Search Results (881)

The impact of oncological diseases extends far beyond the clinical patient, profoundly affecting the mental health of caregivers, family members, and volunteers who navigate complex emotional landscapes of grief, anxiety, and trauma. While the domain of digital health has seen a proliferation of serious games aimed at pediatric patient education and treatment adherence, the specific perspective of the “second-order patient”, the caregiver or survivor, remains significantly under-explored. The primary objective of this study is to systematically review the current state of interactive narratives in oncology, palliative care, and grief support, identifying research gaps to inform the broader design space of empathy-driven serious games. Following the PRISMA guidelines, 31 articles were selected from an initial query of 116 records. Interventions were categorized into Serious Games, Games, and Gamification. The analysis reveals a critical thematic transition: early interventions relied heavily on biological “battle” metaphors to empower patients, whereas the current literature advocates for “thanatosensitive” designs that foster empathy. However, a distinct research gap persists regarding narratives that explore post-loss meaning reconstruction and the hospital volunteer experience. Synthesizing these findings, this paper establishes an evidence-based theoretical framework demonstrating a significant opportunity for games that prioritize dialogue and emotional processing over traditional winning conditions. As a practical application of these findings, we also briefly outline the conceptualization of a prototype simulating a widower’s experience volunteering in a palliative ward, shifting the ludic focus from defeating a disease to navigating loss. Full article

The problem of truth-grounding occupies a central position in the history of metaphysics. Aquinas synthesizes Aristotelian epistemology with the Augustinian doctrine of illumination, establishing a comprehensive system in which participation in the divine intellect, expressed through the illuminative function of the agent intellect, serves as the foundational principle. Heidegger, through a critical transformation of this system, opens an alternative path to the ontological grounding of truth. Rather than standing in simple opposition, the two thinkers stand in a relation of critical engagement. Heidegger preserves the phenomenological validity of the illumination metaphor, acknowledging the fundamental structure of truth as manifestation, while simultaneously dismantling the theological framework that undergirds its transcendent guarantee. In its place, he advances the ontological concepts of the clearing (Lichtung) and appropriation (Ereignis). This conceptual transformation marks a decisive shift in the grounding of truth: from dependence on the eternal assurance of a transcendent being to the historical self-disclosure inherent in Dasein itself. Full article

One of the most famous and frequently analysed descriptions in literary and art history is undoubtedly Dostoevsky’s ekphrasis of Holbein’s painting The Dead Christ in the Tomb in his novel The Idiot (Part III. Chapter 6). The painting itself sparked a series of theological and aesthetic controversies with its unusual, non-canonical iconography depicting of the Passion of Christ. Most art historical analyses do not ignore the ekphrasis of that picture in The Idiot. In this study, we proceed from the premise that the “reading of the painting” leads to different results from the point of view of three main characters of the novel: Rogozhin, Myshkin, and Ippolit. Our goal is to prove that ekphrasis is an inseparable part of a speech act—not an objective description, but intentional speech. Therefore, it cannot be interpreted without understanding the speaker’s intention or the character’s situation. This explains the strong distortions and misreading in the ekphrasis. We can capture the meaning reconstructed in the character’s speech through the motifs of copy, epigonism, duplication and misquotation. Ippolit, the subiectum of ekphrasis, proves to be a truly “bad reader,” and his reading becomes devastating in the world of the novel insofar as it anticipates the destruction expressed in the motifs of the Apocalypse. In addition, we also reveal that there is a hidden intention behind Ippolit’s reading, which we can grasp by examining the signs in the text (metaphorical meaning). The most important motifs of ekphrasis (e.g., nature, the number six, actuality, darkness–light) weave through the entire text of the novel and are incorporated into the process of text production and meaning creation. Full article

This paper reconstructs the archive of Islamic humanism as a cultural resource for Critical Psychologists, addressing the geopolitical double-bind of the global Muslim population caught between Islamophobia and fundamentalism. This living archive spans intellectual contributions to falsafa (rationalism) and tasawwuf (mysticism), from medieval thinkers like Ibn Rushd and al-Ghazali to modern figures like Mourad Wahba and Ali Shariʿati. While primarily philosophical, these contributions offer practical implications for psychosocial liberation. Utilizing a methodology of deconstructive unsilencing, the archive is positioned as both pluriversal and metaphorical. By analyzing the ideological mechanism of virtual internment, the paper proposes a praxis of learned ignorance and decolonial resistance to subvert the panoptic look of anti-humanism through the Real Gaze of Islamic humanism. This retrieval offers a materialist praxis seeking to overturn the (post)colonial triad of fundamentalism, parasitic capitalism, and postmodernism. In sum, the article argues that a genealogical consignation of Islamic humanism facilitates a transmodernity that integrates Totality with Exteriority, effectively negating both coloniality and antimodernity. Full article

The article discusses contexts of Henry Miller’s works (“Black Spring”, “Tropic of Capricorn”) and the poem Brooklyn Bridge by Vladimir Mayakovsky, which have in common the theme and imagery of a Bridge and the avant-garde era of creation. The authors of the article analyze not so much the “intersection” as the “union” of Miller and Mayakovsky, that is, not so much coincidences and closeness as complements that allow us to trace the entire breadth of the avant-garde literary project. In Henry Miller’s works the semantics of the image of a bridge referring to Nietzche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra is primarily noted and analyzed. In the analysis of Mayakovsky’s poem, special attention is paid to the verse and thematic composition of the text; metaphors; sound repetitions and echoes and their semantics; the specific historicism; and an important concept of reconstruction from traces, remains, and reflexes, turning to which Mayakovsky comes closer to, the unknown to him, Charles S. Peirce (abduction) and Carlo Ginzburg (keys), who was not yet born in the year the text was written. Full article

This study examines the diachronic development of Spanish perception verbs into deverbal topic markers (DTMs), focusing on tocar (‘to touch’), e.g., en/por lo que toca a, as representative of sensory perception. While the grammaticalization of visual perception verbs into discourse markers (DMs) has been extensively documented, sensory verbs remain understudied. Drawing on data from three electronic corpora—CORDIAM, CORDE, and CORPES—this paper traces the semantic and syntactic evolution of these constructions from the 15th to the 21st century. There are three main conclusions: (a) the semantic development of tocar (‘to touch’) is driven by the interaction of metonymy and metaphor, corresponding to a process of metaphtonymy; (b) en/por lo que toca a arises through gradual grammaticalization processes, including semantic bleaching, decategorialization, increase in scope, and a positional shift toward the left periphery; (c) the corpus evidence suggests a gradual diffusion of the construction across textual genres, beginning in legal and administrative texts and later spreading to other registers. Full article

Contemporary Music Information Retrieval (MIR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems are increasingly applied to diverse musical traditions, yet they are largely grounded in Western musical and linguistic assumptions. This study examines whether commonly used MIR features and multilingual NLP models adequately represent the acoustic, linguistic, and cultural structures of Maskandi music in comparison to Western music and identifies where representational gaps and biases arise. A multidimensional framework was employed, comprising acoustic and structural MIR analysis, linguistic and semantic lyrical analysis, and bias analysis. A curated dataset of 60 recordings and corresponding lyrics was analysed using rhythm and beat features, pitch contour measures, structural self-similarity, timbre embeddings, semantic similarity, lexical diversity, metaphor density, topic modelling, multilingual embeddings, and dataset-level audits. The results reveal systematic representational failures: beat tracking showed lower median IOI coefficient of variation for Maskandi (0.028) versus Western music (0.040, p = 0.0199) yet exhibited greater algorithmic instability, tempo averaged 131.16 BPM versus 111.69 BPM (p = 0.000262), pitch glide proportions were significantly higher in Maskandi (0.34 vs. 0.16), on-beat energy ratios differed substantially (2.26 vs. 1.19, p < 0.0000007), semantic similarity revealed high intra-genre coherence for Maskandi (0.73) versus Western (0.25), metaphor density approached zero in Maskandi versus up to 7 per 100 words in Western lyrics, topic modeling produced two compact clusters for Maskandi versus 6 dispersed clusters for Western, timbre embeddings achieved a 0.405 silhouette score, dataset audits revealed 0% Maskandi representation across seven major MIR corpora with African traditions comprising <3%. The study concludes that statistical separability does not imply representational adequacy and highlights the need for culturally grounded MIR and NLP representations to support diverse musical traditions. Full article

This article investigates the relevance of selected and adapted representations of Krishna from the broader ISKCON tradition for sustainable and self-sufficient practices within Krishna Valley. Krishna Valley is an ISKCON community established in 1993 in the remote areas of Hungary, and it covers 300 hectares. As a self-sufficient and sustainable community, it is part of the Global Environmental Network, and as an ISKCON community, it belongs to the global movement of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. The synchronic interconnections of Krishna Valley as an ecovillage and as a religious place intertwine in the same place. In this article, Krishna Valley serves as an explanatory case study to investigate the relevance of ISKCON religious representations for ecological imagination: the process of perceiving relationships through the use of metaphors, images, narratives, symbols, and sematic frames that are central to and constitutive of human ecological thinking. This study uses two units of analysis (cow service and water management) to explore how in Krishna Valley ecological imagination takes shape in the interaction between local sustainable and self-sufficient practices and specific religious representations that are part of the ISKCON tradition. By looking at how the community interprets and treats cows and water pollution from a religious and environmental perspective, this case study answers the question of how ecovillages might benefit from religion-based ecological imagination for their sustainable livelihoods. Full article

The emergence of artificial knowledge created by the generative artificial intelligence applications challenges the theory developed by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi concerning the organizational knowledge creation dynamics by showing its limits. It is necessary to reimagine this theory within a hybrid framework that integrates both human knowledge and artificial knowledge, being aware of their specific features. Several researchers have already suggested how the SECI (socialization–externalization–combination–internalization) cycle developed by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi can be augmented by introducing artificial knowledge next to human knowledge in each stage of that cycle. However, tacit knowledge is embodied, and it cannot be processed directly by generative artificial intelligence. Therefore, their suggestions ignore the nature and specific features of tacit and explicit knowledge, leading to non-coherent models. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new model based on the Möbius strip metaphor that contains an open SECI cycle coupled with an open artificial knowledge cycle. Knowledge is flowing continuously along the strip, converging in time toward a strange attractor. The value of the new model is given by its novelty of introducing an artificial knowledge cycle and augmenting with it the SECI model centred on human knowledge. The resulting model is more complex and allows a continuous flow of knowledge. Therefore, the organizational knowledge creation dynamics is not represented by a time-evolving spiral, but by the phase space of a strange attractor. The proposed model can be conceived as a new driving force of business sustainability. Full article

Perhaps one of the most defining ‘techniques of the body’ for human beings is bi-pedal walking. This study brings together studies in socio-cultural anthropology to reflect on the nature of walking as a field method in different social-environmental contexts. The study offers an account of walking in relation to natural history, urban studies and contemporary conservation science. How has walking served as a field method in different knowledge-making contexts, and how does it afford an experiential way of being and belonging (or not) in urban and rural settings? By reflecting on such themes, this paper sheds light on the many ways that people walk, and the places, physical and metaphorical, that it takes them and allows them to discover, reveal, and understand. Full article

This article reexamines Paul’s use of athletic imagery in 1 Corinthians 9:24–27 within the broader argument of chapters 8–10. Against readings that treat the passage as a call to individual moral striving or competition for salvation, this study situates Paul’s metaphor within the honor–shame dynamics of Greco-Roman Corinth and his own defense of apostolic self-restraint. Paul’s “race” and “imperishable wreath” do not exhort believers to outperform one another but dramatize the paradox of freedom expressed through voluntary limitation. Drawing on insights from social-scientific and rhetorical criticism, the essay demonstrates that Paul’s imagery functions as the rhetorical climax of the section, translating his ethical argument into the moral grammar of the agon. By reconfiguring the contest from rivalry to service, Paul transforms the competitive ethos of Corinth into a vision of communal flourishing in which believers “compete” for the good of others. The passage thus offers a distinctly Pauline theology of self-control as the discipline of love, turning the agonistic spirit of the games into an image of the gospel itself. Full article

The escalation of geopolitical tensions has forced global manufacturers to reconfigure their supply chains. While Digital Transformation (DT) is widely touted as a primary driver of resilience, traditional variance-based research often assumes a symmetric, linear relationship that applies universally across firms. This study challenges this assumption through the lens of Complexity Theory. Viewing supply chains as Complex Adaptive Systems (CASs), we employ Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) on a stratified sample of 928 manufacturers in a geopolitical high-risk zone (Taiwan). We identify equifinal pathways to Organizational Resilience, revealing a fundamental asymmetry between organizational types. The results suggest that while large enterprises rely on a resource-intensive strategy—which we term the “Digital Fortress” configurational metaphor (combining high digital maturity and agility as a core condition)—SMEs can achieve high resilience through an “Agile Dodger” configuration, leveraging operational agility and niche positioning without necessitating high digital maturity. This study contributes to the systems literature by mapping the “topology of resilience” and offering tailored configurational pathways that complement traditional variance-based perspectives in volatile ecosystems. Full article

Underground infrastructure systems are typically managed as discrete technical assets rather than as integrated, adaptive systems. This paper develops the Body Underground framework, a structured biological analogy that synthesizes prior clinical and epidemiological metaphors into a multiscale conceptual model linking materials, facilities, networks, and governance. Building on Little’s clinical framing of infrastructure health and Bardet and Little’s epidemiological analysis of network failure clustering, the framework extends biological interpretation to anatomical, physiological, and homeostatic scales. The approach maps structural, hydraulic, sensing, protective, and regulatory functions to functional equivalents in living systems using explicit criteria of feedback, regulation, and measurability. The central objective of the study is to determine whether biological regulatory concepts—particularly homeostasis and hierarchical organization—can provide a coherent interpretive structure for understanding infrastructure health across material, facility, network, and governance scales. The resulting framework reframes resilience as dynamic regulatory balance rather than static robustness alone. It clarifies the methodological basis for constructing biological–infrastructure analogies, identifies measurable “vital signs” for infrastructure health, and outlines pathways toward operational translation through integrated monitoring and governance feedback. While conceptual in nature, the framework provides a structured synthesis linking material science, infrastructure engineering, systems resilience theory, and policy coordination. By organizing resilience concepts through cross-scale regulatory logic, the Body Underground model offers a coherent structure for integrating monitoring, diagnosis, and governance in the proactive management of underground infrastructure systems. Full article

As secondary educational environments face increasing volatility due to systemic resource constraints and pedagogical uncertainty, understanding the behavioral mechanisms of teacher agency has become paramount. While traditional teacher education has emphasized the execution of standardized curricula, the current era demands a fundamental shift toward adaptive expertise and psychological resilience. This study investigates the processes by which 28 secondary pre-service physical education teachers (PSTs) navigate instructional resource deficits through the lens of adaptive behavior (bricolage) and ecological teacher agency. Utilizing a qualitative case study design, I collected data from two universities in Seoul, South Korea, through reflective journals, revised lesson plans, and micro-teaching video analysis reports over a full 15-week semester. The results identified five coordinates of an adaptive instructional design compass: (1) Facing Constraints, (2) Resource Mining, (3) Contextual Engineering, (4) Simulation, and (5) Reflective Participation. These coordinates represent a transformative behavioral process where PSTs convert environmental deficits into professional assets. The findings reveal distinct adaptation styles based on psychological dispositions: the analytically oriented group (Group A) prioritized structural redesign through digital tools, while the narratively oriented group (Group B) utilized human-centric somatic metaphors and virtual rehearsals to bridge the epistemic void. Crucially, this research suggests that teacher adaptation is not a mere technical adjustment but a dynamic behavioral achievement of agency that ensures the long-term instructional quality of physical education. I propose that teacher education programs should incorporate “Safe Deficit” simulations—carefully calibrated instructional constraints—to trigger adaptive behavior and ensure that future educators can thrive in unpredictable pedagogical contexts without the risk of professional burnout. Full article

This article examines the interplay of memory, politics, and religion at the Buchenwald Memorial, focusing on the 2024 edition of the Genius Loci festival. Once staged by the German Democratic Republic as a monumental site of antifascist resistance, the memorial has undergone multiple reinterpretations, reflecting shifting regimes of remembrance and contested political claims, and an architectural vocabulary informed by Christian metaphors. Drawing on Durkheim’s sociology of religion and concepts of memory (Nora, Assmann), the analysis highlights how memorial architecture, ritual practices, and artistic interventions frame collective memory as both a political resource and a civic challenge. The Genius Loci festival exemplifies how contemporary art can reactivate debates around memorial spaces, exposing their religious frame of reference while simultaneously opening them to contemporary renegotiation. Full article