Knot cavers, arborists, rescue professionals, stagehands, fishermen, linemen and surgeons. The International Guild of Knot Tyers is an organization dedicated to the Promotion of Knot tying. Truckers in need of securing a load may use a trucker's hitch, gaining mechanical advantage. Knots can save spelunkers from being buried under rock. Many knots can also be used as makeshift tools, for example, the bowline can be used as a rescue loop, and the munter hitch can be used for belaying. The diamond hitch was widely used to tie packages on to donkeys and mules. In hazardous environments such as mountains, knots are
Arf invariant of a knot Arf invariant of a knot In the mathematical field of knot theory, the Arf invariant of a knot, named after Cahit Arf, is a knot invariant obtained from a quadratic form associated to a Seifert surface. If "F" is a Seifert surface of a knot, then the homology group H("F", Z/2Z) has a quadratic form whose value is the number of full twists mod 2 in a neighborhood of an imbedded circle representing an element of the homology group. The Arf invariant of this quadratic form is the Arf invariant of the knot. Let formula_1 be a Seifert matrix of