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In this study, a co-pigmentation complex formed by ionic complexation of blueberry anthocyanins (BA) with chondroitin sulfate (CS) was bound to pullulan (PU) to prepare a steady-state BA-CS-PU system by a combination of co-pigmentation and encapsulation technology. The co-pigmentation and stabilizing effects of CS on BA were evaluated by ultraviolet-visible (UV-visible) spectroscopy and color parameters. The structure of BA-CS-PU was characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and the mechanism of co-pigmentation and encapsulation was explained. The processing and digestive stability of the steady-state system were evaluated under simulated heat, acid-base strength, co-existence with vitamin C (VC) and in vitro digestion conditions. The results showed that the addition of CS caused a red shift in the UV spectrum and an increase in absorbance, and enhanced the redness, thereby resulting in co-pigmentation effect, which was related to the ionic complexation between the sulfate group of CS and the flavylium ion of BA. The encapsulation effect of PU could be achieved through hydrogen bonding. In addition, co-pigmentation with CS and encapsulation with PU significantly improved the retention rate and a value of BA under heat, acid-base strength and VC co-existence conditions, and also enhanced the gastrointestinal digestive stability, with an 8.63% increase in retention rate. The results of this study provide a basis for in-depth processing of anthocyanin-rich berries.

RGB-D salient object detection (SOD) demonstrates its superiority in detecting in complex environments due to the additional depth information introduced in the data. Inevitably, an independent stream is introduced to extract features from depth images, leading to extra computation and parameters. This methodology sacrifices the model size to improve the detection accuracy which may impede the practical application of SOD problems. To tackle this dilemma, we propose a dynamic knowledge distillation (DKD) method, along with a lightweight structure, which significantly reduces the computational burden while maintaining validity. This method considers the factors of both teacher and student performance within the training stage and dynamically assigns the distillation weight instead of applying a fixed weight on the student model. We also investigate the issue of RGB-D early fusion strategy in distillation and propose a simple noise elimination method to mitigate the impact of distorted training data caused by low quality depth maps. Extensive experiments are conducted on five public datasets to demonstrate that our method can achieve competitive performance with a fast inference speed (136FPS) compared to 12 prior methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2012 Pritzker Prize winner, Wang Shu, often builds in stone with a sensitivity to site and context - characteristics that are not often associated with the marginal or cutting edge. Architectural authors and researchers Edward Denison and Guangyu Ren explain how in China, where 'mainstream mediocrity' has become the norm, Wang Shu has set himself apart as an advocate for meaningful innovation and originality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salient object detection has achieved great improvements by using the Fully Convolutional Networks (FCNs). However, the FCN-based U-shape architecture may cause dilution problems in the high-level semantic information during the up-sample operations in the top-down pathway. Thus, it can weaken the ability of salient object localization and produce degraded boundaries. To this end, in order to overcome this limitation, we propose a novel pyramid self-attention module (PSAM) and the adoption of an independent feature-complementing strategy. In PSAM, self-attention layers are equipped after multi-scale pyramid features to capture richer high-level features and bring larger receptive fields to the model. In addition, a channel-wise attention module is also employed to reduce the redundant features of the FPN and provide refined results. Experimental analysis demonstrates that the proposed PSAM effectively contributes to the whole model so that it outperforms state-of-the-art results over five challenging datasets. Finally, quantitative results show that PSAM generates accurate predictions and integral salient maps, which can provide further help to other computer vision tasks, such as object detection and semantic segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degradation effect of ultrasound (US)/hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2) on Tremella fuciformis polysaccharide (TFP) were studied. The main process parameters of degradation were evaluated and the structural changes and antioxidant activities of TFP before and after US/H 2 O 2 were analyzed. The results showed that the degradation effect of US/H 2 O 2 was significantly higher than that of US or H 2 O 2 alone, and the degradation of TFP was dependent on the duration of its exposure to US, the ultrasonic amplitude, and the H 2 O 2 and TFP concentrations. US/H 2 O 2 reduced the molecular weight (from 8.14 × 105 Da to 1.27 × 104 Da) and particle size (from 710 nm to 182 nm) of the TFP within 50 min and narrowed its molecular weight and particle size distribution. High performance liquid chromatography, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, Carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and Congo red results indicated that the treatment could break down the polysaccharide chains, hinder the aggregation, and improve the conformation flexibility of the TFP molecules without changing the primary structure and monosaccharide composition of TFP. Additionally, the degraded TFPs with low molecular weight exhibited a higher antioxidant activity than the original TFP. These findings suggest that the US/H 2 O 2 treatment is a simple and effective method to prepare a TFP of low molecular weight and high bioactivity. • US/H 2 O 2 was first applied to the degradation of Tremella fuciformis polysaccharide (TFP). • Effects of US/H 2 O 2 on structural characteristics and antioxidant activities of TFP were investigated. • The degraded TFPs with low molecular weight exhibited a higher antioxidant activity than the original TFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]