Search

This paper focuses on the complex relationship between pace and place, offering a novel lens for understanding mobility within the context of canal boating. Drawing on fieldwork on the canals in north‐west England, the paper focuses on mobile placemaking practices. Canal boats act as physical and material but also ideological pacemakers, guiding the boaters towards subscribing to the idea of slow living, where certain canal‐based pace‐myths play an important role. Pacemaking on the canals is therefore a form of placemaking, realised through the mobility of the vessel, materialities of the infrastructure, tempos and temporalities, representations and stories about canal life as well as the bodies on board and on towpaths as canal boaters modulate and manage their experience and performance of pace. The investigation of the interplay between the slow pace, rhythms, embodied practices, canal infrastructure, and the prevalent pace‐myths offers valuable insights into the ways places are shaped by the pace of mobility, thus expanding the concept of placemaking. By foregrounding pace as a key concept in mobility studies, the paper demonstrates the need for a more nuanced understanding of the temporalities associated with different modes of movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: This study aims to examine the association between the rest‐activity rhythm (RAR) and the incidence of type 2 diabetes (T2D). Materials and Methods: In total, 97 503 participants without diabetes in the UK Biobank cohort were recruited. Wearable accelerometry was used to monitor circadian behaviour. The parameters of RAR including inter‐daily stability, intra‐daily variability, relative amplitude (RA), most active continuous 10 h period (M10), and least active continuous 5 h period (L5) were calculated to evaluate the robustness and regularity of the RAR. The weighted polygenic risk score for T2D (T2D‐PRS) was calculated. Cox proportion hazards models were used to evaluate the survival relationship and the joint and interaction effects of RAR parameters and T2D‐PRS on the occurrence of T2D. Results: During 692 257 person‐years follow‐ups, a total of 2434 participants were documented. After adjustment for potential confounders, compared with participants in the highest quartile of RA and M10, the participants in the lowest quartile had a greater risk of T2D (HRRA = 2.06, 95% CI: 1.76‐2.41; HRM10 = 1.33, 95% CI: 1.19‐1.49). Meanwhile, the highest quartile of L5 was related to a higher risk of T2D (HR = 1.78, 95% CI: 1.55‐2.24). The joint analysis showed that the high T2D‐PRS with the lowest quartile of RA and M10, or highest quartile of L5 jointly increased the risk of T2D (HRRA = 4.46, 95% CI: 3.36‐6.42; HRM10 = 3.15, 95% CI: 2.29‐4.32; HRL5 = 3.09, 95% CI: 2.40‐3.99). No modification effects of T2D‐PRS on the association between the RAR parameters and risk of T2D were observed (p >.05). Conclusion: The unbalanced RAR are associated with a greater risk of T2D, which are independent of known risk factors of T2D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advancing social and cultural geography's interest in sport, exercise and commuting, as well as the everyday experiences of movement, materiality, and rhythm, this paper provides the first account of run-commuting experiences through a focus on running with a bag. Run-commuting is an emerging active travel practice in which people run to and/or from work. It blurs the usual separation of mobilities related to work and those related to sport, exercise and leisure. In doing so, new body-objects assemblages are introduced into running and commuting practices that have marked impacts on the experiences of mobility. Drawing on interviews and run-alongs with 19 UK run-commuters, this paper explores one such defining experience – running with a bag. Drawing together the concepts of affective materialities and rhythm with work on mobilities and sport, this paper discusses how experiences of running with a bag are marked by disruptive rhythms, managing rhythms and acclimatising to such rhythms. As such, this paper demonstrates the centrality of objects in facilitating and constraining practices, as well shaping the experiences of mobility and exercise. The novel engagement with material and bodily rhythms in this paper also offers fruitful avenues for future mobile, sporting, material and rhythmic thinking in geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The amount of living space we have access to is one manifestation of the unequal distribution of housing resources within societies. The COVID-19 pandemic has required most households to spend more time at home, unmasking inequalities and reigniting longstanding debates about the functionality and experience of smaller homes. Drawing on interviews across three UK cities, this article attends to the changing household routines of individuals living in different types of small home, exploring daily life before and during 'lockdown'. Using the concept of urban rhythms, the data show that the lockdown has intensified existing pressures of living in a smaller home – lack of space for different functions and household members – whilst constraining coping strategies, like spending time outside the home. Lockdown restrictions governing mobility and contact acted as a mechanism of exception, disrupting habitual patterns of life and sociability, and forcing people to spend more time in smaller homes that struggled to accommodate different functions, affecting home atmospheres. For some, the loss of normal strategies was so significant that they sought to challenge the new rules governing daily life to protect their wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses Henri Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis as a foundational text for researching boredom, and offers a critical analysis of UK-based media commentaries about boredom and homeworking written during 2020 and 2021. We situate the discussion within the rhythmic rupture caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and foreground rhythm as a lens for understanding reported experiences and reflections on boredom and work. For non-essential workers, lockdown offered an opportunity to reconfigure working lives away from the constraints of commutes and everyday work settings, yet our findings highlight the narrative representation and experience of a particular type of boredom and inertia known as acedia. The analysis discusses the presence of acedia and absence of rhythm across three themes: acedia and being stuck in time and space; embodiment, movement and rhythm; and the relationship between the present and the future. We conclude by considering what the experience of boredom might mean for how we reconceptualise our post-pandemic working lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has foregrounded the significance of time to everyday life, as the routines, pace, and speed of social relations were widely reconfigured. This article uses rhythm as an object and tool of inquiry to make sense of spatio-temporal change. We analyse the Mass Observation (MO) directive we co-commissioned on 'COVID-19 and Time', where volunteer writers reflect on whether and how time was made, experienced, and imagined differently during the early stages of the pandemic in the UK. We draw on Henri Lefebvre and Catherine Régulier's 'rhythmanalysis', taking up their theorisation of rhythm as linear and cyclical and their concepts of arrhythmia (discordant rhythms) and eurhythmia (harmonious rhythms). Our analysis highlights how MO writers articulate (a) the ruptures to their everyday rhythms across time and space, (b) their experience of 'blurred' or 'merged' time as everyday rhythms are dissolved and the pace of time is intensified or slowed, and (c) the remaking of rhythms through new practices or devices and attunements to nature. We show how rhythm enables a consideration of the spatio-temporal textures of everyday life, including their unevenness, variation, and difference. The article thus contributes to and expands recent scholarship on the social life of time, rhythm and rhythmanalysis, everyday life, and MO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diurnal variation in psychometric indicators of emotion found in Twitter content has been known for many years. The degree to which this pattern depends upon different environmental zeitgebers has been difficult to determine. The nationwide lockdown in the United Kingdom in spring 2020 provided a unique government-mandated experiment to observe the temporal variation of psychometric indicators in the absence of certain specific social rhythms related to commuting and workplace social activities as well as many normal home-based social activities. We therefore analyzed the aggregated Twitter content of 54 UK cities in the 9 weeks of complete lockdown, comparing them with the 10 weeks that preceded them (as well as with the corresponding weeks of 2019). We observed that the key indicators of emotion retained their diurnal behavior. This suggests that even during lockdown there are still sufficient zeitgebers to maintain this diurnal variation in indicators of emotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a novel longitudinal qualitative approach of revisiting older men across an elongated period, this paper addresses the lack of geographical attention given to older age masculinities specifically, and the limited exploration of the temporal aspects of masculinity more generally. Situated within debates around intersectional and relational approaches to masculinity and the critical geographies of ageing, the paper utilises insights from Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis to examine how older men (re)produce, organise, and improvise rhythms in using and experiencing places as they age. The paper shows how the notion of masculinities as relational is given fresh insight when considered through the lens of rhythms, offering a less dualistic framing of men than those centred on bodily capacity and that automatically present older men as subordinate, redundant, or inferior. The paper draws on in‐depth, repeat, qualitative interviews across four phases in an 18‐year period with 32 older men (over 65) in the UK. The analysis points to how changing rhythms as men age may be accommodated through, and subsumed within, wider rhythms of continued work, periods of busyness, and eurhythmia (accordance of rhythms) with those around them. Conversely, aspects of arrhythmia (dissonance or conflict of rhythms) that have previously been pointed to as marginalising may also offer older men a level of distinction – allowing, for example, a distancing from age‐graded spaces and prevalent discourses of older age as well as enabling socially dominant masculine positions compared to others at the local level. The paper also points to how masculinities are not only relational to other people and places but also to natural and non‐human rhythms and daily and seasonal contingencies as well as across time. This paper takes a qualitative approach of revisiting older men across an elongated period to attend to the lack of geographical attention given to older age masculinities specifically, and the limited exploration of the temporal aspects of masculinity more generally. The analysis points to how changing rhythms as men age may be accommodated through, and subsumed within, wider rhythms of continued work, periods of busyness, and eurhythmia (accordance of rhythms) with those around them. Conversely, aspects of arrhythmia (dissonance or conflict of rhythms) that have previously been pointed to as marginalising may also offer older men a level of distinction – allowing, for example, a distancing from age‐graded spaces and prevalent discourses of older age as well as enabling socially dominant masculine positions compared to others at the local level. The paper also points to how masculinities are not only relational to other people and places but also to natural and non‐human rhythms and daily and seasonal contingencies as well as across time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a mixed-methods evaluation of the Finding Rhythms (FR) charity music program in U.K. prisons. Results across two studies indicate that FR group activities and the development of a shared FR identity lead to a positive well-being outcome. Furthermore, FR involvement dissolves rivalries between prisoners and provides them with a sense of purpose that extends into prison life and beyond. We provide evidence for the social cure properties of the FR group and the music program that promotes social engagement and psychological well-being among inmates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To describe heart rhythm during collapse events in boxer dogs using ambulatory electrocardiogram and determine the predictive value of frequent or complex ventricular ectopy for collapse associated with ventricular tachycardia. Materials and Methods: A total of 659 ambulatory electrocardiogram recordings from 429 boxer dogs were identified from a database in the UK. Summary statistics described the frequency and complexity of ventricular ectopy during all recordings, recordings in which collapse occurred and associated boxer demographics. Positive predictive values were calculated to investigate whether frequent ventricular ectopy was useful to predict heart rhythm during episodes of collapse. Results: Of the 659 ambulatory electrocardiogram recordings, 250 recordings showed <50 single ventricular beats (Group 1), and frequent (≥50) or complex ventricular ectopy were observed in 409 recordings (Group 2). A total of 90 collapse events were observed in 72 ambulatory electrocardiograms from 68 dogs, comprising 30 dogs in Group 1 and 38 dogs in Group 2. In both groups, sinus rhythm was the most frequent collapse rhythm, followed by neurally mediated collapse and then ventricular tachycardia. The proportion of dogs that displayed ventricular tachycardia‐associated episodic collapse given that they had frequent (≥50) or complex ventricular ectopy in the study population was 0.11 [95% confidence interval = 0.01 to 0.21]. Clinical Significance: These results challenge the preconception that UK boxer dogs with collapse will have ventricular tachycardia and, consequently, the authors recommend definitive diagnosis of the cause of episodic collapse to guide selection of therapeutic drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic mobility has been discursively circulated in at least two ways: as the cause of transnational identity capital and as the resource for knowledge transfer worldwide. Instead of a preoccupation with neoliberalist and human capital accounts, this article offers a rhythmic perspective and analysis that shifts the matter of academic mobility away from a purely discursive frame of reference. It explores the rhythms of a mobile and migrant academic in an autoethnographic and everyday account of human body encounters. It engages with the unintended realities of the body as the border, especially when it comes to ethnicity and place of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We hypothesized that precise auditory processing facilitates second language learning. • Adult native Polish speakers living in the UK were tested. • Psychoacoustic thresholds were linked to vowel perception and grammatical judgment. • More successful language learners had more consistent frequency-following responses. • Auditory training could help facilitate language learners in some individuals. Abstract There is a great deal of individual variability in outcome in second language learning, the sources of which are still poorly understood. We hypothesized that individual differences in auditory processing may account for some variability in second language learning. We tested this hypothesis by examining psychoacoustic thresholds, auditory-motor temporal integration, and auditory neural encoding in adult native Polish speakers living in the UK. We found that precise English vowel perception and accurate English grammatical judgment were linked to lower psychoacoustic thresholds, better auditory-motor integration, and more consistent frequency-following responses to sound. Psychoacoustic thresholds and neural sound encoding explained independent variance in vowel perception, suggesting that they are dissociable indexes of sound processing. These results suggest that individual differences in second language acquisition success stem at least in part from domain-general difficulties with auditory perception, and that auditory training could help facilitate language learning in some individuals with specific auditory impairments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The street has long been a key laboratory for studies of social life, from the roots of urban sociology in the ethnographies of the Chicago School to the diverse range of contemporary studies which consider the performative, affective and non-representational nature of street etiquette and encounter. For all this, the street remains only loosely defined in many studies, and sometimes disappears from view entirely, with social action often privileged over material and environmental context. This Special Issue is intended as a spur to take the street more seriously in contemporary sociology, and explores the importance of the street as a site, scale and field for sociological research. Recognising that the street is both contradictory and complex, the Introduction to this Issue draws out emerging themes in the shifting sociologies of the street by highlighting the specific contribution interdisciplinary work can make to our understanding of streets as distinctive but contested social spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Itinerant boat-dwellers ('boaters') on the waterways of London speak about their lives as occurring in a time zone that is separate from the sedentary world around them. 'Boat time', as boaters call it, is simultaneously slow and unpredictable. The slow aspect of boat time is said to provide a much-needed contrast to the fast and highly choreographed movements of the city surrounding the towpaths. It becomes part of the boaters' rhetoric of difference from, and resistance to, the state and other sedentary elements surrounding them. This article suggests that temporal experiences are a constitutive part of identity, a strategic component of resistance to the sedentary order, and a thread that links the disparate aspects of boaters' own lives aboard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper consists of a discussion of data sonification--a procedure in which information gathered from systems such as bodies or environmental processes is analyzed and reprocessed into audio models, so aspects of the process generating the data (for example, emotional or tidal ebb and flow) can be apprehended by human senses. This serves various purposes relevant to geography. Firstly, it sets out the principles of sonification as a method, defining its basic principles and relating it to both qualitative and quantitative data. Secondly, it offers potential to geographic interests in process, times, rhythm, landscape, place, and more besides-- 'representing' various aspects of processes that are beyond normal human apprehension, perhaps through register, duration, pitch, and so on. Thirdly, in the illustrating examples, which comprise sonifications of tides and other processes in the Severn Estuary, UK, it highlights possibilities of engaging local communities and stakeholders with the dynamics of landscapes such as tidal processes, which have significant implications for culture, economy, and ecology, as do other tidal and other process geographies elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metrical works both in Qing Dynasty and in Britain and America in the 20th century have some similarities in their wide applicability and extensibility over discourse objects. But they are also different in many ways: metrical works in Qing Dynasty pay more attention to technical regulation, emphasize the exemplary function of versification and are accompanied by traditional thoughts in ancient China; while those in Britain and America in the 20th century focus on theoretical exploration, attach importance to the cognitive roles of versification, are accompanied by Western traditional thoughts and bond with various modern disciplines and thoughts. In conclusion, in terms of the function, metrical works in Qing Dynasty and the latter play different parts respectively, while in terms of theoretical quality, metrical works in Qing Dynasty have a long way to go, comparing with the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a light-hearted, yet serious attempt to address the “gap” that exists between research and practice within the field of psychotherapy. Research is time consuming and exhausting, requiring much energy as it moves through the processes of planning, ethical approval, conducting the research, analysis, presentation of data, and dissemination. Each of these could be seen to have a rhythm. Energy moves in waves and, like the sea, has a natural rhythm. Taking the work of Gabrielle Roth as a starting point, this paper explores 5Rhythms™ (5R), applying them to research in an attempt to demystify the process and emphasize the common humanity shared by researcher and researched. Research methods need to be learned experientially and awareness of the body may make them less remote and more meaningful and interesting to practitioners who are invited to join the dance. Due to often-irregular cyclical rhythms this approach is at best only 75% safe and may lead to the conception of new ideas! [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background We describe the case of a 12 year-old boy with polyarteritis nodosa presenting with long thoracic nerve injury (LTNI) post flu vaccination. Polyarteritis nodosa is an inflammatory vasculitis treated with immunosuppressive medication. Children with immunosuppression require seasonal flu vaccination, and LTNI is a recognised complication, rare in children, with no incidence documented. Physiotherapy plays a role in the conservative management of LTNI, however, there is debate regarding the most effective regime. Methods Case description with literature review of aetiology, treatment strategies and recommendations for effective therapeutic approach. Results Our patient was diagnosed with polyarteritis nodosa following an admission with intra-abdominal bleed, coeliac axis thrombosis and mesenteric artery aneurysm seen on angiogram. He responded well to steroids and immunosuppressive medication. Due to the risk of infection from immune suppression, he received seasonal intra-muscular influenza vaccination to the right deltoid. There were no initial complications, however, two weeks later, burning shoulder pain and sleep disturbance were reported. There was paraesthesia in the right hand although grip strength was not impaired. Of note, the patient is left hand-dominant. Examination revealed elevation of the right shoulder girdle and winging of the medial border of the scapula. Range of movement at the shoulder was full and pain-free. Palpation of the gleno-humeral joint line and deltoid were unremarkable. The clinical findings suggested long thoracic nerve denervation. Physiotherapy assessment demonstrated weakness in the serratus anterior muscle and abnormal scapula movement patterns, including decreased protraction. Nerve conduction studies reported decreased activation of the long thoracic nerve. Scapula recruitment exercises were advised, as well as posture correction. After a year, scapula-humeral rhythm and strength of the scapula muscles improved. Conclusion Causes of scapula-winging in children include osteochondromas, exostoses and sports-related injuries. Scapula-winging associated with LTNI is a recognised complication of flu vaccine but very rarely reported in under 16-year olds. Treatment of LTNI is poorly evidenced in the literature. However, physiotherapy including bracing to enhance proprioception, mobility exercises in supine to correct scapula position and strengthening of scapula muscles is reported. There is a lack of evidence to inform the most effective approach. The literature outlines that general gleno-humeral muscle strengthening is beneficial in improving shoulder function in LTNI. However, there is limited research investigating the specific role of scapula muscle strengthening in LTNI in children. The literature suggests that poor scapula function can impair the biomechanics of the shoulder and exercises that address scapula muscle control can improve movement patterns. The time to recovery from LTNI is estimated between 1-2 years and maintaining muscle bulk is our challenge, as the nerve recovers. Clinicians need to be aware of LTNI complicating flu vaccine in immuno-compromised children. We highlight the importance of physiotherapy in improving scapula biomechanics. Conflicts of Interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]