As LLMs are globally deployed, aligning their cultural value orientations is critical for safety and user engagement. However, existing benchmarks face the Construct-Composition-Context ($C^3$) challenge: relying on discriminative, multiple-choice formats that probe value knowledge rather than true orientations, overlook subcultural heterogeneity, and mismatch with real-world open-ended generation. We introduce DOVE, a distributional evaluation framework that directly compares human-written text distributions with LLM-generated outputs. DOVE utilizes a rate-distortion variational optimization objective to construct a compact value-codebook from 10K documents, mapping text into a structured value space to filter semantic noise. Alignment is measured using unbalanced optimal transport, capturing intra-cultural distributional structures and sub-group diversity. Experiments across 12 LLMs show that DOVE achieves superior predictive validity, attaining a 31.56% correlation with downstream tasks, while maintaining high reliability with as few as 500 samples per culture.
Ensuring that large language models (LLMs) respect diverse cultural values is crucial for social equity. However, existing approaches often treat cultural groups as homogeneous and overlook within-group heterogeneity induced by intersecting demographic attributes, leading to unstable behavior under varying persona granularity. We propose ACE-Align (Attribute Causal Effect Alignment), a causal-effect framework that aligns how specific demographic attributes shift different cultural values, rather than treating each culture as a homogeneous group. We evaluate ACE-Align across 14 countries spanning five continents, with personas specified by subsets of four attributes (gender, education, residence, and marital status) and granularity instantiated by the number of specified attributes. Across all persona granularities, ACE-Align consistently outperforms baselines. Moreover, it improves geographic equity by reducing the average alignment gap between high-resource and low-resource regions from 9.81 to 4.92 points, while Africa shows the largest average gain (+8.48 points). Code is available at https://github.com/Wells-Luo/ACE-Align.
Human spoken language has long been the subject of scientific investigation, particularly with regard to the mechanisms underpinning speech production. Likewise, the study of animal communications has a substantial literature, with many studies focusing on vocalisation. More recently, there has been growing interest in comparing animal communications and human speech. However, it is proposed here that such a comparison necessitates the appraisal of a minimum set of critical phenomena: i) the number of degrees-of-freedom of the vocal apparatus, ii) the ability to control those degrees-of-freedom independently, iii) the properties of the acoustic environment in which communication takes place, iv) the perceptual salience of the generated sounds, v) the degree to which sounds are contrastive, vi) the presence/absence of compositionality, and vii) the information rate(s) of the resulting communications.
Shahriyar Zaman Ridoy, Azmine Toushik Wasi, Koushik Ahamed Tonmoy
As multilingual Large Language Models (LLMs) gain traction across South Asia, their alignment with local ethical norms, particularly for Bengali, which is spoken by over 285 million people and ranked 6th globally, remains underexplored. Existing ethics benchmarks are largely English-centric and shaped by Western frameworks, overlooking cultural nuances critical for real-world deployment. To address this, we introduce BengaliMoralBench, the first large-scale ethics benchmark for the Bengali language and socio-cultural contexts. It covers five moral domains, Daily Activities, Habits, Parenting, Family Relationships, and Religious Activities, subdivided into 50 culturally relevant subtopics. Each scenario is annotated via native-speaker consensus using three ethical lenses: Virtue, Commonsense, and Justice ethics. We conduct systematic zero-shot evaluation of prominent multilingual LLMs, including Llama, Gemma, Qwen, and DeepSeek, using a unified prompting protocol and standard metrics. Performance varies widely (50-91% accuracy), with qualitative analysis revealing consistent weaknesses in cultural grounding, commonsense reasoning, and moral fairness. BengaliMoralBench provides a foundation for responsible localization, enabling culturally aligned evaluation and supporting the deployment of ethically robust AI in diverse, low-resource multilingual settings such as Bangladesh.
Dongmin Kim, Théo Michelot, Katherine Mertes
et al.
Understanding disease dynamics is crucial for managing wildlife populations and assessing spillover risk to domestic animals and humans, but infection data on free-ranging animals are difficult to obtain. Because pathogen and parasite infections can alter host movement, infection status may be inferred from animal trajectories. We present a hidden Markov model (HMM) framework that links observed movement behaviors to unobserved infection states, consistent with epidemiological compartmental models (e.g., susceptible, infected, recovered, dead). Using movement data from 84 reintroduced scimitar-horned oryx (Oryx dammah), 38 confirmed dead in the field and 6 sampled for disease testing, we demonstrate how HMMs can incorporate epidemiological structure through (1) constrained transition probabilities (e.g., to preclude or allow recovery), (2) covariate effects on transmission, and (3) hierarchically structured HMMs (HHMMs) for multi-scale transitions. Comparing veterinary diagnostic reports with model outputs, we found that HMMs with epidemiological constraints successfully identified infection-associated reductions in movement, whereas unconstrained models failed to capture disease progression. Simulations further showed that constrained HMMs accurately classified susceptible, infected, and recovered states. By illustrating flexible formulations and a workflow for model selection, we provide a transferable approach for detecting infection from movement data. This framework can enhance wildlife disease surveillance, guide population management, and improve understanding of disease dynamics.
Mohsinul Kabir, Tasnim Ahmed, Md Mezbaur Rahman
et al.
Machine Translation (MT) is widely employed to address resource scarcity in low-resource languages by generating synthetic data from high-resource counterparts. While sentiment preservation in translation has long been studied, a critical but underexplored factor is the role of cultural alignment between source and target languages. In this paper, we hypothesize that semantic labels are drifted or altered during MT due to cultural divergence. Through a series of experiments across culturally sensitive and neutral domains, we establish three key findings: (1) MT systems, including modern Large Language Models (LLMs), induce label drift during translation, particularly in culturally sensitive domains; (2) unlike earlier statistical MT tools, LLMs encode cultural knowledge, and leveraging this knowledge can amplify label drift; and (3) cultural similarity or dissimilarity between source and target languages is a crucial determinant of label preservation. Our findings highlight that neglecting cultural factors in MT not only undermines label fidelity but also risks misinterpretation and cultural conflict in downstream applications.
Nur Diyana Mohamad Tahir, Sing Yee Yap, Norhariani Mohd. Nor
et al.
Vibriosis outbreaks pose a significant threat to the productivity of Asian seabass culture, causing substantial losses. Nevertheless, the excessive utilization of antimicrobials exacerbates the issue by fostering the development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Consequently, exploring alternative disease management strategies, such as the introduction of oral vaccines into Asian seabass culture, has become a subject of ongoing investigation. This study aims to compare the genomic characteristics of different Vibrio species isolated from both orally vaccinated and unvaccinated Asian seabass populations. Archived samples of vaccinated and unvaccinated Asian seabass from one site in Selangor, Malaysia, were utilized in this sample. Briefly, the vaccinated group was administered the feed-based vaccine on week 0 (prime vaccination), 2 (booster), and 6 (second booster) at 4% body weight. At the same time, the non-vaccinated fish were fed with a commercially formulated pellet without the vaccine. Vibrio isolates identified from the gut samples were used in this study. The samples were stored at -80°C before being subjected to genomic DNA extraction, PCR, gel electrophoresis, and sequencing using Illumina and Nanopore platforms. Universal 16s primer and pyrH primer were used to identify Vibrio species. Bioinformatic analysis was done using NCBI BLAST, QUAST, BUSCO 5, CGE, and J Species. The isolates of Vibrio species exhibited smooth, convex, round, and entire colonies on TCBS agar plates, which were yellow and green. Twenty-two isolates were sent for 16s rRNA sequencing and revealed Vibrio alginolyticus (54.54%), followed by V. diabolicus (13.63%) and V. parahaemolyticus and V. harveyi (9.09% respectively). Of the 22 samples, 7 were selected for further Illumina sequencing. The whole genome sequences of the six Vibrio species isolated exhibited good coverage percentage, N50 value, Average Nucleotide Identity (ANIb), single-copy percentage, and GC content, while one sample showed low single-copy percentage and high duplicated percentage, which suggested contamination during DNA extraction. Eight novel alleles were discovered, three from the vaccinated group and five from the unvaccinated group, including the Rec, atpA, gyrB, and pyrH. A virulence factor database analysis search revealed 58 virulent genes from the unvaccinated samples and 39 virulent genes from the vaccinated samples. Overall, this research provides valuable insights into the genomic characteristics between orally vaccinated and unvaccinated cultured Asian seabass in the locality.
Alveolar echinococcosis (AE) is a chronic and potentially fatal zoonotic parasitic disease that seriously affects the host’s health. It is caused by the proliferation of <i>Echinococcus multilocularis</i> larvae within the liver. Due to its long incubation period following host infection, early diagnosis of the disease is currently not feasible. Treatment options are extremely limited, with the only choice being curative surgical resection combined with benzimidazole medication. Thus, the development of early, rapid, and minimally invasive diagnostic methods is crucial for enhancing patient prognosis. This study conducted proteomic and metabolomic analyses of protein and metabolite changes in the serum of a treatment group and control group, aiming to compare the differences between them. Overall, 22 proteins showed significant differences between the treatment and control groups, primarily involved in carbohydrate metabolism, lipid metabolism, and amino acid metabolism. The upregulation of genes related to immune response and enhanced glycolysis were observed, possibly associated with the reproduction of <i>E. multilocularis</i> in the liver. A total of 182 metabolites were screened to distinguish between the treatment group and control group. A significant increase in the cytochrome P450 (cP450) metabolite of arachidonic acid indicated signs of renal and splenic involvement in the treatment group. Furthermore, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis highlighted a strong association between amino acid metabolism and the development of AE. The observed changes in amino acid levels may provide nutrients that facilitate <i>E. multilocularis</i> colonization and contribute to the pathogenesis of AE. In summary, by investigating the different characteristics of the AE and control group through proteomic (<i>n</i> = 4/group/time point) and metabolomic (<i>n</i> = 8/group/time point) analyses, potential serum biomarkers for diagnosing mice with AE were identified.
The organoid co-culture model, as a novel tool for recreating a three-dimensional microenvironment to study cell-cell interactions, has demonstrated significant application potential in biomedical research in recent years. By simulating the in vivo tissue microenvironment, this model provides a more precise experimental platform for investigating complex cellular interactions, particularly in areas such as tumor immune evasion mechanisms, drug sensitivity testing, and the pathological characterization of neurodegenerative diseases, where it has demonstrated significant value. However, the organoid co-culture model still faces several challenges in terms of standardized procedures, large-scale cultivation, ethical guidelines, and future development. In particular, in the field of laboratory animal science, how to effectively combine organoids with traditional animal models, and how to select the most appropriate model for different research needs while exploring its potential for replacement, remain pressing issues. In the context of ethical approval and the replacement of animal experiments, the organoid co-culture model offers an experimental approach that better aligns with the "3R" principle (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement), potentially becoming an important tool for replacing traditional animal models. To this end, this paper reviews the latest advances and key challenges in this field, providing a detailed description of the construction methods for organoid co-culture models and discussing their applications in disease mechanism research and drug screening. The paper also systematically compares the organoid co-culture models with traditional animal models, exploring the criteria for selecting the appropriate model for specific applications. Furthermore, this paper discusses the potential value of organoid co-culture models as alternatives to animal experiments and anticipates future development trends of this technology. Through these discussions, the paper aims to promote the innovation and development of organoid co-culture technology and provide new perspectives and scientific evidence for future research.
Olumide Samuel Ajani, Samuel Gbadebo Olukole, Matthew Olugbenga Oyeyemi
et al.
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a widely used chemical in the plastic industry and a known endocrine disruptor which causes reproductive toxicity in animals. Also, melatonin is an antioxidant that can alleviate the toxicity caused by endocrine disruptors. Previous studies have demonstrated that melatonin protects the male reproductive functions. However, the protective mechanisms of melatonin are not well elucidated. This study investigated how melatonin protects against BPA-induced testicular dysfunction in rats. Forty male Wistar rats were grouped randomly into four. Animals in group A (control) received 0.2 mL of olive oil orally, B: melatonin (10 mg/kg) intraperitoneally, C: BPA (10 mg/kg) orally, and D: co-exposed with BPA and melatonin. All rats were treated daily for 45 days. Testicular samples were harvested and analysed on the 46th day. Results from this study showed that melatonin prevented the BPA-induced testicular necrosis and distortion of spermatozoa flagellar axoneme arrangement in the co-exposed rats. In addition, the induction of alpha-smooth muscle actin, vimentin, and S-100 proteins in the testes was significantly reduced in the BPA alone-treated rats. The melatonin upregulated the proteins in the co-treated group. Increased expression of alpha-smooth muscle actin, vimentin, and S-100 proteins in normal tissue have been associated with effective regulation of fibroblast contractile activity, cell migration and metastasis, and apoptosis, proliferation, differentiation, and inflammation in different cell types, respectively. Therefore, our findings provide insights into the protective mechanisms of melatonin against the bisphenol A-induced reproductive toxicity.
Sagnik Mukherjee, Muhammad Farid Adilazuarda, Sunayana Sitaram
et al.
Socio-demographic prompting is a commonly employed approach to study cultural biases in LLMs as well as for aligning models to certain cultures. In this paper, we systematically probe four LLMs (Llama 3, Mistral v0.2, GPT-3.5 Turbo and GPT-4) with prompts that are conditioned on culturally sensitive and non-sensitive cues, on datasets that are supposed to be culturally sensitive (EtiCor and CALI) or neutral (MMLU and ETHICS). We observe that all models except GPT-4 show significant variations in their responses on both kinds of datasets for both kinds of prompts, casting doubt on the robustness of the culturally-conditioned prompting as a method for eliciting cultural bias in models or as an alignment strategy. The work also calls rethinking the control experiment design to tease apart the cultural conditioning of responses from "placebo effect", i.e., random perturbations of model responses due to arbitrary tokens in the prompt.
Tung-Yuan Hsiao, Lu-Kai Wang, Tzung-Yuang Chen
et al.
Background : Proton flash therapy is an emergency research topic in radiation therapy since the Varian announced the promising results from the first in human clinical trial of Flash therapy recently. However, it still needs a lot of researches on this topic, not only to understand the mechanism of the radiobiological effects but also to develop an appropriate dose monitoring system. Purpose : In this study we setup an experimental station for small animal proton Flash irradiation in a clinical machine. The dose monitoring system is able to provide real-time irradiation dose and irradiation time structure. Methods : The dose monitoring system includes homebrewed transmission ionization chamber (TIC), plastic scintillator based beam position monitor, and Poor Man Faraday Cup (FC). Both TIC and FC are equipped with a homebrewed fast reading current integral electronics device. The imaging guidance system comprises a moveable CT, laser, as well as attaching a bead on the body surface of the mouse can accurately guide the testing small animal in position. Results : The dose monitoring system can provide the time structure of delivered dose rate within 1 ms time resolution. Experimental testing results show that the highest dose in one pulse of 230 MeV proton that can be delivered to the target is about 20 Gy during 199 ms pulse period at 100 Gy/s dose rate. Conclusion : A proton research irradiation platform dedicated for studying small animal Flash biological effects has been established at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital. The final setup data represent a reference for the beam users to plan the experiments as well as for the improvement of the facility.
Alex J. Chan, José Luis Redondo García, Fabrizio Silvestri
et al.
Content moderation on a global scale must navigate a complex array of local cultural distinctions, which can hinder effective enforcement. While global policies aim for consistency and broad applicability, they often miss the subtleties of regional language interpretation, cultural beliefs, and local legislation. This work introduces a flexible framework that enhances foundation language models with cultural knowledge. Our approach involves fine-tuning encoder-decoder models on media-diet data to capture cultural nuances, and applies a continued training regime to effectively integrate these models into a content moderation pipeline. We evaluate this framework in a case study of an online podcast platform with content spanning various regions. The results show that our culturally adapted models improve the accuracy of local violation detection and offer explanations that align more closely with regional cultural norms. Our findings reinforce the need for an adaptable content moderation approach that remains flexible in response to the diverse cultural landscapes it operates in and represents a step towards a more equitable and culturally sensitive framework for content moderation, demonstrating what is achievable in this domain.
Reza Kanani, Ruhollah Kianfar, Hossein janmohammadi
et al.
Introduction: Vitamin D3 is one of the important vitamins in calcium metabolism, which increases the active transport of calcium and phosphorus in the intestinal epithelium. However, the mechanism by which vitamin D3 increases the absorption of calcium and phosphorus is not fully understood. The active form of vitamin D3 or 1,25-hydroxycalciferol is transported to the nucleus of the intestinal cells. In the presence of 1, 25-hydroxycalciferol, a specific RNA is secreted from the cell nucleus, which is translated into a specific protein by the ribosomes, thereby increasing the uptake of calcium and phosphorus. The primary role of 1, 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 in vertebrates in regulating calcium homeostasis is the direct action of 1,25-hydroxyvitamin D3 on the gut, kidneys and bones by inhibiting the production of parathyroid hormone in the parathyroid glades. Vitamin C prevents stress by preventing the release of corticosteroid hormones, which can be effective for bird function, egg production and reducing mortality. In the liver, vitamin D3 is converted into 25-hydroxycalciferol, which is later converted into calciferol hydroxylase (activated by vitamin C) in the kidneys by the enzyme 25-hydroxy molecule. This metabolite increases the absorption of calcium and phosphorus from the intestinal wall and renal tubules. The aim of this experiment is therefore the effect of vitamin D3 and vitamin C on performance, egg quality and hatchability in broilers breeder hen at the end of the production period.
Materials and Methods: A total of 240 broiler breeder hens and 24 cockers (Ross 308) were distributed in a 2×2 factorial arrangement including two levels of vitamin D (3500 & 5500 IU) and two levels of vitamin C (0 & 150 mg/kg) with 6 replicate pens of 10 hens and one cock each. The experiment lasted for 12 weeks (from the age of 49 to 61 weeks), and during the trial, the performance traits production and hatchability were recorded. Every 28 days 4 eggs were evaluated for internal and external quality.
Results and Discussion: The results of the study showed that the main effect of vitamin D3 had a significant impact on egg weight, with higher concentrations resulting in a reduction in egg weight. However, there was no significant effect on other performance parameters. The main effect of higher concentrations of vitamin D3 was an increase in the number of hatching eggs, shell percentage, shell thickness, specific gravity of the eggs, a decrease in the percentage of egg breakage. However, this effect was not significant for other parameters. Increasing the level of 1,25 hydroxycalciferol significantly increased plasma calcium levels, which led to increased renal 1-alpha-hydroxylase activity, envelope secretion, reduced oocyte rupture, resulting in increased hatch fertility. The main effect of vitamin C significantly increased production percentage and reduced feed conversion and feed consumption per egg. However, there was no significant effect on other parameters. Addition of vitamin C significantly increased external characteristics of the eggs, including shell proportion, shell thickness, shell ash and phosphorus, number of hatching eggs, but reduced the number of broken eggs. However, there was no significant effect on internal parameters, except for yolk color. The use of vitamin C activates the enzyme 25-hydroxycholecalciferol hydroxylase to produce 1,25 hydroxycalciferol, which increases calcium absorption from the intestinal wall and reduces the number of ruptured eggs. Regarding the interaction of different levels of vitamin D3 and vitamin C, the results showed that higher levels of vitamin D3 and vitamin C increased production percentage, egg mass, number of hatching eggs, shell thickness, phosphorus and FCR. Intake in the egg removed significantly increased, but the number of broken eggs decreased.
Conclusion: In general, according to the results of the present experiment, it can be concluded that the use of vitamin C in an amount of 150 mg / kg with 5500 IU of vitamin D3 can increase the production percentage, increase the mass of eggs and improve the feed conversion ratio. It can also increase shell thickness and the number of chickens produced weekly and over the period, decrease the number of broken eggs, increase the number of hatching eggs, reduce feed intake per egg and feed intake per chicken at the end of the broiler breeder production period.
Today most technologies and interfaces are designed to be global. We argue that if emotional aspects are incorporated during the design phase of technologies and interfaces - or in technologies for recognizing users' emotions such as affective computing - culture and language should be taken as relevant criteria.
Fiona Lippert, Bart Kranstauber, E. Emiel van Loon
et al.
Studying animal movements is essential for effective wildlife conservation and conflict mitigation. For aerial movements, operational weather radars have become an indispensable data source in this respect. However, partial measurements, incomplete spatial coverage, and poor understanding of animal behaviours make it difficult to reconstruct complete spatio-temporal movement patterns from available radar data. We tackle this inverse problem by learning a mapping from high-dimensional radar measurements to low-dimensional latent representations using a convolutional encoder. Under the assumption that the latent system dynamics are well approximated by a locally linear Gaussian transition model, we perform efficient posterior estimation using the classical Kalman smoother. A convolutional decoder maps the inferred latent system states back to the physical space in which the known radar observation model can be applied, enabling fully unsupervised training. To encourage physical consistency, we additionally introduce a physics-informed loss term that leverages known mass conservation constraints. Our experiments on synthetic radar data show promising results in terms of reconstruction quality and data-efficiency.
Laura P. Schaposnik, Sheryl Hsu, Robin I. M. Dunbar
In recent years it has become evident the need of understanding how failure of coordination imposes constraints on the size of stable groups that highly social mammals can live in. We examine here the forces that keep animals together as a herd and others that drive them apart. Different phenotypes (e.g. genders) have different rates of gut fill, causing them to spend different amounts of time performing activities. By modeling a group as a set of semi-coupled oscillators on a disc, we show that the members of the group may become less and less coupled until the group dissolves and breaks apart. We show that when social bonding creates a stickiness, or gravitational pull, between pairs of individuals, fragmentation is reduced.