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The conclusion draws together the overarching strands of argument that have been developed throughout this study. It returns attention to the models of authorship described in Chapter 1, showing how Grass has negotiated various self-images less as the result of an overall literary development than as part of a lifelong project that continuously circles around questions of authorship and uses the written text as a vehicle for self-exploration. This point is briefly illustrated through Grass's 2006 autobiography Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, arguing that the metaphorical significance of peeling back the layers of skin coincides exactly with the central point of this study: for Grass, trying to get to the core of his identity, even within clear political parameters, is first and foremost an aesthetic process of self-construction that feeds directly into both literary constructions of authorship and the media-led construction of the author's public image.

This chapter deals with amniote skin characters such as scales, feathers, and hair. One of the key novelties of vertebrates is their skin. Vertebrate skin is unique among metazoans in at least two respects. First, vertebrates are the only phylum for which the body is completely covered by a multilayered epidermal cover. Second, the vertebrate skin is a composite structure comprising the epidermis and the dermis. The chapter first examines the developmental evolution of skin and skin appendages in amniotes before discussing mammalian skin derivatives including hairs and breasts. It then considers the evolution of bird skin from scales into feathers and concludes by explaining the origin of feathers.

This chapter considers the evolutionary development of the hand within the context of changes in the structure and function of primate hands. The differences between modern human and nonhuman primate hands are discussed with reference to tool use and manufacture. The anatomical structure of the human hand is reviewed in terms of the bones, joints, and muscles that comprise the hand and of the structure of the skin that overlies the palmar and dorsal surfaces. The sensory and motor innervation of the human hand is also explained. The chapter concludes with a summary of some of the biomechanical models of the hand that have been developed.

This chapter explains how mold spores can cause allergies. Spores carry proteins on their surface, and those that act as antigens can cause a cascade of immune responses resulting in the miseries of allergic rhinitis or hay fever, allergic conjunctivitis, skin allergies, asthma, eczema or atopic dermatitis, and hypersensitivity pneumonitis. This chapter describes interactions between immune cells in allergies mediated by IgE and IgG, providing a primer on this complex field of medicine. The idea that allergy is a perversion of a response that evolved to combat parasitic infestations is discussed, along with the hygiene hypothesis that has been advanced as an explanation for the increasing prevalence of asthma.

This chapter presents empirical analyses of inequalities of opportunity for social mobility in Brazil. It conducts three types of analyses. First, it describes the intergenerational mobility between the parents' class or class of origin and the class of destination of whites, pardos, and blacks. The intent here is to verify what has a greater influence on the inequality of opportunities for ascensional mobility: the class of origin or skin color. Next, it provides a decomposition of such mobility, taking as an intermediary point the educational level achieved. Education is one of the most important factors of social ascension: without educational qualifications, one cannot, for instance, occupy professional positions, and thereby obtain relatively more comfortable life conditions. The inequality of educational opportunities is analyzed to verify the weight of class origin and skin color upon the chances of completing different educational levels. Finally, the chapter analyzes the likelihood that mobility opportunities will favor the more privileged classes, according to an individual's educational level, class origin, and skin color. This three-stage analysis enables the disclosure of the main barriers to social mobility, and also an evaluation of the combination of race and class of origin that inhibit such mobility.

Somatic responses such as heart rate and muscle potentials abound. Electrical activity can be recorded from the surface of the skin at any moment. Background electrical activity is always present and spontaneous changes in activity occasionally appear, even when it seems that an individual is relaxing or asleep. This makes the task of recording and correctly interpreting a subject's evoked response to a specific stimulus or situation a challenge. Most psychophysiological recordings can be analyzed in terms of three types of activity: spontaneous, tonic (background), and phasic (evoked responses). Tonic activity is often referred to as the background level or resting level of activity of a particular physiological measure, while phasic activity is a discrete response to a specific stimulus — an evoked response. What is referred to as spontaneous activity is in reality a change in physiological activity that occurs in the absence of any known stimuli.

This chapter focuses on the emergence of new sorts of human taxonomies as well as new claims about the color of all human groups, including East Asians, during the course of the eighteenth century, as well as their racial implications. It first considers the theory advanced in 1684 by the French physician and traveler François Bernier, who proposed a “new division of the Earth, according to the different species or races of man which inhabit it.” One of these races, he suggested, was yellow. Then in 1735, the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus published Systema naturae, in which he categorized homo sapiens into four different skin colors. Finally, at the end of the eighteenth century, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, also a physician and the founder of comparative anatomy, declared that the people of the Far East were a yellow race, as distinct from the white “Caucasian” one.

This chapter examines how the “yellow race” became an important focus in nineteenth-century anthropology. More specifically, it considers how the whole notion of skin tone had become inextricably linked to scientifically validated prejudices and normative claims about higher and lower forms of human culture. The chapter first discusses why the term “Mongolian” was selected to represent the people of the Far East and compares it to “Tartar” before exploring how the new field of anthropology became preoccupied with the idea of anatomical quantification, and especially the measurement of skin color using an instrument known as the color top. It shows that the desire to find yellowness in East Asians was so ingrained in the Western imagination that some anthropologists tried to prove that their skin really was yellow.

Electrodermal activity (EDA) has been recorded in thousands of psychophysiological studies. Many who record EDA today share the basic belief expressed by Carl Jung in 1907 and also by present-day lie detector operators that verbal responses do not tell all, but that EDA does reveal the secrets of “mental life”. Today, EDA is used as a measure of the state of the organism's interaction with its environment, a reflection of emotional responding that is also elicited by cognitive activity. If we think of the skin as a giant receptor separating humans from the rest of the world, is it any wonder that responses obtained from it would be of interest to psychologists? This chapter discusses the four common descriptions of EDA: skin conductance level, skin conductance response, skin potential level, and skin potential response (SPR). The physiological basis of EDA and its psychophysiological recording are explored.

A man can hide from another man, and even from himself, but he cannot hide from God. Everything of his remains accessible to Him. Since the eyes, ears, and skin are the borders across which relationships are established between the self and the nonself, they are also obstacles for the other in his knowledge of the inner self. Thus hearing, sight, and touch bear witness to what can be hidden from another. And only those who can speak can bear witness. Human reliance on the other's lack of knowledge about his inner self presupposes the inability of ears, eyes, and skin to speak. They are thus subordinated to human management through speech. But the Self is only present in the pure heart. Touching and kissing and union at the moment of achieving the peak of satisfaction, which unites severity and beauty and extinguishes separation, serve only to show that all dividedness and all closeness are different ways of disclosing that oneness.

This chapter reviews the major psychophysiological findings and theories regarding antisocial behavior, with a specific focus on skin conductance (SC), heart rate (HR), electroencephalogram (EEG), and startle blink research. Psychophysiological findings in relation to antisocial behavior support the notion that chronic serious antisocial behavior is a disorder that partly arises from a biological dysfunction within the individual. The strongest evidence suggests that antisocial individuals are characterized by fearlessness or emotional detachment, reflected in reduced levels of tonic autonomic (i.e., HR and SC) arousal, increased heart rate variability (HRV), greater slow-wave EEG activity, and reduced startle blink potentiation to unpleasant stimuli. There is also growing evidence of other antisocial behavior characterized more by defensiveness, stress reactivity, and negative emotionality as reflected in decreased HRV, increased SC reactivity, normal or increased affective startle modulation, and left frontotemporal dysfunction.

This chapter considers both analytical calculations of Casimir energies and forces between real metal plates and numerical computations using tabulated optical data for the complex index of refraction of metals. Comparison between the results of analytical and numerical computations permits one to infer the main properties of metals that affect the Casimir force, and how they enter into the Lifshitz theory. Calculations have been done with the help of the dielectric permittivity of the plasma model, the Drude model, and the generalized plasma-like model. The concept of the Leontovich surface impedance, related boundary conditions, and the application region of the impedance approach are also discussed. The chapter should be considered as a preparation for Chapter 14, where the complicated problem of the thermal Casimir force between real metal plates is considered.

Focusing on records of the Milanese health board, this chapter examines the evolution of pestilential signs, symptoms, and modes of transmission from the Black Death to 1815. Against claims of historians and scientists, it shows that the early modern plague's skin disorders differed from those of the twentieth century's bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis). Moreover, by the mid–fifteenth century the plague had changed in one crucial aspect from the Black Death and plagues of the late fourteenth century: the pneumonic form—coughing and spitting blood—had disappeared completely; yet the early modern plagues remained highly contagious. In addition, the chapter compares the clinical observations of health‐board doctors with theoretical and academic treatises, finding that there were not two separate worlds of observation, the latter supposedly blinded by antique scientia.

This epilogue reemphasizes the arguments in the book. Brown-skin models acquired significant social status as African American women on an expanded global stage between 1945 and 1954—a short but critical period that marked the end of World War II, the hardening lines of Cold War politics, and the significant victory of Brown v. Board of Education that, in 1954, made segregation illegal in public schools. Indeed, during this short period and turning tide, a powerful iconography of beautiful brown women emerged to represent African-descended people in the United States by recasting beauty as a democratic right and function. Brown beauty was formalized, both at home and abroad, as a consumerist symbol of women’s successful negotiation of the trials of race, sex, and womanhood in the postwar nation, still half-segregated.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the limitation of the mean free path. It then discusses the boundary scattering of phonons, electrical conductivity of thin wires and films, the galvanomagnetomorphic effect, and the anomalous skin effect.