Shaved Head Research Articles

A qualitative evaluation of factors influencing Tumor Treating fields (TTFields) therapy decision making among brain tumor patients and physicians

BackgroundTumor Treating Fields (TTFields) Therapy is an FDA-approved therapy in the first line and recurrent setting for glioblastoma. Despite Phase 3 evidence showing improved survival with TTFields, it is not uniformly utilized. We aimed to examine patient and clinician views of TTFields and factors shaping utilization of TTFields through a unique research partnership with medical neuro oncology and medical social sciences.MethodsAdult glioblastoma patients who were offered TTFields at a tertiary care academic hospital were invited to participate in a semi-structured interview about their decision to use or not use TTFields. Clinicians who prescribe TTFields were invited to participate in a semi-structured interview about TTFields.ResultsInterviews were completed with 40 patients with a mean age of 53 years; 92.5% were white and 60% were male. Participants who decided against TTFields stated that head shaving, appearing sick, and inconvenience of wearing/carrying the device most influenced their decision. The most influential factors for use of TTFields were the efficacy of the device and their clinician’s opinion. Clinicians (N = 9) stated that TTFields was a good option for glioblastoma patients, but some noted that their patients should consider the burdens and benefits of TTFields as it may not be the desired choice for all patients.ConclusionsThis is the first study to examine patient decision making for TTFields. Findings suggest that clinician support and efficacy data are among the key decision-making factors. Properly understanding the path to patients’ decision making is crucial in optimizing the use of TTFields and other therapeutic decisions for glioblastoma patients.

Hook Fabric Electroencephalography Electrode for Brain Activity Measurement without Shaving the Head.

In this research, novel electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes were developed to detect high-quality EEG signals without the requirement of conductive gels, skin treatments, or head shaving. These electrodes were created using electrically conductive hook fabric with a resistance of 1 Ω/sq. The pointed hooks of the conductive fabric establish direct contact with the skin and can penetrate through hair. To ensure excellent contact between the hook fabric electrode and the scalp, a knitted-net EEG bridge cap with a bridging effect was employed. The results showed that the hook fabric electrode exhibited lower skin-to-electrode impedance compared to the dry Ag/AgCl comb electrode. Additionally, it collected high-quality signals on par with the standard wet gold cups and commercial dry Ag/AgCl comb electrodes. Moreover, the hook fabric electrode displayed a higher signal-to-noise ratio (33.6 dB) with a 4.2% advantage over the standard wet gold cup electrode. This innovative electrode design eliminates the need for conductive gel and head shaving, offering enhanced flexibility and lightweight characteristics, making it ideal for integration into textile structures and facilitating convenient long-term monitoring.

We Have All Been Through a Lot: Use of Vulnerability and Self as a Healing Bridge.

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Personal AccountsFull AccessWe Have All Been Through a Lot: Use of Vulnerability and Self as a Healing BridgeDiane Roston, M.D.Diane RostonSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:13 Oct 2022https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.20220431AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail “Doc, did you ever ride?” Dan asked as I walked him into my office where he had been my psychiatric patient for several years.The question caught me off guard. I usually keep my personal life outside of my office door. I noticed that he was holding something in his hand and said, “Tell me about what you brought with you today.”Dan gripped a small framed photograph between his working-man’s hands. “This is the bike I’ve been telling you about. That color isn’t pink,” he said, pointing to the front fender. “It’s fuchsia. See how fine that trim looks? It’s not pink, I’m sure of that. My dad wouldn’t have rode a pink bike. This bike is the reason I stay alive.”My late husband and I had ridden a motorcycle together once many years ago—before we were married, before my husband became severely depressed, before he gave up. What was the reason I stayed alive after my husband went into the woods with a shotgun and never came out?Over the past year, Dan had pulled through a serious episode of depression that included thoughts of suicide. There had been appointments after which I feared that Dan would not live to meet with me again.Dan continued. “When I grew up, my dad and me got real close. We rode bikes together. Got tight. When he hit 50 and got too sick to ride, I’d ride by his place on my motorcycle and stop on the porch for a beer. One day, he got serious on me. I followed him into his trailer and sat down across from him at the small table. ‘I’m not getting better,’ he told me. ‘You’ve got two choices: you can keep my bike, or you can sell it and keep the cash. That’s what you have to choose.’”Dan pointed to the photograph. “I couldn’t get rid of my dad’s Harley. It was his pride and joy.”“Nice bike.” I pointed at the lanky man with the ponytail wearing jeans and an unbuttoned shirt posing in front of the bike. “That’s your dad?”“Yes. That’s my father.” He held the photograph out from his chest and looked at it with reverence. “So when I get to thinking it’s not worth living, I look here”—he pointed to the motorcycle—“and then I have to stay alive. For my dad. I have to take care of my dad’s Harley.”I had been relieved in recent appointments to hear Dan talk about how he had replaced some of the motorcycle parts with original parts so that in the future—it was reassuring that he was planning for the future—he could restore his father’s motorcycle to its original form.As I looked at the picture, I was taken back to that ride on a June day many years ago. I remember feeling the sun warm my bare arms and holding my husband as if I would never let go of him.For a time after he died, I did not let go. I left his sandals on the mudroom floor, his reading glasses by his side of the bed, and his coveralls on the nail in his wood shop, and I waited for him to return. For months, I waited.Slowly, I learned to let go of that wish and to hold on to the love. I let go of the sandals and reading glasses and left the coveralls on the nail to remind myself of the many hours he spent building shelves for all our books.Slowly, the full force of the memory of that ride returned. How much we loved! What joy we shared! For that joy, I stayed alive. For this memory, I was grateful.Dan pulled off his cap, stroked his shaved head, and repositioned the cap just so. Again he asked, “You ever ride?”Sometimes self-disclosure feels right. At that moment, I felt that sharing something about my own experience would deepen our human connection. We had both been through a lot. “Yes,” I said. “I rode once. On the back of a motorcycle, actually. Holding tight to someone I loved. That ride took my breath away.”“That’s good, Doc. Then you know what I mean. You know just what I mean.”I smiled. Yes, I knew.Send correspondence to Dr. Roston ([email protected]). Patricia E. Deegan, Ph.D., and William C. Torrey, M.D., are editors of this column. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byNone Volume 74Issue 3 March 01, 2023Pages 324-324 Metrics KeywordsAdministration & managementPsychiatry/generalPDF download History Published online 13 October 2022 Published in print 1 March 2023

A Study on Children Customary Clothes in Malay Head Shaving - Cukur Jambul Ceremony for The Malay Royal Tradition

This Study aims to discover and document the clothing customarily worn by children during the Malay head shaving ceremony (Cukur Jambul), a tradition observed by the Malay Royal family. The head shaving ceremony is a unique Malay tradition and custom, relating to the birth of a new baby into the royal family and the Tradisi Agung custom. This study emphasizes Mayer Schapiro’s theory of style in the context of artefacts or material cultural objects. It applies a qualitative method due to its flexibility in recording the views of informants in relation to observations. Specifically, this research considers a collection of photographs taken during head shaving ceremonies. The observation on Malay royal family tradition continues to uphold the uses of Songket (“The queen of textiles”) in most of their ceremonies until today. Overall, this study will provide an invaluable source of information about Malay custom and culture. It will be of benefit to the Malay royal family, researchers, academics, scholars, students, cultural archivists, and museum curators interested in studying and preserving this subject and tradition.

Theater of Shame: The rise of online humiliation

Theater of ShameThe rise of online humiliation Charlie Tyson (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution On the internet, people can be selected at random and held up for the instant scorn of thousands. [End Page 122] men punish with shame," wrote the sixteenth-century poet Thomas Wyatt. It is the "greatest punishment on earth, yea! greater than death." Other forms of punishment—torture, solitary confinement—may do more to break the body and spirit. But the primitive power of shaming, and the reliability with which shame punishments are administered informally by the community as well as formally by the state, make it an especially disturbing mode of discipline. The ubiquity of shame punishments across many cultures—from the penal tattooing of [End Page 123] slaves and criminals in ancient Rome to the stocks, pillory, and cucking stool of early modern England to the practice in modern China, only recently outlawed, of roping together suspected sex workers and forcing them to march barefoot through the streets—alerts us to the likelihood that we are dealing with a human propensity that can never be banished, only contained. Shame is a consequence of many punishments. Being branded as a criminal, a deviant, or an outcast, whether with a hot iron or an orange jumpsuit, inevitably entails a humiliating loss of status. But there is a class of punishments in which shaming is the primary objective. In Shakespeare's England, for instance, the stocks and the pillory were only part of an elaborate roster of humiliations. Convicted persons, writes the historian Keith Thomas, might be branded, whipped, mutilated, carted through the streets to the sound of bells, stripped half-naked or dressed in embarrassing clothes, made to wear placards describing their offenses, or forced to ride backwards on a donkey while onlookers jeered. The feature that unites these penalties is the exhibition of the offender to the public. Shame punishments are a kind of theater in which the suffering is real and the audience is encouraged to participate. At their core is the agony of coerced display. Humiliating costumes and props or various forms of disfigurement (a shaved head, a sliced-off ear, an insignia carved into the forehead) underscore the kinship between shaming rituals and the structure of drama. Public shaming is one of humanity's most revealing categories of spectacle, a radical form of theater in which the community expresses its moral views by inflicting real injuries. In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault claimed that from the nineteenth century onward, punishment for crimes became more secret, less theatrical. In post-Revolutionary France, the open cart transporting convicts to the guillotines was replaced by a closed carriage. At last, the guillotine was moved inside prison walls. "Punishment," he wrote, "had gradually ceased to be a spectacle." The cruelest punishments in contemporary American society indeed occur away from public view, in prisons, detention camps, [End Page 124] and border facilities. But the public's hunger for disciplinary spectacles has not dwindled for lack of food. In the digital world that we are building together, we have given rituals of public correction a central place. An ambient culture of shame saturates the online social environment. On such platforms as Twitter or TikTok or YouTube the risk of humiliation is ever present. Some online performers have neutralized the threat of cringe through stylized self-embarrassment: comedians riff on their own narcissism; dancers engage in cartoonish slapstick, reminiscent of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin (as if, on the internet, the history of cinema is replaying itself), ensuring that they pie themselves in the face before anyone else can. The rest of us, fated to play "ourselves" before an unknown and fickle audience, must improvise other defenses. Cancel culture, callouts, online harassment, mob justice, accountability: all of these terms refer to structurally similar phenomena (the targeting of the one by the many, in front of an audience), yet none offers a neutral description. What is decried as "cancel culture" is sometimes just spirited criticism; what is endorsed as "accountability" is sometimes gratuitous and cruel. Given the confusion and sophistry that mar discussion of online shaming, it is worth keeping two facts in mind. The first...

Harmful practices: Use of insecticide to treat a child with tinea capitis

The global call for the general public and citizenry to go back to the grass-root had led to a mass increased desire for the people all over the world to go back to farming. In many localities, most available land spaces has been cleared of bushes and converted to farmlands. The different national governments has been supportive, helped in providing fertilizers at reduced costs, gave out soft loans to these farmers and even allowed their soil scientists to test the various soil samples and thereby advised on the best crops to plant locally. But the widespread bush clearing has led to changes in the bio-diversity of the lands and the possible eradication or migration of several species of wild animals and plants types. Also, these clearing of bushes causes exposure of the topsoil and leads to increased erosion and landslides in vulnerable localities. More importantly, the increased farming practices leads to the proliferation of several kinds of pests on these farms produces which in many ways impacted negatively on the final yields of the farms. This has also led to the manufacturing of several kinds of pesticides that are to be used on these farms. These pesticides contain several kinds of chemicals that are active against different types of farm pests, but that do not harm the crops themselves. These pesticides were meant for use only on the farms and not in the homes, but they have now been found for other non-indicated uses. They have been reported to be used in family homes to eradicate rodents, mosquitoes, cockroaches and even bed-bugs amongst several others. The index case report is that of the use of one such named pesticide to treat tinea capitis on a young boy by his parents with a devastating end report. Apparently, the child’s parent had applied the said pesticide on the cleanly shaved head of the boy on a daily basis for several days but only reported to the hospital when events had taken a turn for the worst. These harmful practices are seen in many communities with devastating consequences.

Pata Negra

Pata Negra Alexia Arthurs (bio) Gabrielle said I was always pining over a white girl, which wasn’t true, except for that night, when I was in fact pining over a white girl named James. Though none of us were girls anymore. Gabrielle and I were twenty-nine. That’s what I hated about being close to someone who had known me since I was fourteen. I felt like I could never be anyone else to her. Or anyone else to me? Was I seeing myself through her eyes or seeing myself as myself because with her I was the truest version of me? No matter. We were in Mexico City, in a bar called Pata Negra, and Gabrielle was grinding against a black man on the dance floor. I rarely saw black people in Mexico City, except in neighborhoods like this one and the one next door, Roma Norte, where tourists, expats, and artistic, affluent Mexicans were plentiful. We’d been standing at the bar, sipping mezcal cocktails, admiring the bodies dancing to reggaeton. I noticed when the black man walked in. I watched as he made a beeline for my friend. My back against the bar, I watched them dance. Maybe everyone imagined what their friends were like in bed—the sounds they made, how they moved, the power dynamics of their fucking. I memorized the details Gabrielle had told me about what she liked: once, she said that she liked to have sex like a man threw her out the window and ran down the stairs to pick up her bruised body from the sidewalk and continued to fuck her, whatever that analogy meant. When we were twenty, I visited her in college. Deep in the closet, I refused to make anything of how I stared at her breasts when she undressed to hop in the shower. She kept saying she was on a diet since she’d gained twelve pounds, but it looked like she’d gained all of it in her breasts. That night, lying in bed next to her, I jilled off while she slept. I’ve always wondered whether she knew. Gabrielle, who would correct you if you called her Gabby with a “That’s not my name,” was the most self-assured person I knew. Once, she told me, “I know I’m not the cutest girl,” by way of an explanation when a man turned down the advances of a more conventionally beautiful woman at a party because he wanted to “chill” with Gabrielle. [End Page 23] But I found her beautiful too—her angular, freckled face, her long legs, and how her body curved at the best places. I knew without her telling me that her dancing partner wasn’t as tall as she liked, though she admired his broad chest and smooth, dark skin. They held each other in an easy way, talking as they swayed. I wondered what they were saying to each other. A man came up to me, tall and handsome, his English accented, probably an Argentinean. I shook my head. “I’m waiting for my friend,” I said. He moved on quickly. I caught Gabrielle looking at me, shaking her head because I was being antisocial. Pata Negra was suddenly packed with the usual hipster Mexicans, expats, and tourists. To my left, a British man with a face full of piercings was saying that Mexico City was to become the next fashion epicenter, but his date, an American white woman with a shaved head and big hoop earrings, disagreed, saying that the city had earthquakes too frequently to become the epicenter of anything. Just last week, I had stood in my bedroom doorway in the early hours of the morning, waiting for the building to stop shaking before my housemate and I ran down the five flights of stairs to join my neighbors in the street. I’d never felt the earth move before—it terrified and thrilled me. When it had seemed certain that the building wouldn’t fall, we went back to our beds. I ordered another drink. The British man and American woman were debating whether it was a good sign that...

INNV-13. UNDERSTANDING FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE THE DECISION OF ACCEPTING TUMOR TREATING FIELDS (TTF) THERAPY

Abstract BACKGROUND Tumor Treating Fields (TTF) Therapy is an FDA-approved therapy in the first line and recurrent setting for glioblastoma. Despite Phase 3 evidence showing improved survival, it is not uniformly utilized despite its availability. This qualitative prospective study interviewed glioblastoma patients to better understand key driving factors for decision making. METHODS Adult glioblastoma patients who were offered TTF and who signed IRB approved consent were included. Patients participated in a one-time recorded interview with the researchers from the Northwestern University Department of Medical Social Sciences and were asked about factors shaping their decision to use or not use TTF. RESULTS 40 patients were enrolled with a mean age of 53 years, 92.5% were white and 60% were male. Of the 33 (82.5%) participants who accepted TTF, 23 (69.7%) reported their physician recommending TTF, 8 (24.2%) reported physician neutrality toward TTF, and 2 (6.1%) said their physician advised against TTF. Among the 7 (17.5%) participants who did not choose TTF, 4 (57.1%) reported physician neutrality, 2 (28.6%) reported that their physician advised against TTF, and 1 (14.3%) reported that their physician recommended TTF. Participants who decided against TTF stated that head shaving, appearing sick, and inconvenience of wearing/carrying the device most influenced their decision. For those choosing to use TTF, the most influential factors were extending life and following their doctor's opinion; other factors included level of familial support and the clinical evidence supporting TTF. DISCUSSION This clinical study was a collaboration with the Medical Social Sciences team to better understand the key factors that drive patient decision making with TTF. Findings suggest that physician support and positive Phase 3 results are among the key decision-making factors. Properly understanding the path to patients’ decision making is crucial in optimizing use of TTF and other therapeutic decisions for glioblastoma patients.

Translation Strategy of Cultural Aspects in Lat Cartoons: The Kampung Boy

This paper discusses the translation of the Malay cultural elements into Japanese by focusing on translation techniques used by the translator in a cartoon The Kampung Boy (Budak Kampung カ ン ポ ン ボ ー イ). The Kampung Boy is a graphic biographic book of the famous cartoonist, Dato 'Mohd Nor Khalid or better known as Dato' Lat, who appealed to the life of his childhood in a village in the Kinta Valley, Perak, in the 1950s and early in the year 1960, as well as the stories of family life in the rural and traditional customs. The book was first published in Malaysia in Malay and English in 1979 and was translated into several languages ​​, including Japanese. This paper is a qualitative study using comparative methods, analyzing cultural details based on translation theories, semantic theory, and sociolinguistic theory. Comparisons are also conducted to identify translation strategies adopted by translators in translating cultural elements in this work. This paper is guided by the translation strategy submitted by translation figures such as Newmark (1988) and Abdullah & Ainon Mohd (2007). Six (6) samples of cultural elements have been selected, i.e., related to birth, head shaving, circumcision, recite the Quran, traditional wedding, and games. The findings show that translators tend to use loan techniques with explanatory notes compared to other six (6) samples from twelve (12) selected samples. The sample translated with this loan strategy is a cultural element in custom culture/ideology. At the same time, five (5) samples use replacement techniques, and one (1) sample using a generalization strategy.

The Annotations

The Annotations Blair Hurley (bio) In the monastery at Saône-et-Loire there are two manuscript copiers, and they are always together. They arrived fifteen years apart as donated third sons. Jean-Marie arrived so long ago he claimed to have forgotten the high noble house he came from. While many monks travel to neighboring villages to collect alms or offer teachings, Jean-Marie has not been known to have passed through the monastery gates in many years. Michel, the younger monk, spoke haughtily of his family's great history in Gaul dating back to Roman times, until he learned that such talk was frowned upon. In truth, Michel came from a small, unremarkable house that had fallen on hard times and could no longer afford to feed its many bastards. He was sickly as a child and was given to God to ease the household burden. He was too frail to do much labor on the monastery farm but had a fine, unhurried hand for letters and was assigned as an apprentice to Jean-Marie. After morning prayers they can be found in the dusty manuscript room at the back of the chapel, side by side, heads bent in parallel as they copy Scripture. Jean-Marie is the better reader, so he often copies out the first draft, checking for errors, while Michel copies the final drafts, taking the notes on formatting or phrasing that Jean-Marie has left him in the margins. In the sun-shafted quiet of the room, Jean-Marie finishes his notes on a page and passes it wordlessly to his right; Michel picks it up and reads carefully, then begins his painstaking version. When he finishes a page, he picks it up gingerly by the edges, blowing the delicate, shining ink, then returns it to Jean-Marie to check, note any errors, and start again with a new page. Their shaved heads leaning over the mess of vellum, their fingers stained with ink. ________ Thesis Journal, March 2019 Met with thesis adviser today and finally told him my plan to write exclusively on the annotations. I explained how there are two monks in particular I'm interested in. They seem to be in conversation with each other, even though we can't be sure if they are in fact two individuals or if they were even at the same monastery at the same [End Page 186] time. I call them Jean-Marie and Michel, but of course no one knows their names. Monks don't sign their work, generally. Prof. Henkel looked at me over glasses with a pitying smile. Looks a little like a monk himself, with his curly fringes of hair. Can hear his German accent come out more when he likes my ideas. Asked how I could be sure I was picking out annotations of two particular individuals. Walk me through your methodology, he said. He doesn't know how long I've spent looking at scans of their manuscripts. Going cross-eyed scrolling and zooming and struggling to interpret medieval shorthand and Latin puns. Told him how abbey records indicated a handful of monasteries in the region only had a few copiers at this time. Told how handwriting was distinctive. Jean-Marie appears to be senior copier, and leaves small edits and corrections on Michel's draft. J had a characteristic way of annotating—left small dashes with a little drip on the end, probably a feature of a leaky stylus. Favorite writing tool that has brought him luck from writing gods for too many years to let go of, like the dinged-up ballpoint I have had since eighth grade that refuses to run out. J draws little carets for insertion spacing when Michel writes with letters bunched too closely together. Feel like I almost know them at this point. Michel's writing has exuberant crowding to it, as though trying to fit more and more onto each new version of the same page. An impatience there. Maybe feels his talents are better spent than just mindlessly copying same Bible verses over and over. J's notes bring him back to the job. J reminds M of sacred...

COT-20 Clinical experience with tumor-treating fields therapy for newly diagnosed glioblastoma

Introduction: Tumor-treating fields (TTF) is an established modality for glioblastoma (GBM) treatment administered through the portable Optune system. The efficacy of Optune for newly diagnosed GBM was demonstrated in the EF-14 phase 3 trial. Although TTF is now included as part of initial treatment in the Japan GBM guideline, it is not yet a standard therapy because the procedures are cumbersome and may impose unnecessary psychological burdens on patients with dire prognoses. In our institution, TTF therapy has been offered as a treatment option for GBM patients since January 2018. This report summarizes our initial experience with this novel treatment.Methods: The medical records of the first eight patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma who underwent TTF were retrospectively reviewed.Results: The eight patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma treated with TTF comprised five men and three women (median age, 68 years; range 34–83 years). Nine patients were offered TTF therapy, but one declined because of the need for a shaved head. The patients continued TTF for 1–7 months, without major complications. Skin reaction was the most prevalent adverse event (n = 5). One patient could not continue TTF treatment after femoral neck fracture due to the weight of the mobile battery. One patient who did not have a helper at home received TTF treatment from a nurse visiting his home.Conclusions: Patients should be provided with information on TTF, such as the timing of informed consent during and after chemoradiotherapy, to help them better understand this new modality and secure their consent.

Oral ascorbic acid 2-glucoside prevents coordination disorder induced via laser-induced shock waves in rat brain.

Oxidative stress is considered to be involved in the pathogenesis of primary blast-related traumatic brain injury (bTBI). We evaluated the effects of ascorbic acid 2-glucoside (AA2G), a well-known antioxidant, to control oxidative stress in rat brain exposed to laser-induced shock waves (LISWs). The design consisted of a controlled animal study using male 10-week-old Sprague-Dawley rats. The study was conducted at the University research laboratory. Low-impulse (54 Pa•s) LISWs were transcranially applied to rat brain. Rats were randomized to control group (anesthesia and head shaving, n = 10), LISW group (anesthesia, head shaving and LISW application, n = 10) or LISW + post AA2G group (AA2G administration after LISW application, n = 10) in the first study. In another study, rats were randomized to control group (n = 10), LISW group (n = 10) or LISW + pre and post AA2G group (AA2G administration before and after LISW application, n = 10). The measured outcomes were as follows: (i) motor function assessed by accelerating rotarod test; (ii) levels of 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), an oxidative stress marker; (iii) ascorbic acid in each group of rats. Ascorbic acid levels were significantly decreased and 8-OHdG levels were significantly increased in the cerebellum of the LISW group. Motor coordination disorder was also observed in the group. Prophylactic AA2G administration significantly increased the ascorbic acid levels, reduced oxidative stress and mitigated the motor dysfunction. In contrast, the effects of therapeutic AA2G administration alone were limited. The results suggest that the prophylactic administration of ascorbic acid can reduce shock wave-related oxidative stress and prevented motor dysfunction in rats.

Cue masking and cultural signals: Testing context-specific preferences for bald(ing) leaders

Androgenic Alopecia affects the majority of aging men and consequently a substantial number of leaders. Yet, there is little research on how male pattern baldness (MPB) influences leader perceptions, and no research on context-specific leader preferences for bald men. Across three studies, we add to this sparse literature by investigating a) how baldness as a biological cue for age (i.e. MPB) affects various trait perceptions, as opposed to baldness as a cultural signal for dominance (i.e. a shaved head), and b) how this information influences contingent leader preferences across coordination problems. We hypothesized a preference for a dominant leader appearance (shaved head) during war vs. peace, and a preference for an older leader appearance (MPB) during exploitation vs. exploration. In Study 1, we find that men with MPB are indeed perceived as older and that head shaving attenuates this age cue while increasing perceived dominance. Studies 2 and 3 do not show increased leader preferences for men with MPB or men with shaved heads, in any context. Instead, both studies show a particular dislike for men with a shaved head when the coordination problem requires intergroup peacekeeping.

State Legal Responses to Historical Institutional Abuse: Shame, Sovereignty and Epistemic Injustice.

The history of the Irish State is littered with shamed bodies. For decades the State collaborated with religious orders in incarcerating children and single women, shamed by their poverty, race, disability, or association with sexual transgression (Fischer Gender, Nation; O’Sullivan and O’Donnell; Smith; Buckley). Shaming practices such as head shaving, using numbers to identify children, or flogging were used to punish and control (Arnold; Coleman 121; Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse [CICA] vol. 1, ch. 8). Women and children in industrial or reformatory schools, psychiatric hospitals, County Homes, and Magdalene Laundries were burdened with a stigmatized identity that meant total exclusion from society (O’Donnell and O’Sullivan 257). As they have begun to speak publicly about their experiences, victim-survivors have forced the State and Irish society to acknowledge this history. Their testimony to experiences of neglect, beatings, forced labor, sexual assault, and imprisonment are an indictment of the sovereign State’s claim to protectits most vulnerable and to detect and punish crime within its territory. In response, the State offers an architecture of apology, investigation, and redress. Scholars have traced patterns of violation of domestic and international norms at the core of this framework (Gallen and Gleeson; O’Rourke, “The Justice for Magdalenes Campaign”; Ring, “The Victim of Historical Abuse”). These legal responses can usefully be analyzed in terms of the key objectives of transitional justice (truth telling; accountability; redress and reparations, and guarantees of non-recurrence). However transitional justice and its processes are themselves contingent and capable of oppression. Suppressed and marginalized knowledges may be omitted or excluded in the name of transitional justice (Mamdani; van Marle; Koggel). This article contributes to the literature exploring epistemic injustice in transitional justice processes by scrutinizing the Irish State’s legal responses to historical institutional abuse. In particular, we develop a theory of State shame that describes and explains the ways the Irish State perpetuates epistemic injustices against people who suffered abuse in State institutions. We unpack the relationship between the State’s performance of shame in these legal responses and its need to preserve its sovereignty — its professed singular competence to determine how painful national events are understood and resolved (Dean). We argue that the State uses discourses of its own shame to legitimate legal responses that prioritize its sovereignty over the demands of true shame. We show how this produces significant epistemic injustices in the present against people who suffered institutional abuse as in the past.

State Legal Responses to Historical Institutional Abuse: Shame, Sovereignty, and Epistemic Injustice

State Legal Responses to Historical Institutional Abuse:Shame, Sovereignty, and Epistemic Injustice* Máiréad Enright (bio) and Sinéad Ring (bio) The history of the Irish state is littered with shamed bodies. For decades the state collaborated with religious orders in incarcerating children and single women, who were shamed by authorities for their poverty, race, disability, or association with sexual transgression (Fischer, "Gender"; O'Sullivan and O'Donnell; Smith, Ireland's Magdalen Laundries; Buckley, Cruelty Man; Clough, Shame). Practices such as head shaving, name changing, identifying children by number, and flogging were used to punish and control (Arnold; Coleman 121; Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse [hereafter cited as CICA] vol. 1, ch. 8). Women and children in industrial or reformatory schools, psychiatric hospitals, county homes, and Magdalen laundries were burdened with a stigmatized identity that meant total exclusion from society (O'Sullivan and O'Donnell 257). By beginning to speak publicly about their experiences, victim-survivors have forced the state and Irish society to acknowledge this history. Their testimony of neglect, beatings, forced labor, sexual assault, and imprisonment is an indictment of the sovereign state's claim to protect its most vulnerable and to detect and punish crime within its territory. In response the state offers an architecture of apology, investigation, and redress. Scholars, however, have traced patterns of violation of domestic and international norms at the core of this framework (Gallen and Gleeson; O'Rourke, "Justice for Magdalenes Campaign"; Ring, "Victim of Historical Abuse"). This essay contributes to the literature exploring transitionaljustice processes by scrutinizing the Irish state's responses to historical [End Page 68] institutional abuse.1 Scholars can analyze state actions through the lens of truth-telling, accountability, redress and reparations, and guarantees of nonrecurrence—the key objectives of transitional justice. But such processes are themselves contingent and potentially oppressive, especially where suppressed and marginalized knowledges are omitted or excluded in the name of transitional justice (Mamdani; Van Marle; Koggel). This essay develops a theory of state shame that describes and explains the harms experienced by victimsurvivors of state institutions in their attempts to gain recognition and redress from the state. It demonstrates the relationship between the state's performance of this shame in these legal responses and its need to preserve its sovereignty, and it evaluates its professed singular competence to determine how painful national events are understood and resolved (Dean). We argue that the state uses discourses of its own shame to legitimate these flawed responses. We further show that in its legal responses the state benefits from a series of epistemic injustices against people who suffered institutional abuse in the past. We present our argument in four parts. First, we distinguish between true shame as an ideal type on the one hand and the Irish state's discourse of itself as shamed subject (state shame) on the other. We argue that true shame and state shame are very different modes of engagement with past wrongs. Whereas true shame involves a collapse of the sovereign self, state shame preserves the state from any loss of sovereignty. As we next show, a discourse of state shame has been employed to legitimate narrow legalist strategies such as limited inquiries, adversarial interrogation, adherence to fixed evidentiary standards, and a focus on monetary redress to the exclusion of other aspects of reparation. Examining the state's use of law and legalism to respond to the claims of victim-survivors of institutional child abuse and of the Magdalen laundries, we show how the state produces unitary official histories, monetizes and commodifies [End Page 69] harms raised in victim-survivors' testimony, and preserves old hierarchies of power between state, religious orders, and victim-survivors. In the third section we argue that in their encounters with these legal measures victim-survivors experience epistemic injustice. This term refers to forms of unfair treatment relating to issues of knowledge, understanding, and participation in communicative practices (Kidd et al. 1). Feminist philosopher Miranda Fricker identifies two forms of epistemic injustice, testimonial and hermeneutical, both of which involve wronging someone in their capacity as a knower (Epistemic Justice 1). We suggest that the legal responses to victim-survivors enact a refusal to listen...

Wonderland by Matthew Dickman

Reviewed by: Wonderland by Matthew Dickman Chris Ketchum (bio) Matthew Dickman. Wonderland. W. W. Norton. From the first pages of Matthew Dickman’s Wonderland, boys are desperate to become men. Dickman’s third full-length collection of poems transports us again to his Portland, Oregon, neighborhood of the 1980s, demonstrating how the cruelties and complicities of the past manifest in the present day. The landscape is Catholic school and chain-link fence, syringe and stolen cigarette, mini-mart and skate park, but among the images of dereliction, Dickman finds the rain, a pine tree that reminds him of Saint Francis, and “the blue heron that lives / in Laurelhurst Park.” As he explores the characters of his childhood, Dickman neither indicts nor apologizes for the adults or children in his poems; he looks on them with compassion for their complexities, offering measured appraisals of their choices and actions. Wonderland quiets the exuberance of Dickman’s earlier work to a reflection on the people and circumstances that defined his life before adulthood. Many poems in Mayakovsky’s Revolver, his second book, examine friends, lovers, and family members with the intention of turning the lens around; the narrator triangulates the self through his relationships. By contrast, Wonderland places two cameras on the same scene: one held by the narrator, who tells us the story as he witnesses it, and a second held by Dickman, but farther back, showing the edges of a greater sociopolitical context connected to the stories of his youth, and implicating himself as a bystander. “Gas Station,” from Mayakovsky’s Revolver, reads as our beacon toward the subjects developed in Wonderland, touching on accountability and guilt when the narrator explains that “Anton and I had cornered a younger kid . . . [and] screamed at him / Say you’re fat! Say it.” This refined wide-angle shot also allows Dickman to focus outward, yielding several [End Page 186] powerful, loving poems about his mother and their relationship. Paradoxically, his new scope offers us the books’ most honest moments of introspection. Wonderland’s first poem, “Teenage Riot,” gives insight into Dickman’s thematic and formal interests that pervade the collection. The poem introduces us to a group of boys on the cusp of high school, learning new skate tricks, “flipping off cops and skinheads,” drinking their parents’ vodka, and, like many of us who were once boys, believing they can misbehave their way into manhood. When the narrator’s friend suddenly gets jumped, another boy “walked / over to the man / like someone walking into a bank / and stabbed him.” Dickman is a hypnotist, lulling the reader into identifying with his characters through nostalgia or his own acute sense of empathy, until violence or heartbreak snaps us back to reality. It is his extraordinary control of tone, consistent and understated, that allows Dickman to deliver such a swift volta without it feeling cheap or lurid, leaving us, like the victim of the stabbing, “right in the middle of his new consciousness, / kind of looking around.” One of the most exciting structural features of Wonderland is how Dickman couples a narrative, or theme, with its own form that tracks throughout the book. The five titular poems, all called “Wonderland,” follow a character named Caleb from the fourth grade through his assimilation of white supremacy. Each poem is written in couplets, which adopts the stop-motion effect of flipping through a stack of snapshots. In the first poem, we see Caleb tossing a stick, which he imagines as a flaming sword, in his front yard, while “Inside the house / his dad is screaming at his mom.” The intervening poems detail a litany of misguided choices and intensifying cruelties, until the culminating poem of the series, in which “Caleb is marching / with his new friends, their shaved heads / like tongues of fire.” It is as if Dickman is leading us back to the first “Wonderland” to find where it all went wrong; when did the flaming stick become a torch? What prevents Wonderland from coming off as even remotely sanctimonious are the annals of complicity in violent or prejudicial behavior throughout the book, part and parcel with Dickman’s willingness to situate his narrator beside deeply flawed individuals...

The Serpent

The Serpent Wayne Karlin (bio) If not for the sign in front of the gravel parking lot, the permanently sputtering and fly-specked neon Budweiser advertisement, and the Happy Hour sign behind the dirt-filmed glass of the window, the Rondezvous Bar and Lounge could be taken for the house of a heartbroken widower who no longer gives a damn: loose boards, green paint peeling off loose boards, a porch shaded by a sagging tin overhang, the roof shingles winged up here and there or missing in patches, with the underlying creosote sheets showing through like wounds. The sign always bothered me when I drove by the place, as if the misspelled French would confirm some redneck stereotype of the county to visitors. I once pulled in, had a beer, and mentioned the mistake in the spelling to the owner, Tom Delaney. Delaney, a three-hundred-pound man with a shaved head, Fu Manchu moustache, prison tattoos, and cigarette burn scars on hairy arms, had lowered his head, looked at me, and growled, "What are you, a Democrat?" He gave me the same look as I came in now. He was wearing a black Harley Davidson t-shirt, sagging black jeans, and scuffed engineer boots. He wiped the bar counter with a rag that looked like it could have been used to wipe grease from his motorcycle, if he had had one. He didn't. Some of the tattoos that had been on his arms were gone also, replaced by the red burn and pucker of laser scars, defoliated patches in the pelt that covered his arms. The tattoos had included the shamrock symbols of the Aryan Brotherhood, but as it turned out, he'd never been in prison or owned a motorcycle. In fact, he drove a Subaru wagon and had bought the bar, apparently fulfilling the shape of some lifelong dream, after he'd sold an arts-and-crafts supply store his family had owned in PG county. When I'd gotten his background information from our sheriff, Russell Hallam, I'd felt disappointed: it turned out that both he and the bar were concepts themselves, like the '50s-style diners I'd see in Bethesda or Tyson's Corners or Annapolis, as if nothing of our time now on earth could be anything but shadows on the cave wall, legitimized only through older models. Delaney's tattoos had gone after some actual Aryan brothers had seen them and given him a choice between erasure and amputation. As far as I knew, though, none of the other clientele saw the bar or Delaney as anything more than they purported to be. I'd never told anyone what Hallam [End Page 78] had told me about Delaney, and as long as the Brotherhood didn't come around, he was a man content in his reinvention, at it for so long that he'd become it. As soon as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I spotted Joleen Baird, sitting in a booth near the bathroom, a glass and a nearly empty pitcher of draft beer in front of her, her finger pushing thin wakes out of the net of foam on the scarred tabletop. She was the only customer, which, it being ten in the morning, was not surprising, though not always the case. She turned to me, and I saw her in the light of the Coors neon waterfall near the mirror. She looked lacquered. I don't mean drunk. I mean lacquered. As if someone had poured a gallon of lacquer over her head that had dried and encased her in a sheen. Her blonde hair sat like a helmet on her head, and her face—bright-red lipstick, penciled eyebrows, artificial lashes—looked as if a wax death mask had been fastened to it. Like the bar and Delaney, she'd become a painting of herself. Thinking that, I remembered how in middle school I'd tried to earnestly explain to her the correct the spelling of her name—some early marker, I suppose, of my journalistic predisposition. It should be j-o-l-e-n-e, I told her. Later, I found out that the...

Children customary clothe in Malay head shaving – cukur jambul ceremony for the communal

The Malay Archipelago, Malay community have a unique tradition and custom that are align to their belief and lifestyle. Head Shaving ceremony is a kind of a ceremony in Malay tradition and custom. This is one of a kind to welcoming the birth of a new baby into the family. Each custom is regarded as unique and special, that has been celebrated for specific purpose that lies in the same Islamic taught and belief. This study aims to discover the children customary clothe in Malay head shaving ceremony or Cukur Jambul that focuses on the Malay tradition. Other than that, it is to document the knowledge with regards to the Malay children starts from baby. This study emphasizes Meyer Schapiro’s on theory of style in the context of artefact or material culture object. The research paper applies the qualitative method due to its flexibility views from the informants, observation is made due to the photos collection during the head shaving ceremony. The Malay was maintaining to use Malay traditional clothe in most of their custom ceremonies until today. All in all, this study will provide invaluable source of references to the Malay custom and culture that benefited the royalty’s family, researchers, academicians, scholars, students, cultural activist, and museum curators in archiving about the customary clothe during Head Shaving ceremony.

The Run-on.

The Run-on Amber Milliken I was in third grade, the same year I survived my brain tumor, when my teacher's red ink scribbled "run-on sentences!" atop my short story, underlined and exclamation marked. So I copied the first sentence of a Victor Hugo novel—42 words in the first sentence (I did not know he had a longer 800-word sentence at the time). How was I supposed to tell a story within the limitations of short sentences!? My stories were deemed confusing. Associatively, I blamed my actual story as being too complex to tell, a character whose story setting was in the borderland of the world of "normalcy" and the world that chronic illness patients inhabit. I was deemed "complicated" by brilliant surgeons. Their organ of choice: the brain. My initial survivorship of a childhood brain tumor was overshadowed by the following twenty years of further operations for a secondary condition. The neat promise of a hopeful future of was a mis-promise (I dare not say lie), for my family, relationships, education, work … My life was a run-on. The few who were told my story were taken aback by the image of the person telling it. I did not look like the person who had thirteen neurological surgeries, and a few spinal ones thrown in for good measure. I looked fine as so many, including the neurosurgeons, would say. Even with the astrocytoma at eight-years-old—I looked fine despite having continual flu symptoms, headaches, vomiting sessions, and increasingly bad balance. After every surgery and procedure that followed that tumor—from cerebrospinal fluid complications—we were told that I looked fine. I couldn't even tell looking at my own school pictures over the years—my shaved head and surgeries hidden under a mop of hair. I remember how I felt in some of those photos, still in shock from the weeks previous, the vestiges of a smile tempered with residual pain, and in later years, of numbness from the narcotic pain medications. I felt like there was a massive weight on my shoulders dragging me down, that I couldn't breathe for it sagging upon me, my feet clumsy and tangled, tripping on myself sometimes as I fatigued. I felt one eye bulged out as the pressure increased behind my temples. At most, people would say I looked pale. The invisibility of my chronic illness has allowed me to hide behind that image that people perceive, in a constant flux of denial at my experience. Despite the illusion of everything being fine, most of those two decades were a struggle for us. I say "us" because a chronic illness is not merely individual—it is a family experience. The headaches and pain have scarred us more deeply than the physical scars across my body. However, my memories are blurred, while they are etched in my mother's perspective as witness. Partially from denial and my psyche's self-protection, and partially from its interweaving with narcotics. I can tell the facts of what happened—of what surgery was when. I can give you the formula that I have memorized to fill in new doctor's office forms. Please list previous surgeries here: '98 (x2); '01; '05 (x2); '06 (x4); '09; '11; '12 (x3); '14; '16 (x3). Which is misleading because of the life in-between those semicolons. Not all those surgeries and the associated suffering were created equal. It is not simply the symptoms, or the tumor, or the hydrocephalus devices implanted to regulate cerebrospinal fluid that malfunction. No, it is the experience of the battle of self in suffering. Between trying to fight through pain that returns in waves, suffocating [End Page 208] one under the pummel of the tide. Where you have to have succinct non-Hugoian answers when you come up for a gasp of air to tell your neurosurgeon not just that you are drowning, but exactly how you are drowning, or they will send you home with a MRI certified as level fine. Where you have to decide what your philosophy is on dealing with pain. The tide that I drown in is not external, but rather...

Evaluation of Patient Perspectives Toward Awake, Frame-Based Deep-Brain Stimulation Surgery.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an effective therapeutic modality; however, only a percentage of eligible patients undergo the procedure. To study patients' perspectives toward DBS surgery. A survey was sent to 95 consecutive adult patients who underwent DBS surgery for Parkinson disease, essential tremor, or dystonia; the response rate was 73% (69 patients). Post-hoc analyses were performed to evaluate factors that led to favorable outcomes. The average time between surgical procedure to survey completion was 16 months. Awake surgery, use of a rigid head frame, and having hair clipped were seldom reported as major deterrents to surgery. Patients retrospectively reported an average comfort level of 8.3 ± 1.8 during surgery. The average comfort level with head frame placement was reported as 5.2 ± 3.15, and patients reporting discomfort with the frame nonetheless reported overall comfort with the procedure (8.7 ± 1.8). An analysis of satisfaction revealed that 90% of patients would recommend the procedure to a family member or friend and that 78% of patients would undergo the procedure again. A post-hoc analysis of patients who were not satisfied with the procedure revealed that this subset reported significantly less overall comfort (6.9 ± 1.7, P= 0.0003) and were less likely to report that the goals and expectations of surgery were clearly discussed before surgery (P= 0.0004). Frame placement, awake surgery, and head shaving did not appear to play a significant role in most patients' decision-making process to undergo DBS, as analyzed in this retrospective cohort. The majority of patients were satisfied with the procedure and reported being comfortable. Managing goals and expectations preoperatively played a significant role in ultimate overall satisfaction.