Toba Batak Textile Inventions

INTRODUCTION This article focuses on fruits of looms worked by Toba Batak weavers in the Silindung Valley, North Sumatra, Indonesia. Silindung Valley weavings are characteristically bright and fashionable. They are described by the Batak themselves and by visitors from outside as the least traditional of Batak woven goods. They are also surging in popularity throughout all of Toba and increasingly making inroads into the market replacing the old-style textiles which are larger, of coarser yarn, and deeper/sober in colour. It is the modern style of Batak textile which today commands the highest prices locally. Connoisseurs of Indonesian textiles, however, usually will not even consider buying them. To the connoisseur, they are evidence of the decline that is occurring in the once wondrously sophisticated Indonesian textile arts. In this paper I will examine some of the changes that are occurring in Silindung Valley textiles. This Valley of socalled declining textiles is precisely the location of rapid fashion change. The invention of new textiles is not infrequent. I believe that the vitality and dynamism of the Silindung Valley textile tradition forces us to reconsider what is meant by decline as it is used, for example, in the following quotation: To me, antique Batak textiles,especially those from Toba, represent the highest achievement of Indonesian weaving. Hence what now comes from this area is so heart-rending to look at. The contrast between modern and antique products is nowhere else so extreme ... Decline through European influence is especially evident in the imported regular yarn dyed in bright aniline colours... (Visser 1918-1919:21,22). SILINDUNG VALLEY TEXTILE INNOVATIONS To discuss Silindung Valley textile innovations, I will focus on the work of a single weaver/ikat-maker, Nai Ganda (ill 1), who inhabits the village of Hutagalung. She first told me about her textile inventions in 1986, and again in 1990 she showed me several more of her creations, hot off the loom. Each of Nai Ganda\u27s inventions is of a different order, but each exemplifies the modern features for which Silindung Valley textiles are known. I shall briefly review the inventions she introduced me to, both for their innovative features and to indicate the nature of current Silindung Valley textile fashions

Grundlagen und Neukonzeption der amtlichen Ausbildung von Tierärzten unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Anforderungen der EU

Anforderungen der EU an den tieraerztlichen Berufsstand sowie die Vereinheitlichung der Ausbildungsmoeglichkeiten fuer den Tierarzt auf dem Gebiet des Verbraucherschutzes beduerfen eine intensive Betrachtung und Neuorientierung bestehender Ausbildungssysteme. In der Bundesrepublik Deutschland gibt es 11 Pruefungsverordnungen fuer den hoeheren Veterinaerdienst. Die Laender Bremen, Hamburg, Rheinland-Pfalz, Saarland und Schleswig-Holstein besitzen keine eigene Pruefungsverordnung. Innerhalb der einzelnen Bundeslaender werden z.T. sehr unterschiedliche Voraussetzungen und Anforderungen an die angehenden Amtstieraerzte gestellt. Je nach Bundesland dauert die Ausbildung zum Amtstierarzt zwischen 2 und 4 Jahren. Ein Tierarzt aus Berlin und Niedersachsen benoetigt beispielsweise 2 Jahre und ein Tierarzt aus Hessen, Sachsen und Sachsen-Anhalt benoetigt 4 Jahre um Amtstierarzt zu werden. Auch innerhalb der Weiterbildungsgaenge des Fachbereiches Lebensmittel gibt es bundesweit z.T. sehr gravierende Unterschiede in den Weiterbildungsgaengen und -zeiten. Der auf den Grundsaetzen des Weissbuches basierende Vorschlag der EU fuer eine „Verordnung mit spezifischen Vorschriften fuer die amtliche UEberwachung von zum menschlichen Verzehr bestimmten Erzeugnissen tierischen Ursprungs“ sieht fuer die Durchfuehrung der UEberwachung von Frischfleisch in den Schlachthoefen, Wildverarbeitungsbetrieben oder Zerlegungsbetrieben nur noch „amtliche Tieraerzte“ vor, die eine Pruefung und eine praktische Schulung von 200 Std. absolviert haben. Diese Verordnung tritt ab dem 01. Januar 2005 in Kraft. Der in dem Vorschlag enthaltene Anforderungskatalog an die amtlichen Tieraerzte, ist so umfangreich, dass er bisher nicht alleine durch das Tiermedizinstudium abgedeckt werden kann. Von Seiten des „Runden Tisches“ wurde fuer die geforderte Qualifikation zum amtlichen Tierarzt ein bundeseinheitliches Modulsystem vorgeschlagen, mit dem sowohl die angehenden Amtstieraerzte als auch die Fachtieraerzte verknuepft werden koennen. Durch eine solche bundeseinheitliche Verknuepfung der Aus-, Weiter- und Fortbildungen wuerde an alle Teilnehmer dieser Module die gleichen Anforderungen und Pruefungsbedingungen gestellt. Im Studium soll weiterhin ein Grundwissen fuer alle Taetigkeiten im Bereich Lebensmittel-, Fleisch- und Milchhygiene einschließlich Technologie gelehrt werden. Damit der Tierarzt weiterhin mit der tieraerztlichen Approbation, ohne Teilnahme an einem Zusatzstudium, zur selbststaendigen Durchfuehrung im Bereich der Schlachttier- und Fleischuntersuchung befaehigt bleibt, sollten die von der EU geforderten Inhalte fuer den amtlichen Tierarzt im Fleischsektor, ohne eine Erhoehung der SWS, im Querschnittsfach „Lebensmittel“ gelehrt werden. Fuer die uebrigen amtlichen Taetigkeiten muessen die Tieraerzte an den Modulen der postgradualen Ausbildung teilnehmen. Im Rahmen der europaweiten Vereinheitlichung der Ausbildungsanforderungen an die amtlichen Tieraerzte sollte die Gelegenheit innerhalb der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ergriffen werden, eine bundeseinheitliche Vernetzung der Aus-, Weiter- und Fortbildung zu schaffen, um somit die z.T. gravierenden Unterschiede innerhalb der Anforderungen an die Amtstieraerzte oder Fachtieraerzte zu beseitigen

Initiation of health-behaviour change among employees participating in a web-based health risk assessment with tailored feedback

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Primary prevention programs at the worksite can improve employee health and reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease. Programs that include a web-based health risk assessment (HRA) with tailored feedback hold the advantage of simultaneously increasing awareness of risk and enhancing initiation of health-behaviour change. In this study we evaluated initial health-behaviour change among employees who voluntarily participated in such a HRA program.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted a questionnaire survey among 2289 employees who voluntarily participated in a HRA program at seven Dutch worksites between 2007 and 2009. The HRA included a web-based questionnaire, biometric measurements, laboratory evaluation, and tailored feedback. The survey questionnaire assessed initial self-reported health-behaviour change and satisfaction with the web-based HRA, and was e-mailed four weeks after employees completed the HRA.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Response was received from 638 (28%) employees. Of all, 86% rated the program as positive, 74% recommended it to others, and 58% reported to have initiated overall health-behaviour change. Compared with employees at low CVD risk, those at high risk more often reported to have increased physical activity (OR 3.36, 95% CI 1.52-7.45). Obese employees more frequently reported to have increased physical activity (OR 3.35, 95% CI 1.72-6.54) and improved diet (OR 3.38, 95% CI 1.50-7.60). Being satisfied with the HRA program in general was associated with more frequent self-reported initiation of overall health-behaviour change (OR 2.77, 95% CI 1.73-4.44), increased physical activity (OR 1.89, 95% CI 1.06-3.39), and improved diet (OR 2.89, 95% CI 1.61-5.17).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>More than half of the employees who voluntarily participated in a web-based HRA with tailored feedback, reported to have initiated health-behaviour change. Self-reported initiation of health-behaviour change was more frequent among those at high CVD risk and BMI levels. In general employees reported to be satisfied with the HRA, which was also positively associated with initiation of health-behaviour change. These findings indicate that among voluntary participating employees a web-based HRA with tailored feedback may motivate those in greatest need of health-behaviour change and may be a valuable component of workplace health promotion programs.</p

CAVE:Cerebral artery–vein segmentation in digital subtraction angiography

Cerebral X-ray digital subtraction angiography (DSA) is a widely used imaging technique in patients with neurovascular disease, allowing for vessel and flow visualization with high spatio-temporal resolution. Automatic artery–vein segmentation in DSA plays a fundamental role in vascular analysis with quantitative biomarker extraction, facilitating a wide range of clinical applications. The widely adopted U-Net applied on static DSA frames often struggles with disentangling vessels from subtraction artifacts. Further, it falls short in effectively separating arteries and veins as it disregards the temporal perspectives inherent in DSA. To address these limitations, we propose to simultaneously leverage spatial vasculature and temporal cerebral flow characteristics to segment arteries and veins in DSA. The proposed network, coined CAVE, encodes a 2D+time DSA series using spatial modules, aggregates all the features using temporal modules, and decodes it into 2D segmentation maps. On a large multi-center clinical dataset, CAVE achieves a vessel segmentation Dice of 0.84 (±0.04) and an artery–vein segmentation Dice of 0.79 (±0.06). CAVE surpasses traditional Frangi-based k-means clustering (P &lt; 0.001) and U-Net (P &lt; 0.001) by a significant margin, demonstrating the advantages of harvesting spatio-temporal features. This study represents the first investigation into automatic artery–vein segmentation in DSA using deep learning. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/RuishengSu/CAVE_DSA.</p

Spatio-Temporal U-Net for Cerebral Artery and Vein Segmentation in Digital Subtraction Angiography

X-ray digital subtraction angiography (DSA) is widely used for vessel and/or flow visualization and interventional guidance during endovascular treatment of patients with a stroke or aneurysm. To assist in peri-operative decision making as well as post-operative prognosis, automatic DSA analysis algorithms are being developed to obtain relevant image-based information. Such analyses include detection of vascular disease, evaluation of perfusion based on time intensity curves (TIC), and quantitative biomarker extraction for automated treatment evaluation in endovascular thrombectomy. Methodologically, such vessel-based analysis tasks may be facilitated by automatic and accurate artery-vein segmentation algorithms. The present work describes to the best of our knowledge the first study that addresses automatic artery-vein segmentation in DSA using deep learning. We propose a novel spatio-temporal U-Net (ST U-Net) architecture which integrates convolutional gated recurrent units (ConvGRU) in the contracting branch of U-Net. The network encodes a 2D+t DSA series of variable length and decodes it into a 2D segmentation image. On a multi-center routinely acquired dataset, the proposed method significantly outperformed U-Net (P<0.001) and traditional Frangi-based K-means clustering (P$<$0.001). Particularly in artery-vein segmentation, ST U-Net achieved a Dice coefficient of 0.794, surpassing the existing state-of-the-art methods by a margin of 12\%-20\%. Code will be made publicly available upon acceptance

autoTICI: Automatic Brain Tissue Reperfusion Scoring on 2D DSA Images of Acute Ischemic Stroke Patients

The Thrombolysis in Cerebral Infarction (TICI) score is an important metric for reperfusion therapy assessment in acute ischemic stroke. It is commonly used as a technical outcome measure after endovascular treatment (EVT). Existing TICI scores are defined in coarse ordinal grades based on visual inspection, leading to inter- and intra-observer variation. In this work, we present autoTICI, an automatic and quantitative TICI scoring method. First, each digital subtraction angiography (DSA) sequence is separated into four phases (non-contrast, arterial, parenchymal and venous phase) using a multi-path convolutional neural network (CNN), which exploits spatio-temporal features. The network also incorporates sequence level label dependencies in the form of a state-transition matrix. Next, a minimum intensity map (MINIP) is computed using the motion corrected arterial and parenchymal frames. On the MINIP image, vessel, perfusion and background pixels are segmented. Finally, we quantify the autoTICI score as the ratio of reperfused pixels after EVT. On a routinely acquired multi-center dataset, the proposed autoTICI shows good correlation with the extended TICI (eTICI) reference with an average area under the curve (AUC) score of 0.81. The AUC score is 0.90 with respect to the dichotomized eTICI. In terms of clinical outcome prediction, we demonstrate that autoTICI is overall comparable to eTICI.Comment: 10 pages; submitted to IEEE TM

Multi-modal image registration: matching MRI with histology

Spatial correspondence between histology and multi sequence MRI can provide information about the capabilities of non-invasive imaging to characterize cancerous tissue. However, shrinkage and deformation occurring during the excision of the tumor and the histological processing complicate the co registration of MR images with histological sections. This work proposes a methodology to establish a detailed 3D relation between histology sections and in vivo MRI tumor data. The key features of the methodology are a very dense histological sampling (up to 100 histology slices per tumor), mutual information based non-rigid B-spline registration, the utilization of the whole 3D data sets, and the exploitation of an intermediate ex vivo MRI. In this proof of concept paper, the methodology was applied to one tumor. We found that, after registration, the visual alignment of tumor borders and internal structures was fairly accurate. Utilizing the intermediate ex vivo MRI, it was possible to account for changes caused by the excision of the tumor: we observed a tumor expansion of 20%. Also the effects of fixation, dehydration and histological sectioning could be determined: 26% shrinkage of the tumor was found. The annotation of viable tissue, performed in histology and transformed to the in vivo MRI, matched clearly with high intensity regions in MRI. With this methodology, histological annotation can be directly related to the corresponding in vivo MRI. This is a vital step for the evaluation of the feasibility of multi-spectral MRI to depict histological ground-truth

Genetic variants for head size share genes and pathways with cancer

The size of the human head is highly heritable, but genetic drivers of its variation within the general population remain unmapped. We perform a genome-wide association study on head size (N = 80,890) and identify 67 genetic loci, of which 50 are novel. Neuroimaging studies show that 17 variants affect specific brain areas, but most have widespread effects. Gene set enrichment is observed for various cancers and the p53, Wnt, and ErbB signaling pathways. Genes harboring lead variants are enriched for macrocephaly syndrome genes (37-fold) and high-fidelity cancer genes (9-fold), which is not seen for human height variants. Head size variants are also near genes preferentially expressed in intermediate progenitor cells, neural cells linked to evolutionary brain expansion. Our results indicate that genes regulating early brain and cranial growth incline to neoplasia later in life, irrespective of height. This warrants investigation of clinical implications of the link between head size and cancer.</p