When OpenAI deprecated GPT-4o in early 2026, thousands of users protested under #keep4o, claiming newer models had "lost their empathy." No published study has tested this claim. We conducted the first clinical measurement, evaluating three OpenAI model generations (GPT-4o, o4-mini, GPT-5-mini) across 14 emotionally challenging conversational scenarios in mental health and AI companion domains, producing 2,100 scored AI responses assessed on six psychological safety dimensions using clinically-grounded rubrics. Empathy scores are statistically indistinguishable across all three models (Kruskal-Wallis H=4.33, p=0.115). What changed is the safety posture: crisis detection improved monotonically from GPT-4o to GPT-5-mini (H=13.88, p=0.001), while advice safety declined (H=16.63, p<0.001). Per-turn trajectory analysis -- a novel methodological contribution -- reveals these shifts are sharpest during mid-conversation crisis moments invisible to aggregate scoring. In a self-harm scenario involving a minor, GPT-4o scored 3.6/10 on crisis detection during early disclosure turns; GPT-5-mini never dropped below 7.8. What users perceived as "lost empathy" was a shift from a cautious model that missed crises to an alert model that sometimes says too much -- a trade-off with real consequences for vulnerable users, currently invisible to both the people who feel it and the developers who create it.
This study investigates bifurcation dynamics in an SIRS epidemic model with cubic saturated incidence, extending the quadratic saturation framework established by Lu, Huang, Ruan, and Yu (Journal of Differential Equations, 267, 2019). We rigorously prove the existence of codimension-three Bogdanov-Takens bifurcations and degenerate Hopf bifurcations, demonstrating the coexistence of three limit cycles within a single epidemiological model, a phenomenon that is rarely documented and exhibits significant dynamical complexity. Our analysis reveals that both the infection rate $κ$ (through specific inequality conditions) and psychological effect thresholds critically govern disease dynamics: from complete eradication to various persistence patterns, including multiple periodic oscillations and coexistent steady states. By innovatively applying singularity theory, we characterize the topology of the bifurcation set through the local unfolding of singularities and the identification of nondegenerate singularities for fronts. Numerical simulations verify the emergence of three limit cycles in monotonic parameter regimes and two limit cycles in nonmonotonic regimes. This work advances existing bifurcation research by incorporating higher-order interactions and comprehensive singularity analysis, thereby providing a mathematical foundation for decoding complex transmission mechanisms critical to the design of public health strategies.
Reinhold Niebuhr stands alone among many 20th century theorists of religion and politics for at once rejecting both the natural law tradition of just war, as well as the secular-rationalist tradition of his progressive contemporaries. Nowhere is his dual criticism more evident than in his critical stance on technology in war. For Niebuhr, technological advancements were not only inevitable, but sometimes necessary to develop in the face of advances from nefarious actors in world affairs. But using technologically advanced weapons risked destroying the moral authority of a nation by engaging in utilitarian calculus. Religious and military ethicists concerned with the integration of technological advancement in contemporary war would do well to consider Niebuhr’s thought and how it might be developed further in order to address the new concerns raised not only by modern tools such as drones, hypersonic weapons, and AI, but also by whatever yet to be developed technologies remain past the temporal horizons.
In bio-social models, cooperative behaviour has evolved as an adaptive strategy, playing multi-functional roles. One of such roles in populations is to increase the success of survival and reproduction of individuals and their families or social groups. Moreover, collective decision-making in cooperative behaviour is an aspect that is used to study the dynamic behaviour of individuals within a social group. In this paper, we have focused on population dynamics by considering a predator-prey model as our main exemplification, where the generalist predator has adopted a cooperative hunting strategy while consuming their prey. In particular, we have analyzed the dynamic nature of the system when a nonlocal term is introduced in the cooperation. First, the Turing instability condition has been studied for the local model around the coexisting steady-state, followed by the Turing and non-Turing patterns in the presence of the nonlocal interaction term. This work is also concerned with the existence of travelling wave solutions for predator-prey interaction with the nonlocal cooperative hunting strategy. Such solutions are reported for local as well as for nonlocal models. We have characterized the invading speed of the predator with the help of the minimal wave speed of travelling wave solutions connecting the predator-free state to the co-existence state. The travelling waves are found to be non-monotonic in this system. The formation of wave trains has been demonstrated for an extended range of nonlocal interactions. Finally, the importance of psychological effects in shaping the dynamics of nonlocal collective behaviour is demonstrated with several representative examples.
Benny Wei-Yun Hsu, Yu-Ming Chen, Yuan-Han Yang
et al.
Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD) impact dementia care substantially, affecting both patients and caregivers. Effective management and early detection of BPSD are crucial to reduce the stress and burden on caregivers and healthcare systems. Despite the advancements in machine learning for dementia prediction, there is a considerable gap in utilizing these methods for BPSD prediction. This study aims to fill this gap by presenting a novel personalized framework for BPSD prediction, utilizing physiological signals from smart wearable devices. Our personalized fine-grained BPSD prediction method accurately predicts BPSD occurrences by extracting individual behavioral patterns, while the generalized models identify diverse patterns and differentiate between various BPSD symptoms. Detailed comparisons between the proposed personalized method and conventional generalized methods reveals substantial improvements across all performance metrics, including a 16.0% increase in AUC. These results demonstrate the potential of our proposed method in advancing dementia care by enabling proactive interventions and improving patient outcomes in real-world scenarios. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that leverages physiological signals from smart wearable devices to predict BPSD, marking a significant stride in dementia care research.
SUBJECT & OBJECTIVES: The emergent spiritualities have a special and new look at man and his relationship with the Almighty God, leading to humanism in some cases. Deepak Chopra believes man has a lot of ability due to his mind and he can know God without the need for divine religions. He can also behave like God and participate in the creation of the Universe with the Almighty God and control the material world and the universe. On the other hand, Mulla Sadra considers all human abilities to be related to his Nafs (soul), which can possess abilities and dominate existence if connected to God Almighty.METHOD & FINDING: This article is a critical research answering the question of what the position of humans in the universe is. The findings of the research show that Chopra imagined that divine religions were created to nurture and develop human abilities, especially the physical type; While the purpose of divine religions is the spiritual evolution of man.CONCLUSION: Using the qualitative method in the analysis of Chopra's writings based on Mulla Sadra's views, we can draw the following conclusion: Although man is composed of two domains, Nafs (soul) and the body, his most important domain is his soul, for which, although man has abilities, his abilities are due to his connection to the Almighty God.
With the revival of nationalism and identity politics, imagological studies that analyze attitudes, stereotypes and prejudices about one’s own and others’ national character are becoming increasingly relevant. These studies investigate relationships that govern rhetoric, discursive representation, literary activity, and ultimately international relations in general. Imagology is currently intensively developing in literary criticism and other humanities, which also determines the relevance of this study. The purpose of this review article is to analyze scientific publications on the theoretical and practical aspects of imagology over the past 10 years in order to determine its significance and development prospects in the era of globalization. Тhe object of the study is the significance and prospects for the development of imagology; the subject of the study are scientific publications on imagological topics over the past 10 years. The choice of sources for this review was made by the keyword imagology on the following resources: Scopus, Cyberleninka, as well as Imagologica.eu — a site dedicated to imagological research over the past 10 years. An analysis of the main specialized series and collections of articles on imagology was carried out in order to identify the predominant topics of publications and confirm the role of imagology in literary criticism and other humanities. The study of modern Russian and foreign publications on imagological topics has shown that the modern environment is open to studying the discursively constructed nature of many social and cultural values. Thus, a large number of publications on imagological topics testify to the importance of modern imagology, its great prospects and continuous development. The analysis showed the main directions of research in modern imagology and proved that at present imagology is not concerned with isolated images, but with their relationships and associative links with other images, chronological boundaries of the dispersion of images, and shifts in content elements. Combining various approaches of contextual analysis (socio-historical, ethno-psychological and cultural-political), makes the imagological method effective and universal. It must be emphasized that imagology takes on the political mission of deconstructing nationalist reasoning and thus contributes to a better understanding between peoples. In cross-cultural, transnational and globalization studies, imagology has the potential to break stereotypes that oppose nations to each other and to find ways to interact.
Abstract In reply to the claim that syntax is not taken into account in Linguistic Meaning Meets Linguistic Form, I show that local syntactic analysis has been implemented in the treatment of aspectual verbs and verbs of positive and negative recall, where the syntactic function of the -ing form as direct object of the main verb is put into relation with the main verb’s meaning as the basis for the inferences drawn concerning the temporal relation between the main verb’s event and that expressed by the complement. I argue that I have also developed new tools of syntactic analysis for the to-infinitive, demonstrating that it is not the direct object of the main verb, but rather a goal- or result-specifier, and showing how this accounts for the fact that its event is always understood to be somehow subsequent to that of the main verb. Regarding the applicability of formal semantics to natural language, I argue that the absolute priority accorded to the truth-functional dimension of language by this type of semantics leads to the artificial separation of use-conditions from truth-conditions, with the former being treated as an additional interpretational function added on to the truth-functional one. Contra the autonomous syntax claim that our desire to express meaning is to a great extent independent of the means we use to express those meanings, it is argued that how we perceive the world in our experience is influenced by our system of linguistic representation.
Buddhism is an influential religion with a long-standing history and profound philosophy. Nowadays, more and more people worldwide aspire to learn the essence of Buddhism, attaching importance to Buddhism dissemination. However, Buddhist scriptures written in classical Chinese are obscure to most people and machine translation applications. For instance, general Chinese-English neural machine translation (NMT) fails in this domain. In this paper, we proposed a novel approach to building a practical NMT model for Buddhist scriptures. The performance of our translation pipeline acquired highly promising results in ablation experiments under three criteria.
Adamantini Hatzipanayioti, Alexia Galati, Marianna Pagkratidou
et al.
In one experiment we examined the organizational structure of spatial memories for familiar environments, comparing it directly with that for unfamiliar environments. Participants in the familiar condition pointed from imagined perspectives towards objects in their own rooms and their performance was compared to that of matched controls in an unfamiliar condition who carried out the same task after studying the same rooms in immersive Virtual Reality. In both conditions, participants were faster and more accurate in pointing from imagined perspectives that were aligned with the geometry of the room (vs. not aligned), suggesting the presence of orientation-dependent representations. Whereas in the unfamiliar condition pointing performance was best along a single axis, performance in the familiar condition was about equal across all 4 orientations that were aligned with the geometric structure of the room. Moreover, performance in the familiar condition was influenced by the orientation from which participants started to preview the room prior to testing; in contrast, in the unfamiliar condition performance was not influenced by the orientation from which encoding started. This finding suggests that post-encoding situational factors (e.g., the starting orientation from which an environment is previewed) can prime the accessibility of information in well-established long-term spatial memories.
The point of departure of this article is postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault’s ‘archaeological analysis’ of the history of sexuality, seen from the lens of the South African philosopher Johann Beukes. Foucault points out that since the circulation of the so-called handbooks on penance in the 6th century CE, same-gender sex was seen as a punishable sin. With regard to perspectives before this period, Foucault reflects specifically on the contribution of the Christian theologian Augustine (354–430 CE), and particularly Augustine’s interpretation of the Greek expression para phusin (παρὰ φύσιν) as ‘against nature’ as written in Paul’s letter to the Romans (1:26). He argues that this interpretation by Augustine represents a trend in contemporaneous thinking of non-Christian writers such as Plutarch and Themistios. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that a much more influential stimulus from another non-Christian thinker, namely Artemidorus of Daldis (2nd century CE), created a common context that influenced Augustine’s views and subsequently those on same-gender sex, sexual identity, and heterosexual marriage within the Christian tradition.
Contribution: The article shows how modern-day homophobia and aversion in same-gender sex do not have its primarily ground in Paul’s use of para phusin, but that Augustine and present-day homophobes in the Christian (including the Reformed) tradition do have their roots in a non-Christian conviction without realising its intercultural and non-Christian origins.
Quan-Hoang Vuong, Tam-Tri Le, Quang-Loc Nguyen
et al.
Rapid urbanization with poor city planning has resulted in severe air pollution in low- and middle-income countries' urban areas. Given the adverse impacts of air pollution, many responses have been taken, including migration to another city. The current study explores the psychological process and demographic predictors of migration intention among urban people in Hanoi, Vietnam - one of the most polluted capital cities in the world. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) was used to construct the model and perform Bayesian analysis on a stratified random sampling dataset of 475 urban people. We found that the migration intention was negatively associated with the individual's satisfaction with air quality. The association was moderated by the perceived availability of a better alternative (or nearby city with better air quality). However, the high migration cost due to geographical distance made the moderation effect of the perceived availability of a better alternative negligible. Moreover, it was also found that male and young people were more likely to migrate, but the brain drain hypothesis was not validated. The results hint that without air pollution mitigation measures, the dislocation of economic forces might occur and hinder sustainable urban development. Therefore, collaborative actions among levels of government, with the semi-conducting principle at heart, are recommended to reduce air pollution.
This paper puts forward an ontology that is indebted to QBism, Kant, Bohr, Schrödinger, the philosophy of the Upanishads, and the evolutionary philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. Central to it is that reality is relative to consciousness or experience. Instead of a single mind-independent reality, there are different poises of consciousness, including a consciousness to which ``we are all really only various aspects of the One'' (Schrödinger). This ontology helps clear up unresolved issues in the philosophy of science, such as arise from the reification of either instruments or calculational tools, or from a disregard of the universal context of science, which is human experience. It further helps clear up unresolved issues in the philosophy of mind, among them the problem of intentionality and the dilemma posed by the mutual inclusion of self and world (Husserl's paradox of human subjectivity).
This is a translation into English of my Masters thesis (hovedoppgave) from 1991. The main topic of the thesis is the relation between fundamental physics and philosophy, and a discussion of several possible ontologies of quantum field theory.
Aim: To explore the nature and magnitude of alcohol's harms to others (AHTOs), and associations with mental well-being. Methods: Cross-sectional survey implemented amongst 891 randomly selected Welsh residents (aged 18+ years), via computer assisted telephone interviews. Questions established past 12-month experience of nine direct harms resulting from another person's alcohol consumption (e.g. violence) and five linked outcomes (e.g. concern for a child). The source (e.g. partner/stranger) and frequency of the AHTO were collected, and respondents' socio-demographics, drinking behaviours and mental well-being status. Results: During the past 12 months, 43.5% of respondents had experienced at least one direct harm (45.5% at least one direct harm/linked outcome). In demographically adjusted analyses, the odds of experiencing any direct harm decreased sequentially as age group increased (Adjusted Odds Ratio [AORs]: 1.9 [age 65–74 years] - 4.2 [age 18–34 years]), and was higher amongst binge drinkers (AOR, 1.5, p < 0.05). Associations between age group and suffering the direct harms anxiety, disrupted sleep, feeling threatened, property damage and emotional neglect were found. Experience of feeling threatened was lower amongst females (AOR 0.6, p < 0.05). In demographically adjusted analyses, low mental well-being was higher amongst those who had suffered alcohol-related financial issues (AOR 2.2, p < 0.001), emotional neglect (AOR 2.3, p < 0.01) and property damage (AOR 2.2, p < 0.05). Conclusion: AHTOs place a large, although unequal burden on adults in Wales. Individuals' drinking patterns are associated with experience of AHTOs. Critically, experience of some harms is associated with low mental well-being. Keywords: Alcohol, Harm, Prevention, Mental well-being
Psychology, Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Positive psychology is a science, yet its subject matter overlaps significantly with that of the humanities. Differing methods of inquiry could lead to an antagonistic relationship between positive psychology and the various disciplines in the humanities, but this chapter explores the value of collaborative relations between these domains. It begins by noting ways in which the humanities have influenced—and continue to influence—positive psychology, and goes on to advocate an extensive, robust, and formal collaboration between positive psychology and the humanities. Positive psychology stands to benefit from such a collaboration through access to a rich repository of information about human experience and the quest to understand and cultivate human flourishing, through conceptual analyses and more robust and nuanced constructs, and through a new domain of positive interventions. Two extended discussions demonstrate some of the benefits that can accrue to positive psychology through collaboration with the humanities. First, a careful philosophical analysis of the “positive” in positive psychology shows how the humanities can help deepen positive psychology’s conceptual roots. Second, the presentation of a conceptual model for operationalizing the well-being effects of the humanities shows how collaboration can open up significant new programs of scientific inquiry into the roles of philosophy, history, religion, literature, music, film, and visual and performance art for understanding, enjoying, and advancing human flourishing.
Sadaf Iqbal,1 Tahir Farid,1 Jianhong Ma,1 Qaiser Mehmood2 1Department of Applied Psychology and Behavioral Science, Zhejiang University, Zhejiang, China; 2Department of Management, Hamdard University, Islamabad, Pakistan Background: Leaders play vital role in organization to accomplish organizational goals and establish healthy working environment. This study addresses the effect of authentic leadership on employees’ communal relationship and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). In addition, this research also examines how procedural justice augments the effect of authentic leadership on both aforementioned employees’ behavioral outcomes.Materials and methods: Using a cross-sectional design, data were collected from 425 employees working in banking sector of Pakistan. It was hypothesized that authentic leadership would positively predict employees’ communal relationship and OCB. Furthermore, we also assumed that procedural justice will strengthen the relationship between authentic leadership, both behavioral outcomes, that is, employees’ communal relationship and OCB. Results: Analyses reveal that authentic leadership positively predicts employees’ communal relationship and OCB. In addition, procedural justice was found to positively moderate the effect of authentic leadership on employees’ communal relationship and OCB. Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the relationships among authentic leadership, procedural justice, communal relationship, and OCBs in the South Asian context. This is the first study to report the moderating role of procedural justice in the relationship between authentic leadership and communal relationship and OCB. The practical implications of study findings and direction for future research are discussed. Keywords: authentic leadership, communal relationship, organizational citizenship behaviors, procedural justice
Time machines are predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity and provide a myriad of unsolved paradoxes. Convincing and general arguments against time machines and their paradoxes are missing in physics and philosophy so far. In this article, a philosophical argument against time machines is given. When thought of as a process, individuation refuses the idea of time machines, in particular travels into the past. With the aid of Nietzsche-Heraclitus' philosophy of becoming and Simondon's notion of process of individuation, I propose that time machines are modern fables, created by the man of $\textit{ressentiment}$. In the $\textit{amor fati}$ formula of Nietzsche, I suggest the antipode to time machines.
The segregation and exploitation of people labeled as intellectually disabled is so thorough that it is rarely academically investigated through the lens of structural violence. This article interrogates the cultural practices and dynamics that are used to oppress based on categories related to intellectual capacity. With the aim of resisting reinforcing the epistemological violence that has silenced the voices and experiences of those grappling under these circumstances of structural violence, the author of the article explores an interrelational method. The words of a woman from within a sheltered workshop (factory like spaces of exclusion claiming to support people with disabilities) are intertwined with the scholar activist stance of the author to explore moral exclusion and structural violence. Along with the excavation of these abusive practices, this article inspired by the insights contained in the letters from the author within the sheltered workshop, envisions desire as a form of resistence and subjects as agents. Rather than seeking conclusions from the themes of resistence elevated from the analysis of the letters, uncomfortable questions are generated about power and academic exploitation in the name of activism.