or engineering aspects of the home, contemporary security products actually constitute the home as a feeling, architectural body capable of being affected. This recalls notions of a sensuous architecture and bodily metaphors within architectural discourse (see Thomsen; Puglini). It is not simply our fears that lead us to secure our homes through technology, but through our fears we come to invest our housing architecture with a nervous system capable of fearing for itself. Our eyes and ears become detection systems while our screams are echoed in building alarms. Body organs are deterritorialised from the human body and reterritorialised on contemporary residential architecture, while our senses are extended through modern security technologies. The vulnerable body of the family home has become a feeling body conscious of its own vulnerability. It is less about the physical expression of fear, as Nan Ellin has put it, than about how building materialities become capable of fearing for themselves. What we have now are residential houses that are capable of being more fully mobilised in this urban war. Family homes become bodies that scan the darkness for the slightest movements, bodies that scream at the slightest possibility of danger. They are bodies that whisper to each other: a house can recognise an intrusion and relay a warning to a security station, informing security personnel without the occupants of that house knowing. They are the newly produced victims of an urban war. Our homes are the event-spaces in which mediated fear unfolds into an architectural nervous system. If media plug our homes into one set of relations between ideologies, representations and fear, then the architectural nervous system plugs that back into a different set of relations between capital, fear and the electronic grid. The home is less an endpoint of broadcast media than a node in an electronic network, a larger nervous system that encompasses the globe. It is a network that plugs architectural nervous systems into city electronic grids into mediated subjectivities into military technologies and back again, allowing fear to be disseminated and extended, replayed and spliced into the most banal aspects of our domestic lives. References Barty, Euan, David White, and Paul Burall. Safety and Security in the Home. London: The Design Council, 1980. Blunt, Alison, and Ann Varley. “Introduction: Geographies of Home.” Cultural Geographies 11.1 (2004): 3-6. Bunting, James. The Protection of Property against Crime. Folkestone: Bailey Brothers & Sinfen, 1975. Chartered Institution of Building Service Engineers. Security Engineering. London: CIBSE, 1991. Colomina, Beatriz. “Domesticity at War.” Assemblage 16 (1991): 14-41. Department of Housing and Construction. Safety in and around the Home. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1981. Design Council. The Design Centre Guide to Domestic Safety and Security. London: Design Council, 1976. Diken, Bülent, and Carsten Bagge Lausten. “Zones of Indistinction: Security and Terror, and Bare Life.” Space and Culture 5.3 (2002): 290-307. Ellin, Nan. “Shelter from the Storm or Form Follows Fear and Vice Versa.” Architecture of Fear. Ed. Nan Ellin. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. Epstein, Dora. “Abject Terror: A Story of Fear, Sex, and Architecture.” Architecture of Fear. Ed. Nan Ellin. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. Fiske, John, Bob Hodge, and Graeme Turner. Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987. Geason, Susan, and Paul Wilson. Designing Out Crime: Crime Prevention through Environmental Design. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 1989. Hubbard, Alan. Home Safety and Security, Western Australia. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005. Jeffery, C. Ray. Crime Prevention through Environmental Design. Beverley Hills: Sage, 1971. Macken, Julie. “Why Aren’t We Happier?” Australian Financial Review 26 Nov. 1999: 26. Mallory, Keith, and Arvid Ottar. Architecture of Aggression: A History of Military Architecture in North West Europe, 1900-1945. Hampshire: Architectural Press, 1973. Massumi, Brian. Parables of the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. McLennan, W. Security Services, Australia, 1998-99. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000. Morley, David. Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Mouzos, Jenny, and Tina Houliaras. Homicide in Australia: 2004-05 National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP) Annual Report. Research and Public Policy Series 72. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 2006. Newman, Oscar. Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design. New York: Collier, 1973. Puglini, Luigi. HyperArchitecture: Space in the Electronic Age. Basel: Bikhäuser, 1999. Signal Security. 13 January 2007 http://www.signalsecurity.com.au/securitysystems.htm>. Smith, Geoff. Home Security Precautions, New South Wales, October 1999. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000. Spigel, Lynn. Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2001. Thomsen, Christian W. Sensuous Architecture: The Art of Erotic Building. Munich and New York: Prestel, 1998. Walker, Philip. Electronic Security Systems: Better Ways to Crime Prevention. London: Butterworths, 1983. Young, Iris Marion. “House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme.” Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger. Eds. Nancy J. Holland and Patricia Huntington. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State UP, 2001. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Caluya, Gilbert. "The Architectural Nervous System: Home, Fear, Insecurity." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/05-caluya.php>. APA Style Caluya, G. (Aug. 2007) "The Architectural Nervous System: Home, Fear, Insecurity," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/05-caluya.php>.

Sphincter I hope my good old asshole holds out 60 years it's been mostly OK Tho in Bolivia a fissure operation survived the altiplano hospital -- a little blood, no polyps, occasionally a small hemorrhoid active, eager, receptive to phallus coke bottle, candle, carrot banana & fingers -- Now AIDS makes it shy, but still eager to serve -- out with the dumps, in with the condom'd orgasmic friend -- still rubbery muscular, unashamed wide open for joy But another 20 years who knows, old folks got troubles everywhere -- necks, prostates, stomachs, joints -- Hope the old hole stays young till death, relax -- March 15, 1986, 1:00 PM, Allen Ginsberg Lucky to the end, Allen Ginsberg (1926-97) achieved his first and final wish. Despite the constipation mentioned occasionally in his later poems, the anus of the grand gay father of the Beats remained relatively healthy until his death while other vital organs failed. Ginsberg, who had also described the erectile misfunction of his penis in mid-to-late career poems, died from a heart attack brought on by liver cancer. While the poet fleshed out references to the male anus in at least fifty of his poems, his "Sphincter" comprises the chronological climax in the development of both his anal and erotic verse. The poem was written just months after the beginning of the global media demonisation of Hollywood star Rock Hudson who was found in late 1985 to be both gay and to have died from AIDS complications. Ginsberg's timely "Sphincter" reflects on the poet's survival as an anally-active gay man through both the pre-AIDS and AIDS eras. While criticism of the (homo)eroticism in Ginsberg's verse ranges from utter denial to near hagiography, overall the significance of his musings on male ani has been avoided. The rather anal-retentive Thomas Merrill claims that, "even sophisticated readers of Ginsberg's poetry are apt to be put off, perhaps bored by, his obsession not only with four-letter words, but with the clinical, strikingly nonerotic descriptions of his homosexuality" (24). For the far less uptight John Tytell, on the other hand, "Ginsberg has always reveled in the divinity of his own sexuality, his homosexuality, adorning his own physical propensities and urging the life of the body on his readers" (245). However, "Sphincter" which is an intensely erotic (albeit anti-Romantic) poem, contains none of the expletives (apart from "asshole") nor divine associations used repeatedly by the poet elsewhere to represent the (homo)eroticised male body, and his anus in particular. Six decades of anal health and recovery aside, Ginsberg packs a suggestive lot into his "Sphincter" with the list of objects wielded during the pre-AIDS period as the means to his erotic end. The term "phallus" -- while suggesting the penis and allo-erotic activity -- may also mean dildoes with certain tactile qualities and anus-fitting shapes and sizes ideal for auto-erotic delight. Indeed, the "coke bottle, candle, carrot/banana & fingers" -- with their smooth to slightly rough texture, stiff to pliable constituency, hard to semi-hard density, and rounded pointedness -- offer more reliable potential for sustained anal stimulation than the occasionally tumescent penis. These objects may answer the decades-old queries in "Iron Horse" (1966): "What can I shove up my ass?" and "Oh if only somebody'd come in &/shove som'in up that ass a mine" (432). The bottle and candle are appropriated from a passage in Ginsberg's signature poem, "Howl" (1955), about the "best [male] minds" (126) of the poet's generation, "who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a/package of cigarettes a candle . . . and ended fainting on the wall with/a vision of ultimate cunt and come..." (128). In his "Sphincter", Ginsberg reminisces about the pleasurable insertion into his anus of such props to heterosexual romance. The coke (rather than beer) bottle signifies the contemporary product probably most commodified along with youthful images of (compulsory) heterosexuality in global mass media advertising. Through sodomy with that iconic item of American capitalist cultural imperialism, the poet's jingle valorises his rectum as one of the most fitting and wonderfully subversive "things" that "go better with coke!" As items usually for oral insertion rather than anal penetration, the carrot and banana (and bottle) here play on a subtle metaphor of "receptive"-anus-as-"active"-mouth. Allusions to the (frequently 'cock-hungry') oral-anal configuration of the anus denatus are more explicit in other Ginsberg poems. In "Journal Night Thoughts" (1961) the poet awaits as "a cock throbs I lie still my/mouth in my ass" (271). Ginsberg asks his sexual partner in "Please Master" (1968) to "make me wriggle my rear to eat up the prick trunk", and describes his anus as his "hairmouth" (494). In "Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass" (1974) he desires a young man's "soft mouth asshole" (613). While containing "phallus" and "fingers", there is no tongue nor other oral referent in the rather clean "Sphincter". By contrast, "Iron Horse" (1966) includes the growly request: "Sweet Prince --/open yr ass to my mouth" (433-4). Ginsberg's Pre-AIDS poems frequently celebrate the joining of the uncondomed penis, anus and body fluids in sensational detail. In "This Form of Life Needs Sex" (1961) "joy" comes to mean the very act of joining male anus with penis: "You can joy man to man but the Sperm/comes back in a trickle at dawn/in a toilet on the 45th floor" (285). "Please Master" (1968) includes the demand, "fuck me more violent ... & throb thru five seconds to spurt out your semen heat over & over" (495). In "Love Comes" (1981) the period of the sex act and whether condoms are used is not stated: "I relaxed my inside/loosed the ring in my hide ... He continued to beat/his meat in my meat" (11). The memorial "'What You Up To?'" (1982) recaptures his most scatological unsafe copulation: "That white boy ... one night in 1946/he fucked me naked in the ass/till I smelled brown excrement/staining his cock" (29). While "Sphincter" marks the chronological peak in the development of Ginsberg's erotic poetry, the unbroken line, "unashamed wide open for joy", comprises the structural and thematic climax within the poem itself. This current of anal-erotic joy traces back to "Howl" (1955) with its passage about those men, "who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists/and screamed with joy" (128). Ginsberg has said that he wrote "joy" here instead of the expected "pain" as a reaction to the "James Dickey film Deliverance where [receptive anal sex] is supposed to be the worst thing in the world" (Young 103). In the inter-male rape scene in the 1972 film version of Dickey's 1970 novel, actions indicate that one man uses his penis to penetrate the anus of another who is held at gunpoint and ordered to squeal like a pig throughout the assault. Prior to this the raped man is taunted with female names. The consensual 'safe' gay anal joy exhibited by Ginsberg's "Sphincter" counters such homo-, gyno- and porcine-phobic violence. While the anal-erotic jouissance in poems that preceded "Sphincter" was overshadowed at times by non-reproductive aims and scatological themes, "Sphincter" delivers the explicit message that consensual protected anus-around-penis eroticism (particularly for actively "receptive" men) creates penultimate emotional and physical pleasure. The "phallus/coke bottle, candle, carrot/banana & fingers" leave any specified penis out of the pre-AIDS picture. By contrast, "Now" as Ginsberg states "[in the mid-Eighties age of] AIDS", at a time when auto-eroticism, digital/dildo stimulation and other penetrations without penis mean the safest anal sex, the poet himself celebrates contact with the safe sex penis -- "the condom'd/orgasmic friend" -- for which he is "unashamed wide open for joy". The preceding phrase, "out with the dumps", refers to the expulsing of two combined types of "dumps". Firstly, the mental depression about the end of skin-to-skin anus-penis sex and secondly, defecated matter which brings not only physical relief but an anus open to penetration. Unlike "Sphincter", later poems do not specify whether sexual encounters are 'safe' or 'unsafe'. In "The Guest" (1992) the question of whether condoms are used is open but the consensual status of the encounter is stressed: "I ask permission, he says 'yes,'/I pull his hips up, hold his breast,/spurt my loves deep in his bum" (78). Other poems such as "Violent Collaborations" (written with Peter Hale, 1992) humorously relish sadomasochistic and coprophilic pleasure: "Fuck me & fist me/in your army enlist me/Poop on me when you're at ease" (92). Again there is no specification that condoms are used nor that there is 'unsafe' contact. With its "shy" but "eager" anus and "condom'd/orgasmic friend", "Sphincter" marks not so much an end to 'unsafe' sex as an end to the specification of 'safe' sex in Ginsberg's poetry. No Ginsberg poem specifically addresses his penis (and/or testicles) in the way that "Sphincter" is devoted to his anus. In his poetry he does not epitomise himself as any libidinous body part other than his anal hole. In "Please Master" (1968) the poet conflates his anus with his selfhood when exclaiming: "touch your cock head to my wrinkled self-hole/... please please master fuck me again" (494-5), and "Please call me ... a wet asshole" (495). In Ginsberg's "Sphincter" moreover, his anus synecdochically represents not only his whole person but a type of gay Everyman. His sphincter is "active" and "receptive", "old" and "young", "shy" and "unashamed", and "rubbery" and "muscular". These antithetical qualities also characterise the male body idealised in gay culture (in reaction to media images of decaying 'plague victims') during the AIDS-era. This body is sexually 'versatile' (as both 'bottom' and 'top'), boyish-looking but sexually mature, introspective but assertively 'out', and physically toned but flexible. The "rubbery muscular" qualities of Ginsberg's anus are focal, because -- apart from the "blood" and "hemorrhoid" which evoke colours and shapes -- "Sphincter" contains no other physical representations of his anal orifice nor any of the myriad hyperbolic metaphorisations found in his earlier visceral verses. Anal-roseate associations appear in "A Methedrine Vision in Hollywood" (1965) and "Hiway Poesy" (1966). In the first there is wind of the floral: "one-eyed sparkle, giant glint, any tiny fart/or rose-whiff before roses were/Thought Impossible" (381). In the second, the anus-as-flower manifests through ambiguous layers. The word "rose" may be read as noun, adjective or verb: "Oh that I were young again and the skin in my anus folds/rose" (386). "Kaddish" (1959) draws on topographical metaphors: "a mortal avalanche, whole mountains of homosexuality, Matter-/horns of Cock, Grand Canyons of Asshole" (214). Manifestations of the anus as a cosmic portal or eye appear in several poems, but not in "Sphincter". Ginsberg draws on Yogic beliefs to cast the anus as the source of the enlightening kundalini in "Iron Horse" (1966): "Muladhara sphincter up thru/mind aura/Sahasrarapadma promise/another universe" (435). In the only reference to the anus in the copious footnotes to his Collected Poems, the editors explain 'Muladhara Sphincter' simplisticly as "anal chakra (one of seven bodily centers of spirit energy in Orient [sic] yoga practice)", while 'Sahasrarapadma' is described in detail as "Seventh chakra, 'thousand-petal lotus' at skulltop" (781). Ginsberg, however, seems to have placed his stress on these first and last chakras more equally or in reverse. In "Scatalogical Observations" (1997) he declares, "The Ass knows more than the mind knows" (85-6). In "Journal Night Thoughts" (1961) the poet's anus comprises a universal 'third eye' through which he comes to 'know' and 'see'. This anus/eye in the formulation of "the eye in the center of the moving/mandala -- the/eye in the hand/the eye in the asshole" (267) is later eroticised as "I prostrate my sphincter with my eyes in/the pillow" (271). As we have seen, Ginsberg's erotic poetry frequently features imagery of the sexual orifice that is beyond any man's individual scope and culturally most proscribed from public view. While many passages in his verse evoke the male anus as a subject worthy of versification and visualisation, Ginsberg's "Sphincter" comprises an ode which literally and literarily presents the poet's anus to the audience as a poetic vision in itself. The succinctly anti-analphobic and anti-homophobic "Sphincter" finely balances critical aspects of the ars poetica. Devoid of signature tropes such as the anus/mouth, anus/I and anus/eye, "Sphincter" with its relative lack of euphemism and clever mix of metonymy and metaphor nonetheless merges antithetical themes to relay a profound spiritual message. The poet's ode to his ageing anus matter-of-factly and humorously revels in memories of auto- and allo-erotic 'phallo-morphous' perversity and celebrates the anal-erotic joy in being 'fucked safely' as a personal and political act. As this millennium closes, we could do worse in our 'anal-retentive' culture than following one of the century's wisest poetic ends: "till death, relax". References Deliverance. Dir. John Boorman. U.S.A.: Warner Bros., 1972. Dickey, James. Deliverance. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Ginsberg, Allen. Collected Poems 1947-1980. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985. ---. Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992. London: Penguin, 1994. ---. Death and Fame: Poems 1993-1997. London: Penguin, 1999. ---. White Shroud: Poems 1980-1985. New York: Harper and Row, 1986. Merrill, Thomas F. Allen Ginsberg. Boston, MA: Twayne, 1988. Tytell, John. Naked Angels: The Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. Young, Allen. "Allen Young Interviews Allen Ginsberg." 1973. Gay Sunshine Interviews. Ed. Winston Leyland. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1978: 96-128. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Simon-Astley Scholfield. "A Poetic End: Allen Ginsberg's 'Sphincter'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/sphincter.php>. Chicago style: Simon-Astley Scholfield, "A Poetic End: Allen Ginsberg's 'Sphincter'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (199x), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/sphincter.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Simon-Astley Scholfield. (1999) A poetic end: Allen Ginsberg's "Sphincter". M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/sphincter.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract The focus of Chapter 6 is managing uncomfortable feelings. It encourages readers to use their emotions as a guide as they give us important messages about what we need. Healthy emotional regulation, learning to accept uncertainty, and tips to label and express difficult emotions are reviewed. A wide range of techniques for managing overwhelming feelings and increasing psychological safety are provided. Some examples include how to identify trigger responses, emotional labeling, emotional release, distress tolerance, positive affirmations, grounding exercises, visualization, the divers’ response, pelvic floor exercises and somatic exercises. Tips for recognizing and managing anger are reviewed. A therapeutic letter writing exercise is outlined.