Vegetation Community Convergence of Pastoralists' Pasture at Different Economic Levels in Desert Steppe

Vegetation characteristics of pastoralist households’ pastures at different economic levels were quantiifed to compare the grassland conditions in Sunite Right Banner, Inner Mongolia, China in 2011 and 2012. The results showed that the heights of Stipa klemenzis and Cleistogenes songorica were similar among economic treatments. And the height of Allium polyrhizm had no signiifcant differences between high-economic-level （HEL） and low-economic-level （LEL） treatments. There were no signiifcant difference among treatments in the canopy cover of C. songorica. The densities of dominant species （S. klemenzis, C. songorica and A. polyrhizm） were signiifcantly similar among treatments. Aboveground community biomass in reference area （CK） was higher than that in other three treatments in 2011, but their biomass showed no signiifcant difference among three economic treatments;for 2012, biomass in HEL was higher than low-economic-level treatment （LEL）, while the biomass in middle-economic-level treatment （MEL） and CK was similar to that in HEL and LEL, respectively. Aboveground biomass of S. klemenzis and C. songorica was similar among treatments in both 2011 and 2012. Biomass of A. polyrhizum had no signiifcant difference between HEL and MEL. Households of LEL had rented out excess lands and those of HEL had leased their available lands thus resulting uniform utilization and convergence of pastoralist households’ pastures across all economic levels.

Insulin-like signaling pathway functions in integrative response to an olfactory and a gustatory stimuli in Caenorhabditis elegans

Animals integrate various environmental stimuli within the nervous system to generate proper behavioral responses.However,the underlying neural circuits and molecular mechanisms are largely unknown.The insulinlike signaling pathway is known to regulate dauer formation,fat metabolism,and longevity in Caenorhabditis elegans(C.elegans).Here,we show that this highly conserved signaling pathway also functions in the integrative response to an olfactory diacetyl and a gustatory Cu^(2+) stimuli.Worms of wild-type N2 Bristol displayed a strong avoidance to the Cu^(2+) barrier in the migration pathway to the attractive diacetyl.Mutants of daf-2(insulin receptor),daf-18(PTEN lipid phosphatase),pdk-1(phosphoinositide-dependent kinase),akt-1/-2(Akt/PKB kinase)and sgk-1(serum-and glucocorticoidinducible kinase)show severe defects in the elusion from the Cu^(2+) .Mutations in DAF-16,a forkhead-type transcriptional factor,suppress the integrative defects of daf-2 and akt-1/-2 mutants.We further report that neither cGMP nor TGFβpathways,two other dauer formation regulators,likely plays a role in the integrative learning.These results suggest that the insulin-like signaling pathway constitutes an essential component for sensory integration and decision-making behavior plasticity.

Creating Autonomous, Perceptive and Intelligent Virtual Humans in a Real-Time Virtual Environment

Creating realistic virtual humans has been a challenging objective in computer science research for some time. This paper describes an integrated framework for modeling virtual humans with a high level of autonomy. The framework seeks to reproduce human-like believable behavior and movement in virtual humans in a virtual environment. The framework includes a visual and auditory information perception module, a decision network based behavior decision module, and a hierarchical autonomous motion control module. These cooperate to model realistic autonomous individual behavior for virtual humans in real-time interactive virtual environments. The framework was tested in a simulated virtual environment system to demonstrate the ability of the framework to create autonomous, perceptive and intelligent virtual humans in real-time virtual environments.