Body Rhythms Research Articles

Evaluation of the isokinetic muscle function, postural control and plantar pressure distribution in capoeira players: a cross-sectional study.

Capoeira is a cultural practice with Brazilian roots that combines several elements including dance, fighting and body rhythm. Because of the diverse elements involved in its practice, capoeira is excellent at developing the physical and social abilities of its players. The aim of this study was to compare the biomechanical profile of muscle strength, plantar pressure distribution, and postural balance between players and non-players of capoeira. We evaluated 51 subjects who were allocated into two groups: capoeira group and control group. Subjects were evaluated using a baropodometer (Diasu®) and an isokinetic dynamometer (Biodex®). When comparing plantar pressure distribution between groups and limbs, there were significant differences in mean load of forefoot (p=0.008) and total load (p=0.001). There were no significant differences between groups and limbs in balance and muscle strength; however, a significant difference was found in quadriceps torque peak (p=0.001) and agonist/antagonist ratio (p=0.001) when comparing these variables between the groups. Capoeira players displayed a tendency to have an asymmetric profile in plantar pressure distribution. No difference was found in balance between groups. Despite the fact that capoeira players showed increased strength of the quadriceps muscle, their agonist/antagonist ratio was more asymmetrical than the control group. IV.

Taylorism, the European Science of Work, and the Quantified Self at Work

While the Quantified Self has often been described as a contemporary iteration of Taylorism, this article argues that a more accurate comparison is to be made with what Anson Rabinbach has termed the “European Science of Work.” The European Science of Work sought to modify Taylor’s rigid and schematic understanding of the laboring body through the incorporation of insights drawn from the rich European tradition of physiological studies. This “softening” of Taylorist methods had the effect of producing a greater “isorhythmia” or synchronicity between the bodily rhythms of workers and those of the mode of production itself and was embraced by employers as a way to dampen worker militancy. Through a discursive analysis of the promotion of sensor analytics by management consultants VoloMetrix and Humanyze, I argue that the contemporary quantification of the workplace represents a similar project of “soft domination,” as the intimate, bottom-up mode of surveillance it fosters seeks to more closely mold workers’ physiological and social rhythms to the structure of the workplace and the working day.

Un estudio experimental sobre la influencia de la música en la coreografía: movimiento y espacio

En este estudio experimental investigamos la relación entre música y danza a partir de cuatrofragmentos musicales compuestos por Pep Llopis para espectáculos de danza. Participan dos coreógrafos profesionales ajenos a los espectáculos en cuestión y sin información sobre el origen o la intención de los fragmentos musicales. Los coreógrafos trabajan de manera aislada y sin compartir información. Primero, cada coreógrafo hace una escucha previa de cada fragmento, y verbaliza las evocaciones sugeridas (imágenes, sensaciones, etc.) y los movimientos y desplazamientos visualizados. Se le encarga concebir una coreografía improvisada que, en una sesión posterior, se graba en vídeo. Se procede a un análisis cualitativo detallado sobre el vídeo, con la ayuda de una segunda entrevista a los coreógrafos. Se realiza un análisis cuantitativo del espacio y de los elementos técnicos: espacio ocupado, direcciones y mirada,tipos de desplazamientos/dinámicas, recorridos/trayectorias, alturas/niveles, peso, ritmo y energía corporal. Los resultados muestran una influencia estadísticamente muy significativa de la música en los elementos coreográficos (altura, peso, forma corporal, ocupación espacial, recorridos, pasos) independientemente de las evocaciones internas de cada coreógrafo. También destaca una influencia en la posición/dirección respecto al público y dirección dela mirada.

Heterogeneity of cellular circadian clocks in intact plants and its correction under light-dark cycles.

Recent advances in single-cell analysis have revealed the stochasticity and nongenetic heterogeneity inherent to cellular processes. However, our knowledge of the actual cellular behaviors in a living multicellular organism is still limited. By using a single-cell bioluminescence imaging technique on duckweed, Lemna gibba, we demonstrate that, under constant conditions, cells in the intact plant work as individual circadian clocks that oscillate with their own frequencies and respond independently to external stimuli. Quantitative analysis uncovered the heterogeneity and instability of cellular clocks and partial synchronization between neighboring cells. Furthermore, we found that cellular clocks in the plant body under light-dark cycles showed a centrifugal phase pattern in which the effect of cell-to-cell heterogeneity in period lengths was almost masked. The inherent heterogeneity in the properties of cellular clocks observed under constant conditions is corrected under light-dark cycles to coordinate the daily rhythms of the plant body. These findings provide a novel perspective of spatiotemporal architectures in the plant circadian system.

The synchronization of neuronal oscillators determined by the directed network structure of the suprachiasmatic nucleus under different photoperiods.

The main function of the principal clock located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of mammals is synchronizing the body rhythms to the 24 h light-dark cycle. Additionally, the SCN is able to adapt to the photoperiod of the cycle which varies among seasons. Under the long photoperiod (LP), the synchronization degree of the SCN neurons is lower than that under the photoperiod (SP). In the present study, a potential explanation is given for this phenomenon. We propose that the asymmetrical coupling between the light-signal-sensitive part (the ventralateral part, abbreviation: VL) and the light-signal-insensitive part (the dorsalmedial part, abbreviation: DM) of the SCN plays a role in the synchronization degree, which is reflected by the ratio of the number of the directed links from the VL neurons to the DM neurons to the total links of both directions between the VL and the DM. The ratio is assumed to characterize the directed network structure under different photoperiods, which is larger under the SP and smaller under the LP. We found that with the larger ratio in the situation of the SP, the synchronization degree is higher. Our finding may shed new light on the asymmetrical coupling between the VL and the DM, and the network structure of the SCN.

Lazy Labor, Modernization, and Coloniality

This article examines two distinct yet overlapping cultures of mobility in turn-of-the-century Ecuador. On the one hand, there was a modernizing culture that sought to implement utopian modes of transportation between the Andes and the Amazon. On the other hand, there were indigenous porters and pilots, who had nonhegemonic ideas about mobility and labor. This article argues that (1) indigenous labor was based on the performance of colonial habits, which I refer to as coloniality; (2) within this framework of spatial practice, native bodily rhythms could be interpreted as successful tactics of everyday resistance; and (3) the conflict between Indians and non-Indians reveals a universal, modern tension between machine and humanlike mobilities.

The temporal dimension of drugs: a sociological analysis based on a category key to the study of health-disease-care processes

The temporal dimensions that shape the senses and practices of men and women who are poly-consumers of psychoactive substances, 18-35 years of age, and living in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires were analyzed. Using a qualitative approach, 29 individual in-depth interviews were carried out and then analyzed through a constant comparative analysis process between the categories generated from the data obtained and the theoretical concepts. From the analysis, practices and meanings emerge that regulate the diverse temporalities that underlie drug consumption: feelings related to body rhythms, periods between consumptions, the timing of phases of the life cycle, or unspecific temporalities that become an adequate "moment" for consumption. These practices require that particular attention be paid to time, as this enables the flexibility to consume without being a consumer, to use drugs without being addicted to them.

Time to manage: patient strategies for coping with an absence of care coordination and continuity.

This paper examines how people with chronic illnesses respond to absences of continuity and coordination of care. Little work has been done on how the ill person might mitigate flaws in a less than optimal system. Our qualitative research, carried out among 91 participants in Australia, reveals that people with chronic illnesses create strategies to facilitate the management of their care. These strategies included efforts to improve communication between themselves and their health care practitioners; keeping personal up-to-date medication lists; and generating their own specific management plans. While we do not submit that it is patients' responsibility to attend to gaps in the health system, our data suggests that chronically ill people can, in and through such strategies, exert a measure of agency over their own care; making it effectively more continuous and coordinated. Participants crafted strategies according to the particular social and bodily rhythms that their ongoing illnesses had lent to their lives. Our analysis advances the view that the ill body itself is capable of enfolding the health system into the rhythms of illness - rather than the ill body always fitting into the overarching structural tempo. This entails an agent-centric view of time in illness experience. A Virtual Abstract of this paper can be found at: https://youtu.be/UwbxlEJOTx8.

Nerve growth factor, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and the chronobiology of mood: a new insight into the "neurotrophic hypothesis"

The light information pathways and their relationship with the body rhythms have generated a new insight into the neurobiology and the neurobehavioral sciences, as well as into the clinical approaches to human diseases associated with disruption of circadian cycles. Light-based strategies and/or drugs acting on the circadian rhythms have widely been used in psychiatric patients characterized by mood-related disorders, but the timing and dosage use of the various treatments, although based on international guidelines, are mainly dependent on the psychiatric experiences. Further, many efforts have been made to identify biomarkers able to disclose the circadian-related aspect of diseases, and therefore serve as diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic tools in clinic to assess the different mood- related symptoms, including pain, fatigue, sleep disturbance, loss of interest or pleasure, appetite, psychomotor changes, and cognitive impairments. Among the endogenous factors suggested to be involved in mood regulation, the neurotrophins, nerve growth factor, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor show anatomical and functional link with the circadian system and mediate some of light-induced effects in brain. In addition, in humans, both nerve growth factor and brain-derived neurotrophic factor have showed a daily rhythm, which correlate with the morningness-eveningness dimensions, and are influenced by light, suggesting their potential role as biomarkers for chronotypes and/or chronotherapy. The evidences of the relationship between the diverse mood-related disorders, with a specific focus on depression, and neurotrophins are reviewed and discussed herein in terms of their circadian significance, and potential translation into clinical practice.

Markets, bodies, and rhythms: A rhythmanalysis of financial markets from open-outcry trading to high-frequency trading

This article explores the relationship between bodily rhythms and market rhythms in two distinctly different financial market configurations, namely the open-outcry pit (prevalent especially in the early 20th century) and present-day high-frequency trading. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis, we show how traders seek to calibrate their bodily rhythms to those of the market. We argue that, in the case of early-20th-century open-outcry trading pits, traders tried to enact a total merger of bodily and market rhythms. We also demonstrate how, in the 1920s and '30s, market observers began to respond to a widely perceived problem, namely that market rhythms might be contagious and that some form of separation of bodily and market rhythms might therefore be needed. Finally, we show how current high-frequency trading, despite being purely algorithmic, does not render the traders' bodies irrelevant. Yet high-frequency trading does change the role of the body rather than seeking to attune their bodies to the markets, high-frequency traders seek to calibrate their bodies to their algorithms. While the article demonstrates the usefulness of deploying Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis in analyses of financial markets, it also suggests that high-frequency trading in particular might produce new types of market rhythms that, contra Lefebvre, do not revolve around traders' bodies.

New Riffs on the Old Mind-Body Blues: “Black Rhythm,” “White Logic,” and Music Theory in the Twenty-First Century

AbstractContemporary music historians have shown how taxonomic divisions of humanity—constructed in earnest within European anthropologies and philosophies from the Enlightenment on—were reflected in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theories of musical-cultural evolution, with complex and intellectualized art music forms always shown as transcending base and bodily rhythm, just as light skin supposedly transcended dark. The errors of old and now disreputable scholarly approaches have been given much attention. Yet scientifically oriented twenty-first-century studies of putatively Afro-diasporic and, especially, African American rhythmic practices seem often to stumble over similarly racialized fault lines, the relationship between “sensory” music, its “intelligent” comprehension, and its analysis still procedurally and politically fraught. Individual musical sympathies are undermined by methods and assumptions common to the field in which theorists operate. They operate, too, in North American and European university departments overwhelmingly populated by white scholars. And so this article draws upon and tests concepts from critical race and whiteness theory and asks whether, in taking “black rhythm” as its subject, some contemporary music studies reinscribe what the sociologists Tukufu Zuberi and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva have called “white logic”: a set of intellectual attitudes, prerogatives, and methods that, whatever the intentions of the musicologists concerned, might in some way restage those division practices now widely recognized as central to early musicology.

Dietary proanthocyanidins modulate melatonin levels in plasma and the expression pattern of clock genes in the hypothalamus of rats.

Circadian rhythms allow organisms to anticipate and adapt to environmental changes, and food components can adjust internal rhythms. Proanthocyanidins improve cardiovascular risk factors that exhibit circadian oscillations. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to determine whether proanthocyanidins can modulate body rhythms. Male Wistar rats were orally gavaged with 250 mg grape seed proanthocyanidin extract (GSPE)/kg body weight at zeitgeber time (ZT) 0 (light on). Phenotypic biorhythm was evaluated by measuring the concentration of plasma melatonin and metabolites, using MNR-metabolomics, at several ZT. Remarkably, GSPE treatment maintained nocturnal melatonin levels at ZT3 and altered the oscillations of some metabolites in plasma. Quantification of expression of clock-core (Clock, Bmal1, Per2, Rorα, Rev-erbα) and clock-controlled (Nampt) genes in the hypothalamus by RT-PCR showed that this phenotypic alteration was concomitant with the modulation of the expression pattern of Bmal1 and Nampt. However, GSPE did not modulate the nocturnal expression of clock genes when administered at ZT12 (light off). PAs could have chronobiological properties, although their activity depends largely on the time of administration.

Fire in the Plio-Pleistocene: the functions of hominin fire use, and the mechanistic, developmental and evolutionary consequences.

Fire is a powerful natural force that can change landscapes extremely quickly. Hominins have harnessed this resource for their own purposes, with mechanistic and developmental physiological consequences. In addition, the use of fire has niche constructive effects, altering selective environments for genetic and cultural evolution. We review the record for hominin fire use in the Plio-Pleistocene, before considering the various functions for its use, and the resultant mechanistic and developmental consequences. We also adopt the niche construction framework to consider how the use of fire can modify selective environments, and thus have evolutionary consequences at genetic and cultural levels. The light that fire produces may influence photoperiodicity and alter hormonally-controlled bodily rhythms. Fire used for cooking could have extended the range of foods hominins were able to consume, and reduced digestion costs. This may have contributed to the expansion of the hominin brain and facial anatomy, influenced by a higher quality cooked diet. Fire may also have allowed dispersal into northern areas with much cooler climates than the hominin African origin, posing novel problems that affected diet and social behaviour.

Rhythmic movement, the city symphony and transcultural transmediality: Liu Na'ou and The Man Who Has a Camera (1933)

This article explores how the creative career, protean experiments and theoretical writings of Taiwanese/Shanghainese/Japanese writer, translator, filmmaker and critic Liu Na'ou (1905–1940) were enriched by the interpenetration of his transcultural and transmedial aspirations. Through close reading of Liu's amateur “city film,” The Man Who Has a Camera (1933), paying explicit homage to Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov's “city symphony” film The Man With a Movie Camera (1929), I investigate how it embodies and encompasses the notions of reinvention and transculturation. Furthermore, through Liu's film criticism, especially on sound aesthetic and rhythmicity, I examine how camera movement and body movement, rhythm and musicality communicate and become entangled with the concept of transmediality. These complications also mediate Liu's ambiguous cultural identity as a colonial subject and transnational practitioner. I suggest how these intertwined concepts and practices created new aesthetic possibilities in 1930s Shanghai and contributed to—as well as constrained—a distinctively cosmopolitan vision.

Design of Chronomodulated Drug Delivery System of Valsartan: In Vitro Characterization.

The aim of the present study was to design and evaluate a chronomodulated time-clock pulsatile tablets of valsartan to release it after a certain lag time, independent of the gastrointestinal pH, in its absorption window to cope with the circadian rhythm of human body for blood pressure elevation. Core tablets were prepared by direct compression of a homogenous mixture of valsartan, Avicel PH101, croscarmellose sodium, magnesium stearate and Aerosil. The core tablets were then sprayed coated with a sealing layer formed of ethyl cellulose that was subsequently coated with a release-controlling layer. Three different aqueous dispersions namely; carnauba wax or beeswax or a mixture in a ratio of 2.5:1, respectively, were used to form five time-clock tablet formulations having the release controlling layer with different thickness {B5, B10, B20, BW5 and CW5}. Quality control testing were carried out to the core tablets. Differential scanning calorimetry was also performed to detect the possible drug excipient interaction in the core tablet formulation. The release was carried out, for the prepared time-clock tablet formulations, in 0.1 N hydrochloric acid for the first 2 h, followed by phosphate buffer (pH 6.8) for 4.5 h. The effect of pH on valsartan release was studied through a release study in 0.1 N hydrochloric acid for 6.5 h. Two phase dissolution study was performed to the selected time-clock tablet formulation to predict the drug permeation through the gastrointestinal tract. Stability study of the selected formula was performed at 25°/60% RH and at 40°/75% RH for 3 months. Results showed that a release-controlling layer composed of a mixture of carnauba wax and beeswax in a ratio of 2.5:1 showed a reasonable release lag time. The release lag time of the tablets increased with the increase of the coat thickness, thus B20>B10>B5 with corresponding lag time values of 4.5, 3 and 2.5 h, respectively. Selected B5 tablet formula exhibited a reasonable lag time after which the highest, complete % drug release at pH 6.8 was obtained. In addition, a good partitioning of valsartan, between the aqueous and organic phases in a ratio of 1:7, was observed. The selected formula was stable for at least 3 months under standard long-term and accelerated storage conditions. In conclusion, in vitro studies revealed that the novel time-clock system could be used successfully to deliver valsartan in a pulsatile pH-independent manner. It provided a desirable lag time followed by a rapid and complete drug release accompanied by an expected effective permeation through the biological membranes upon release in the duodenum; the window of absorption, as indicated by the two phase release study.

Assia Djebar: Patterns of Resistance

Research Article| January 01 2015 Assia Djebar: Patterns of Resistance Madeleine Dobie Madeleine Dobie Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Romanic Review (2015) 106 (1-4): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1215/26885220-106.1-4.1 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Madeleine Dobie; Assia Djebar: Patterns of Resistance. Romanic Review 1 January 2015; 106 (1-4): 1–5. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/26885220-106.1-4.1 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsRomanic Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2015 The Trustees of Columbia University2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Distending Straight‐Masculine Time: A Phenomenology of the Disabled Speaking Body

Drawing upon feminist, queer, and crip phenomenology, this essay argues that the distinct temporality of the lived, stuttering body disturbs the normalized “choreography” of communication and thereby threatens the disabled speaker's recognition as a speaking subject. Examined through the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty and Alfred Schutz, the disabled speaking body is temporally “out of step” with the normalized bodily rhythms and pace of communicative practices in relation to both lived and objective time. Disciplined for his incalculable and therefore irrational bodily choreography, the disabled speaker is foregrounded against an objective, instrumentally ordered world constituted by a disembodied and hegemonic “straight‐masculine” time. Although dominant communicative choreographies may often be unlivable for disabled speakers, cripping communicative time rejects the cardinal value of futurity and invites interlocutors to gather in a noninstrumentalized and nonproductive present. This reshaping of communicative space enacts new modes of relationality and opens up an array of communicative futures suppressed or cut off by straight‐masculine time.

Queer Time in Charles Perrault's “Sleeping Beauty”

At first glance, there might seem to be little that is queer about Charles Perrault's La Belle au bois dormant, or Sleeping Beauty. There is seemingly nothing in broadest arc of tale that deviates from norms of gender or sexuality: a story about a princess who falls prey to a fairy's spell and a charming prince who awakens her and overcomes adversity to ensure requisite happy ending (with two children in tow) has all makings of a classically normative heterosexual fairy-tale plot. This admittedly reductive summary, which corresponds to what many recognize as Sleeping Beauty tale (whether or not they attribute it to Perrault), gives nary a hint of even a more capacious understanding of queer, beyond domains of gender and sexuality. We might think, for instance, of definition proposed by Lee Edelman, for whom word queer denotes the excess of something always unassimilable that troubles relentlessly totalizing impulse informing normativity (Dinshaw et al. 189). Judging from hostile reception by many feminists, spectacle of a passive princess waiting to be awakened by her prince is all too normative.1And yet, if we take trouble to look at letter and detail of Perrault's text, something altogether different comes into view, and that something, I argue, is queer. Saying this, I do not contend that this version of Sleeping Beauty is unproblematically queer (if indeed anything ever could be); as we will see and as others have shown, there are moments of undeniable misogyny in this and many of Perrault's fairy tales, and these cannot be explained away.2 Yet alongside and in tension with these moments are deviant desires and disruptions to heterosexual marriage plot. What at first glance appears to be a tale about inevitable triumph of heterosexuality turns out to invite a far more skeptical if not perverse view of ostensible love plot. Ultimately, my reading invites us to take a fresh look at commonplace assertion that Perrault's fairy tales establish a normative patriarchal discourse for genre. What 1 want to propose through this reading of inaugural tale of his 1697 prose collection, Histoires ou contes du temps passe (Stories or Tales of Past Times), is that Sleeping Beauty encourages readers to imagine another tale, unlike one cited by narrative voice, that is replete with queer potential.1 argue that queer potential of Sleeping Beauty stems from temporality, by which I mean specifically narrative uses of to both construct and undermine normative social plots of sexuality and kinship. Like Kay Turner in her essay in this special issue, 1 am inspired by considerable body of queer theoretical work on cultural understandings of and how it shores up and undermines normative social structures, in process giving form to subjects, their consciousness, and affects.3 As Elizabeth Freeman has put it, ... is not only of essence, it actually produces 'essences' (Introduction 160). Time is used to transform unequal power relations into natural bodily rhythms and to control access to positions of mastery within cultures. In short, what is commonly understood as normal is inextricably- and almost imperceptibly-bound up with hegemonic social relations. Freeman coins term chrononormativity to describe the use of to organize individual human bodies toward maximum productivity. . . . People are bound to one another, engrouped, made to feel coherently collective through particular orchestrations of time (Time Binds 3). Linked with chrononormativity is a notion Freeman borrows from Dana Luciano (channeling Foucault), chronobiopolitics: 'the sexual arrangement of of life' of entire populations (3).These two notions foreground a logic by which unfolds naturally through a series of cause-and-effect sequences to produce particular forms of personhood with foreordained roles to play in larger sociopolitical order. …

Thyroid circadian timing: roles in physiology and thyroid malignancies.

The circadian clock represents an anticipatory mechanism, well preserved in evolution. It has a critical impact on most aspects of the physiology of light-sensitive organisms. These rhythmic processes are governed by environmental cues (fluctuations in light intensity and temperature), an internal circadian timing system, and interactions between this timekeeping system and environmental signals. Endocrine body rhythms, including hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis rhythms, are tightly regulated by the circadian system. Although the circadian profiles of thyroid-releasing hormone (TRH), thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), thyroxine (T4), and triiodothyronine (T3) in blood have been well described, relatively few studies have analyzed molecular mechanisms governing the circadian regulation of HPT axis function. In this review, we will discuss the latest findings in the area of complex regulation of thyroid gland function by the circadian oscillator. We will also highlight the molecular makeup of the human thyroid oscillator as well as the potential link between thyroid malignant transformation and alterations in the clockwork.

The Effect of the Colour Selection for Internal Surfaces on Non-Visual Daylight Human Response

Nowadays lighting criterions for internal spaces can be widened; because there is need to not only stimulate properly the human visual system but also to entrain the non-visual system of users or inhabitants. Since the medical discoveries in the field of light influence of circadian system, a system that controls our daily body rhythms, gave us basic principles how it works, we can use advanced methods how to evaluate internal light climate in the buildings. We focused on the colours of wall finishes, which influence the spectral composition of the light that enters the eye of inhabitants in specified locations. A set of specified applied colors were compared to the neutrally coloured walls. Also the effect of external shading obstruction was examined in this study. This observation, based on the spectral examination of light conditions, may provide more complex overview on selection of internal surfaces colours in long-term occupied spaces, taking health and wellbeing into consideration.