Mermaid

The personal coat of arms of Michaëlle Jean, Canada's Governor General, features two Simbi, mermaid-like spirits from Haitian vodun, as supporters.
Helmet Developers. A shield and sword-wielding mermaid (Syrenka) is the official Coat of Arms of Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Some well-known manufacturers of motorcycle helmets are:. In heraldry, the charge of a mermaid is commonly represented with a comb and a mirror, and blazoned as a 'mermaid in her vanity.' Merfolk were used to symbolize eloquence in speech. Besides as protection in vehicle crashes, the full face motorcycle helmet is sometimes used in robberies and other crimes and in riots, as a mask to prevent recognition and to protect the head from injury by weapon, as at Riot control#Helmets. In the wake of the 2004 tsunami, pictures of fiji mermaids were passed around on the internet as something that had washed up amid the devastation, though they were no more real than Barnum's exibit [5]. This choice is described in greater detail in the standards section.

Barnum displayed in his museum a taxidermal hoax called the Feejee (sic) Mermaid. Others have perpetrated similar hoaxes, which are usually papier-mâché fabrications or parts of decease creatures, usually monkeys and fish, stitched together for the appearance of a grotesque mermaid. Most standard helmet tests use speeds between 5 and 7 m/s. T. In practice, motorcycle helmet manufacturers choose the impact speed they will design for based on the speed used in standard helmet tests. In the 19th century, P. So helmets help most in impacts at the speeds they were designed for, and continue to help but not as much in impacts that are at different speeds. This condition is about as rare as conjoined twins and is usually fatal within a day or two of birth because of kidney and bladder complications, though there are two known survivors of this disorder alive today. Still, a helmet with a stiffer foam that stopped the head before the liner crush space ran out would have done a better job.

Sirenomelia, also called "mermaid syndrome", is a rare congenital disorder in which a child is born with his or her legs fused together and the genitalia reduced. However, in the absence of the helmet, the head would have been brought to a sudden stop from a higher speed causing more injury. The males are known as mermen. When the crush space of the liner runs out, the head will stop suddenly which is not ideal. They are the females of the merfolk race. If the impact is faster than the one the helmet was designed for, the head will completely crush the liner and slow down but not stop in the process. Mermaids are also fictional creatures in the Dungeons and Dragons game. If the helmet is in a real impact that is slower than the one for which it was designed, it will still help but the head will be decelerated a little more violently than was actually necessary given the available space between the inside and outside of the helmet, although that deceleration will still be much less than what is would have been in the absence of the helmet.

The name Lori Lemaris was probably drawn from Lorelei rock in the Rhine added to maris, from the Latin mare, meaning ocean. The result is that the manufacturer must choose a likely speed of impact and optimize the helmet for that impact speed. For many years, the comic book superhero Superman had a romantic love interest with a mermaid woman named Lori Lemaris. It depends on the impact speed of the head, which is of course unknown at the time of manufacture of the helmet. Frank Baum (creator of Oz) wrote a novel about merfolk, The Sea Fairies. So how stiff is that? The answer, significantly, is that it depends. L. This means that an ideal helmet liner is stiff enough to decelerate the impacting head to a dead stop in a smooth uniform manner just before it completely crushes the liner and no stiffer.

Mermaids are also featured in the film Hook and the Harry Potter series, specifically in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The head cannot move any further so after crushing the liner it comes suddenly to a dead stop, causing high accelerations that injure the brain. Even more ambiguous is the mermaid featured on the Starbucks Coffee logo. What happens then? Well, beyond the liner is a hard plastic shell and beyond that is whatever the helmet is hitting, which is presumably an unyielding surface. Advertising characters from television commercials include the Chicken of the Sea Mermaid, the cartoon mascot for a brand of tuna. If the liner is too soft, the head will crush it completely upon impact without coming to a stop. Also Aquamarine a novel by Alice Hoffman about two 12 year old girls who discover a Sassy teenage mermaid was popular among teen and preteen girls and will be relased as a film in 2006 by Twentieth Century Fox starring Sara Paxton ,Emily Roberts and Jo Jo. This implies a limit to how soft the liner can be.

It was about a trio of mermaid sisters named Venus, June and Diana who solve their father's murder. Unfortunately, there is a limit to how thick the helmet can be for the simple reason that the helmet quickly becomes impractical if the liner is more than 1 or 2 inches thick. A made-for-cable movie, Mermaids, starring Nikita Ager, Sarah Laine and Erika Heynatz aired on the PAX network in 2003. It is clear then that it is very important that the liner in a motorcycle helmet is soft and thick so the head decelerates at a gentle rate as it sinks into it. She Creature (2001) featured a villainous mermaid who seemed to have a taste for human flesh and lesbian tendencies. Small blood vessels are also damaged causing bleeding (petechial hemorrhages) deep within the brain. Miranda (1948), starring Glynis Johns, is another popular movie to feature a mermaid. This movement produces stretching and tearing of axons (diffuse axonal injury) and the insulating myelin sheath, injuries which are the major cause of loss of consciousness in a head trauma.

It starred Amy Yasbeck and Todd Waring, and was later made in to a short lived television series. The resulting shearing forces cause different levels in the brain to move relative to one another. A made-for-television sequel, Splash, Too[4] followed in 1988. These forces, associated with the rapid acceleration and deceleration of the head, are smallest at the point of rotation of the brain near the lower end of the brain stem and successively increase at increasing distances from this point. Much of the movie revolves around her humorous attempts to conceal her true identity from her lover. In these situations rotational forces such as might occur in whiplash-type injuries are particularly important. She could walk dry land as a human female, but whenever salt water touched her legs they changed into a fish-tail. Another characteristic, susceptibility to shearing forces, plays a role primarily in injuries which involve rapid and forceful movements of the head, such as in motor vehicle accidents.

In Splash (1984), starring Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks, Hannah played a mermaid who fell in love with a man. Blood vessels linking the brain to the inside of the skull may also break during this process, causing dangerous bleeds. The story has been retold in other films and television programs, and regularly features in collections of fairytales. Then the brain rebounds in the opposite direction, stretching the tissue near the impact site and squeezing the tissue on the other side of the head. Anderson's Little Mermaid was immortalized with a famous bronze sculpture in Copenhagen harbour, and was adapted into a Disney movie (The Little Mermaid, 1989). During an impact to the front of the head, the brain lurches forwards inside the skull, squeezing the tissue near the impact site and stretching the tissue on the opposite side of the head. Andersen's portrayal has arguably become the standard, and has influenced most modern Western depictions of mermaids since it was published. Think of how you lurch backwards and forwards while standing on a bus as it accelerates or stops.

This is likely due to the influence of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale The Little Mermaid (1836), which has been translated into many languages and adapted into various mediums. Closed head injury results from violent acceleration of the head which causes the brain to move around inside the skull. Mermaids are one of the most famous creatures of popular culture, and are depicted regularly in literature and film. The most common type of head injury in motorcycle accidents is closed head injury, meaning injury in which the skull is not broken as distinct from an open head injury like a bullet wound. In some European legends mermaids are said to grant wishes. Therefore, the primary purpose of a helmet is to prevent traumatic brain injury while skull and face injuries are a significant secondary concern. It is said in Japan that eating the flesh of a mermaid can grant unaging immortality. They frequently result in death, permanent disability or personality change and, unlike bone, neurological tissue has very limited ability to recover after an injury.

One freshwater mermaid-like creature from European folklore is Melusine, who is sometimes depicted with two fish tales, and other times with the lower body of a serpent. Brain injuries are much more serious. Examples from other cultures are the Mami Wata of West Africa, the Jengu of Cameroon, the Merrow of Ireland and Scotland, and the Greek Oceanids, Nereids, and Naiads. Skull fractures are usually not life threatening unless the fracture is depressed and impinges on the brain beneath and bone fractures usually heal over a relatively short period. Her attributes relate to the goddess Jagua, and the hibiscus flower of the majagua tree Hibiscus tiliaceous [3]. The common perception that a helmet's purpose is to save you from splitting your head open is misleading. Among the Neo-Taíno nations of the Caribbean the mermaid is called Aycayía [1] she of the beautiful voice [2]. To understand the action of a helmet, it is first necessary to understand the mechanism of head injury.

Lucian of Samosata in Syria (2nd century CE) in De Dea Syria ("Concerning the Syrian Goddess") wrote of the Syrian temples he had visited:. The purpose of the foam liner is to crush during an impact, thereby increasing the distance and period of time over which the helmet stops and reducing its acceleration. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo, where she was often conflated with Aphrodite. The purpose of the hard outer shell is. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid - human above the waist, fish below, though the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as being a fish with a human head and legs, similar to the Babylonian Ea. The conventional motorcycle helmet has two principal protective components: a thin, hard, outer shell made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic, fiberglass or kevlar and a soft, thick, inner liner usually made of expanded polystyrene foam or expanded polypropylene foam. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine nature. For the best protection, helmets should be replaced after any impact, and every three or so years even if no impact is known to have occurred.

Atargatis, the mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, was a goddess who loved a mortal shepherd and in the process killed him. Note that impacts may, of course, come from things other than crashing, such a dropping a helmet, and may not cause any externally visible damage. 1000 BCE. Motorcycle helmets are generally designed to break in a crash (thus expending the energy otherwise destined for the wearer's skull), so they provide little or no protection after their first impact. The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria, ca. They generally have fabric and foam interiors for both comfort and protection. Tales of mermaids are nearly universal. Modern helmets are constructed from plastics, often reinforced with kevlar or carbon fiber.

It has even been posited that the traditional image of a mermaid with long flowing hair could be attributed to manatees breaking the ocean surface underneath patches of seaweed, and giving the unfamiliar observer the impression of having long "hair.". Some motorcycle helmets have a built-in so-called MROS (Multiple Reflective Optic System): a set of reflective surfaces inside the helmet which together function as a rear-view mirror [1]. It is possible that sailors seeing these unfamiliar beasts for the first time, would assume that they had in fact stumbled across some sort of humanoid species, and consequently spread their accounts of the sightings through their homelands on their return from voyages. A "novelty helmet" can protect the scalp against sunburn while riding and - if it stays on during a crash - might protect the scalp against abrasion, but it has no capability to protect the skull or brain. These large aquatic mammals are notable for the way in which they carry their young, cradled in their arms much as a human would carry a baby. Such helmets are often smaller and lighter than DOT-approved helmets, and are unsuitable for crash protection because they lack the energy-absorbing foam that protects the brain by allowing it to come to a gradual stop during an impact. It has been widely suggested that manatees could be behind the myth of the mermaid. There are other helmets - often called "beanies" or "novelty helmets" - which are not certified and generally only used to provide the illusion of compliance with mandatory helmet laws.

. All of these types of helmets are secured by a chin strap, and their protective benefits are greatly reduced if the chin strap is not fastened. Other related types of mythical or legendary creature are water fairies (e.g., various water nymphs) and selkies). The rider may thus eat or drink without unfastening the chinstrap and removing the helmet. The Sirens of Greek mythology are sometimes portrayed in later folklore and art as being physically similar to mermaids; in fact in some languages the name sirena is used interchangeably for both creatures. A subset called "Convertible", "Flip-face" or "Flip-up" is also available; in these helmets, the chin bar pivots upwards (or, in some cases, may be removed). Various cultures throughout the world have similar figures. From most to least protective, they are:.

The male version of a mermaid is called a merman. There are three basic types of motorcycle helmets. A mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the head and torso of human female and the tail of a fish. Modern standards setters choose the severity of the standard test impact to be somewhere between these two extremes, so that manufacturers are doing their best to protect the riders who can be helped by their helmet during a head impact. On the other hand, if an impact is so mild that the rider is unlikely to be injured at all so long as he is wearing a helmet than that impact is not a demanding test. If currently available data suggest that the rider is unlikely to survive in such an impact, regardless of how well his helmet performs, then there is little point in demanding that helmets be optimized for this impact.

It is possible to deduce how well the 'perfect' helmet outlined in the Function section of this page would perform in an impact of a given severity. The speeds are chosen based on modern knowledge of the human tolerance for head impact, which is by no means complete. Some of these are more severe than the impacts used in the standard tests and some are less so. Overall, there is a very wide range of severity in the impacts that could conceivably happen in a motorcycle impact.

So a perpendicular impact against a flat steel anvil at 5 m/s might be about as severe as a 30 m/s oblique impact against a concrete surface or a 30 m/s perpendicular impact against a sheet metal car door or windscreen. The sheet metal wall of a car door may bend inwards to a depth of 7.5 - 10 cm (3 - 4 inches) during a helmeted head impact, meaning that it generates more stopping distance for the rider's head than the helmet itself. The other vital factor in determining the severity of an impact is the nature of the surface struck. Of course, other surfaces are perpendicular to the motorcylists velocity such as trees, walls and the sides of other vehicles.

For example, the surface of the road is almost parallel to the direction the motorcyclist moves in so only a small component of his velocity is directed perpendicular to the road while he is riding. This confusion is relieved by understanding that the perpendicular impact speed of the helmet is usually not the same as the road speed of the motor cycle and that the severity of the impact is determined not only by the speed of the head but also by the nature of the surface it hits. At first glance, this is confusing given that motorcyclists frequently ride at speeds of 20 or 30 m/s. Most motorcycle helmet standards use impacts at speeds between 4 and 7 m/s.

drag racing, bicycling, horseback riding), and many riders in North America consider Snell certification a benefit when considering buying a helmet. The Snell Memorial Foundation has developed stricter requirements and testing procedures for motorcycle helmets, as well as helmets for other activities (e.g. Of the above standards, the DOT standard is by far the most lax. Among them are:.

Worldwide, many developed countries have defined their own sets of standards that are used to judge the effectiveness of a motorcycle helmet in an accident, and define the minimal acceptable standard thereof. In some countries, most notably the USA, there is significant popular opposition to compulsory helmet use, based on these safety and also philosophical objections (see Helmet law defense league). As with seat belt legislation the actual effects of imposing helmet wearing are a matter of dispute with evidence available indicating a risk compensation effect. These laws vary considerably, often exempting mopeds and other small-displacement bikes.

Motorcycle helmets are generally believed to greatly reduce injuries and fatalities in motorcycle accidents, thus many countries have laws requiring acceptable helmets to be worn by motorcycle riders. . The primary goal of a motorcycle helmet is to protect the rider's head during impact, although many helmets provide additional conveniences, such as face shields, ear protection, intercom etc. A motorcycle helmet is a type of protective headgear used by motorcycle riders.

Philips (scalp-like membrane to protect against rotational injury). Z1R. Suomy. Shoei (pronounced show-eh).

Schuberth. Nolan. HJC. Bell.

Arai. AGV. This is important because the foams used have very little resistance to penetration and abrasion. to provide structure to the inner liner so it does not disintegrate upon abrasive contact with pavement.

to prevent penetration of the helmet by a pointed object that might otherwise puncture the skull, and. DOT FMVSS 218 (USA). BS 6658 (United Kingdom). NZ 5430 (New Zealand).

JIS T8133 (Japan). 22 (Europe). UN/ECE Regulation No. CSA CAN3-D230-M85 (Canada).

AS 1698 (Australia).