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There are currently many different anthropometric methods for determining the individual body fat percentage, as well as almost as many variants of bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA) and only a single method of infrared reflection measurement (IR) as easily available methods of field research. The present study aims at a simultaneous comparison between calipermetry, IR and BIA. In particular, the question which measurement method could be used as an equivalent method in the event of failure of BIA or IR is investigated. The sample group consisted of 121 female office workers (average age 32.5 ± 9.4 years, average height 164.5 ± 6.3 cm and average weight 60.3 ± 6.8 kg), from the Rhine-Main area. The measurements were previously scheduled and mostly carried out during the lunch break. For anthropometry, 13 skin fat folds were measured with the Accu® Measure Caliper, thigh circumference with a measuring tape, the height with a height measuring device and the body mass on the weight scale. Subsequently, an IR measurement (Futrex®) and a BIA (InBody®) were performed on the same subjects. The parameters of body fat percentage and total body water (in L) were examined. Statistical methods were correlation coefficients, Bland-Altman comparison and paired t-test for equivalence. For the women studied, the highest correlation coefficients were in the comparisons between the formulas according to Parízková and Brožek et al. (r = 0.82), as well as for Parízková and Siri (r = 0.82). The correlation coefficient for the IR vs. BIA comparison was r = 0.92. A key result of the present study was the finding that the investigated methods in a female study group could not be substituted in an equivalent way.

BackgroundMany automatic approaches to brain tumor segmentation employ multiple magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences. The goal of this project was to compare different combinations of input sequences to determine which MRI sequences are needed for effective automated brain metastasis (BM) segmentation.MethodsWe analyzed preoperative imaging (T1-weighted sequence ± contrast-enhancement (T1/T1-CE), T2-weighted sequence (T2), and T2 fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (T2-FLAIR) sequence) from 333 patients with BMs from six centers. A baseline 3D U-Net with all four sequences and six U-Nets with plausible sequence combinations (T1-CE, T1, T2-FLAIR, T1-CE+T2-FLAIR, T1-CE+T1+T2-FLAIR, T1-CE+T1) were trained on 239 patients from two centers and subsequently tested on an external cohort of 94 patients from four centers.ResultsThe model based on T1-CE alone achieved the best segmentation performance for BM segmentation with a median Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 0.96. Models trained without T1-CE performed worse (T1-only: DSC = 0.70 and T2-FLAIR-only: DSC = 0.72). For edema segmentation, models that included both T1-CE and T2-FLAIR performed best (DSC = 0.93), while the remaining four models without simultaneous inclusion of these both sequences reached a median DSC of 0.81-0.89.ConclusionsA T1-CE-only protocol suffices for the segmentation of BMs. The combination of T1-CE and T2-FLAIR is important for edema segmentation. Missing either T1-CE or T2-FLAIR decreases performance. These findings may improve imaging routines by omitting unnecessary sequences, thus allowing for faster procedures in daily clinical practice while enabling optimal neural network-based target definitions.

There are currently many different anthropometric methods to determine individual body fat percentage, as well as almost as many variants of bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA) and only a single method of infrared reflection measurement (IR) as easily feasible methods of field research. The present study aims at a simultaneous comparison between calipermetry, IR and BIA. In particular, the question which measurement method could be used as an equivalent method in the event of failure of the BIA or IR is investigated. The sample group consisted of 250 male office workers from the Rhine-Main area (average age 31.75 ± 9.16 years, average height 178.5 ± 6.93 cm and average weight 80.61 ± 9.42 kg). The measurements were previously scheduled and mostly carried out during the lunch break. For anthropometry, 13 skin fat folds were measured with the help of the Accu® Measure Caliper, thigh circumference with the help of a measuring tape, height with a height measuring device and body mass on the weight scale. Subsequently, an IR measurement (Futrex®) and a BIA (InBody®) were performed on the same subject. The parameters of body fat percentage and total body water (in litres) were examined. The statistical methods were correlation coefficients, Bland-Altman comparison and paired t-test for equivalence. For the men studied, the highest correlation coefficients were in the comparisons between the formulas according to Parízkova & Buzkova 1 and Parízkova & Buzkova 3 (r = 0.93), as well as for Parízkova & Buzkova 3 and Parízkova & Buzkova 4 (r = 0.96). The correlation coefficient for the IR vs. BIA comparison was only r = 0.56. A key result of the present study was the finding that certain methods cannot be substituted in an equivalent way, in fact only some calipermetric regression equations.

During residence in high mountain regions, the human water hydration status changes and, from the height of ~ 3,000 m above sea level, is associated with the risk of mountain sickness. The present investigation assessed this phenomenon at moderate height (1,300–2,300 m above sea level) after a residence time of approximately one week by means of bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA). 132 volunteers, attendees of a sports medicine congress (78 men, 54 women), agreed to enter the study. All participants underwent BIA measurements initially and after one week’s time. Apart from the basic characteristics – resistance (resistor, R) and capacitor resistor (reactance, Xc) – derived characteristics such as whole body water (TBW), body cell mass (BCM) or extracellular cell mass (ECM) were of interest. Significant changes after the stay in moderate altitude were only verified with regard to hand resistance (R). As the resistance decreased in both men and women, tissue hydration was probably stimulated. In conclusion, the study showed that a 1-week stay at moderate altitude shows only a slight influence on the BIA parameters.

One of the fundamental characteristics of grammars of human languages seems to be the fact that (most of) their structures are inherently asymmetric, with exactly one element, the head, being more important than its co-elements. By way of introduction to this volume, we discuss some phenomena that pose potential problems for such a view and that have not yet been fully described empirically and understood theoretically. Here we focus on three structures from German, namely “left-headed” (?) verbs, then morphological reduplications and copulative/ coordinative compounds, and finally (auxiliary) verb ellipses, all of which are not easily captured by a straightforward analysis in terms of head structures.

Stereotactic radiotherapy is a standard treatment option for patients with brain metastases. The planning target volume is based on gross tumor volume (GTV) segmentation. The aim of this work is to develop and validate a neural network for automatic GTV segmentation to accelerate clinical daily routine practice and minimize interobserver variability.We analyzed MRIs (T1-weighted sequence ± contrast-enhancement, T2-weighted sequence, and FLAIR sequence) from 348 patients with at least one brain metastasis from different cancer primaries treated in six centers. To generate reference segmentations, all GTVs and the FLAIR hyperintense edematous regions were segmented manually. A 3D-U-Net was trained on a cohort of 260 patients from two centers to segment the GTV and the surrounding FLAIR hyperintense region. During training varying degrees of data augmentation were applied. Model validation was performed using an independent international multicenter test cohort (n = 88) including four centers.Our proposed U-Net reached a mean overall Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 0.92 ± 0.08 and a mean individual metastasis-wise DSC of 0.89 ± 0.11 in the external test cohort for GTV segmentation. Data augmentation improved the segmentation performance significantly. Detection of brain metastases was effective with a mean F1-Score of 0.93 ± 0.16. The model performance was stable independent of the center (p = 0.3). There was no correlation between metastasis volume and DSC (Pearson correlation coefficient 0.07).Reliable automated segmentation of brain metastases with neural networks is possible and may support radiotherapy planning by providing more objective GTV definitions.

In most grammatical models, hierarchical structuring and dependencies are considered as central features of grammatical structures, an idea which is usually captured by the notion of “head” or “headedness”. While in most models, this notion is more or less taken for granted, there is still much disagreement as to the precise properties of grammatical heads and the theoretical implications that arise of these properties. Moreover, there are quite a few linguistic structures that pose considerable challenges to the notion of “headedness”. Linking to the seminal discussions led in Zwicky (1985) and Corbett, Fraser, & McGlashan (1993), this volume intends to look more closely upon phenomena that are considered problematic for an analysis in terms of grammatical heads. The aim of this book is to approach the concept of “headedness” from its margins. Thus, central questions of the volume relate to the nature of heads and the distinction between headed and non-headed structures, to the process of gaining and losing head status, and to the thought-provoking question as to whether grammar theory could do without heads at all. The contributions in this volume provide new empirical findings bearing on phenomena that challenge the conception of grammatical heads and/or discuss the notion of head/headedness and its consequences for grammatical theory in a more abstract way. The collected papers view the topic from diverse theoretical perspectives (among others HPSG, Generative Syntax, Optimality Theory) and different empirical angles, covering typological and corpus-linguistic accounts, with a focus on data from German.

Die ersten Lehrwerke für moderne Fremdsprachen, die zwischen dem 15. und 17. Jahrhundert in Europa gedruckt wurden, sind in vielfacher Hinsicht ein lohnender Untersuchungsgegenstand: Nicht nur das sprachliche, metasprachliche und didaktische Wissen, sondern auch Teile des Weltwissens jener Zeit können anhand dieser Werke rekonstruiert werden. Der Umgang mit Mehrsprachigkeit und die damaligen Vorstellungen von Didaktik geraten in den Blick und damit die Frage nach den Formen und Prinzipien der Vermittlung sprachlichen Wissens. Die Texte bilden zudem eine interessante Quellengattung für die Untersuchung der Prinzipien von historischer sprachlicher Variation und von Sprachwandel generell. In diesem Kontext stellt sich auch die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von sprachlicher Realität und vermitteltem sprachlichem Wissen. Der von Julia Hübner und Horst J. Simon herausgegebene Band versammelt aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven verfasste Beiträge, die neben dem Potential der Lehrwerke für die Analyse grammatischer, pragmatischer, soziolinguistischer und wissensgeschichtlicher Fragestellungen auch die Herausforderungen bei der Arbeit mit dem Material aufzeigen.

A Rudolf Neuh��user (1933-2020) Obituary in German, with a bibliography of his works connected with Dostoevsky studies., Dostoevsky Studies, Vol 24 (2021)