A prehistoric thoroughfare between the Ganges and the Himalayas

The greater Himalayan region, including the Tibetan plateau in the north and the Gangetic plain in the south, served as the principal prehistoric thoroughfare for the peopling of East and Southeast Asia. The descendants of ancient migrants through this region ultimately settled lands as far away as New Zealand, Madagascar and the Americas. Several of the keys to understanding the ethnogenesis of human diversity in Asia include the Father Tongue correlation, possible refugia during the Last Glacial Maximum and the hypothesis that language families may have arisen as the result of demographic bottlenecks in prehistory. Ethnolinguistically informed inferences based on Asian Y chromosomal phylogeography permit a reconstruction of episodes of ethnolinguistic prehistory which lie beyond the linguistic event horizon, i.e. beyond the time depth empirically accessible to historical linguistics. The origins of the language families which make up the hypothetical Uralo-Siberian and East Asian linguistic phyla are argued to have lain in the northeastern corner of the Indian subcontinent. Several other Asian language families are shown to be tied to the subcontinent. The Centripetal Migration model, which assumes that migrations in quest of a better life unfolded in both centrifugal and centripetal directions with respect to technologically more advanced centres of civilisation, is opposed to the Farming Language Dispersal theory, which assumes that all linguistic dispersals were driven by agricultural centrifugal migration.

Wie man die anderen verstehen soll und wie man über sie schreiben kann. Der Paris-Bericht Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ aṭ-Ṭahṭāwīs (1801-1873) als vielseitige Vermittlung von 'Kultur'

Im vorliegenden Essay wird eine Lesart des viel diskutierten Paris-Berichts von Rifāʿa aṭ-Ṭahṭāwī vorgestellt. Kontrastierend zu der Annahme, Ṭahṭāwī habe eine Reise aus einer Kultur in eine andere unternommen, soll hier dargelegt werden, wie sich aus dem Text des Ägypters ein eigenes Kulturverständnis erschließen lässt. Besonders Ṭahṭāwīs Bemühungen um die Übersetzung des französischen Begriffs 'civilisation' deuten auf ein plurales Verständnis von 'Kultur'. Denn im Text lassen sich diejenigen Dimensionen des Begriffs 'Kultur' finden, die auch aus der europäischen Geistesgeschichte rekonstruiert werden können: Kultur als bestimmter Lebensstil, als Prozessbegriff zur Beschreibung gesellschaftlicher Entwicklung und als kreative oder künstlerische Aktivität.

Man sollte wach sein, die eigenen Bedürfnisse wahrnehmen

Zwischen 40 und 50 bilanzieren Frauen und Männer ihr Leben. Viele wollen sich neu orientieren. Wichtig sei Offenheit und der Austausch mit anderen, sagt Psychologie-Professorin Pasqualina Perrig-Chiello. (Von Rolf Murbach)

Multi-modal glioblastoma segmentation: man versus machine

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Reproducible segmentation of brain tumors on magnetic resonance images is an important clinical need. This study was designed to evaluate the reliability of a novel fully automated segmentation tool for brain tumor image analysis in comparison to manually defined tumor segmentations. METHODS We prospectively evaluated preoperative MR Images from 25 glioblastoma patients. Two independent expert raters performed manual segmentations. Automatic segmentations were performed using the Brain Tumor Image Analysis software (BraTumIA). In order to study the different tumor compartments, the complete tumor volume TV (enhancing part plus non-enhancing part plus necrotic core of the tumor), the TV+ (TV plus edema) and the contrast enhancing tumor volume CETV were identified. We quantified the overlap between manual and automated segmentation by calculation of diameter measurements as well as the Dice coefficients, the positive predictive values, sensitivity, relative volume error and absolute volume error. RESULTS Comparison of automated versus manual extraction of 2-dimensional diameter measurements showed no significant difference (p = 0.29). Comparison of automated versus manual segmentation of volumetric segmentations showed significant differences for TV+ and TV (p<0.05) but no significant differences for CETV (p>0.05) with regard to the Dice overlap coefficients. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients (ρ) of TV+, TV and CETV showed highly significant correlations between automatic and manual segmentations. Tumor localization did not influence the accuracy of segmentation. CONCLUSIONS In summary, we demonstrated that BraTumIA supports radiologists and clinicians by providing accurate measures of cross-sectional diameter-based tumor extensions. The automated volume measurements were comparable to manual tumor delineation for CETV tumor volumes, and outperformed inter-rater variability for overlap and sensitivity.