Translator of Islay 3D Animations into Flash Platform

The three-dimensional (3D) interactive animations and video games are so attractive that successful educational programming environments like Alice and Kodu Game Lab deal with 3D characters. Islay 3D is another educational programming environment of which feature is an intuitively comprehensive user interface in terms of state transition diagrams. Unfortunately its animation definition was too memory-hungry when played by the built-in interpreter. In this paper, we present a translator of the animation definitions of Islay 3D into ActionScript3 (AS3). Compiling the AS3 codes by way of Papervision3D, we obtain the 3D Flash animation file playable on the Flash platform. It will be shown that the memory and CPU usages will be much saved, quartered and halved, respectively, by virtue of the translator.

Effects of active molecules of Korean pine seed on rodent health and implications for forest regeneration

After maturation, Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis Siebold & Zucc.) seeds often cannot disperse to reach a suitable germination site. It is therefore difficult to naturally regenerate by itself and relies on animal dispersal. Squirrels hoard pine seeds as winter food and Korean pine seeds stored for overwintering might become the source of regeneration of the species. From field observations, the pine seeds are the food preference for squirrels during autumn in the Lesser Khingan Mountains in Northeast China. Such preference by squirrels has been attributed to high seed energy content and the ease of seed storage. However, it may also be expected from nutritional aspects that a coevolutionary relationship between squirrels and Korean pine species could be partially explained by the effect of active seed components and their physiological regulatory effects on squirrels. To test this hypothesis, control experiments were carried out to examine the modulatory effects of Korean pine nut oil (PNO) on intestinal microbiota, inflammatory profile and oxidative stress in mice. The results showed that, compared with mice fed a high-fat diet, PNO significantly improved the physical and the healthy state of mice. Histological analysis of the liver and epididymal fat tissue showed that PNO alleviated liver and adipocyte lesions, and inflammation caused by high-fat diets. PNO also significantly decreased atherosclerotic index and ameliorate serum lipid accumulation to prevent cardiovascular disease, which effect the positive control SG group. Moreover, PNO elevated superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase enzyme activities and reduced malondialdehyde levels in the serum. 16S rRNA sequencing showed that PNO restored intestinal microbiota composition, significantly increasing the relative abundance of Lactobacillus and Akkermansia bacteria. These results suggest that Korean pine seeds not only provide adequate fat, protein and energy for squirrels, but also promote physical health and improve body immunity.

Seed size affects rodent–seed interaction consistently across plant species but not within species:evidence from a seed tracking experiment of 41 tree species

Scatter-hoarding rodents play a crucial role in seed survival and seed dispersal.As one of the most important seed traits,seed size and its effect on rodent–seed interaction attract lots of attention.Current studies usually target one or a few species and show inconsistent patterns;however,few experiments include a large number of species although many plant species usually coexist in natural forest and overlap in fruiting time.Here,we tracked the dispersal and predation of 26100 seeds belonging to 41 tree species in a subtropical forest for 2 years.Most species showed no relationships between seed size and rodent foraging preference,while the remaining species displayed diverse of patterns:monotonic decrease and increase trends,and hump-shaped and U-shaped patterns,indicating that a one-off study with a few species might give misleading information.However,the seed size effect across species was consistent in both years,indicating that including a large number of species that hold a sufficient range of seed size may avoid the aforementioned bias.Interestingly,seed size effect differed among rodent foraging processes:a negative effect on seed harvest,a hump-shaped effect on seed removal and removal distance,while a positive effect on overwinter survival of cached seeds,indicating that rodents may make trade-offs between large and small seeds both among foraging processes and within a single process,thus lead to a parabolic relationship between seed size and seed dispersal success,that is medium-sized seeds were more likely to be removed and cached,and transported with a further distance.