Spanish bowline Spanish bowline The Spanish bowline is a double loop knot that can be used to lift a person. For a conscious person, each loop is placed around a leg and the person holds onto the standing part of the rope. This knot can serve as a makeshift Bosun's chair. For an unconscious person one loop is placed around the arm pits and the second loop is placed around the knees. This knot has an elegant symmetry and can be tied quickly when mastered. Unlike the Portuguese bowline, each loop is separately fixed, which is a nice feature. It is a
Signature of a knot represented as a "2g"-by-"2g" Seifert matrix "V", formula_7. The signature of the matrix formula_8, thought of as a symmetric bilinear form, is the signature of the knot "K". Slice knots are known to have zero signature. Knot signatures can also be defined in terms of the Alexander module of the knot complement. Let formula_9 be the universal abelian cover of the knot complement. Consider the Alexander module to be the first homology group of the universal abelian cover of the knot complement: formula_10. Given a formula_11-module formula_12, let formula_13 denote the formula_11-module whose underlying formula_15-module is formula_12 but where formula_17