China's railway transportation has been developed and steadily improved during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), with more efficient network operation and improved services, a transport official said on Monday.
An Lusheng, deputy head of the National Railway Administration, made the statement while briefing on China's major achievements in transportation during the five-year period at a press conference in Beijing.
"In terms of cargo transportation, the railway network has been able to handle larger freight volumes, deliver faster transit times, and cover longer distances in recent years. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the country's railway freight volume is expected to exceed 25 billion tonnes, five billion tonnes more than that of the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020). Additionally, high-speed freight rail services have become normalized, allowing flowers from Kunming City and fresh fruits from Dunhuang City to be delivered to major cities across the country within a single day," An said.
Furthermore, An also stressed that with strong demand for cross-border transport, the China-Europe Railway Express which runs through Central Asia has seen rapid growth.
"In addition, the China-Europe and China-Central Asia train services have reached over 300 cities in 37 countries across Eurasia. China's 'new trio', including electric vehicles, are now being transported to the world via the 'steel caravan'. Since the opening of the China-Laos Railway over three years ago, it has shipped 13.9 million tonnes of goods across more than 3,000 categories, allowing consumers to enjoy a wider and faster selection of rich agricultural products from Southeast Asia," he said.
China sees more efficient railway network operation, improved services in 2021-2025: official
Researchers from the Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology (CEBSIT) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have made new progress in invasive brain-computer interface clinical trials, with the second successful case involving a paralyzed patient.
According to the research team, the patient suffered a spinal cord injury in 2022 that resulted in high paraplegia. After more than a year of rehabilitation, only head and neck movement was possible. In June this year, the patient underwent implantation of a BCI system.
Following two to three weeks of training, the patient was able to control electronic devices such as a computer cursor and a tablet. To meet further needs, researchers expanded the application from two-dimensional digital screens to three-dimensional physical devices. An intelligent wheelchair and a robotic dog became new control targets.
This shift required the system to not only decode simple intentions such as "left" or "right," but also to deliver continuous, stable, and low-latency precise control to cope with complex real-world environments and interactive tasks.
According to an expert, as the patient became more proficient, the level of mental concentration required was significantly reduced.
"The experience is very close to how we normally control our own bodies. Once you are very skilled, it doesn't require much mental effort -- just like being able to chat while driving," said Zhao Zhengtuo, researcher from CEBSIT.
To achieve this, the team made multiple technical breakthroughs.
At the data source level, they developed high-compression, high-fidelity neural data compression technology and innovatively combined different compression methods. This allows effective information to be extracted efficiently even in noisy neural signal environments, improving overall brain-control performance by 15 to 20 percent.
The team also replaced traditional calibration methods with an "online recalibration" technology that silently and continuously fine-tunes decoding parameters in real time to maintain high system performance. Control speed has also been significantly improved, with intentions and actions now almost synchronized.
Notably, the research team has partnered with a local federation for persons with disabilities to enable the patient who can control a computer via the BCI to participate in online data annotation work, such as verifying the accuracy of AI recognition in vending machines. This makes the patient China's first paraplegic to earn income through labor using a brain-computer interface.
Researchers revealed that a third patient has now had a BCI implanted for nearly two months. Future applications will focus on more refined movements.
"[The next step is] to use the intention of finger movements to control robotic fingers to interact with the external world," said Poo Mu-ming, scientific director of CEBSIT, and also a CAS academician.
Chinese researchers complete 2nd successful case in invasive brain-computer interface trial in Shanghai
