Hasil untuk "Animal culture"

L. Stefanis, R. Burke, L. A. Greene

N. Zaveri

Tom Ben-Arye, Y. Shandalov, Shahar Ben-Shaul et al.

M. Kratochvil, Alexis J. Seymour, Thomas L. Li et al.

T. Pierson, M. Diamond

J. B. van der Valk, K. Bieback, C. Buta et al.

The supplementation of culture medium with fetal bovine serum (FBS, also referred to as "fetal calf serum") is still common practice in cell culture applications. Due to a number of disadvantages in terms of quality and reproducibility of in vitro data, animal welfare concerns, and in light of recent cases of fraudulent marketing, the search for alternatives and the development of serum-free medium formulations has gained global attention. Here, we report on the 3rd Workshop on FBS, Serum Alternatives and Serum-free Media, where regulatory aspects, the serum dilemma, alternatives to FBS, case-studies of serum-free in vitro applications, and the establishment of serum-free databases were discussed. The whole process of obtaining blood from a living calf fetus to using the FBS produced from it for scientific purposes is de facto not yet legally regulated despite the existing EU-Directive 2010/63/EU on the use of animals for scientific purposes. Together with the above-mentioned challenges, several strategies have been developed to reduce or replace FBS in cell culture media in terms of the 3Rs (Refinement, Reduction, Replacement). Most recently, releasates of activated human donor thrombocytes (human platelet lysates) have been shown to be one of the most promising serum alternatives when chemically-defined media are not yet an option. Additionally, new developments in cell-based assay techniques, advanced organ-on-chip and microphysiological systems are covered in this report. Chemically-defined serum-free media are shown to be the ultimate goal for the majority of culture systems, and examples are discussed.

C. Lawrence

Ling Gao, Zachery R. Gregorich, Wuqiang Zhu et al.

K. Laland

Humans possess an extraordinary capacity for cultural production, from the arts and language to science and technology. How did the human mind—and the uniquely human ability to devise and transmit culture—evolve from its roots in animal behavior? This book presents a new theory of human cognitive evolution. It reveals how culture is not just the magnificent end product of an evolutionary process that produced a species unlike all others—it is also the key driving force behind that process. The book shows how the learned and socially transmitted activities of our ancestors shaped our intellects through accelerating cycles of evolutionary feedback. The truly unique characteristics of our species—such as our intelligence, language, teaching, and cooperation—are not adaptive responses to predators, disease, or other external conditions. Rather, humans are creatures of their own making. The book explains how animals imitate, innovate, and have remarkable traditions of their own. It traces our rise from scavenger apes in prehistory to modern humans able to design iPhones, dance the tango, and send astronauts into space. This book tells the story of the painstaking fieldwork, the key experiments, the false leads, and the stunning scientific breakthroughs that led to this new understanding of how culture transformed human evolution. It is the story of how Darwin's intellectual descendants picked up where he left off and took up the challenge of providing a scientific account of the evolution of the human mind.

F. Ruiz-Ojeda, A. Rupérez, C. Gómez-Llorente et al.

Over the last several years, the increasing prevalence of obesity has favored an intense study of adipose tissue biology and the precise mechanisms involved in adipocyte differentiation and adipogenesis. Adipocyte commitment and differentiation are complex processes, which can be investigated thanks to the development of diverse in vitro cell models and molecular biology techniques that allow for a better understanding of adipogenesis and adipocyte dysfunction associated with obesity. The aim of the present work was to update the different animal and human cell culture models available for studying the in vitro adipogenic differentiation process related to obesity and its co-morbidities. The main characteristics, new protocols, and applications of the cell models used to study the adipogenesis in the last five years have been extensively revised. Moreover, we depict co-cultures and three-dimensional cultures, given their utility to understand the connections between adipocytes and their surrounding cells in adipose tissue.

D. K. Gessner, R. Ringseis, K. Eder

Ahmed S. Mandour, Haney Samir, Ahmed Farag et al.

Abstract Introduction The intraventricular pressure gradient (IVPG) measured by color M-mode echocardiography (CMME) and two-dimensional speckle tracking echocardiography (2D-STE) have emerged as novel imaging techniques for heart function evaluation. Various experimental and clinical studies have been conducted on animals, but reports on ruminant species are limited. Objectives This study aimed to determine the concomitant changes in IVPG and 2D-STE in goats before and after sedation and highlight the relationship between the parameters obtained from the two imaging techniques. Methods Ten male goats were included and the full conventional echocardiographic protocol, including 2D, M-mode, spectral Doppler, tissue Doppler imaging (TDI), 2D-STE, and CMME were performed before and after sedation with xylazine (50 ug /kg BW/IM). The analysis of 2D-STE at the apical and mid-levels of the left ventricle and the IVPG were assessed using special software. Results The results showed good quality data obtained for the evaluation of heart functions through conventional echocardiography, CMME, and 2D-STE. Xylazine administration significantly reduces mitral inflow and TDI velocities as well as the total IVPG and basal IVPG. (P < 0.05). Sedation also significantly disturbed the contractility of the segmental myocardium at the mid and apical levels. The radial and circumferential strains and strain rates, in addition to the synchrony time index, were reduced accordingly (p < 0.05). Conclusion This study utilizes two novel imaging techniques to assess changes observed in cardiac function in goats after sedation. Xylazine, an α2-agonist, induces loading alterations that disproportionately affect wall mechanics, reducing circumferential and radial shortening as well as IVPG parameters. Our findings confirm that CMME and 2D-STE are sensitive tools to detect subtle, region-specific alterations in the IVPG and myocardial function, respectively, in ruminants, complementing conventional echocardiographic indices. This may have important implications for both clinical monitoring and experimental designs where α₂-adrenergic agonists are employed.

Qing-Ao Xiao, Lin Chen, Xiao-Long Li et al.

ABSTRACT: There is currently a lack of research examining the association between the consumption of different dairy products and type 2 diabetes (T2D) in East Asian populations. To address this gap, the present study employs Mendelian randomization to investigate the potential effects of 3 different types of milk consumption (including whole milk, semi-skim milk, and skim milk) on the risk of developing T2D. The results indicate that both whole milk and skim milk are associated with an increased risk of T2D (whole milk: odds ratio [OR] = 1.022, 95% CI: 1.001–1.044; skim milk: OR = 1.023, 95% CI: 1.007–1.039). Mediation analysis revealed that asparagine acts as a mediator between skim milk consumption and T2D, with a mediation effect of 0.003 (95% CI: 0.000 to 0.008), accounting for 14.269% of the total effect.

John Cassius Moreki, Shame Bhawa, Leungo P. Kamwanga et al.

Although quail farming is still in its infancy in Africa, it is commonly practiced in Asia, with China producing about 38% of global production. About 10% of the world’s egg production comes from quail, while their meat represents about 0.2% of the global poultry meat production. This review presents the status of quail farming in Africa and highlights the sub-sector’s challenges and opportunities. Quail farming is one of the least exploited poultry sub-sectors on the African continent; hence, there is limited production and consumption data. The consumption of quail meat and eggs is still low in Africa, but these have the potential to flourish as people become more aware of their nutritional and health benefits. As an evolving industry with great potential, quail farming faces many challenges, including a lack of access to markets, lack of access to credit, inadequate extension support, unavailability of specific quail feeds, and poor housing. Many opportunities exist in feed manufacturing, expanding existing hatcheries and establishing new ones, establishing breeding and rearing facilities, and further processing of quail meat and eggs. Some potential identified challenges include intensifying farmer education, forming cooperative societies to improve market access, developing support programs to encourage farmers to venture into quail farming, and investing in affordable and durable housing to mitigate theft, predation and escaping. We conclude that African governments should consider encouraging quail farming, as it has the potential to play an important role in income generation, job creation and food and nutrition security.

Nikhil Reddy Varimalla, Yunfei Xu, Arkadiy Saakyan et al.

As Video Large Language Models (VideoLLMs) are deployed globally, they require understanding of and grounding in the relevant cultural background. To properly assess these models' cultural awareness, adequate benchmarks are needed. We introduce VideoNorms, a benchmark of over 1000 (video clip, norm) pairs from US and Chinese cultures annotated with socio-cultural norms grounded in speech act theory, norm adherence and violations labels, and verbal and non-verbal evidence. To build VideoNorms, we use a human-AI collaboration framework, where a teacher model using theoretically-grounded prompting provides candidate annotations and a set of trained human experts validate and correct the annotations. We benchmark a variety of open-weight VideoLLMs on the new dataset which highlight several common trends: 1) models performs worse on norm violation than adherence; 2) models perform worse w.r.t Chinese culture compared to the US culture; 3) models have more difficulty in providing non-verbal evidence compared to verbal for the norm adhere/violation label and struggle to identify the exact norm corresponding to a speech-act; and 4) unlike humans, models perform worse in formal, non-humorous contexts. Our findings emphasize the need for culturally-grounded video language model training - a gap our benchmark and framework begin to address.

Mohamed Gamil, Abdelrahman Elsayed, Abdelrahman Lila et al.

Despite recent advances in AI, multimodal culturally diverse datasets are still limited, particularly for regions in the Middle East and Africa. In this paper, we introduce EgMM-Corpus, a multimodal dataset dedicated to Egyptian culture. By designing and running a new data collection pipeline, we collected over 3,000 images, covering 313 concepts across landmarks, food, and folklore. Each entry in the dataset is manually validated for cultural authenticity and multimodal coherence. EgMM-Corpus aims to provide a reliable resource for evaluating and training vision-language models in an Egyptian cultural context. We further evaluate the zero-shot performance of Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training CLIP on EgMM-Corpus, on which it achieves 21.2% Top-1 accuracy and 36.4% Top-5 accuracy in classification. These results underscore the existing cultural bias in large-scale vision-language models and demonstrate the importance of EgMM-Corpus as a benchmark for developing culturally aware models.

Alistair Plum, Anne-Marie Lutgen, Christoph Purschke et al.

Large language models have become the latest trend in natural language processing, heavily featuring in the digital tools we use every day. However, their replies often reflect a narrow cultural viewpoint that overlooks the diversity of global users. This missing capability could be referred to as cultural reasoning, which we define here as the capacity of a model to recognise culture-specific knowledge values and social norms, and to adjust its output so that it aligns with the expectations of individual users. Because culture shapes interpretation, emotional resonance, and acceptable behaviour, cultural reasoning is essential for identity-aware AI. When this capacity is limited or absent, models can sustain stereotypes, ignore minority perspectives, erode trust, and perpetuate hate. Recent empirical studies strongly suggest that current models default to Western norms when judging moral dilemmas, interpreting idioms, or offering advice, and that fine-tuning on survey data only partly reduces this tendency. The present evaluation methods mainly report static accuracy scores and thus fail to capture adaptive reasoning in context. Although broader datasets can help, they cannot alone ensure genuine cultural competence. Therefore, we argue that cultural reasoning must be treated as a foundational capability alongside factual accuracy and linguistic coherence. By clarifying the concept and outlining initial directions for its assessment, a foundation is laid for future systems to be able to respond with greater sensitivity to the complex fabric of human culture.

Joan Nwatu, Longju Bai, Oana Ignat et al.

Culture shapes the objects people use and for what purposes, yet mainstream Vision-Language (VL) datasets frequently exhibit cultural biases, disproportionately favoring higher-income, Western contexts. This imbalance reduces model generalizability and perpetuates performance disparities, especially impacting lower-income and non-Western communities. To address these disparities, we propose a novel function-centric framework that categorizes objects by the functions they fulfill, across diverse cultural and economic contexts. We implement this framework by creating the Culture Affordance Atlas, a re-annotated and culturally grounded restructuring of the Dollar Street dataset spanning 46 functions and 288 objects publicly available at https://lit.eecs.umich.edu/CultureAffordance-Atlas/index.html. Through extensive empirical analyses using the CLIP model, we demonstrate that function-centric labels substantially reduce socioeconomic performance gaps between high- and low-income groups by a median of 6 pp (statistically significant), improving model effectiveness for lower-income contexts. Furthermore, our analyses reveals numerous culturally essential objects that are frequently overlooked in prominent VL datasets. Our contributions offer a scalable pathway toward building inclusive VL datasets and equitable AI systems.

Antonia Troillet, Doreen Scharner

Cecocolic intussusceptions are a rare condition of acute colic in horses requiring immediate surgical intervention due to persistent uncontrollable pain and ongoing ischemic cecal necrosis. Particularly in cases where reduction of the intussusception is surgically not feasible surgical interventions such as partial typhlectomy through colotomy (partial cecal amputation) combined with or without cecal bypass techniques are described. Alternatively, surgical interventions can also be performed without partial typhlectomy via incomplete bypass ileocolostomy. Information regarding applicable techniques and outcomes base on sparse literature of single case reports or small case series. Therefore, this case series aims to add more cases treated with incomplete bypass ileocolostomy without typhlectomy to existing literature and to compare the outcome by reviewing medical records from January 2009 to March 2024 in context to literature. Five horses were surgically treated and were followed-up between 1 and 9 years. Minor short-term complications were recorded during hospitalization such as transient mild colic and febrile episodes. Long-term outcome revealed that horses received or exceed their previous level of use. By adding the hereby presented cases to published data horses treated with ileocolostomy without partial typhlectomy had a long-term survival rate of 100%. However, numbers of published cases are still low with 49 horses being included in the literature review whereof 42 recovered from surgery. The overall long-term survival rate was 53%. The added value of this study is based on the comprehensive documentation of a cohort of five horses successfully treated with an incomplete bypass procedure, demonstrating favorable long-term outcomes. Furthermore, the study advances the surgical technique by implementing the closure of mesenteric gap. The evidence for the application of the surgical technique has been strengthened.

Agnieszka Czaplicka, Fabian Baumann, Iyad Rahwan

The remarkable ecological success of humans is often attributed to our ability to develop complex cultural artefacts that enable us to cope with environmental challenges. The evolution of complex culture (cumulative cultural evolution) is usually modelled as a collective process in which individuals invent new artefacts (innovation) and copy information from others (social learning). This classic picture overlooks the growing role of intelligent algorithms in the digital age (e.g. search engines, recommender systems and large language models) in mediating information between humans, with potential consequences for cumulative cultural evolution. Building on a previous model, we investigate the combined effects of network-based social learning and a simplistic version of algorithmic mediation on cultural accumulation. We find that algorithmic mediation significantly impacts cultural accumulation and that this impact grows as social networks become less densely connected. Cultural accumulation is most effective when social learning and algorithmic mediation are combined, and the optimal ratio depends on the network's density. This work is an initial step towards formalizing the impact of intelligent algorithms on cumulative cultural evolution within an established framework. Models like ours provide insights into mechanisms of human-machine interaction in cultural contexts, guiding hypotheses for future experimental testing.