Journal articles on the topic 'Posture – Physiological aspects'

The subject of this article is the famous headstand posture and some current theories about the production of its effects of which there are an enormous number. The definitive work was published by Dr. Rao in the Journal of Applied Physiology (Ref. I& 2). The first point he considered was when one goes into the headstand position, about 400 to 500 ml of blood flows from the legs down towards the head. He measured blood pressure in the leg and found that it fell from about 200 to 10 mm Hg., average pressure. In the neck and arm, however, pressure rose by 20% (from about 90 mm Hg., to 108 mm Hg., mean blood pressure).

When farm animals are transported over long distances there is concern about their welfare. This has resulted in consumer pressure and additional legislation to control the transport of animals. However, information on the behavioural and physiological responses of sheep to transport is required to assess which aspects of transport can cause welfare problems. An optimal space allowance for long distance transport of sheep should ideally provide stability; allow normal posture (during standing and lying), and postural adjustments, without causing an increased risk of injury and psychological ‘stress’. Direct behavioural observations of potentially traumatic events related to vehicle movement and behavioural interactions (riding and trampling) were recorded during transport. Postures, orientation, rumination and eating were recorded to determine whether there was sufficient space to lie down during transport and to assess the relative priorities for resting and eating post-transport. Measurements of ‘stress’ (heart rate and plasma concentrations of Cortisol); injury (plasma activities of creatinine kinase and aspartate aminotransferase, and acceleration sensors), and dehydration (packed cell volume, plasma osmolality, plasma concentrations of total protein, vasopressin and sodium, water intake and live-weight change) were also made.

Behavior is central to psychology in almost any definition. Although observable activity is a core aspect of behavior, assessment strategies have tended to focus on emotional, cognitive, or physiological responses. When physical activity is assessed, it is done so mostly with questionnaires. Converging evidence of only a moderate association between self-reports of physical activity and objectively measured physical activity does raise questions about the validity of these self-reports. Ambulatory activity monitoring, defined as the measurement strategy to assess physical activity, posture, and movement patterns continuously in everyday life, has made major advances over the last decade and has considerable potential for further application in the assessment of observable activity, a core aspect of behavior. With new piezoresistive sensors and advanced computer algorithms, the objective measurement of physical activity, posture, and movement is much more easily achieved and measurement precision has improved tremendously. With this overview, we introduce to the reader some recent developments in ambulatory activity monitoring. We will elucidate the discrepancies between objective and subjective reports of activity, outline recent methodological developments, and offer the reader a framework for developing insight into the state of the art in ambulatory activity-monitoring technology, discuss methodological aspects of time-based design and psychometric properties, and demonstrate recent applications. Although not yet main stream, ambulatory activity monitoring – especially in combination with the simultaneous assessment of emotions, mood, or physiological variables – provides a comprehensive methodology for psychology because of its suitability for explaining behavior in context.

The article presents an analysis of the means and methods of physical rehabilitation aimed at aesthetic correction of posture for women 30-45 years old. The analysis of changes in the physical and functional state of women that occur with age and are a natural part of life is presented. It was stated that due to a healthy diet, an active lifestyle, and emotional stability, some physiological changes can be delayed, which was the main goal of this work. The positive aspects of the physical exercises offered under this topic are described in detail. The positive and most effective aspects of the methodology of individualized corrective exercises are considered. The results obtained during the study are presented, and a comparative analysis is performed, on the basis of which the program and practical recommendations are compiled. The assessment of the state of mobility, strength and flexibility of the muscles of the spine corset by simple and affordable means. Complexes of means of physical rehabilitation are proposed, the main component of which are: Chinese hormonal self-massage to create a psycho-emotional state; method of tapping the body; Japanese breathing technique from Mici Riosuke – power exercise; Dr. Izumi Fukutsuji's cushions exercise – corrective exercise, passive self-stretching; japanese technique from Tamayo 3 in 1 – power exercise, coordination; myofascial release foam roller and considered passive correction with healing postures, according to the method of A. Sitel. And also, the simplest self-massage exercise “tapping”, which allows not only to warm up the muscles, but also to launch a positive emotional mood.

The preschool construction space and environment poses major impacts on childrens growth and development. Looking from the current development situation of the country, the preschool construction maintains no independent posture while existing as the ancillary construction for the residential places. This text carries out discussions from the aspects as its general planning, the planar design and the environment, aiming to promote the ecological designing concept development for it construction. Children are the future for the country, the preschool construction, therefore, should not only meet childrens physiological and psychological development, but should also take its ecological and comfortable properties into consideration.

Locusts, Schistocerca gregaria, in common with many limbed vertebrates, can make directed scratching movements in response to tactile stimulation. For instance, stimulation of different sites on a wing elicits different movements that are accurately targeted so that the hindleg tarsus passes across the stimulus site. I have analysed these limb movements to define the ability of a locust to target stimulus sites correctly under a range of experimental conditions. In particular, I describe aspects of the behaviour that reveal possible neuronal pathways underlying the responses. These neuronal pathways will be the subject of further physiological analyses. Limb targeting during scratching is continuously graded in form; different patterns of movement are not separated by sharp transitions. The computation of limb trajectory takes into account the starting posture of the hindleg, so that different trajectories can be used to reach a common stimulus site from different starting postures. Moreover, the trajectories of the two hindlegs moving simultaneously from different starting postures in response to a single stimulus can be different, so that their tarsi converge onto the common stimulus site. Different trajectories can be used to reach a common stimulus site from the same start posture. Targeting information from a forewing is passed not only down the nerve cord to the ipsilateral hindleg but also across the nerve cord, so that the contralateral hindleg can also make directed movements. This contralateral transmission does not rely on peripheral sensory feedback. When the stimulus site moves during a rhythmical scratch, the targeting of subsequent cycles reflects this change. Both ipsilateral and contralateral hindlegs can retarget their movements. The trajectory of a single cycle of scratching directed towards a particular stimulus site can be modified after it has begun, so that the tarsus is redirected towards a new stimulus site.

In today’s automotive market, comfort is huge selling point of a vehicle. Priority is given by buyers to how comfortable a seat feels during purchase decisions. The measure of comfort is harmonious mix of many aspects such as human ergonomics and physiological factors. However, a gap still exists between objective and subjective measures due to lack of emphasis by past researchers. This is particularly obvious in the lumbar support feature that has still not been able to address the health problems related to driving. This project focuses on bridging the gap by giving users the ability to define true preferred posture in realistic settings. This is done by the creation of a apparatus that allows users to individually manipulate the seat contour for optimum support in more segments than just lumbar area. The experiment is performed in 3 parts, where in each part different segments of the apparatus are manipulatable (lumbar segment, sacral & thoracic segment, and all segments). Sixty human subjects’ statistics are recorded (gender, age, BMI and height) and the subjects are palpated to locate internal joints. These joints are marked and postural angles between them are measured using a goniometer. In each seat configuration, the angles are measured and a comfort rating is taken to be compared. It was found that the posture angles are different among the 3 experiments, and there is a change in comfort felt. Some human factors have also been proven to contribute heavily to angles chosen by occupants.

The equipment, such as broomsticks used by street sweepers are not appropriate based on anthropometric aspects, with a potency to induce inconvenience among them. Working with equipment that is not ergonomics, in addition to non-physiological work posture can cause fatigue, musculoskeletal disorders, and increased workload. This study aims to determine whether redesign an ergonomic-based broomstick may reduce the physiological burden of street sweepers in Denpasar city, Indonesia. This research is a pure experiment using a cross-design (two-period crossover design). The sample was 16 female street sweepers, divided into two groups: 8 as the control group and 8 treatment groups. Data analysis were performed using a paired t-test with significance level of 5%. The results showed significant difference (p <0.05) on the variables of workload, musculoskeletal complaints, and fatigue. In the first period, the mean of the street sweeper working heart rate was 118.96 ± 2.26 beats per minutes (bpm), the mean musculoskeletal complaint score was 91.63 ± 2.70 and the average fatigue was 77.69 ± 2.96. In Period II, the mean heart rate was 98.49 ± 2.22 bpm, the mean musculoskeletal complaint score was 63.56 ± 2.73 and the average fatigue was 57.56 ± 2.94. Redesigned stem brooms turned out to reduce workload, musculoskeletal complaints, and fatigue by 17.21%, 30.6%, and 25.91%, respectively. It can be concluded that the redesign of an ergonomic-based broomstick can reduce workload, musculoskeletal complaints, and fatigue.

Objectives: Sleep is a normal physiological process of the body. Sleep impacts on many aspects of health and quality of life at all ages. There are many risk factors associated with sleep deprivation or poor sleep quality: physical health problems such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease; mental health issues like depression; traffic and occupational accident. The study was conducted with the aims of understanding the sleep quality situation of youngster aged 16-30 years in Da Nang City, Vietnam, and determining the factors related to the sleep quality of the study participants. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on adolescents living in Da Nang City, Vietnam. The information was collected by using a structured questionnaire. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to identify the risk factors associated with the sleep quality among adolescents. Results: The proportion of the adolescents who suffered from poor sleep quality was 31.1%. The results of multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that there were the relationships between sleep quality and living in Hoa Vang District; occupations were student, worker, or officer; finishing working/studying time after 7 pm; regularly use and dependent on the internet; having stress; having pressure on study/work, overeating before going to bed, rarely or sometimes staying up late, lying postures were laying up, lie on the left side and other postures; hand posture when sleeping. Conclusion: The proportion of adolescents living in Da Nang City with good sleep quality was not high. The government needs to propagandize and mobilize people, especially young people in terms of the impacts of sleep quality on health, thereby improving sleep quality to help young people in good condition, helping the country and defending the country. Keywords: Sleep quality, adolescents, Da Nang City

While some aspects of neuroanatomical organization are related to packing and access rather than to function, other aspects of anatomical/physiological organization are directly related to function. The mathematics of symmetry groups can be used to determine logical structure in projections and to relate it to function. This paper reviews two studies of the symmetry groups of vestibular projections that are related to the spatial functions of the vestibular complex, including gaze, posture, and movement. These logical structures have been determined by finding symmetry groups of two vestibular projections directly from physiological and anatomical data. Logical structures in vestibular projections are distinct from mapping properties such as the ability to maintain two- and three-dimensional coordinate systems; rather, they provide anatomical/physiological foundations for these mapping properties. The symmetry group of the direct projection from the semicircular canal primary afferents to neck motor neurons is that of the cube (O, the octahedral group), which can serve as a discrete skeleton for coordinate systems in three-dimensional space. The symmetry group of the canal projection from the secondary vestibular afferents to the inferior olive and thence to the cerebellar uvula-nodulus is that of the square (D8), which can support coordinates for the horizontal plane. While the mathematical relationship between these symmetry groups and functions of the vestibular complex are clear, these studies open a larger question: what is the causal logic by which neural centers and their intrinsic organization affect each other and behavior? The relationship of vestibular projection symmetry groups to spatial function make them ideal projections for investigating this causal logic. The symmetry group results are discussed in relationship to possible ways they communicate spatial structure to other neural centers and format spatial functions such as body movements. These two projection symmetry groups suggest that all vestibular projections may have symmetry groups significantly related to function, perhaps all to spatial function.

A stroke can have implications for all areas of a person's life. In research on adaptation to stroke, finding meaning is associated with better adaptation. This study focuses on one of the driving principles behind meaning-making processes: global meaning. The aim of this study was to explore whether global meaning (i.e., fundamental beliefs and life goals concerning core values, relationships, worldview, identity and inner posture) is associated with processes and outcomes of rehabilitation, as experienced by people with stroke. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted, and analysed using qualitative research methods. Aspects of global meaning were associated with the following elements of process and outcome of rehabilitation: motivation, handling stress and emotions, physical functioning and acceptance. The influence was mostly positive. If rehabilitation professionals took global meaning into account, respondents tended to associate this with better or faster recovery.

INTRODUCTION: Street runner is a health-friendly and low-cost practice, which makes it currently biased worldwide. However, this prophylaxis unaccompanied by qualified professionals culminates in a higher incidence of lesions. OBJECTIVES: The aim this study was to evaluate the efficacy of intervention at the primary level (awareness of habits and behaviors that modulate the physiological and biochemistry responses) given by qualified professionals through the analysis of biochemical and physiological parameters, in order to promote health. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The sample had 28 runners (both sexes) with mean age of 32.8 ± 7.2, subdivided into control group (without intervention) and test group (submitted to intervention/orientation on modifiable aspects before and after training, for example: feeding/hydration, metabolic/hormonal control, breathing, and posture). Two evaluations were performed, with a 45-day interval in both groups. In each evaluation, the participants were submitted to a 10 minute exercise test (mean intensity), and before and after the test the following parameters were measured: blood glucose and lactate, and spirometry. DISCUSSION AND RESULTS: Spirometric data demonstrated that the airway functionality increased significantly (p= 0.005) through the Tiffeneau index only in the test group, which in fact is directly related to the change in the metabolic profile. For the glycemic and lacthemic findings, the test group showed only tendency to maintain and decrease these parameters, respectively. However, even if based, these results demonstrate that there was a beneficial modification of the parameters analyzed after primary intervention. These results reinforce the applicability of the analysis and awareness on biochemical and physiological biomarkers for the promotion of health extrapolating the laboratory and clinical environment. CONCLUSION: Thus, the potential applicability of the intervention by educational processes of awareness is shown here, using basic parameters of biochemistry and physiology as a tool, aiming at the promotion of health at the primary level.

Handling different objects, by pulling/pushing motions is influenced by the environment both by its meteorological parameters (temperature, humidity, pressure) and by the operating parameters of the used equipments and devices (vibrations/shocks, noises, intermittent light sources etc.). These influences are materialized by changes in the worker’s comfort degree, by accomplishing the processing accuracy or information acquisition by the human factor. In the first part of the paper some general aspects concerning the influence of vibrations upon the human body are presented, especially for the fingers, hand-arm assembly. In the second part, the methodology and experimental system used for the evaluation of the comfort degree of pulling/pushing motions under the influence of some controlled induced categories of vibrations are described. Following this methodology, the physiological and anatomical limits of motion for each part of the assembly (fingers, hand and arm) are studied, during the pulling/pushing motions and are respectively subjected to a set of controlled induced vibrations. Also these measurements are correlated by computerized methods with the stability degree and posture of the human body. In the final part of the paper we analyze the results and determine the comfort degree for a target group of 10 subjects without malfunctions of the handling system or of the locomotion system.

This paper examines the importance of reading the body language signals in business negotiations and business meetings. By observing the physical changes of the human body, gestures, can lead to a more or less realistic impression about opponent, feelings of the other person, his mood, thoughts, expectations, intentions, and their changes. In non-verbal body language are very much important things : human posture, dress, accessories, gestures, eye contact, facial expressions, smile, voice intonation, laughter, eye contact, eye signs, the distance between the communicators, touch, clap, dance, and physiological responses - sweating palms, forehead, paleness, resulting in acute facial, neck redness and others. Part of nonverbal communication signs, or in other words the body language signals are sent consciously (natural or play signs, signals), and the other part of the body signals is emitted into the environment unintentionally, when to the information received response is made immediately, instantly, instinctively and without thinking. Body language signals in business negotiations or business meetings are important in several aspects:- reveal the other person’s, the opponent's physical and emotional state as well as its evolution;- complement, reinforce or weaken the spoken language;- allows those who are able to read nonverbal communication signs, to determine more or less accurately whether oral language is true.

The first author, Elisa Gabrielli, has been a distance runner for many years, and then at a particular point in her career, she decided to move over to the 3000-m steeplechase. She was attracted by this discipline as she believed that it would be the appropriate discipline for her, due to the challenge it provided her, and the necessary knowledge and awareness she had through her studies. For reasons that are discussed in this report, the 3000-m steeplechase is a race that is more difficult to interpret and manage biomechanically and physiologically than most others. Combining this with her PhD allowed her to use a multidisciplinary approach to review the competitive experience gained in this discipline. During this period, she indeed not only deepened the technical aspects of her training, but also those that underlie this discipline, through her knowledge of sport, with particular reference to the female athlete. Through her technical research, she was able to take ‘snapshots’ of what could happen from the physiological point of view. With satisfaction, she improved her performance in the 3000-m race and in the 3000-m steeplechase. How? In particular, she worked on her running technique through specific exercises. She worked on de-contraction and posture, while saving energy consumption. She worked on the control of her breathing, and she took into account her prevailing heart rate. This was all in combination with the consumption of specific nutrients, as she tried to manage the production of lactate with the training of the red muscle fibres that are rich in mitochondria. Finally, she tried to improve her perception of strenuous work, by training at high altitude. This allowed her not only to improve her physical performance, but especially to improve her mind-set, which allowed her to be more confident in herself and her abilities.

The word "yoga" is commonly used to refer specifically to Hatha yoga stretching postures or generally to Hatha yoga programs that also include certain relaxation,breathing and meditation practices. Such programs, however, represent only certain aspects of the comprehensive system that comprises the physical, psychological,philosophical, and spiritual components of yoga. In the generic sense, yoga means the practical aspect of a philosophy, — its methods and application. More specifically, it refers to the philosophical view of the world and the individual described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and related texts.

During the last 10 years, computerized dynamic posturography has yielded various patterns of sway on the sensory organization test and the motor control test that have been associated with a variety of organic balance disorders. Some aspects of performance during computerized dynamic posturography, however, are under conscious control. Voluntary movements not indicative of physiologic response to balance system stimulation can also affect computerized dynamic posturography results. Quantification of nonorganic or “aphysiologic” response patterns in normal subjects, patients, and suspected malingerers is crucial to justify use of computerized dynamic posturography for identification of physiologically inconsistent results. For this purpose the computerized dynamic posturography records of 122 normal subjects, 347 patients with known or suspected balance disorders, and 72 subjects instructed to feign a balance disturbance were critically evaluated by use of seven measurement criteria, which were postulated as indicating aphysiologic sway. Each criterion was scored with a standard calculation of the raw data in a random, blinded fashion. The results of this multicenter study show that three of the seven criteria are significantly different in the suspected “malingerer” group when compared with either the normal or patient group. The relative strength of each criterion in discerning organic from nonorganic sway provides the examiner with a measure of reliability during platform posture testing. This study demonstrates that computerized dynamic posturography can accurately identify and document nonorganic sway patterns during routine assessment of posture control.

Any change produced, or feature introduced, in a body after death which is accidentally or physiologically unrelated to the natural state of the body is termed as an artefact. Since artefacts may lead to misinterpretation of post-mortem findings, it is important to rule them out. Artefacts may be produced for a variety of reasons. We present a case report where a young male in his late twenties committed suicide by hanging. He was suffering from haemorrhoids. Because of his posture, there was post-mortem bleeding, which was interpreted by the police as bleeding due to the self-cutting of his veins. Hence, we felt the need to report this case.

Abstract This paper attempts to coin a stipulative definition of “emotions” to determine their functions. In this sense, “emotion” is a complex phenomenon consisting of an accurate (reliable) determination of the state of affairs in relation to the state of the subject and specific “points of adaptation”. Apart from the cognitive aspect, this phenomenon also includes behavior, physiological changes and expressions (facial expression, voice, posture), feelings, and “execution” of emotions in the nervous system. Emotions fulfill informative, calibrating, identifying, existential, and motivating functions. Emotions capture the world as either positive or negative, important or unimportant, and are used to determine and assign weightings (to set up a kind of hierarchy). They emerge automatically (involuntarily), are difficult (or hardly possible) to control and are (to some extent) influenced by culture.

In mammals, many aspects of physiology vary over the 24-hour day in a predictable, periodic manner. Hormones, such as thyroid-stimulating hormone and melatonin, as well as cardiovascular and autonomic measures such as heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature all have a predictable diurnal pattern. It is important to understand that such variation is generated internally; that is, such variation represents a fundamental, endogenous circadian variation. Circadian variability is typically distinguished from the numerous exogenous factors that can influence the physiologic parameters in question by its periodic pattern (Turek & Zee, 1999). For example, sleep lowers body temperature, and physical activity, upright posture, food intake, and the state of wakefulness increase body temperature. Such exogenous masking factors can affect body temperature at any point in the 24-hour day. Thus, the behavioral act of going to sleep lowers body temperature, but the fall in body temperature during wakefulness also heralds the onset of sleep and incipient sleepiness. Nonetheless, when all such factors are strictly controlled (by having volunteers confined to supine bed rest with restricted activity, sleep deprivation, hourly isocaloric food intake, and controlled lighting conditions), body temperature continues to oscillate in a highly predictable way, affected only by age, sex, and, perhaps, mental status.

This thesis entitled “The Description of Oda Nobunaga in the Drama of Nobunaga Concerto”. This thesis aims to know character’s description of Oda Nobunaga and its comparison in historical fact. The method used to analyze the data is descriptive analysis techniques. This thesis used the new historicism theory by Barry (2002) and the semotics theory by Saussure (1913). According to the result, there are three descriptive dimensions of Oda Nobunaga namely physiological, psychological, and sociological dimensions. Physiological dimension is shown with three aspects namely, 1) physical characteristics, 2) age, 3) clothes and accessories. Psychological dimension is shown with two aspects namely, 1) characters and 2) intelegence in arranging the strategy of war. Sociological dimension is shown with two aspects namely, 1) social status and 2) social relations. This research examines the comparison between the character of Oda Nobunaga and Oda Nobunaga in historical fact by three dimensions. First, based on physiological dimension, three have been found similarities in terms of body posture and shape of face, while the differences are the style of haircut, age, clothes and accessories. Second, psychologically, the similarities are found on their characters, and the differences found are their intelegence. Third, sociologycally, they are similar in social status-upscale, and having less harmony relations to their surroundings.

A renowned motorcycling instructor noted that human error is the main reason for motorcycling road tragedies. Indeed, there are various reasons that could be held responsible in leading towards human error. Even so, it is strongly emphasized that there is a link between motorcycle road accidents with the cases of human error due to motorcycling fatigue. The aim of this study was to explore the physical, physiological and psychological symptoms experienced by motorcyclists during prolonged motorcycling and its relation with motorcycling fatigue. This study assessed motorcycling fatigue generally, without specifying in a single type of fatigue resulting from prolonged motorcycling activity. Literature assessment, real world riding assessment, working posture hazard assessment and a survey study were selected as the research methods for this study. Results showed that collectively, all the physical, physiological and psychological aspects of the motorcyclist could be a variable in leading towards motorcycling fatigue. Nevertheless, all of these variables would only lead to two final outcomes which are: (i) overall decrement in motorcycling performance, and (ii) sleepiness. Both of these outcomes could occur independently or dependently – dependent on individual motorcyclist and the responsible variables that is affecting the particular motorcyclist. In short, motorcycling fatigue could not be simply defined with one single definition. Therefore, it is best to view motorcycling fatigue in various perspectives (physical, physiological and psychological perspectives) of motorcycle ergonomics. Motorcycling fatigue is almost inevitable, thus, further research is warranted in order to gain more accurate information and better understanding on motorcycling fatigue.

A pianist’s movements are fundamental to music-making by producing the musical sounds and the expressive movements of the trunk and arms which communicate the music’s structural and emotional information making it valuable for this review to examine upper-body movement in the performance process in combination with the factors important in skill acquisition. The underpinning playing technique must be efficient with economic muscle use by using body segments according to their design and movement potential with the arm segments mechanically linked to produce coordinated and fluent movement. Two physiologically and pianistically important actions proposed by early music scientists to deliver the keystroke involve dropping the hand from the shoulders towards the keys via a wave action with the joints activated sequentially, and forearm rotation to position the fingers for the keystroke, an action followed by the elbow/upper-arm rotating in the opposite direction. Both actions spare the forearm muscles by generating the energy needed in the larger shoulder muscles. The hand in the playing position has a curved palm through action of the metacarpal (knuckle) joints and curved fingers. Palm/finger posture controls sound quality from loud, high tempo sounds to a more mellow legato articulation, and to perform effectively the forearms should slope down towards the keyboard. The technique must be automatic through systematic practice which develops the motor skills for proficient playing, with practice duration tempered to reduce the risk of causing injury through overuse of the forearm muscles. Efficient movement patterns and strategic muscle relaxation which results in faster movement are realized only through extensive training. The constant movements of the head and trunk, and flowing arm movement with frequent hand lifts and rotational elbow movements, although generated in producing the playing technique, resonate with audience members who perceive them as expressive and thereby creating in them an empathic engagement with the music. It was proposed that music students be trained in the mechanical aspects of upper-body use in the playing technique, and practice strategies, with specialist pedagogy for children to develop motor skills for efficient playing, and training methods fostering an appreciation of the communicative aspects of music performance.

There is, in our sense of place, little cognisance of what lies underground. Yet our sense of place, instinctive, unconscious, primeval, has its own underground: the secret spaces which mirror our insides; the world beneath the skin. Our roots lie beneath the ground, with the minerals and the dead. (Hughes 83) The-Home-and-Away-Game Imagine the earth-grounded, “diagrammatological” trajectory of a footballer who as one member of a team is psyching himself up before the start of a game. The siren blasts its trumpet call. The footballer bursts out of the pavilion (where this psyching up has taken place) to engage in the opening bounce or kick of the game. And then: running, leaping, limping after injury, marking, sliding, kicking, and possibly even passing out from concussion. Finally, the elation accompanying the final siren, after which hugs, handshakes and raised fists conclude the actual match on the football oval. This exit from the pavilion, the course the player takes during the game itself, and return to the pavilion, forms a combination of stasis and movement, and a return to exhausted stasis again, that every player engages with regardless of the game code. Examined from a “diagrammatological” perspective, a perspective Rowan Wilken (following in the path of Gilles Deleuze and W. J. T. Mitchell) understands as “a generative process: a ‘metaphor’ or way of thinking — diagrammatic, diagrammatological thinking — which in turn, is linked to poetic thinking” (48), this footballer’s scenario arises out of an aerial perspective that depicts the actual spatial trajectory the player takes during the course of a game. It is a diagram that is digitally encoded via a sensor on the footballer’s body, and being an electronically encoded diagram it can also make available multiple sets of data such as speed, heartbeat, blood pressure, maybe even brain-wave patterns. From this limited point of view there is only one footballer’s playing trajectory to consider; various groupings within the team, the whole team itself, and the diagrammatological depiction of its games with various other teams might also be possible. This singular imagining though is itself an actuality: as a diagram it is encoded as a graphic image by a satellite hovering around the earth with a Global Positioning System (GPS) reading the sensor attached to the footballer which then digitally encodes this diagrammatological trajectory for appraisal later by the player, coach, team and management. In one respect, this practice is another example of a willing self-surveillance critical to explaining the reflexive subject and its attribute of continuous self-improvement. According to Docker, Official Magazine of the Fremantle Football Club, this is a technique the club uses as a part of game/play assessment, a system that can provide a “running map” for each player equipped with such a tracking device during a game. As the Fremantle Club’s Strength and Conditioning Coach Ben Tarbox says of this tactic, “We’re getting a physiological profile that has started to build a really good picture of how individual players react during a game” (21). With a little extra effort (and some sizeable computer processing grunt) this two dimensional linear graphic diagram of a footballer working the football ground could also form the raw material for a three-dimensional animation, maybe a virtual reality game, even a hologram. It could also be used to sideline a non-performing player. Now try another related but different imagining: what if this diagrammatological trajectory could be enlarged a little to include the possibility that this same player’s movements could be mapped out by the idea of home-and-away games; say over the course of a season, maybe even a whole career, for instance? No doubt, a wide range of differing diagrammatological perspectives might suggest themselves. My own particular refinement of this movement/stasis on the footballer’s part suggests my own distinctive comings and goings to and from my own specific piece of home country. And in this incessantly domestic/real world reciprocity, in this diurnally repetitive leaving and coming back to home country, might it be plausible to think of “Home as Capital of the Region”? If, as Walter Benjamin suggests in the prelude to his monumental Arcades Project, “Paris — the Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” could it be that both in and through my comings and goings to and from this selfsame home country, my own burgeoning sense of regionality is constituted in every minute-by-minutiae of lived experience? Could it be that this feeling about home is manifested in my every day-to-night manoeuvre of home-and-away-and-away-and-home-making, of every singular instance of exit, play/engage, and the return home? “Home, Capital of the Region” then examines the idea that my home is that part of the country which is the still-point of eternal return, the bedrock to which I retreat after the daily grind, and the point from which I start out and do it all again the next day. It employs, firstly, this ‘diagrammatological’ perspective to illustrate the point that this stasis/movement across country can make an electronic record of my own psychic self-surveillance and actualisation in-situ. And secondly, the architectural plan of the domestic home (examined through the perspective of critical regionalism) is used as a conduit to illustrate how I am physically embedded in country. Lastly, intermingling these digressive threads is chora, Plato’s notion of embodied place and itself an ancient regional rendering of this eternal return to the beginning, the place where the essential diversity of country decisively enters the soul. Chora: Core of Regionality Kevin Lynch writes that, “Our senses are local, while our experience is regional” (10), a combination that suggests this regional emphasis on home-and-away-making might be a useful frame of reference (simultaneously spatiotemporal, both a visceral and encoded communication) for me to include as a crucial vector in my own life-long learning package. Regionality (as, variously, a sub-generic categorisation and an extension/concentration of nationality, as well as a recently re-emerged friend/antagonist to a global understanding) infuses my world of home with a grounded footing in country, one that is a site of an Eternal Return to the Beginning in the micro-world of the everyday. This is a point John Sallis discusses at length in his analysis of Plato’s Timaeus and its founding notion of regionality: chora. More extended absences away from home-base are of course possible but one’s return to home on most days and for most nights is a given of post/modern, maybe even of ancient everyday experience. Even for the continually shifting nomad, nightfall in some part of the country brings the rest and recreation necessary for the next day’s wanderings. This fundamental question of an Eternal Return to the Beginning arises as a crucial element of the method in Plato’s Timaeus, a seemingly “unstructured” mythic/scientific dialogue about the origins and structure of both the psychically and the physically implaced world. In the Timaeus, “incoherence is especially obvious in the way the natural sequence in which a narrative would usually unfold is interrupted by regressions, corrections, repetitions, and abrupt new beginnings” (Gadamer 160). Right in the middle of the Timaeus, in between its sections on the “Work of Reason” and the “Work of Necessity”, sits chora, both an actual spatial and bodily site where my being intersects with my becoming, and where my lived life criss-crosses the various arts necessary to articulating a recorded version of that life. Every home is a grounded chora-logical timespace harness guiding its occupant’s thoughts, feelings and actions. My own regionally implaced chora (an example of which is the diagrammatological trajectory already outlined above as my various everyday comings and goings, of me acting in and projecting myself into context) could in part be understood as a graphical realisation of the extent of my movements and stationary rests in my own particular timespace trajectory. The shorthand for this process is ‘embedded’. Gregory Ulmer writes of chora that, “While chorography as a term is close to choreography, it duplicates a term that already exists in the discipline of geography, thus establishing a valuable resonance for a rhetoric of invention concerned with the history of ‘place’ in relation to memory” (Heuretics 39, original italics). Chorography is the geographic discipline for the systematic study and analysis of regions. Chora, home, country and regionality thus form an important multi-dimensional zone of interplay in memorialising the game of everyday life. In light of these observations I might even go so far as to suggest that this diagrammatological trajectory (being both digital and GPS originated) is part of the increasingly electrate condition that guides the production of knowledge in any global/regional context. This last point is a contextual connection usefully examined in Alan J. Scott’s Regions and the World Economy: The Coming Shape of Global Production, Competition, and Political Order and Michael Storper’s The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. Their analyses explicitly suggest that the symbiosis between globalisation and regionalisation has been gathering pace since at least the end of World War Two and the Bretton Woods agreement. Our emerging understanding of electracy also happens to be Gregory Ulmer’s part-remedy for shifting the ground under the intense debates surrounding il/literacy in the current era (see, in particular, Internet Invention). And, for Tony Bennett, Michael Emmison and John Frow’s analysis of “Australian Everyday Cultures” (“Media Culture and the Home” 57–86), it is within the home that our un.conscious understanding of electronic media is at its most intense, a pattern that emerges in the longer term through receiving telegrams, compiling photo albums, listening to the radio, home- and video-movies, watching the evening news on television, and logging onto the computer in the home-office, media-room or home-studio. These various generalisations (along with this diagrammatological view of my comings and goings to and from the built space of home), all point indiscriminately to a productive confusion surrounding the sedentary and nomadic opposition/conjunction. If natural spaces are constituted in nouns like oceans, forests, plains, grasslands, steppes, deserts, rivers, tidal interstices, farmland etc. (and each categorisation here relies on the others for its existence and demarcation) then built space is often seen as constituting its human sedentary equivalent. For Deleuze and Guatteri (in A Thousand Plateaus, “1227: Treatise on Nomadology — The War Machine”) these natural spaces help instigate a nomadic movement across localities and regions. From a nomadology perspective, these smooth spaces unsettle a scientific, numerical calculation, sometimes even aesthetic demarcation and order. If they are marked at all, it is by heterogenous and differential forces, energised through constantly oscillating intensities. A Thousand Plateaus is careful though not to elevate these smooth nomadic spaces over the more sedentary spaces of culture and power (372–373). Nonetheless, as Edward S. Casey warns, “In their insistence on becoming and movement, however, the authors of A Thousand Plateaus overlook the placial potential of settled dwelling — of […] ‘built places’” (309, original italics). Sedentary, settled dwelling centred on home country may have a crust of easy legibility and order about it but it also formats a locally/regionally specific nomadic quality, a point underscored above in the diagrammatological perspective. The sedentary tendency also emerges once again in relation to home in the architectural drafting of the domestic domicile. The Real Estate Revolution When Captain Cook planted the British flag in the sand at Botany Bay in 1770 and declared the country it spiked as Crown Land and henceforth will come under the ownership of an English sovereign, it was also the moment when white Australia’s current fascination with real estate was conceived. In the wake of this spiking came the intense anxiety over Native Title that surfaced in late twentieth century Australia when claims of Indigenous land grabs would repossess suburban homes. While easily dismissed as hyperbole, a rhetorical gesture intended to arouse this very anxiety, its emergence is nonetheless an indication of the potential for political and psychic unsettling at the heart of the ownership and control of built place, or ‘settled dwelling’ in the Australian context. And here it would be wise to include not just the gridded, architectural quality of home-building and home-making, but also the home as the site of the family romance, another source of unsettling as much as a peaceful calming. Spreading out from the boundaries of the home are the built spaces of fences, bridges, roads, railways, airport terminals (along with their interconnecting pathways), which of course brings us back to the communications infrastructure which have so often followed alongside the development of transport infrastructure. These and other elements represent this conglomerate of built space, possibly the most significant transformation of natural space that humanity has brought about. For the purposes of this meditation though it is the more personal aspect of built space — my home and regional embeddedness, along with their connections into the global electrosphere — that constitutes the primary concern here. For a sedentary, striated space to settle into an unchallenged existence though requires a repression of the highest order, primarily because of the home’s proximity to everyday life, of the latter’s now fading ability to sometimes leave its presuppositions well enough alone. In settled, regionally experienced space, repressions are more difficult to abstract away, they are lived with on a daily basis, which also helps to explain the extra intensity brought to their sometimes-unsettling quality. Inversely, and encased in this globalised electro-spherical ambience, home cannot merely be a place where one dwells within avoiding those presuppositions, I take them with me when I travel and they come back with me from afar. This is a point obliquely reflected in Pico Iyer’s comment that “Australians have so flexible a sense of home, perhaps, that they can make themselves at home anywhere” (185). While our sense of home may well be, according to J. Douglas Porteous, “the territorial core” of our being, when other arrangements of space and knowledge shift it must inevitably do so as well. In these shifts of spatial affiliation (aided and abetted by regionalisation, globalisation and electronic knowledge), the built place of home can no longer be considered exclusively under the illusion of an autonomous sanctuary wholly guaranteed by capitalist property relations, one of the key factors in its attraction. These shifts in the cultural, economic and psychic relation of home to country are important to a sense of local and regional implacement. The “feeling” of autonomy and security involved in home occupation and/or ownership designates a component of this implacement, a point leading to Eric Leed’s comment that, “By the sixteenth century, literacy had become one of the definitive signs — along with the possession of property and a permanent residence — of an independent social status” (53). Globalising and regionalising forces make this feeling of autonomy and security dynamic, shifting the ground of home, work-place practices and citizenship allegiances in the process. Gathering these wide-ranging forces impacting on psychic and built space together is the emergence of critical regionalism as a branch of architectonics, considered here as a theory of domestic architecture. Critical Regionality Critical regionalism emerged out of the collective thinking of Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis (Tropical Architecture; Critical Regionalism), and as these authors themselves acknowledge, was itself deeply influenced by the work of Lewis Mumford during the first part of the twentieth century when he was arguing against the authority of the international style in architecture, a style epitomised by the Bauhaus movement. It is Kenneth Frampton’s essay, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance” that deliberately takes this question of critical regionalism and makes it a part of a domestic architectonic project. In many ways the ideas critical regionalism espouses can themselves be a microcosm of this concomitantly emerging global/regional polis. With public examples of built-form the power of the centre is on display by virtue of a building’s enormous size and frequently high-cultural aesthetic power. This is a fact restated again and again from the ancient world’s agora to Australia’s own political bunker — its Houses of Parliament in Canberra. While Frampton discusses a range of aspects dealing with the universal/implaced axis across his discussion, it is points five and six that deserve attention from a domestically implaced perspective. Under the sub-heading, “Culture Versus Nature: Topography, Context, Climate, Light and Tectonic Form” is where he writes that, Here again, one touches in concrete terms this fundamental opposition between universal civilization and autochthonous culture. The bulldozing of an irregular topography into a flat site is clearly a technocratic gesture which aspires to a condition of absolute placelessness, whereas the terracing of the same site to receive the stepped form of a building is an engagement in the act of “cultivating” the site. (26, original italics) The “totally flat datum” that the universalising tendency sometimes presupposes is, within the critical regionalist perspective, an erroneous assumption. The “cultivation” of a site for the design of a building illustrates the point that built space emerges out of an interaction between parallel phenomena as they contrast and/or converge in a particular set of timespace co-ordinates. These are phenomena that could include (but are not limited to) geomorphic data like soil and rock formations, seismic activity, inclination and declension; climatic considerations in the form of wind patterns, temperature variations, rainfall patterns, available light and dark, humidity and the like; the building context in relation to the cardinal points of north, south, east, and west, along with their intermediary positions. There are also architectural considerations in the form of available building materials and personnel to consider. The social, psychological and cultural requirements of the building’s prospective in-dwellers are intermingled with all these phenomena. This is not so much a question of where to place the air conditioning system but the actuality of the way the building itself is placed on its site, or indeed if that site should be built on at all. A critical regionalist building practice, then, is autochthonous to the degree that a full consideration of this wide range of in-situ interactions is taken into consideration in the development of its design plan. And given this autochthonous quality of the critical regionalist project, it also suggests that the architectural design plan itself (especially when it utilised in conjunction with CAD and virtual reality simulations), might be the better model for designing electrate-centred projects rather than writing or even the script. The proliferation of ‘McMansions’ across many Australian suburbs during the 1990s (generally, oversized domestic buildings designed in the abstract with little or no thought to the above mentioned elements, on bulldozed sites, with powerful air-conditioning systems, and no verandas or roof eves to speak of) demonstrates the continuing influence of a universal, centralising dogma in the realm of built place. As summer temperatures start to climb into the 40°C range all these air-conditioners start to hum in unison, which in turn raises the susceptibility of the supporting infrastructure to collapse under the weight of an overbearing electrical load. The McMansion is a clear example of a built form that is envisioned more so in a drafting room, a space where the architect is remote-sensing the locational specificities. In this envisioning (driven more by a direct line-of-sight idiom dominant in “flat datum” and economic considerations rather than architectural or experiential ones), the tactile is subordinated, which is the subject of Frampton’s sixth point: It is symptomatic of the priority given to sight that we find it necessary to remind ourselves that the tactile is an important dimension in the perception of built form. One has in mind a whole range of complementary sensory perceptions which are registered by the labile body: the intensity of light, darkness, heat and cold; the feeling of humidity; the aroma of material; the almost palpable presence of masonry as the body senses it own confinement; the momentum of an induced gait and the relative inertia of the body as it traverses the floor; the echoing resonance of our own footfall. (28) The point here is clear: in its wider recognition of, and the foregrounding of my body’s full range of sensate capacities in relation to both natural and built space, the critical regionalist approach to built form spreads its meaning-making capacities across a broader range of knowledge modalities. This tactility is further elaborated in more thoroughly personal ways by Margaret Morse in her illuminating essay, “Home: Smell, Taste, Posture, Gleam”. Paradoxically, this synaesthetic, syncretic approach to bodily meaning-making in a built place, regional milieu intensely concentrates the site-centred locus of everyday life, while simultaneously, the electronic knowledge that increasingly underpins it expands both my body’s and its region’s knowledge-making possibilities into a global gestalt, sometimes even a cosmological one. It is a paradoxical transformation that makes us look anew at social, cultural and political givens, even objective and empirical understandings, especially as they are articulated through national frames of reference. Domestic built space then is a kind of micro-version of the multi-function polis where work, pleasure, family, rest, public display and privacy intermingle. So in both this reduction and expansion in the constitution of domestic home life, one that increasingly represents the location of the production of knowledge, built place represents a concentration of energy that forces us to re-imagine border-making, order, and the dynamic interplay of nomadic movement and sedentary return, a point that echoes Nicolas Rothwell’s comment that “every exile has in it a homecoming” (80). Albeit, this is a knowledge-making milieu with an expanded range of modalities incorporated and expressed through a wide range of bodily intensities not simply cognitive ones. Much of the ambiguous discontent manifested in McMansion style domiciles across many Western countries might be traced to the fact that their occupants have had little or no say in the way those domiciles have been designed and/or constructed. In Heidegger’s terms, they have not thought deeply enough about “dwelling” in that building, although with the advent of the media room the question of whether a “building” securely borders both “dwelling” and “thinking” is now open to question. As anxieties over border-making at all scales intensifies, the complexities and un/sureties of natural and built space take ever greater hold of the psyche, sometimes through the advance of a “high level of critical self-consciousness”, a process Frampton describes as a “double mediation” of world culture and local conditions (21). Nearly all commentators warn of a nostalgic, romantic or a sentimental regionalism, the sum total of which is aimed at privileging the local/regional and is sometimes utilised as a means of excluding the global or universal, sometimes even the national (Berry 67). Critical regionalism is itself a mediating factor between these dispositions, working its methods and practices through my own psyche into the local, the regional, the national and the global, rejecting and/or accepting elements of these domains, as my own specific context, in its multiplicity, demands it. If the politico-economic and cultural dimensions of this global/regional world have tended to undermine the process of border-making across a range of scales, we can see in domestic forms of built place the intense residue of both their continuing importance and an increased dependency on this electro-mediated world. This is especially apparent in those domiciles whose media rooms (with their satellite dishes, telephone lines, computers, television sets, games consuls, and music stereos) are connecting them to it in virtuality if not in reality. Indeed, the thought emerges (once again keeping in mind Eric Leed’s remark on the literate-configured sense of autonomy that is further enhanced by a separate physical address and residence) that the intense importance attached to domestically orientated built place by globally/regionally orientated peoples will figure as possibly the most viable means via which this sense of autonomy will transfer to electronic forms of knowledge. If, however, this here domestic habitué turns his gaze away from the screen that transports me into this global/regional milieu and I focus my attention on the physicality of the building in which I dwell, I once again stand in the presence of another beginning. This other beginning is framed diagrammatologically by the building’s architectural plans (usually conceived in either an in-situ, autochthonous, or a universal manner), and is a graphical conception that anchors my body in country long after the architects and builders have packed up their tools and left. This is so regardless of whether a home is built, bought, rented or squatted in. Ihab Hassan writes that, “Home is not where one is pushed into the light, but where one gathers it into oneself to become light” (417), an aphorism that might be rephrased as follows: “Home is not where one is pushed into the country, but where one gathers it into oneself to become country.” For the in-and-out-and-around-and-about domestic dweller of the twenty-first century, then, home is where both regional and global forms of country decisively enter the soul via the conduits of the virtuality of digital flows and the reality of architectural footings. 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