White hand sign

The white hand sign is a medical sign observed as a visible whitening of skin on the hand when the subject elevates the hands above the shoulder girdle with fingers pointing to the ceiling and palms facing forward. It results from this change in position causing a compression of the subclavian artery and temporary loss of circulation, as often occurs in patients with thoracic outlet syndrome, a complex syndrome involving the compression of various nerves and blood vessels between the axilla (armpit) and the base of the neck.

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White hand

White Hand or Whitehand may refer to:

Organizations

People

Fictional entities

Other uses

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White Hand (military organization)

White Hand or Bela Ruka (Serbian: Бела Рука), was a secret, unofficial military organization in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (and later in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia).

The White Hand was formed in 1912 by Colonel Petar Živković in opposition to another, similar organization called Black Hand. Both Živković and the founder of the Black Hand, Dragutin Dimitrijević, had been involved in the 1903 coup against Aleksandar Obrenović.

With the demise of the Black Hand in the Salonika Trial (Solunski proces), White Hand steadily gained control of the young and ambitious Prince Alexander. Živkovic was made the head of the Palace Guard in 1921, and started amassing power. In 1929 King Alexander I, along with officers of the White Hand orchestrated a coup in attempt to control the growing nationalist tensions in the country (especially in Croatia) and the instability of the Parliament. Živković, now a general, was appointed Prime Minister. The autocracy was eased in 1931, when the King re-instated some constitutional rights after his reforms completely failed in their purpose, and Živković lost his position in 1932 after organizing numerous show trials against minority leaders, ultra-nationalist groups, and communists.

Manual communication

Manual communication systems use articulation of the hands (hand signs, gestures) to mediate a message between persons. Being expressed manually, they are received visually, and sometimes tactually (see tactile signing). Manual communication, when it is a primary form of communication, may be enhanced by body language and facial expressions and other forms of communication.

Manual communication is employed in sign languages and in systems that are codes for oral languages (see Manually Coded Language).

Other, simpler forms of manual communication have also been developed. They are neither natural languages nor even a code that can fully render one. They communicate with a very limited set of signals about an even smaller set of topics and have been developed for situations where speech is not practical or permitted, or secrecy is desired.

Environments with manual communication used

Sign language

A sign language (also signed language) is a language which chiefly uses manual communication and body language to convey meaning, as opposed to acoustically conveyed sound patterns. This can involve simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's thoughts. They share many similarities with spoken languages (sometimes called "oral languages", which depend primarily on sound), which is why linguists consider both to be natural languages, but there are also some significant differences between signed and spoken languages.

Wherever communities of deaf people exist, sign languages have been developed. Signing is not only used by the deaf, it is also used by people who can hear, but cannot physically speak. While they use space for grammar in a way that spoken languages do not, sign languages show the same linguistic properties and use the same language faculty as do spoken languages. Hundreds of sign languages are in use around the world and are at the cores of local deaf cultures. Some sign languages have obtained some form of legal recognition, while others have no status at all.