Shaved Head Research Articles

A Submammarian Approach for Cosmetically Improved Implantation of Deep Brain Stimulation Generators.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) indications include movement disorders, psychiatric affections, or epilepsy in which patients risk social isolation heightened by abnormal motions or behavioral patterns. Further stigmatization after DBS surgery from head shaving, visible scarring, or disfigurement from bulky lead insertion points should be avoided. We present a cosmetically optimized, adapted submammarian approach for DBS neurostimulator implantation that leaves the décolletage untouched. Over 24 months, 61 patients suffering from Parkinson disease, dystonia, or tremor underwent DBS surgery. The modified, submammarian approach was compared with the conventional infraclavicular approach regarding clinical outcome, complications, and limitations over a 5-year follow-up. Neurostimulators were implanted in a paraumbilical (n= 20) or infraclavicular position (n= 41; Parkinson disease, n= 27; dystonia, n= 9; tremor, n= 5), the latter using a standard (n= 16), modified juxta-axillary (n= 6), or submammarian approach (n= 19; 18 women, 1 man with significant gynecomastia). After 12 months, there was no significant difference in the infection rate and one event of rebleeding in each group. Overall, operation time was longer (+20 minutes) for the submammarian versus standard, infraclavicular approach, but acceptable. Neurostimulator replacement was, necessary within 5 years due to advanced battery discharge (n= 32). Battery replacement was easily achieved using the submammarian approach (n= 14), again with increased surgical time (+20 minutes), and iatrogenic damage to extensions was avoidable. A submammarian approach might be an alternative for infraclavicular implantation of DBS neurostimulators, particularly in female patients in the context of cosmetically optimized surgery. Patients' self-perception and self-esteem may be strengthened, potentially enabling them to better cope with disease.

Effects of human head hair on performance and thermoregulatory responses during 10-km outdoor running in healthy men

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1980-0037.2016v18n2p155 The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of human head hair on performance and thermoregulatory responses during 10-km outdoor running in healthy men. Twelve healthy males (29.5 ± 3.7 years, 174.9 ± 4.3 cm, 72.7 ± 3.2 kg and VO2max 44.6 ± 3.4 ml.kg-1.min-1) participated in two self-paced outdoor 10-km running trials separated by 7 days: 1) HAIR, subjects ran with their natural head hair; 2) NOHAIR, subjects ran after their hair had been totally shaved. Average running velocity was calculated from each 2-km running time. Rectal temperature, heart rate and physiological strain index were measured before and after the 10-km runs and at the end of each 2 km. The rate of heat storage was measured every 2 km. The environmental stress (WBGT) was measured every 10 min. The running velocity (10.9 ± 1 and 10.9 ± 1.1 km.h-1), heart rate (183 ± 10 and 180 ± 12 bpm), rectal temperature (38.82 ± 0.29 and 38.81 ± 0.49oC), physiological strain index (9 ± 1 and 9 ± 1), or heat storage rate (71.9 ± 64.1 and 80.7 ± 56.7 W.m-1) did not differ between the HAIR and NOHAIR conditions, respectively (p>0.05). There was no difference in WBGT between the HAIR and NOHAIR conditions (24.0 ± 1.4 and 23.2 ± 1.5ºC, respectively; p=0.10). The results suggest that shaved head hair does not alter running velocity or thermoregulatory responses during 10-km running under the sun.

Aspiring to the Creative Class: Reality Television and the Role of the Mentor

Aspiring to the Creative Class: Reality Television and the Role of the Mentor

Short-Acting Scalp Micropigmentation with Roller and Needle

1. Tracey Outram Phillips (Tracey{at}cosmedicsolutions.co.uk) 1. London, United Kingdom Scalp micropigmentation (SMP) is the clinical art of implanting pigment into the upper-most layer of the dermis of the human scalp, simulating the human hair in shaved heads and adding camouflage in

The Genetic History of Peruvian Quechua-Lamistas and Chankas: Uniparental DNA Patterns among Autochthonous Amazonian and Andean Populations.

SummaryThis study focuses on the genetic history of the Quechua‐Lamistas, inhabitants of the Lamas Province in the San Martin Department, Peru, who speak their own distinct variety of the Quechua family of languages. It has been suggested that different pre‐Columbian ethnic groups from the Peruvian Amazonia, like the Motilones or “shaven heads”, assimilated the Quechua language and then formed the current native population of Lamas. However, many Quechua‐Lamistas claim to be direct descendants of the Chankas, a famous pre‐Columbian indigenous group that escaped from Inca rule in the Andes. To investigate the Quechua‐Lamistas and Chankas’ ancestries, we compared uniparental genetic profiles (17 STRs of Q‐M3 Y‐chromosome and mtDNA complete control region haplotypes) among autochthonous Amazonian and Andean populations from Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. The phylogeographic and population genetic analyses indicate a fairly heterogeneous ancestry for the Quechua‐Lamistas, while they are closely related to their neighbours who speak Amazonian languages, presenting no direct relationships with populations from the region where the ancient Chankas lived. On the other hand, the genetic profiles of self‐identified Chanka descendants living in Andahuaylas (located in the Apurimac Department, Peru, in the Central Andes) were closely related to those living in Huancavelica and the assumed Chanka Confederation area before the Inca expansion.

The Academic Freedom of Social Movement

The Academic Freedom of Social Movement Junaid Rana (bio) Hallowed terms like “democracy,” “freedom,” “values,” and “dialogue” or “free exchange,” even “morality,” are employed in unexpected ways and used to mask sheer irrationality. The righteous haze that surrounds such figurative potential blinds us to the literal violence before our eyes. When public discourse threatens to become illegal, what responsibilities do teachers have to speak about actions that some consider mere “ideology”? —Colin Dayan, “The Boycott Effect”1 Steven was in Urbana to give a book talk on his recently published Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom and wanted to see the campus.2 I was immediately nonplussed. “Really, you want a campus tour?” I responded. And then it quickly dawned on me, and I had to smile. Was this a subversive act? This was a public common, or so I’d been made to believe. It crossed my mind that walking on campus grounds might be interpreted as trespassing. Was a faculty member allowed to escort a colleague with a pending lawsuit against the university across campus? It didn’t matter. We did it anyway. I recalled how over a year earlier journalist Ali Abunimah was asked by campus police during that fateful Board of Trustees meeting if he was Professor Salaita.3 It was as if the officers were shown a picture of a brown guy with a shaved head the morning before and told to escort him off the premises should he appear. Earlier that afternoon Steven and I had been asked if we were brothers. In my head I said “brothers-in-arms.” And here we were taking a lap on the main quad. This most ordinary of things, the campus walking tour, suddenly felt exciting. I started to feel it around me. I’ve walked this quad hundreds of times and no one ever pays attention. Never have I noticed students looking at me, much less being the center of attention. That day, alongside Steven, there were a lot of double takes, some smiles, and the usual business of students enjoying the beautiful weather. As we circumambulated, I pointed out the spot [End Page 111] where the Student for Justice in Palestine apartheid wall in 2012 elicited the great headline: “‘Tear down this wall’ Hillel tells … Israel? (No, University of Illinois).”4 We then passed the north end of the quad, where over a year earlier in the damp, brisk air on September 11 a large protest denounced the administration and board for the firing of Professor Steven Salaita. There were many ironies on this campus walk. Here we were presumed lawbreakers, rebels, outlaws, even if for a few minutes. Or to some, perhaps, we were showing our true character. Engaging—as scholars are often wont to do—even against the odds. Steven ended our tour with the centerpiece of campus tourism: a selfie with Foellinger Auditorium, the image often used to represent the University of Illinois. In January 2014, almost two years earlier, I was on my way to Palestine for the second time in my life. I was part of the North American Academic and Labor delegation traveling to meet with members of Palestinian civil society. It was a demanding itinerary with the intention of learning from as many as possible, meeting with scholars, researchers, and organizations involved in a broad spectrum of activity. Arriving in Amman, Jordan, from Lebanon, I had just attended a conference at the American University in Beirut. At the conference there was a buzz over the growing intellectual interest in Palestine. The unprecedented growth of academic associations in the United States that had passed resolutions to join the academic boycott of Israel in response to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement was also creating an openness of academic inquiry and participation with the question of Palestine.5 Boycott is engagement, after all. The American Studies Association (ASA) had just passed an academic boycott resolution, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) declared support for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, and the previous March the Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) was the first U.S.-based academic institution to pass a boycott resolution...

Use of Nape and Peri-Auricular Hair by Follicular Unit Extraction to Create Soft Hairlines and Temples: My Experience With 128 Patients

Hairlines and temples can look unnatural due to coarseness of the safe donor area of transplanted scalp hair. Although the thinner caliber of nape and peri-auricular (NPA) hair would be ideal to create softer hairlines, they have not been used mainly because of concerns that they are nonpermanent. We assessed the outcome of NPA hair transplanted to hairlines and temples in selected patients. During November 2006 to November 2011, follicular unit extraction (FUE) transplantation using NPA hair was conducted in 128 patients following a shave test involving the visual evaluation of hair density and caliber of shaved head donor areas. The test was used to determine permanent versus nonpermanent donor areas. A questionnaire was sent to patients to assess satisfaction with their restored hairlines, with a follow-up questionnaire sent to those who initially responded. Three-quarters of patients are good candidates for use of NPA hair to the hairlines and temples based on the shave test. Of 128 patients transplanted, 71% responded and reported a mean overall satisfaction of 8.3 (scale, 1-10). Patients saw full hair coverage at the recipient area at a mean of 9.6 months after surgery. Nineteen patients reported lost grafts. Thirty-three patients responded to a second survey and reported a mean overall satisfaction of 8.5 at an average of 4.6 years after surgery; only 5 (15%) new instances of graft loss were reported. Soft, natural-looking hairlines can be created in select patients using NPA hair as a donor source by FUE hair transplantation. 4 Therapeutic.

Postcolonial Eye

The first chapter of Alison Ravenscroft’s The Postcolonial Eye: White Australian Desire and the Visual Field of Race begins with a description of a photograph, property of the South Australian Museum, series AA346. This photograph is one of thousands taken during the Board for Anthropological Research’s Harvard and Adelaide Universities’ 1938 expedition. In it, two Murri girls stare at us, one with a shaved head, the other wearing a card marked ‘N1474’. What we see in this photograph, the violence of colonial history, is striking, but equally (perhaps more) striking, Ravenscroft suggests, is what we fail to see. “Who were these girls and what happened to them after the camera closed its eye and the photographer turned away?” she asks (7). Although we can see signs of colonial subject formation—exemplified by the name ‘N1474’—no matter how closely we look, we cannot see the girls’ fate, nor the fate of the researcher behind the camera, the one “who looked upon an image from which he excluded himself but in which he was implicated nevertheless” (7). Furthermore, “How [are we] to bring such a scene into writing?” Ravenscroft asks, implicating herself (as well as us, as readers of cultural studies and co-viewers of this photograph) in the categorical violence perpetrated by the invisible photographer (7).

Leaving the uncanny valley behind

Say hello to Ira. His head is visi ble on a screen, as though he?s in a videoconference. He seems to be in his early 30s, with a shaved head, a pronounced nose, and thin eyebrows. Ira seems a little goofy and maybe just a wee bit strange. But unless you knew his full name-it?s Digital Ira-you probably wouldn?t guess that he?s nothing but bits.

Staphylococcus aureus dispersal from healthy volunteers

Understanding Staphylococcus aureus dispersal from human carriers is vital for preventing transmission and colonization of this organism in health care settings. This study investigated the S aureus supershedder hypothesis in relation to attributes of healthy volunteers. Microbial aerosol generation from volunteers was quantified within a controlled environmental chamber during walking or sitting activities. Biological air samplers were used to determine numbers of total S aureus colony-forming units disseminated during these activities. A total of 17 volunteers was sampled on 3 occasions. Hairstyle (long hair tied up or a shaved head) was the only significant predictor of dissemination of S aureus (5% significance level). No other significant effects were found at the 5% level. A negative binomial distribution provides the best fit with respect to S aureus. We found that, in the context of our small sample size, hairstyle (long hair tied up or a shaved head) statistically affected levels of bacteria shed from volunteers. However, we found no evidence for "supershedders" or "cloud adults," suggesting they are at an extreme end of a continuous distribution.

Ephraim and Malik

Ephraim and Malik Avery Irons (bio) I was a young, dumb kid when my son Malik was born six years ago. His mother Michelle was on point and tried to get me on the right track. To finish school. To find a job. I love her, but I wasn’t trying to hear her back then. In my defense, I did know that my son was all that really mattered. I was just stupid about how I tried to prove it. Unless I was working, me and him were inseparable and dressed in matching clothes, sneakers, boxers, and Caesar cuts. I thought keeping him in Hilfiger, Rocawear, and Nikes would let him (and everybody else) know that I was a good father. The cops that busted me had a good laugh when they went through my book bag. They found a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a new pair of little Timberlands, and the rocks I had planned on selling that day (enough to get me a ten-year bid even after a plea). As the cuffs clicked and tightened around my wrists, I finally understood what Michelle had tried to tell me—Malik wouldn’t care that the boots, books, and toys never made it to him. It’s me that he would miss and need. A lesson learned too late. I worked hard for two years trying to convince Michelle to bring Malik up here for a visit. She always refused, saying she didn’t want Malik in some sweaty room with tough guys with dirty tattoos, or gang tattoos, or shaved heads. “It’s not gonna be like that,” I had told her. “It’s a special visit just for kids.” “I just don’t think it’ll be good for him, Ephraim. Being in there. Seeing you in there.” She held her ground as usual. “I know, ‘Chelle, but it’s not like it’s only been six months. I’ve been gone two years. If I’m gonna do what I can to teach him, and actually be his father, we gotta see each other, not just talk on the phone.” I wanted to say more. I wanted to beg. But the hard, impatient eyes of the guys in line for the phone forced me to keep it together. Michelle was silent. I heard the hospital floor swirling around her: the beeps, the intercom pages, and the murmur of voices. I’d never seen her in her real nurse’s scrubs. I’d gotten busted a few weeks before she finished her associate’s degree. “It’ll be alright, ’Chelle. I wouldn’t bring Malik into anything that would hurt him,” I went on. Silence always meant she was softening. “We painted the visiting room. We wrote letters and some stores donated cookies, juice, games, crayons and coloring books. There’s even gonna be a clown.” I waited, nervous and desperate, through more silence and more beeps. She’d said no for so long, I was shocked when actually she said yes. Thirty minutes into the two-hour visiting period, Michelle and Malik still hadn’t shown up. I can’t even tell you how I was feeling. I sat there alone at the folding table reserved for my family praying that she hadn’t changed her mind. The other fathers looked over with nods of support. They read picture books to the sons and daughters in their laps or oohed over a report card or a newly drawn picture that would soon get taped to the walls of their cells. My stomach cramped and my hands sweated so much I nearly rubbed holes in my pants to keep them dry I imagined everything that could have gone wrong from Michelle’s little Honda breaking down on the expressway to the chicken pox. I had let myself get too excited. For weeks, from wake-up to lights-out I told all kinds of stories about my little man. When we lifted weights in the yard, I’d tell the guys how Malik could hold his own even before he could walk. My favorite was the story about the time one of my [End Page...

"To Care for Her Beauty, to Dress Up, Is a Kind of Work": Simone de Beauvoir, Fashion, and Feminism

It is now over sixty years since the publication of The Second Sex, a pioneering text written well before most of the so-called seminal texts of wave feminism. Although many women, as Toril Moi (2010) reminded us, have stressed that this particular book actually changed their lives in the 1950s, in later years, she argues, was not always accorded the respect might deserve. Feminists of the 1970s seemed to misread the text; is, I would suggest, a passionate and personal polemic clearly shaped by the sociohistorical context of a traumatized postwar France. The book is a mixture of philosophy, psychoanalysis, literary criticism, and a kind of fieldwork, a subjective sociological methodology; could not be written within our specialized academy.If some second-wave feminists mistook her intention, seeing a seemingly elitist universalizing of her own milieu, many still pounced with delight on the half chapter she devoted to dress. Here we find a seemingly straightforward equation of elegance with bondage in a description of the haute-bourgeoise, the woman of who has chosen to make herself a thing ([1949] 1997, 550) in order to showcase her social status and to please her affluent husband. This gave second-wave feminists invaluable ammunition in their sustained attack on as a man-pleasing manipulation of the natural woman.In 1985, Elizabeth Wilson in Adorned in Dreams argued convincingly that fashion, feminism, and socialism could happily coexist; she started with the observation that Beauvoir's seeming strictures had become the orthodox view within feminism (100). So persistent been this reading of Beauvoir that later feminist writers on still feel compelled to dismantle her arguments (see, for example, Bruzzi 1997).I would argue that Beauvoir been unjustly treated, first by those who did not appreciate the overtly political nature of her intervention in 1949 and second by those who still read the pages on fashion as an unambiguous attack on pleasure in dress and self-adornment. It is problematic to separate the section on dress in the chapter Social Life' from the full text of a book that itself may best be understood through a full appreciation of its context.Its genesis was the political turbulence of postwar France, perhaps doubly difficult for women after the comparative though problematic freedoms of the war years. Daniel Purdy argues that because it had such a strong influence, the book been read today too often as a document (Purdy 2004, 126) But what he means here is that the book a historical place within feminist literature; he is not so much concerned with postwar Paris.In 1948 and 1949, France was still damaged, physically and psychologically, and struggling to readjust. The country had suffered humiliation and division during the war years under the collaborationist Petain regime. Some had colluded with the government, others were quietly resigned, while the most politically active - including Sartre and Beauvoir - either joined or supported the French Resistance. The aftermath was a series of bitter reprisals, including the public trials of known collaborators; there was the shaming and ritual on-street head shaving of women known to have slept with Germans, so eloquently captured by the camera of Henri Cartier-Bresson. However, leading designer Coco Chanel, who had spent the war years living in luxury at the Ritz Hotel with her Nazi lover, was fortunate; she was simply exiled to Switzerland. Perhaps this simple fact helped fuel Beauvoir s suspicion of high fashion, particularly when coupled with Christian Dior's New Look of 1947. This much copied collection, whose influence lasted for nearly a decade, imprisoned women in waist-cinching corsets and long skirts evocative of the early years of the century.In France there was widespread poverty during the postwar reconstruction of its devastated infrastructure. …

The Surveillance State Bigger, Braver New World?

notebook 6 worldliteraturetoday.org What distinguishes the modern surveillance-and-control state from its predecessors is technodeterminism : the use of algorithms, not human beings, to monitor and shape citizens’ attitudes and behavior. A grotesque example of a primitive political order enslaving its subjects is found in Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov’s 1980 novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years. He retold the legend of the mankurts—prisoners in steppe societies who had wet camel hides (shiri) fitted over their shaven heads. Left in the Central Asian sun until the camel skin dried out, either cracking their skulls or destroying their reason and memory, mankurts who survived became mindless subjects. A bit earlier , in the classic era of dystopian writing around the time of the two world wars, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Yevgeny Zamyatin, and others described the makings of sophisticated totalitarian regimes. Are we today on the brink of a new wave of literature offering resistance to an allknowing surveillance state? Kallocain Karin Boye It is puzzling that Swedish writer Karin Boye’s 1940 novel about a totalitarian Worldstate is not treated as a classic of dystopian fiction. The novel offers a terrifying account of state manipulation of people’s thoughts and feelings, transforming them into mere “healthy cells in the state organism.” Boye takes for granted that citizens are constantly monitored and imagines innovations toughening thought control. Through kallocain, a truth-telling drug, human feelings are repossessed by their rightful owner, the state. Linda’s valiant struggle against succumbing is particularly poignant. One critic wrote that “Karin Boye is something of the saint thirsting in the desert.” She took her own life within a year of completing this novel. The Silences of Hammerstein Hans Magnus Enzensberger Nazi Germany organized its citizenry into a militarist mass society. But how it repressed opponents, especially of elite military background, has been left to one of Germany’s leading poets and public intellectuals to describe. Combining archival and epistolary sources, reportage, fictional posthumous interviews, and narrative , Enzensberger offers a spellbinding account of the intransigent Kurt von Hammerstein, the Wehrmacht’s last commander before Hitler, and his family. Opposition to the Nazi order is spearheaded by three of his four daughters who join the Communist Party and consort with Jewish militants . We also obtain new insight into the totalitarian Stalinist regime with which Germany collaborated. The Unknown Soldier Gerald Seymour A British-born Al Qaeda mastermind released from Guantánamo crosses the sprawling Saudi desert in a caravan populated by camels, Bedouins, and terrorists. Tracking him from the skies are American technicians operating Predator drones and Hellfire missiles. Their location is eerily close to the site of the real-world, secret US drone base that showed up in satellite images in February 2013, two years after the base’s clamshell hangars and airstrips had been constructed but nine years after the publication of Seymour’s novel. Do the drones get their man? The Watchman in Pieces: Surveillance, Literature, and Liberal Personhood David Rosen & Aaron Santesso This scholarly monograph offers a sweeping history of surveillance and literature since the Renaissance. Political structures and literary works share a philosophical quest for understanding and organizing reality. Both construct observation strategies. Today profit-motivated, corporate dataveillance adds a new layer to citizen control. Literature’s role is to restore empathy and to rehumanize the state while mapping strategies of resistance. What to Read Now The Surveillance State Bigger, Braver New World? Ray Taras Ray Taras was born and educated in Montreal and went on to study and teach at universities in the UK, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, and the US. He publishes on issues of identity and of world literature’s importance to making sense of international politics. His interviews with Carsten Jensen and Rawi Hage appear, respectively, in the May 2011 and July 2013 issues of WLT. ...

Welcome to Healdsburg

WelcometoHealdshurg Rae Paris In front of Robin, about sixty people—mostly White—sat in uncomfortable foldout chairs in a circle drinking coffee and tea from biodegradable cups, chomped on bagels, and waited for her to do something about the crying White woman. The woman was sitting too far away for Robin to read her nametag, but her T-shirt had huge block letters: I MARCHED WITH MARTIN Below, Martin Luther King Jr.'s giant, disembodied, wax museum head floated against a sky-blue background, as if the other pieces of his body might be passing this way any minute now, just wait. The crying woman sniffled. Usually, Robin could spot them right away, the people who'd been saving up years of guilt, who came to diversity trainings prepared to cry, but this woman had moved too fastforher, must have started crying before Robin pulled the top offher magic marker. If Summer was here, one of their White allies at DWP (Dismantling White Privilege), an ail-White antiracist group they often partnered with, she'd put her hands on the crying woman's shoulders and lead her away from the group, gentle but firm. But Summer had called that morning sick with the flu. FeministStudies39, no. 2. © 2013 bv Rae Paris 654 Rae Paris 655 Even before Summer called, Robin knew the day would go wrong. Earlier, she'd woken up feeling extra dumpy and loose, so she wrapped a bright red scarf around her shaved head, tying it in a knot at the base of her neck in an effort to keep it all together. On the bus from Oakland to Emeryville, a scrawny little White boy sitting behind her on his mother's lap yanked the scarf off her head. "Balloon, balloon," he'd said. His mother returned the scarf without apology. "He thinks your head's a balloon." She was a girl, the mother, her tired face a distur bance of severe freckles that were probably never cute. She frowned at Robin's head as if Robin had stepped out into the world looking like a balloon on purpose just to confuse her tow-headed son who was reaching for her head again. She couldn't have been more than twenty—fifteen or so years younger than Robin — but already deep lines stretched from the corners of her mouth. "He has lots of imag ination," said the girl, sounding uncertain, not bothering to bat the boy's hand away. "Well," said Robin, "at least he has that." She leaned away from the sticky hand and retied her scarf, which made the boy cry. For the next few stops, Robin listened to the girl's wounded pigeon coos: "It's okay. There's nothing there. Justa big, black, bald head. That's all it is. We'll get you something else." Soon, came the laplaplap of the boy's lollipop sucks. It might as well have been Robin's head. And now, this crying White woman. The woman stuck a hand in her full head of gray hair and fluffedit. She sniffled louder. Robin turned her back to the circle. I am Miles Davis, she thought. You people don't matter. At the top of her flippad, she wrote: Welcome! Tolerance in the Workplace. Eventually she'd have to turn around. She'd already taken stock of how many people of color were in the room: a couple of Asians, one Latino, and two Black people, one of whom was a fine-ass, Tupac looking brother. She turned toward them. Most everyone's arms were crossed. Not a good sign. No one wanted to be here, except maybe Mar tin's sidekick who fluffed her hair again and sniffled louder. Robin 656 Rae Paris stuck a fingernail underneath her scarf to get at an itch. She didn't blame them. She'd rather be on a bus going nowhere. It started years ago. Robin, along with three other women — one Mexican, one Filipina, one Vietnamese—formed their nonprofit, Free Your Mind, in the early nineties, not too long after the En Vogue song had come out. Organizations hired them to perform magic. They'd wave their hands, say...

Steganography: Dct Coefficient Replacement Method andCompare With Jsteg Algorithm

Steganography is a method for hiding secret data in another media which is called cover. The selection of cover and techniques for hiding data is for caching less attention and visual distortion. The outlet of steganography system is called Steganograme which has the similar characteristics to the cover, and also it contains our hidden information. Steganography is not a new subject which is considered nowadays, its history can be traced in 440 BC. In the first usage of this knowledge the secret messages were written on the shaved head of Greek soldiers, when their hair grew up, the messages were concealed from the others. By development of digital communication and multimedia technology, steganography is being entered to a new season. These days images, audio and video files can be used as a cover media. In this paper, a digital image is used for this reason. By changing the way of data embedding in JSteg algorithm a new method can be achieved, which has higher signal to noise ratio and also its coefficient histogram is more similar to the cover image histogram. Most of the steganography techniques; which hide the data

Women with shaved heads: western Buddhist nuns and Haredi Jewish wives: polysemy, universalism and misinterpretations of hair symbolism in pluralistic societies

This article focuses on female hair, or rather the absence of hair: it compares the symbols attached to shaved heads for Western Buddhist nuns and for Jewish married women from various Haredi or ‘ultra-orthodox’ groups, and the (mainly negative) representations of these in the external, secular society.The comparison is based on fieldwork research undertaken by the author. When interviewing Western nuns of Jewish origin, it appeared that their shaved heads had been very difficult to cope with for their families, to whom it was a reminder of the Holocaust. The same body treatment can thus represent, on one side, bliss (for the Buddhist nun for whom it is a symbol of libertation and spiritual engagement), and on the other side, horror (for her family and sometimes, out of a Buddhist context, society). Also, the same body treatment can be used to express celibacy for the Buddhist nun, or marriage for the Haredi, or ultra-orthodox woman. Therefore the meaning of head shaving seems to be fluctuating and contextual: it can mean either­ religious commitment, or punishment, or disease.

The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement (review)

Reviewed by: The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement George N. Green The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement. By Miriam Pawel. (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010. Pp. 384. Illustrations, maps, notes, index. ISBN 9781596914605, $28.00 cloth.) This is the story of eight people, mostly from the fields and classrooms, who joined César Chávez's farm worker crusade as organizers and activists in the 1960s and 1970s. Their story highlights Chávez's incredible accomplishments as well as their own, but unlike most books about the farm workers' movement, it also chronicles Chávez's ultimately woeful shortcomings as a leader and administrator. The grape agribusinesses had no intention of ever recognizing a union, even one that had the overwhelming support of the impoverished field hands. After two years of failed strikes, Chávez switched tactics to launch a nationwide boycott of grapes in 1967. At the height of the boycott in 1970 seventeen million Americans stopped eating grapes so that farm workers in California could achieve better wages and working conditions. The selected eight people were among a host of volunteers who initially worked for free and slept on floors, inspired by Chávez's oratory, his commitment to non-violence, his vision of poor people taking command of their lives, and his sacrifices—e.g., Gandhi-like fasting—to propel the movement forward. The well-known union victories are noted, but the author focuses on the problems that abounded. The eight leaders had to cope with chaotic union hiring halls, wildcat strikes, innumerable and complicated lawsuits, and staying in touch with widely dispersed workers from the remote headquarters at La Paz. The author describes [End Page 349] the long ordeal of the UFW crumbling from within, and places the blame squarely on Chávez's inept micromanagement and growing intolerance of dissent. Chief lawyer and frequent negotiator Jerry Cohen, for instance, believed he was close to having the historic grape contracts renewed in 1973, when Chávez suddenly excoriated the growers for allowing prostitutes and gambling in the company camps. The negotiations failed. With the Coachella grape strike faltering in 1974, Chávez denounced illegal immigrants in the fields and urged the federal government to step up deportations. But the union's staunch church supporters never embraced the demand. One divisive issue revolved around the modest salaries that the lawyers and some other staffers received unbeknownst to volunteer staffers. This startling revelation in 1977 was accompanied by Chávez's demand that the union staff abandon salaries and traditional unionism and adopt communal living, modeled after California's Synanon drug rehabilitation cult. Marked by shaved heads and overalls, Synanon members were deeply involved in the "Game," an encounter group exercise in which players hurled insults at one another for alleged bad behavior in a therapeutic effort to enhance communication. The "Game," soon required of all staffers, seemed to promote Chávez's increasing fears that the union was infiltrated with enemies. In the late 1970s and in the 1980s Chávez turned against most of his veteran staffers, some of whom turned on each other, and the grape and vegetable contracts began disappearing. Chávez died in 1993, by which time only one percent of the state's farm hands (5,000) were still under contract. The author, an accomplished reporter, utilizes interviews and archival sources, albeit some of them private. She disrupts individual storylines by switching from one activist to another, but stitches it all together coherently in a well-researched, sorrowful tale of the demise of a potentially transformational union for farm hands. Future UFW researchers will have to deal with this unsettling book, and will find the main body of it very difficult to question. I should disclose that I was marginally involved in la causa and met two of the leaders mentioned several times in the book (but none of the eight principals). Also, I remember that the movement in the Rio Grande Valley was plagued by some of the same internal problems that occurred in California, but the Texas story—including the...

A P Jenkins (ed.), The journal and official correspondence of Bernard Jean Bettelheim, 1845–54, Part I: 1845–51, Okinawa Prefectural History Series, No. 21, subseries, 2, also on CD-ROM, Okinawa, Okinawa Prefectural Government Board of Education, 2005, pp. xxx, 640, yen 4,000 (orders to: Okinawa Prefectural Archives, Arakawa, 148-3, Haebaru, Okinawa 901–1105, Japan)

Anyone who suspects medical missionaries of being cultural imperialists will find plenty of grist for their mill in these writings of a missionary to the Ryukyu (or Liuqiu in Chinese) Islands in the period between the First Opium War (1839–40) and the “opening of Japan”. Bernard Jean Bettelheim (1811–70) was born a Jew in what is now Hungary, studied languages with the original intent of becoming a rabbi, earned a medical degree from Padua, Italy in 1836, and practised naval and military medicine until his conversion to Christianity in 1840. Denied ordination, Bettelheim joined the new “Loochoo [Liuqiu] Naval Mission” as a lay preacher and medical missionary, and continued in Ryukyu until 1854. The writings reproduced here represent the first half of what remains of the Bettelheim archive transcribed into print with helpful explanatory footnotes by Anthony P Jenkins. It makes fascinating reading. Bettelheim, his wife and two infant children went first to Hong Kong, where they consulted with other missionaries, notably Rev. Karl Gutzlaff, a colourful and controversial early Protestant missionary, and Dr Peter Parker, first medical missionary to China. There are interesting accounts of vaccination failures, including the contamination of one batch of vaccine with live smallpox (pp. 15, 68). In May 1846, the Bettelheims landed at Naha, the Ryukyuan capital, where local officials made the first of many attempts to get them to leave. They refused, and the official temple where they had been allowed temporary shelter became their permanent home. Bettelheim spent his time studying Chinese and the local language, and preaching at every public gathering he could find. His intercourse with the locals was supervised and increasingly obstructed, so that accounts of medical practice mostly concern his family and minders. For instance, he requested leeches to treat his daughter, and lectured officials on the importance of venesection in “paralysis, apoplexy, and other acute inflammatory diseases” (pp. 218–19). Sometimes his treatments were homoeopathic, sometimes heroic, as in the use of calomel and julep as purging therapy, or blistering and mustard plasters (“synapism”) on the shaved head for fever. Mrs Bettelheim suffered frequent headaches, for which she refused to allow him to bleed her, preferring purgatives instead. Everywhere the Bettelheims went, guards ran ahead ordering all doors locked. So they took to entering homes through the back alleys, and delivering their evangelistic lectures to whomever they could find. Occasionally Bettelheim experienced evangelistic success—in one case, a young guard who began to confess belief in Jesus was declared mad by his family and kept shackled at home. Occasionally these same guards asked for treatments, as when Bettelheim sent one who had “anarsarca” (generalized oedema) a drastic purgative with calomel together with “a homeopathic sprinkle of cantharid [probably Cantharis, Spanish fly]” to good effect. But these requests were usually made with pleas for secrecy. On the other hand, one of the interpreters, Ichirazichi, who was also an interpreter to the ruling regent of the Ryukyus and later a minister, asked for “an ointment for the itch”, which cleared his skin, and then complained that the native doctors had treated a malignant boil with moxa to no avail, so Bettelheim provided him with emplastrum vesicantia[blistering plaster]. This proved so effective that the patient asked for instruction in western materia medica. In 1849 Bettelheim received a new supply of vaccine matter, and offered to vaccinate the Ryukyuans. This was refused, but during an 1851 smallpox epidemic, officials imported smallpox scabs from China to use in variolation, the deliberate inoculation of smallpox matter into healthy children. Bettelheim advised Ichirazichi in how to inoculate into the skin using a lancet—preferably with a drop of human milk!—instead of blowing the smallpox matter into the nose, and reported that the unusually mild course of the disease that year was attributed to the new methods he had taught. This book gives rare insight into the methods and mindset of early Protestants in East Asia. Bettelheim was haughty and intolerant, but his attitude was far from atypical among missionaries, and he was unusually active in producing translations, dictionaries, and accounts of everything he saw. The book gives rare light on the day-to-day management of remarkably frequent diplomatic encounters in the years before Perry's 1853–4 mission to Japan, and the next volume—if funded—will contain accounts of Bettelheim's involvement in that mission. Anthony P Jenkins, as editor, has done a great service to historians in bringing this volume into print, and it is to be hoped that the project will be supported to completion.

Protective head-cooling during cardiac arrest and cardiopulmonary resuscitation: the original animal studies

Prolonged standard cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) does not reliably sustain brain viability during cardiac arrest. Pre-hospital adjuncts to standard CPR are needed in order to improve outcomes. A preliminary dog study demonstrated that surface cooling of the head during arrest and CPR can achieve protective levels of brain hypothermia (30°C) within 10 minutes. We hypothesized that protective head-cooling during cardiac arrest and CPR improves neurological outcomes. Twelve dogs under light ketamine-halothane-nitrous oxide anesthesia were arrested by transthoracic fibrillation. The treated group consisted of six dogs whose shaven heads were moistened with saline and packed in ice immediately after confirmation of ventricular fibrillation. Six control dogs remained at room temperature. All 12 dogs were subjected to four minutes of ventricular fibrillation and 20 minutes of standard CPR. Spontaneous circulation was restored with drugs and countershocks. Intensive care was provided for five hours post-arrest and the animals were observed for 24 hours. In both groups, five of the six dogs had spontaneous circulation restored. After three hours, mean neurological deficit was significantly lower in the treated group (P=0.016, with head-cooled dogs averaging 37% and the normothermic dogs 62%). Two of the six head-cooled dogs survived 24 hours with neurological deficits of 9% and 0%, respectively. None of the control group dogs survived 24 hours. We concluded that head-cooling attenuates brain injury during cardiac arrest with prolonged CPR. We review the literature related to the use of hypothermia following cardiac arrest and discuss some promising approaches for the pre-hospital setting.

To the Ode, and: Elegy, with City Bus and Blue-Haired Girl

To the Ode, and: Elegy, with City Bus and Blue-Haired Girl Lance Larsen (bio) To the Ode True, you intimidate me, but when I slip you on,like Horace's bathrobe, all things cometo life: an ant as worthy of praise as a phoenix,a Styrofoam cup as capaciousas a Grecian urn. Nothing too trivial for you.Not clouds, not the bent spooncarrying oatmeal to the dowager's mouth,not spotted dogs in heat.Under your watch, Dejection and Joysmoke the peace pipe and take upresidence in adjacent flats.Thanks to you, I talk to my orange juicebefore I drink it, I begin a Q and Awith the rain, sadness and greedconverted into longing. Behind my sternum,an ancient Mayan city. What is water,but a confessor, willing to wash away my grit? [End Page 156] What are train tracks but a ladder to heaventurned on its side? What is a rottingmouse but a country of flies buzzing with praise? Elegy, with City Bus and Blue-Haired Girl If three things made her beautiful waiting to board the 822, four left her lost, though in a month of Thursdays I could never name them. From my seat, I could tally colors—hair several shades of darkening sky, a shopping list in green scribbled up and down her left arm. Or was it a manifesto? She was the last in line, so I had plenty of time not to fall in love. Bright but cold outside, one of those March mornings when if you're a body of water, it's better to flow shallow than run deep—more surface to suck up a feeble sun. But also more brooding, more vulnerability, [End Page 157] more time for a boy with a shaved head to cut in front of her before she stepped on. They faced each other, his back to the bus door. Not this time he said without saying, and crossed his arms in leather. Such things happen in Newark or outside boarded up Conoco stations dreaming of recreational arson, but not here: not in the shadow of Lincoln Middle School—where custodians emptied garbage in French, and ivy falling across the teacher's desk taught everyone to photosynthesize, breathe in, one two three, even on chilly days, even if a girl with blue hair kept saying, Don't bring it, don't bring it, don't bring it. But he had brought it, his body a gate that wouldn't swing, a locked gate that turned everything public. Lost Girl vs. Loser Boy. A hush hung between them, against which she tried to move. He countered. Lovers these two, you could tell, by the way they touched with their eyes. They had entered burning [End Page 158] buildings in tandem, counted petals and uncles on parole, tic-tac-toed the constellations from a broken mattress under a bridge— only not now. Now she shoulder-butted him, and he pushed back. Which made three of us stand up, and two of us reach for our cells. But no, not a push exactly, something short of that, a meanness you could get away with at bus stops, under the trembling of a red-tailed balloon caught in overhead branches that should have signaled desire, but just hung there, a rag. And the school bell, when it sounded, rang out advice: Save her, push him away, try anything. But if we tried, he'd just give it to her worse later on, wouldn't he? Whatever It was. It pushed down on us, tasted the air we drew into our mouths, dripped the stairs to pool at their ankles. Then children poured out for recess. "Miss, do you need some help? Hey, Miss." The driver punctuated his offer with tenderness: [End Page 159] he knelt the bus. Yes, knelt it. In a whoosh of hydraulics, that behemoth dinosaured to its knees. Which offered her something—seconds and second chances, offered her a pause, chivalric and ridiculous, in which children dodge balled and four squared, and all of us dropped fifteen inches out of our newspapers and complacence. Offered. Plenty of...