On cupstones in South China

In South China, cupstones, a kind of artifact of ancient cultures bearing unique regional characteristics, are widely distributed. Cupstones are cobbles with concave recesses (cupules) formed by direct processing or wearing for a long-time of use. According to the numbers of the sides exhibiting such recesses, cupstones can be classified into those bearing recesses on one side, on two sides, on three sides, and on four or more sides. The cupstones are distributed in two distinct areas: the inland and coastal regions. They were made and used starting during the Upper Paleolithic Age and persisted into the Warring States period and Qin and Han dynasties, and perhaps even later. These artifacts experienced a development that saw their increase over time in quantity and quality as they changed from being made in rough to finer form. The function of cupstones may not be single; they might have been used to process nuts or shells, or perhaps they functioned as implements or tools for processing stone implements, or as a kind of multipurpose artifact.

Auditory and Somatosensory P3 Are Complementary for the Assessment of Patients with Disorders of Consciousness

The evaluation of the level of consciousness in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) is primarily based on behavioural assessments. Patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) do not show any sign of awareness of their environment, while minimally conscious state (MCS) patients show reproducible but fluctuating signs of awareness. Some patients, although with remaining cognitive abilities, are not able to exhibit overt voluntary responses at the bedside and may be misdiagnosed as UWS. Several studies investigated functional neuroimaging and neurophysiology as an additional tool to evaluate the level of consciousness and to detect covert command following in DOC. Most of these studies are based on auditory stimulation, neglecting patients suffering from decreased or absent hearing abilities. In the present study, we aim to assess the response to a P3-based paradigm in 40 patients with DOC and 12 healthy participants using auditory (AEP) and vibrotactile (VTP) stimulation. To this end, an EEG-based brain-computer interface was used at DOC patient’s bedside. We compared the significance of the P3 performance (i.e., the interpretation of significance of the evoked P3 response) as obtained by ‘direct processing’ (i.e., theoretical-based significance threshold) and ‘offline processing’ (i.e., permutation-based single subject level threshold). We evaluated whether the P3 performances were dependent on clinical variables such as diagnosis (UWS and MCS), aetiology and time since injury. Last we tested the dependency of AEP and VTP performances at the single subject level. Direct processing tends to overestimate P3 performance. We did not find any difference in the presence of a P3 performance according to the level of consciousness (UWS vs. MCS) or the aetiology (traumatic vs. non-traumatic brain injury). The performance achieved at the AEP paradigm was independent from what was achieved at the VTP paradigm, indicating that some patients performed better on the AEP task while others performed better on the VTP task. Our results support the importance of using multimodal approaches in the assessment of DOC patients in order to optimise the evaluation of patient’s abilities.

Interfruit : Deep Learning Network for Classifying Fruit Images

Fruit classification is conductive to improving the self-checkout and packaging systems. The convolutional neural networks automatically extract features through the direct processing of original images, which has attracted extensive attention from researchers in fruit classification. However, due to the similarity of fruit color, it is difficult to recognize at a higher accuracy. In the present study, a deep learning network, Interfruit, was built to classify various types of fruit images. A fruit dataset involving 40 categories was also constructed to train the network model and to assess its performance. According to the evaluation results, the overall accuracy of Interfruit reached 93.17% in the test set, which was superior to that of several advanced methods. According to the findings, the classification system, Interfruit, recognizes fruits with high accuracy, which has a broad application prospect.

Superhydrophobic membrane: progress in preparation and its separation properties

Superhydrophobic membrane that is highly resistant to wetting by aqueous solution has gained great attention because of its potential to be applied in many emerging membrane processes such as membrane gas absorption (MGA) and membrane distillation (MD). Numerous approaches have been proposed to obtain membranes with superhydrophobic surface from materials with various degrees of hydrophobicity. This paper then reviews the progress in superhydrophobic membrane preparation and its separation properties. A brief description of superhydrophobicity is firstly presented. Preparation methods of the superhydrophobic membrane are subsequently reviewed, including direct processing method and surface modification of the existing membrane. Finally, the separation properties and challenges of superhydrophobic membranes are discussed. This article could provide an insight for further development of superhydrophobic membrane.