An Evaluation of the Efficacy of a Perceptually Controlled Immersive Environment for Learning Acupuncture

This paper presents a basic but functional Perceptual User Interface (PUI) controlled immersive environment (IE) on an electronic learning platform (e-Learning) in order to deliver educational material relating to the NADA (National Acupuncture Detoxification Association) protocol for acupuncture. The purpose of this study is set out a proposed process for evaluating the learning efficacy of the PUI IE e-Learning application when compared with a typical Graphical User Interface (GUI) e-Learning IE application. Both are to be compared to a more traditional learning method. This paper evaluates user interface (UI) sentiment of the systems in advance of this proposed evaluation

The Landscape of Chronic Pain : Broader Perspectives

Chronic pain is a global health concern. This special issue on matters related to chronic pain aims to draw on research and scholarly discourse from an eclectic mix of areas and perspectives. The purpose of this non-systematic topical review is to précis an assortment of contemporary topics related to chronic pain and its management to nurture debate about research, practice and health care policy. The review discusses the phenomenon of pain, the struggle that patients have trying to legitimize their pain to others, the utility of the acute-chronic dichotomy, and the burden of chronic pain on society. The review describes the introduction of chronic primary pain in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Disease, 11th Revision and discusses the importance of biopsychosocial approaches to manage pain, the consequences of overprescribing and shifts in service delivery in primary care settings. The second half of the review explores pain perception as a multisensory perceptual inference discussing how contexts, predictions and expectations contribute to the malleability of somatosensations including pain, and how this knowledge can inform the development of therapies and strategies to alleviate pain. Finally, the review explores chronic pain through an evolutionary lens by comparing modern urban lifestyles with genetic heritage that encodes physiology adapted to live in the Paleolithic era. I speculate that modern urban lifestyles may be painogenic in nature, worsening chronic pain in individuals and burdening society at the population level

Методи пом'якшення

The section describes mitigation methods.У розділі описано методи помякшення

Body Awareness: Construct and Self-Report Measures

OBJECTIVES:Heightened body awareness can be adaptive and maladaptive. Improving body awareness has been suggested as an approach for treating patients with conditions such as chronic pain, obesity and post-traumatic stress disorder. We assessed the psychometric quality of selected self-report measures and examined their items for underlying definitions of the construct. DATA SOURCES:PubMed, PsychINFO, HaPI, Embase, Digital Dissertations Database. REVIEW METHODS:Abstracts were screened; potentially relevant instruments were obtained and systematically reviewed. Instruments were excluded if they exclusively measured anxiety, covered emotions without related physical sensations, used observer ratings only, or were unobtainable. We restricted our study to the proprioceptive and interoceptive channels of body awareness. The psychometric properties of each scale were rated using a structured evaluation according to the method of McDowell. Following a working definition of the multi-dimensional construct, an inter-disciplinary team systematically examined the items of existing body awareness instruments, identified the dimensions queried and used an iterative qualitative process to refine the dimensions of the construct. RESULTS:From 1,825 abstracts, 39 instruments were screened. 12 were included for psychometric evaluation. Only two were rated as high standard for reliability, four for validity. Four domains of body awareness with 11 sub-domains emerged. Neither a single nor a compilation of several instruments covered all dimensions. Key domains that might potentially differentiate adaptive and maladaptive aspects of body awareness were missing in the reviewed instruments. CONCLUSION:Existing self-report instruments do not address important domains of the construct of body awareness, are unable to discern between adaptive and maladaptive aspects of body awareness, or exhibit other psychometric limitations. Restricting the construct to its proprio- and interoceptive channels, we explore the current understanding of the multi-dimensional construct and suggest next steps for further research

Towards a Phenomenological Theory of the Visceral in the Interactive Arts

This is a digitised version of a thesis that was deposited in the University Library. If you are the author and you have a query about this item please contact PEARL Admin ([email protected])Metadata merged with duplicate record (http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/2319) on 20.12.2016 by CS (TIS).This thesis explores the ways in which certain forms of interactive art may and do elicit visceral responses. The term "visceral" refers to the cardiovascular, respiratory, uro-genital and especially excretory systems that affect mind and body on a continuum of awareness. The "visceral" is mentioned in the field of interactive arts, but it remains systematically unexplored and undefined. Further, interactive artworks predominantly focus on the exteroceptive (stimuli from outside) rather than the interoceptive (stimuli arising within the body, especially the viscera) senses. The existentialist phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty forms the basis for explorations of the visceral dimension of mind/body. New approaches to understanding interactive art, design and the mind/body include: attunements to the world; intertwinings of mind/body, technology and world; and of being in the world. Each artwork within utilizes a variation of the phenomenological methods derived from Merl eau-Ponty's; these are discussed primarily in Chapters One and Three. Because subjective, first-person, experiences are a major aspect of a phenomenological approach, the academic writing is interspersed with subjective experiences of the author and others. This thesis balances facets of knowledge from diverse disciplines that account for visceral phenomena and subjective experience. Along with the textual exegesis, one major work of design and two major works of art were created. These are documented on the compact disc (CDROM) bound within. As an essential component of each artwork, new technological systems were created or co-created by the author. User surveys comprise Appendices Two, Three and Four, and are also online at: www. sfu. ca/-dgromala/thesis. To access the URL: login as , and use the password . Numerous talks, exhibitions and publications that directly relate to the thesis work is in Appendix One. This work begins with an introduction to Merleau-Ponty's ideas of flesh and reversibility. Chapter Two is the review of the literature, while Chapter Three is an explication of the hypothesis, an overview of the field, and a framing of the problem. Discussions of each artwork are in Chapter Four (The Meditation Chamber), Chapter Five (BioMorphic Typography) and Chapter Six (The MeatBook). Chapter Seven forms the conclusion. References to the documentation on the CD are found throughout the thesis, and italicized paragraphs provide an artistic context for each chapter

Proceedings experiencing light 2009 : international conference on the effects of light on welbeing

no abstrac

Proceedings experiencing light 2009 : international conference on the effects of light on welbeing

no abstrac

Biomechanical Spectrum of Human Sport Performance

Writing or managing a scientific book, as it is known today, depends on a series of major activities, such as regrouping researchers, reviewing chapters, informing and exchanging with contributors, and at the very least, motivating them to achieve the objective of publication. The idea of this book arose from many years of work in biomechanics, health disease, and rehabilitation. Through exchanges with authors from several countries, we learned much from each other, and we decided with the publisher to transfer this knowledge to readers interested in the current understanding of the impact of biomechanics in the analysis of movement and its optimization. The main objective is to provide some interesting articles that show the scope of biomechanical analysis and technologies in human behavior tasks. Engineers, researchers, and students from biomedical engineering and health sciences, as well as industrial professionals, can benefit from this compendium of knowledge about biomechanics applied to the human body

Making places: performative arts practices in the city

This thesis ‘Making places: performative arts practices in the city’ results from a research project focused on a practice of placemaking informed by performative and social practice artforms. The research is concerned with grassroots arts-led interventions in the urban realm, participated in by citizens with an aim to improve the urban lived experience and to form and cultivate connections between people, place and community. This has come to be termed in the course of the research ‘social practice placemaking’ (social practice placemaking3), a practice observed in the placemaking sector as an approach that is informed by social practice arts and an attention on these arts as a means of urban revitalization. Operating at the intersection of arts, placemaking and urban theory, and place attachment thinking, the research has used a comparative approach based on participant observation and interviews at three case study sites: Art Tunnel Smithfield, Dublin, an outdoor art gallery and garden space; The Drawing Shed, London, a social arts practice predominantly operating in housing estates in Walthamstow and Wandsworth; and Big Car, Indianapolis, an arts organisation operating across the whole of this Midwest USA city. Findings are along three themes. Firstly, of the art practice and process of social practice placemaking, revealing the collaborative social practice placemaking art experience. Secondly, of urban space and place and social practice placemaking as a means of reinterpreting both spatial and cultural activities of the city. Thirdly, of place attachment and social practice placemaking and its role in and citizenship conscientisation and the politics of social practice placemaking activity in the urban public realm. The research presents an original typology of practice for the placemaking sector and examines the practice, process and role of arts in the placemaking sector and positions social practice placemaking in the social practice arts field. Significantly, the presentation of data includes the voice of the artist and non-artist protagonists. The research has various implications for the sector. Firstly, for creative and urban professionals and communities, by revealing how social practice placemaking can deepen an understanding of the relative agencies of the various modes of arts in place. Secondly, how this practice may advance placemaking practice as a whole by its use to better understand differences and similarities between placemakings within the placemaking sector, and from this, better communicate its practices to constituent stakeholders in the creative, urban design and community sectors. Thirdly, how this practice can inform the understanding of collective progressive citizenship in the urban realm and inform generative planning practices