The soft actuator is made of superelastic material and embedded flexible material. In this paper, a kind of soft tube was designed and used to assemble two kinds of pneumatic soft actuators. The experiment and finite element analysis are used to comprehensively analyze and describe the bending, elongation, and torsion deformation of the soft actuator. The results show that the two soft actuators have the best actuation performance when the inner diameter of the soft tube is 4 mm. In addition, when the twisting pitch of the torsional actuator is 24 mm, its torsional performance is optimized. Finally, a device that can be used in the production line was assembled by utilizing those soft actuators, and some operation tasks were completed. This experiment provides some insights for the development of soft actuators with more complex motions in the future.

The production of abstract engravings is considered an indicator of modern human cognition and a means for the long-term recording and transmission of information. This article reports the discovery of two engraved bones from the Lingjing site in Henan Province, China, dated to 105–125 kya. The carefully engraved nature of the incisions, made on weathered rib fragments, precludes the possibility of unintentional or utilitarian origins. Residue analysis demonstrates the presence of ochre within the incised lines on one specimen. This research provides the first evidence for the deliberate use of ochred engravings for symbolic purposes by East Asian Late Pleistocene hominins.

The present study aims to evaluate the antiparasitic activity of active components from Costus speciosus against Ichthyophthirius multifiliis. Bioassay-guided fractionation was employed to identify active compounds from C. speciosus yielding 2 bioactive compounds: Gracillin and Zingibernsis newsaponin. In-vitro assays revealed that Gracillin and Zingibernsis newsaponin could be 100% effective against I. multifiliis at concentrations of 0·8 and 4·5 mg L−1, with median effective concentration (EC50) values of 0·53 and 3·2 mg L−1, respectively. All protomonts and encysted tomonts were killed when the concentrations of Gracillin and Zingibernsis newsaponin were 1·0 and 5·0 mg L−1. In-vivo experiments demonstrated that fish treated with Gracillin and Zingibernsis newsaponin at concentrations of 1·0 and 5·0 mg L−1 carried significantly fewer parasites than the control (P<0·05). Mortality of fish did not occur in the treatment group (Zingibernsis newsaponin at 5·0 mg L−1) during the trial, although 100% of untreated fish died. Acute toxicities (LD50) of Gracillin and Zingibernsis newsaponin for grass carp were 1·64 and 20·7 mg L−1, respectively. These results provided evidence that the 2 compounds can be selected as lead compounds for the development of new drugs against I. multifiliis.

In this paper, we investigate the numerical performance of a family of P-stable two-step Maruyama schemes in mean-square sense for stochastic differential equations with time delay proposed in for a certain class of nonlinear stochastic delay differential equations with multiplicative white noises. We also test the convergence of one of the schemes for a time-delayed Burgers’ equation with an additive white noise. Numerical results show that this family of two-step Maruyama methods exhibit similar stability for nonlinear equations as that for linear equations.

In this paper, we introduce the dissipative spectral methods (DSM) for the first order linear hyperbolic equations in one dimension. Specifically, we consider the Fourier DSM for periodic problems and the Legendre DSM for equations with the Dirichlet boundary condition. The error estimates of the methods are shown to be quasi-optimal for variable-coefficients equations. Numerical results are given to verify high accuracy of the DSM and to compare the proposed schemes with some high performance methods, showing some superiority in long-term integration for the periodic case and in dealing with limited smoothness near or at the boundary for the Dirichlet case.