Leather Boots Research Articles

Поэтика вещи в творчестве современных татарских поэтов как воплощение национального культурного кода

The study of the specifics of the artistic embodiment of the national cultural code through the material world in modern Tatar poetry is of scientific interest to researchers. This article provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the creativity of modern Tatar poets Renat Kharis, Robert Minnullin, Ravil Fayzullin, Sania Akhmetzyanova, who create their works in the Tatar language, and it is revealed that images of home and homeland occupy a large place in their artistic world, an important part of which the “material world” appears, elements of national clothing (ak kalfak — women’s headdress, skullcap — men’s headdress, ichigi — leather boots, musical instruments — kurai, accordion, domra), white or embroidered towel).

Sedimentary Layers: Bob Hawke’s Beer World Record and Ocker Chic

ABSTRACT Australia’s 23rd prime minister, Bob Hawke, is celebrated for a world record set at the University of Oxford in the 1950s for the fastest consumption of a yard of ale. The beer record is apocryphal, having five evidential flaws. However, the embellishment—or fabrication—of the record was crucial to the “larrikin-leader” dual image Hawke constructed over the course of the 1970s as he manoeuvred to enter parliament. Hawke’s dual image appealed widely from the 1970s onwards because of the rise of the “ocker”: a middle-class caricature of Australians. By the 1980s, a refined “ocker chic” identity had emerged in which the middle class could erect a national culture that feigned meritocracy. In the 2020s, politicians, professionals, performative fathers and others identify with an ahistorical nation in which irreverence, elasticated leather boots, cowboy hats, Bavarian-style cold beer, and stories of endurance in foreign lands help to conceal their privilege. While many commentators have tried to explain this phenomenon, Diane Kirkby’s formulation of ocker chic reveals the interchange between class, gender and race that has preserved neoliberal capitalism in Australia.

Jeans and their Fashionable Meanings: Revisiting Beverly Gordon's Cultural Conceptual Framework

Jeans and their Fashionable Meanings: Revisiting Beverly Gordon's Cultural Conceptual Framework

On Loving Clothes, and Preferring Not To

On Loving Clothes, and Preferring Not To

The Design And Responses Of Horses On Polimeric Composite Horseshoes

Horseshoe is used to avoid the failures of horse's hooves due to extreme impact and wear loads. The horse's hooves are repeatedly subjected to loadings during walking, trotting, running and jumping. In this research, we introduce a newly developed horseshoes made of polymeric composite materials. The horseshoes are placed inside the leather boot; it is a specially designed for horse. The process of making horseshoes and horse boots were discussed and the responses of the horse shoes as well as horses were analyzed. The horses were subjected to a series of testing, e.g., walking, trotting, and running. The result of the tests indicate that horseshoes and horse boots are quite strong, light, and safe to be used on horses. The response of horses shows that the horseshoe and boots are quite comfortable for them. This can be seen because there are no significant behavioral changes of the horse before and after wearing the boot. After being used to, it was shown that there is no damage or crack of the horseshoe. Therefore, it can be concluded that the composite horseshoe is safe and good to be used as horseshoe material.

Inside Fire Season

Inside Fire Season Joy Lanzendorfer (bio) saturday, october 26, 2019 acres on fire: 26,000 buildings destroyed: 77 I'm starting to get used to the idea of evacuating my home. This is the third time. The first was in 2017, when the Tubbs Fire tore through nearby Santa Rosa. The second time was voluntary, when we fled the smoke caused by the deadly Camp Fire. Now I find myself at risk again as the Kincade Fire burns near Geyserville, forty minutes away. Despite this, I'm not sure what to save should my house be engulfed in flames. My possessions become both worthless and precious at the same time and value splinters into different meanings: monetary, practical, historical, sentimental. I can live without all of it, but I have it around for a reason. Finally my husband and I agree on a rule: We won't take anything we can replace. In my office, I flip through a volume of high school poetry, cringing at every melodramatic word. It wouldn't be terrible if this burned, I think. Still, I throw it in the box alongside early short stories and elementary school diaries. The future version of myself, the one who has lost her house in a fire, feels oppressive. I don't want to disappoint her. This box of personal scribblings is small compared to my library, which fills an entire wall of my office. But most of those books can be replaced, so okay. My teenage poetry to be saved, Jane Austen to burn. In the bedroom, my husband has rigged up an air cleaner by taping a filter to a fan. Last year, the entire state was cloaked in smoke as the town of Paradise burned down, killing eighty-five people. I got sick—a sore throat and hacking cough that didn't go away until we drove to Oregon and camped in the woods. This time, we're being more careful, but I can still smell smoke, even inside. I contemplate my clothes. Will I want to save the nicer clothes that I've [End Page 98] collected over time but wear only for fancy occasions, or will I want comfortable clothes to wear in a shelter? I'll definitely want socks and underwear, although, to be fair, those can be replaced. I try Marie Kondo. What brings me joy? Having a bed and a house. Not evacuating. There are clothes I love because of the deals I got on them—the three-dollar leather boots from a thrift store, the three-hundred-dollar Kate Spade jeans I found on sale for fifty. I shove everything in bags. It can all be replaced, but finding clothes I like is hard. I don't even go into the kitchen. At this point, the Kincade Fire is on the other end of Sonoma County, but it's spreading so fast that authorities are evacuating most of the population, around two hundred thousand people. Everyone I know is affected. The closest evacuation is Valley Ford, an isolated hamlet connected to me by a long, dry country road. My home, Petaluma, is the first stop for evacuees. The fairground has been turned into an emergency shelter, but from what I hear, it's already full. Outside, I fill the chicken feeder in case we have to leave them behind. We can't bring chickens to a hotel room, so they'll have to take their chances. As I watch my three hens gobble the food, I suddenly sense someone behind me. When I whirl around, no one is there. A second later, the wind moves the leaves by the garage toward me, which is the wrong way. Usually the wind would move leaves away from me, toward the gate, not in the opposite direction, toward the chickens. I go into the backyard and stare up at the Japanese privet. The wind sloshes the branches in a way that seems backward. It looks strange in the smoky air, like the tree is drunk. For the second time, hurricane-force winds are causing fires in Sonoma County. It's not just that the winds are strong—although they are, ripping the...

Dynamics of artisanal gold mining in Gashaka local government area of Taraba State, Nigeria

Despite the fact that gold has been mined in Gashaka, Taraba State for over a century and has continued to present day in the area, not much is known about this activity and its associated environmental impact in the state. This study therefore, examines the dynamics of artisanal small scale gold mining activities in Gashaka Local Government Area of Taraba State, Nigeria. The study adopted survey research design approach which involves the use of direct fieldwork observation and interview of key informants. The findings of the study reveals that alluvial gold is mined along the streams and farmlands on the floodplains in the area. The gold exists as alluvial gold dust and nugget gold. The artisanal gold mining activity is carried out with rudimentary materials such as pickaxes, diggers, shovels, spades, pans and water pumps. Some of the local mining communities are Gayam, Jamtari, Karamti, Serti, Goje, Bodel, Mayo Jim, Bashishir, Kurr and Garbabi. The 3 major methods employed by artisanal gold miners in the study area include panning method, use of locally constructed devices and picking of gold nuggets or crystals from dug pit on the floodplain. The artisanal gold miners use sulphuric acid and white mercury in purifying the collected gold. The miners do not use any protective gears such as face masks, rubber gloves, leather boots or head coverings in the mining process. All golds collected from the mining activities are sold in the town (Serti/Baruwa). There is a ready market with both local buyers residing in the town and distant buyers coming from different parts of the country. Artisanal gold mining is an important livelihood activity in the study area despite the fact that many of them are carried out illegally. Based on the findings, the study recommended the establishment of a goldsmith industry, improvement in security in the local communities and organizing the artisanal gold miners into cooperative organizations.

Leather and Sheepskin Clothes in the Wedding Ceremonies of the Middle Dnieper Ukrainians in the Late 19th — First Half of the 20th Century

The article considers the use of handicraft sheepskin and leather clothes in the wedding ceremonies of the Middle Dnieper Ukrainians in the late 19th – early 20th century. It is established that they have performed important ritual and protective functions. In particular, the ritual function means that clothes served as ritual attributes. In gifting ceremonies, the sheepskin and leather clothes had both practical and special semantic meanings (for example, by giving boots to the bride’s mother, the groom showed his respect and appreciation). The protective function is connected with ancient beliefs about the power of ritual attributes and magic acts. In particular, the leather in the culture of East Slavic people is associated with birth and renewal, while the sheepskin was the symbol of wealth and fertility. In wedding ceremonies, the sheepskin was associated with a cloud, while the wheat grains were thrown over the bridal couple as a symbol of rain and fertility. We may define pre-wedding, wedding, and post-wedding rituals with sheepskin and leather clothes. The most widespread pre-wedding ritual was gifting leather boots to the fiancée and sewing a flower into the fiancé’s sheepskin hat on the engagement day. A sheepskin coat turned inside out played an essential role in the Ukrainian traditional wedding. The highest level of concentration of various magical symbols is retraced in the ceremony of send-off and reception of a newly married couple. In post-wedding rituals, the sheepskin coat was used for costume games to introduce such characters as a bride and a groom, animals, gypsies, etc.

The Epidemiology and Clinical Profile of Tinea Pedis among Occlusive-Foot Wearing Policemen in Osogbo, Nigeria: A Case-Control Study

Background and study aim ‎: Tinea pedis is a common affliction of the feet that causes maceration, scaliness, pruritus, pain, and ‎life quality impairment when untreated. TP affects individuals who wear occlusive footwear ‎disproportionately. A case-control design was made to determine the frequency, risk factors, and ‎implicated organisms among Policemen in Osogbo and compare with control‎. Patients and methods: ‎250 policemen and 250 non-uniform wearing control were recruited. Relevant clinical data and ‎physical examination were documented. TP was diagnosed clinically and confirmed by culture‎. Results: The frequency of clinically (12.4% vs. 8.4%) and mycologically (9.6% vs. 6.8%) diagnosed TP ‎were higher among Policemen than non-uniform wearing control. Interdigital TP was predominant, ‎followed by the moccasin type. One to two interdigital spaces were frequently affected. Occlusive ‎boots and socks wearing, prolonged use of socks, sharing of shower sponge, leather boot, sports ‎participation, and farming (p < 0.001) were significantly associated with TP in Policemen. Family ‎history of atopy (p < 0.001) and sharing socks (p=0.02) were significantly associated with TP in ‎controls. In multivariate analysis, odds of mycological positive TP were significantly increased in ‎male gender (OR = 6.479, 95% CI = 1.49-28.26, p=0.013), by farming or gardening (OR = 2.622, ‎‎95% CI = 2.54-15.11, p=0.009) and excessive sweating in feet or palm (OR = 6.197, 95% CI = ‎‎0.75-3.55, p < 0.001)‎. Conclusion: Tinea pedis remains a disease of public health importance among occlusive wearers. Determinants ‎of TP include male gender, farming, and excessive sweating in palms and feet.

Not Leather Boots but Dress Shoes: White-Collar Masculinity and the Far-Right Movement

Not Leather Boots but Dress Shoes: White-Collar Masculinity and the Far-Right Movement

Scribbles, Sorrows, and Russet Leather Boots: The Life of Louisa May Alcott by Liz Rosenberg

Scribbles, Sorrows, and Russet Leather Boots: The Life of Louisa May Alcott by Liz Rosenberg

Afterword

Afterword Elizabeth A. Povinelli It's rare that a volume of academic articles moves me; it's not that academic writings can't be harrowing. I can find theory devastating. Freud's The Ego and the Id (1961 [1923]) kills me every time I read it, so powerfully does he portray the pathos of the ego's attempt to survive the cruel space of its birth between the id and superego. Nor do I think my feelings flow from the topic of this special section of Anthropology Quarterly. Discussions of corporeal entanglements can be as dry as deserts and concepts as dull as can be. But in each of these articles are moments of profound commentaries of new forms of intimate proximity as they stretch the concept of love across regimes of governance. I was considering how to cluster these four articles, in the way one does when trying to contain and direct the endless possible directions a comment can take. I was musing, for instance, of dividing them according to a focus on sexuality and late liberal governance of intimacy, on the one hand (Weiss and Obadia), and intimate epistemologies of others, on the other (Rutherford and Crosson). But this way of sorting the texts is overwhelmed by the complex and multivalent settings in which the authors place their discussion. At stake in all of them is a question for our times—How do we become together differently when, as Lauren Berlant once said to me, nothing is more generic than our most intimate expressions, gestures, and languages? So, let me begin with Weiss. Any thought that her article would wind up proximate to Elaine Scarry's classic discussion of the body in pain was deeply misguided. The echoes of Scarry's work can be found in Berlant [End Page 1483] and Edelman's work on the unmaking of subjectivity in sex; or in a previous text of Candace Vogler published in a special issue of Critical Inquiry; and in the work of Leo Bersani. As Weiss notes, these theorists show that we do not come to know ourselves more deeply or profoundly in sexual encounters, rather they open us to the incoherency of self and identity. Weiss is, however, far less interested in understanding the self in sex, whether vanilla or rough, than in, quoting Eve Sedgwick, all the "loose ends and crossed ends" not contained in sex per se, or in the identities that have clustered around its acts. What about forms of intimacy outside sex, scientia sexualis as modernity's governing regime of subjectivity and truth? Did this science of sexuality overwhelm not a previous ars erotica nor even what Foucault called alliance, but something akin to kinship? If we turned away from sexuality and toward kinship and alliance, would we find coherence there, some clear algebra of human forms of relatedness and their obligated affects, albeit culturally defined? The center of Weiss's article might wind up in a BDSM dungeon, but it does not center on the dungeon. Fearing her sister's assault by a previous male partner in a BDSM bar, Weiss leads her sister into the dungeon. Once entering, Weiss conveys the stubborn threat of violence from a currently contained—but, the reader imagines, terrifying—stalker; the sounds a specific play of sexuality; its smells of "leather, latex, bleach, rubber, sex." What Weiss wants us to look at, feel, is not these smells, not "the naked man hung on a St. Andrews Cross, being flogged by a woman in a black corset and thigh high leather boots" (though, as if anticipating Rutherford, she is not asking us to look away from these either). Instead, the aspect of overwhelming proximity she wants us to consider is not in, what for some would be, overwhelming sexual altering, but in the supervalent thought—or forms of relatedness—that creates an intensity beyond the given elements in the actual scene. The boyfriend, the sister, the lover, the trans bouncer, the dungeon: each of these "thoughts" express a given ordering of the social field ("a field of enmeshment and imbrication") and release potentialities for a different ordering. Like Chandra Mohanty, Weiss comes to worry whether "through identitarian...

Conflitos: Fotografia e violência política no Brasil, 1889–1964

Former Brazilian president Washington Luís's famous dictum, “The social question is a matter for the police,” expressed the sentiment of elite politicians during the last years of Brazil's First Republic (1889–1930), when few citizens were eligible to vote and coffee barons and other oligarchs ruled the country with an iron fist. The dire conditions of former slaves, rural peasants, and the urban poor—both freed people of color and recent European immigrants—generated popular dissent of all kinds, which was quickly met with the police's baton and the soldier's bullet. The state's brutal response to all forms of protest largely reflected the defense of a rigidly hierarchical and unequal society and a political system that offered few channels for effective legal petitions to power holders by those seeking social justice.This volume captures the nature of that political violence through an examination of social conflicts from the beginning of the republic in 1889 to the 1964 military coup d'état, drawing on a rich array of beautifully reproduced images from the Moreira Salles Institute, the largest and most diverse private photography collection in Brazil. Carefully curated and thoughtfully framed through essays opening the book's three sections by leading scholars—Angela Alonso, Angela de Castro Gomes, and Heloisa Murgel Starling—the book documents regional revolts, naval mutinies, pacification campaigns, and diverse insurrections.Some of these social conflicts have produced iconic images of the Brazilian state's callousness. One becomes freshly unsettled in observing the empty stares of the 400 African-descended women huddled together, many with their heads shrouded with rough peasant cloth, who had just survived the Canudos massacre of the 1896–97 federal government campaigns against religious leader Antônio Conselheiro and his followers (pp. 80–81). The worn faces and the dark skin of resting soldiers in the municipal park of Itapira during the São Paulo revolt of 1932 against the central government, who seem exhausted from marching or perhaps a recent skirmish, reveal their humble social origins (pp. 248–49). Throughout this work one notes how the state time and again forcibly mobilized the poor to fight the poor.In Brazil, as elsewhere, photography in the early twentieth century became an instrument of the victors, documenting the demise of the vanquished and circulating those images in newspapers and other print vehicles, and later in newsreels, to show the power of the state and the consequences of rebellion. The image of the severed heads of rural bandit Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, popularly known as Lampião, and ten of his men, displayed artfully on four steps at the entrance to a rural home with leather half-moon-shaped cangaceiro hats, ammunition belts, and two Singer sewing machines meticulously placed nearby, sends a clear message to the viewer (p. 295). Yet rebels also employed the same medium to promote their strength, power, and persistence, as in the posed photo published in a popular newspaper of Lampião's partner, Maria Bonita, elegantly seated somewhere in the barren sertão affectionately petting a dog, or in the group picture of leaders of the Prestes Column, from the late 1920s, sitting comfortably with their legs crossed wearing high leather boots and conveying a calm determination to continue their trek through the backlands of Brazil in their challenge to the country's ruling elites (pp. 210–11, 303).Cameras also recorded physical destruction of both rebels and the state. In a surrealistic photograph, a boy and a girl sitting in what seems to be a living room whose ceiling has been shattered by federal troop bombardments during the São Paulo revolt gaze passively into the lens with rubble all around them (p. 185). Out-of-focus 16 millimeter frames by an amateur filmmaker register the burning of the National Student Union headquarters in Rio de Janeiro during the 1964 military takeover (pp. 394–95). Papers are scattered all over the ground. Two young men are hurling something (are they rocks or firebombs?) into the burning building.The authors of the essays show the varied political uses of these images as they appeared in magazines and newspapers. Their narratives leave no doubt that one of the purposes of this collection is to reveal the raw nature of political violence that challenged “the social question”—that is, the demands for economic, social, and regional inclusion for those cast to the margins by sectors of society and a state that favored other social classes.One regrets that the volume stopped in 1964. Perhaps the images of Brazil's most recent military dictatorship are too familiar to a generation of intellectuals who might purchase the book. Yet in a moment when elected politicians and a new president have become dictatorship deniers, those photos documenting police repression and brutality during the two decades of military rule regrettably will become germane again and more potent, perhaps, than they were in the immediate past.

Food and Culture in Narratives of the Canadian North

Food and Culture in Narratives of the Canadian North Pam Perkins (bio) In the last months of 1826, British newspaper readers were shocked and titillated by the terrible story of James Sanger, who had been making his living over the previous year by displaying what he claimed were two “Esquimaux” children brought to England by William Parry.1 He had, in fact, bought the children, either from their down-and-out father or from their maternal aunt (newspaper accounts are not consistent) and had then beaten and terrorized them into demonstrating their supposed “Esquimaux” culture in what would be the most efficient way possible for an English audience of the day: declining what their eager viewers would consider palatable food, they ate raw meat instead. These abused children provide, most obviously and most poignantly, a glimpse of the extreme vulnerability of those at the margins of early nineteenth-century British society. Yet the ways in which the villainous Mr. Sanger foregrounds and exploits contemporary prurient fascination with the food culture of what is now the Canadian north is also worth attention. Presenting members of other cultures as being willing [End Page 204] to eat what British readers would not recognize as food was a fairly usual method of implying British cultural superiority in early nineteenth-century travel and exploration literature,2 and it was a trope that, as Sanger’s story illustrates, translated easily into popular culture. Even so, while exploration narratives established the heroism and desperation of the explorers in part by depicting them as driven to eat whatever was necessary to keep themselves alive,3 the willingness to consume something other than what the average British reader would consume as food turns out to be a deeply unreliable marker of any supposed division between “self ” and “other.” Sanger’s assumption that his countrymen would be fascinated by the spectacle of “Esquimaux” meals would have been shaped in part by prior visits by Inuit to England, most famously that of the family who accompanied the fur trader George Cartwright when he travelled back to London from Labrador in 1772 and who (according to an article published in the Caledonian Mercury on 10 August 1774) attracted crowds to watch them as they supposedly ate tallow candles for breakfast. A more immediate context for fascination with the food of the Canadian north would, however, have been provided by a very different source: John Franklin’s account of his desperate attempt to stay alive while travelling back from the shores of the Arctic Ocean in the autumn of 1821. Decades before Franklin vanished into the Arctic on his final expedition, A Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea (1823) had made him a celebrity. And part of what set this book apart from the vast quantity of other material on polar expeditions that was being published around that time4 was its vivid, graphic account of Franklin’s increasingly painful quest to find anything resembling food to keep himself and his party alive as winter set in. Failing in most of their attempts to fish or hunt game, they scrounged what few late berries they could find, scraped lichen from rocks, scavenged carrion bones and scraps of sinew and hide, and, when all else failed, boiled their own leather boots for soup. Here, eating something not quite recognizable as food takes on a completely different meaning from that which Sanger created through his spectacle of the miserably exploited children. Rather than using unpalatable food to evoke “savagery,” Franklin presents his grimly meagre diet as a form of heroism, implying that he and his party demonstrate grit, resilience, and ingenuity by scraping together sufficient calories to survive their journey across an unwelcoming land. Inevitably, however, ideas of heroic endurance become a little more complicated as one looks more closely at what and how the party ate. The most obvious complication comes in a delicately evasive reference to cannibalism, which apparently contributed to the survival of some of the weaker members of the expedition. According to John Richardson, the party’s doctor, he and two of the junior British officers were able to regain enough strength to continue the trek only after...

Effects of wearing gumboots and leather lace-up work boots on plantar loading when walking on a simulated underground coal mine surface

This study investigated the effects of wearing two standard underground coal mining work boots (a gumboot and a leather lace-up boot) on plantar pressures when participants walked across a simulated underground coal mine surface. In-shoe plantar pressures were recorded as 20 male participants walked at a self-selected pace across a hard dirt surface while wearing each boot type. Walking in a gumboot, compared to a leather lace-up boot, resulted in increased plantar pressures and forces, particularly under the heel and forefoot areas. Increased plantar pressures and forces over a long time period is not only a risk factor for painful foot conditions, such as ulcers but also overuse injuries such as stress fractures. The leather lace-up boot might be a better safety footwear option for underground coal miners working under these conditions.

Fractional Contribution of Wildland Firefighters' Personal Protective Equipment on Physiological Strain.

Activities performed by wildland firefighters are carried out wearing a personal protective equipment (PPE). Although the PPE protects workers from a wide variety of hazards, it may increase their physiological response and limit their performance. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of the protective clothing (PPC) and the rest of the PPE elements (i.e., helmet, neck shroud, gloves, goggles, and mid-calf leather boots) on the wildland firefighters’ thermophysiological response during a moderate-intense exercise. Six male wildland firefighters performed, in a counterbalanced order, a 120 min graded exercise test wearing three different clothing configurations: (i) a traditional short sports gear (SG), (ii) a PPC, and (iii) a complete firefighters’ PPE. Trials were conducted on separate days at the same time of the day (12:00–15:00 h) and under climate-controlled conditions (∼30°C and ∼30% relative humidity). Heart rate, respiratory gas exchange, gastrointestinal and skin temperature, blood lactate concentration were recorded throughout the tests. Additionally, parameters of heat balance were estimated. Exercise time was shorter (p < 0.001) wearing the PPE (62.4 ± 13.3 min) than with the PPC (115.5 ± 5.0 min) and SG (118.2 ± 20.7 min). The increment of gastrointestinal temperature with the PPE (1.8 ± 0.3°C) was greater (p < 0.05) than the observed in PPC (1.2 ± 0.6°C) and SG (1.0 ± 0.2°C). The use of PPC increased (p < 0.05) subjects’ metabolic demand and skin temperature versus SG during the last 20 min of the test. The sweat retention in the PPE (1,045.7 ± 214.7 g) and PPC (978.3 ± 330.6 g) was significantly higher than that obtained in the SG (510.0 ± 210.0 g). Sweat efficiency decreased (p < 0.05) in the following order: PPE (45.6 ± 18.3%), PPC (64.3 ± 7.8%), and SG (79.3 ± 7.0%). These results highlight the importance of the PPE elements in the subjects’ thermal strain. The reduction in the sweat evaporation produced by the PPE, together with the ensemble mass caused a substantial increase in the subjects’ thermophysiological response. As a consequence the performance was reduced by ∼50%.

Does the Ponseti Method for Clubfoot Treatment Stand Up to the March of Time?: Commentary on an article by Lewis E. Zionts, MD, et al.: "Sixty Years On: Ponseti Method for Clubfoot Treatment Produces High Satisfaction Despite Inherent Tendency to Relapse".

Commentary What can we advise parents about the long-term results expected from the correction of their child’s clubfoot deformity with the Ponseti method? This meticulous 5-year review tells us that there’s a 62% chance of a relapse and a 38% rate of additional surgery (tendon transfer), but that by the age of 5 years, their child should have a cosmetically acceptable, functional foot. These findings are similar to those of the Iowa group1 some 55 years ago and those of Bor et al.2 in 2009. These analyses are important not only from a clinical-treatment point of view but also for prenatal counseling. I well recall being asked to counsel parents of a 4-month fetus in whom a clubfoot had been diagnosed on ultrasound. The parents were requesting an abortion on the basis of the foot deformity! Statistics from this review would have been a great help in reassuring them that their son’s foot deformity could be corrected; ultimately, it was corrected, as they fortunately did not terminate the pregnancy3. What about the 10 years to follow-up at skeletal maturity? We were told by the Iowa group that few relapses occurred after the age of 5 years, but this needs substantiation as well. The prevalence and severity of clubfeet also vary in different geographic areas. In regions where clubfeet are familial, such as Middle Eastern countries or areas with Hawaiian or Canadian aboriginals, the clubfeet are often more rigid, akin to syndromic clubfeet. We need more long-term follow-up data from these areas to assess the global efficacy of the Ponseti method. Also, one of the problems in any review of clubfeet is trying to compare the various severities of the deformities. Even the idiopathic group in this review had variations in severity. The more severe the deformity, the greater the relapse rate and the greater the need for tibialis anterior transfers. The tibialis anterior transfer as recommended by the authors (transfer of the whole tendon under the extensor retinaculum to the lateral cuneiform, held by a cushioned button on the sole of the foot) is an excellent technique and one that I have used with great success for decades. What is still a gray zone, however, is the best timing for the tibialis anterior transfer. My opinion has always been to not risk leaving the transfer until it is too late. If the foot still tends to be in persistent varus after the patient reaches the age of 3 years, proceed with the transfer while the foot is still growing rapidly and can respond to the valgus force of the transfer. Post-cast bracing with a Denis-Browne or similar splint is a critical part of the Ponseti method. Attention to detail here is as important as the casting phase is. Brace failure is often the cause of relapse, in my experience. It is of the utmost importance to ensure parent buy-in via a heart-to-heart discussion with both parents, preferably with the clinician, to emphasize the importance of brace wear in the successful treatment of their child’s clubfoot. If the parents are not on board with the brace treatment, their negative feelings will be subtly transmitted to the child and brace rejection will occur. In older children, to enhance the efficacy of brace management, the child should sleep in only leather boots (never in Oxford-type shoes, as they will ultimately be kicked off) until the boots essentially become part of their pajamas. The feet are then held straight forward on the brace for another week or 2 and then are gradually externally rotated to 45°. A 6 to 8-inch (15 to 20-cm) bar has a comfortable width, and the bar should be bent 30° to 40° convex plantarward to increase the valgus force on the foot with each kick. In older children, a bedclothes elevator can be used to stop the brace from getting tangled in the bedclothes. Although the Ponseti method for the correction of talipes equinovarus has been with us for >50 years, we have been slow learners because it has been a positive triumph of technique over reason. One has had to see it, experience it, and read follow-ups such as this one to appreciate the efficacy of the Ponseti method. Has the Ponseti method for clubfoot treatment stood the test of time? Yes, at least up to the 5-year follow-up. We are now awaiting the 10-year results and the results from patients who have attained skeletal maturity for the final answer to this question. We have more yet to learn from follow-ups such as this one!

THE PILOT'S INSTRUCTIONS

9 3 R T H E P I L O T ’ S I N S T R U C T I O N S K A R E N E . B E N D E R We were sitting in the plane, waiting to back out from the gate, while the flight attendants prepared the cabin for takeo√. Perplexing airplane sounds arose from unknown locations – inside the plane, out on the tarmac, in the air. It was afternoon – through the small window the sky appeared blue and clear in a way that was both joyful and aggressive. The pilot made an announcement. ‘‘Good afternoon, everyone. Please turn o√ your phones or put them in airplane mode.’’ I looked up. My fellow passengers were packed in their seats, hunched over their electronic devices as though they were all engaged in a form of prayer. I listened to the pilot; I turned o√ my phone. The cabin door slammed shut. We pretended lack of interest in the person sitting next to us, though of course brimmed with many perhaps untoward thoughts about that person, trying not to touch each other’s elbows or thighs. We all faced the same way. East. We were concerned about not reaching our destination. I didn’t like flying, being strapped into a seat, gripping the plastic armrests as I looked at the world we had been separated from, briefly, far below. I sat by the window; the passenger to my right was texting. She 9 4 B E N D E R Y was long and thin, a piece of stretched gum, and appeared to be in her twenties, with short dark hair and a streak of blue on one side. The precise waviness of her hair made me think of my sister, Janine. This thought passed through me and then vanished. Her leather boots were nicer than my sneakers. She gazed at her phone with a contemplative, tender expression. Her fingers flew. The flight attendant strode by, tossing us tiny, bright packets of pretzels. ‘‘Turn o√ small electronic devices and put your phones on airplane mode,’’ she said, glancing at the passengers. How casual she was! As cheerful as carbonation, she trusted this plane, this world. There was no formal examination of the phones. It was assumed that we understood the danger. I was embarrassed that I did not. And I saw danger everywhere. In fact, I had had a dream the night before that the world was about to end. It was an unoriginal movie end, with galactic disturbance and a star moving too close to earth, but everyone knew that these were the last few days of life. It was unclear what horrible death awaited us, but it could involve fire engulfing our sweet, fragile bodies, and the sky was turning an orange gray, and we didn’t know how much longer we would be able to breathe. I woke up sad and trembling. What horrible truth was the dream trying to tell me, which was sometimes a more frightening idea than the dream itself? What did the dream know that I did not? But nothing came to me. So I just got up and made breakfast, the fried eggs lacy and sizzling, bubbling in a way that reassured me. Most of the passengers followed the flight attendant’s directions with gracious obedience; I saw other phones go dark, little dying people releasing their last breath. The stranger beside me texted with a manic quality that was almost sexual in its focus, until she saw the smiling flight attendant walk by again, at which time she placed her phone facedown on her leg. It was a brilliant and somehow diabolical gesture. When the flight attendant had moved far enough away to miss her illicit activity, she picked it up and resumed texting. Her phone was not o√. It was also not on airplane mode. Oh my god, I thought, she will kill us all. The pilot’s instructions should, I assumed, be followed for a reason. I was a polite person. But I did have some people I loved whom I had scrabbled together, some family members and a few T...

Changes in Temperature of the Equine Skin Surface Under Boots after Exercise

AbstractEquine distal limbs have evolved to have long tendons coupled with strong, tendinous muscles positioned proximally on the leg, thus enabling the horse to achieve highly efficient locomotion. The tradeoff is, that the tendons are left unprotected and prone to injuries, therefore they are often protected by various boots and bandages, which may insulate the limbs and cause hyperthermia in the underlying tendons. The actual mechanism for the degeneration of tendons is currently unknown, but damaging temperature increases due to hysteresis in hardworking horses has been suggested as a possible cause. This study compared the skin temperature of the palmar/ plantar metacarpal/metatarsal regions of the limbs after exercise with various types of boots and bandages - primarily tendon boots, leather boots and fleece bandages. Several horses were measured before and after the completion of a standard exercise test. The boots or bandages were removed immediately after the exercise and the temperature was measured at 3 separate places with A Testo 850i infrared thermometer. The differences in temperature increases between the various kinds of boots were compared. The results showed a significantly higher average temperature increase in horses wearing boots or bandages compared to the bare limb. The fleece bandages seemed to accumulate the highest amount of heat, followed by the tendon boots.

John Hunter's operation for popliteal aneurysm.

An aneurysm is defined as a "sac communicating with the lumen of an artery" and the treatment of the various types of this disease has intrigued surgeons through the ages. Aneurysms of the popliteal artery today are fairly uncommon. However, in the 18th century they were quite frequently encountered, many of them in coach drivers. We can only surmise that this was the result of repetitive trauma to the artery, already the seat of arteriosclerosis, against the rim at the top of the long leather riding boot which was worn at that time.