Search Results (11,997)

The Extended Digital Narrative (XDN) research project explores how experimental creative practice with emerging technologies generates critical insights into algorithmic narrativity—the intersection of human narrative understanding and computational data processing. This article presents five case studies demonstrating that direct engagement with AI and Extended Reality platforms is essential for humanities research on new genres of digital storytelling. Lina Harder’s Hedy Lamar Chatbot examines how generative AI chatbots construct historical personas, revealing biases in training data and platform constraints. Scott Rettberg’s Republicans in Love investigates text-to-image generation as a writing environment for political satire, documenting rapid changes in AI aesthetics and content moderation. David Jhave Johnston’s Messages to Humanity demonstrates how Runway’s Act-One enables solo filmmaking, collapsing traditional production hierarchies. Haoyuan Tang’s video game project reframes LLM integration by prioritizing player actions over dialogue, challenging assumptions about AI’s role in interactive narratives. Sérgio Galvão Roxo’s Her Name Was Gisberta employs Virtual Reality for social education against transphobia, utilizing perspective-taking techniques for empathy development. These projects demonstrate that practice-based research is not merely artistic production but a vital methodology for understanding how AI and XR platforms shape—and are shaped by—human narrative capacities. Full article

Child marriage remains a major threat to adolescent girls’ health, development, and rights worldwide. Despite decades of progress, recent policy backsliding and sociopolitical instability have created new risks, with examples from Iraq, Afghanistan, and The Gambia illustrating how legal and political shifts are reshaping vulnerabilities for girls. This paper presents an integrated framework linking developmental science with legal and policy advocacy, emphasizing how evolving capacities and psychosocial maturity should inform marriage laws and protection mechanisms. It reframes advocacy and rights-based action as essential components of adolescent health systems, drawing on recent policy analyses and country examples to identify actionable, multisectoral strategies. The paper highlights an urgent need for collective, evidence-informed advocacy to protect adolescent girls and advance gender equality, an issue of growing importance amid renewed global attention to legal reforms on child marriage. Full article

This study investigates the sustainability, resilience, and institutional performance of urban governance systems by operationalizing key thermodynamic principles energy, exergy, entropy, equilibrium, open systems, and irreversibility within a political and behavioral systems framework. Urban political systems are conceptualized as open, non-equilibrium systems, characterized by continuous flows of resources, information, and institutional feedback across metropolitan governance structures. Within this model, energy represents systemic inputs to urban governance, exergy denotes usable governing capacity at the city and metropolitan scale, and entropy reflects levels of institutional disorder, inefficiency, and systemic degradation affecting urban sustainability. The study first formulates a conceptual analytical model defining urban political entropy and systemic exergy as measurable variables associated with institutional stability, crisis-management capability, adaptability, and reform potential in urban and metropolitan governance. It then conducts a comparative empirical analysis of Germany, Türkiye, China, and South Africa using normalized indicators derived from international datasets for 2023, with particular attention to their implications for urban governance capacity and city-level institutional performance. These indicators are employed to construct proxy measures for the Exergy Efficiency Ratio, Societal and Institutional Entropy, and overall urban governance capacity. The comparative results reveal that open and decentralized governance systems tend to maintain higher exergy efficiency and lower entropy levels at the urban scale, whereas highly centralized systems, although effective in resource mobilization, tend to accumulate greater systemic entropy over time. Transitional governance systems exhibit hybrid and fluctuating thermodynamic characteristics in their urban institutional structures. The findings empirically support the Thermodynamic Model of Political Systems and demonstrate its utility as a predictive and diagnostic framework for evaluating urban institutional efficiency, resilience, and sustainability. By quantifying political energy flows and entropy dynamics within urban governance systems, this study contributes to the development of integrated systems thermodynamics of cities and provides a robust analytical foundation for sustainable urban governance, institutional reform, and long-term strategic policy design Full article

Pragmatic language is a core component of school-based social participation, yet children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Social Communication Disorder (SCD) frequently experience persistent difficulties in using language appropriately across everyday learning contexts. This study investigated the effectiveness of a culturally adapted, school-based immersive Virtual Reality (VR) learning program designed to enhance pragmatic language and social communication skills among Thai primary school children. Eleven participants aged 7–12 years completed a three-week, ten-session VR program that simulated authentic classroom, playground, and canteen interactions aligned with Thai sociocultural norms. Outcomes were measured using the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) and the Pragmatic Behavior Observation Checklist (PBOC). While SCQ scores showed a small, non-significant reduction (p = 0.092), PBOC results demonstrated significant improvements in three foundational pragmatic domains: Initiation and Responsiveness (p = 0.032), Turn-Taking and Conversational Flow (p = 0.037), and Politeness and Register (p = 0.010). Other domains showed no significant changes. These findings suggest that immersive, culturally relevant VR environments can support early gains in core pragmatic language behaviors within educational settings, although broader social communication outcomes may require longer or more intensive learning experiences. Full article

We develop a model of monetary policy committee decision-making, building on the framework of games played through agents (GPTA). Interest groups seek to influence policy by offering action-contingent contracts to committee members. The resulting equilibrium admits a simple characterization and shows how institutional features—such as committee size—shape the extent of external influence. When political pressure pushes for expansive and inflationary policy, larger committees can enhance de facto independence by diluting this influence. We also show that when anti-inflationary pressures dominate, an appropriate choice of committee size can replicate the preference shift towards more conservativeness familiar from delegation frameworks, even when it is not feasible to appoint a conservative central banker in a systematic way. Full article

Deviance poses a fundamental challenge for groups: while it can threaten cohesion and invite moral condemnation, it can also express deep commitment to shared principles. The present research examines how loyalty shapes perceptions of constructive deviance through the case of Republicans for Harris (RHs) during the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Across three time points, we compared how deviants (RHs, N = 89) perceived themselves to how they were viewed by mainstream ingroup members (Republicans for Trump; RTs, N = 340) and outgroup members (Democrats; N = 294). Results revealed marked asymmetries: RTs viewed RHs as less loyal, less prototypical, and more likely to defect than RHs saw themselves. All groups, including mainstream ingroup members, outgroup members, and deviants themselves, felt warmer toward deviants they perceived as more loyal and prototypical. These findings suggest that constructive deviants maintain positive self-views by construing their actions as expressions of fidelity to, rather than rejection of, the group. Full article

Urban Water Systems (UWS) are complex infrastructures that interact with energy, food, ecosystems and socio-political systems, and are under growing pressure from climate change and resource depletion. Planning circular interventions in this context requires system-level analysis to avoid fragmented, siloed decisions. This paper develops the Hydrosocial Resource Urban Nexus (HRUN) framework that integrates hydrosocial thinking with the Water–Energy–Food–Ecosystems (WEFE) nexus to guide UWS design. We conduct a structured literature review and analyse different configurations of circular interventions, mapping their synergies and trade-offs across socioeconomic and environmental functions of hydrosocial systems. The framework is operationalised through a typology of circular interventions based on their circularity purpose (water reuse, resource recovery and reuse, or water-cycle restoration) and management scale (from on-site to centralised), while greening degree (from grey to green infrastructure) and digitalisation (integration of sensors and control systems) are treated as transversal strategies that shape their operational profile. Building on this typology, we construct cause–effect matrices for each intervention type, linking recurring operational patterns to hydrosocial functionalities and revealing associated synergies and trade-offs. Overall, the study advances understanding of how circular interventions with different configurations can strengthen or weaken system resilience and sustainability outcomes. The framework provides a basis for integrated planning and for quantitative and participatory tools that can assess trade-offs and governance effects of different circular design choices, thereby supporting the transition to more resilient and just water systems. Full article

The phenomenon of underachievement of working-class young people in the English education system reveals long-standing prejudices surrounding English language development. This article reports the findings of a small-scale, qualitative study exploring the power of aesthetic experience in supporting the acquisition and development of the English language in a Further Education (FE) college in England. Findings provide evidence of how engagement with aesthetic experiences enables learners to access new ways of thinking and relate to new and complex ideas and concepts that may once have seemed beyond their reach. Findings also suggest that experimentation with various forms of art, as sources of inspiration, impacts confidence, engagement, and the learners’ experience of education in profound ways. This study challenges hierarchical and class-based socio-political forces which elevate one form of language or expression above another on the grounds that this can cause serious damage to the confidence and self-esteem of learners from lower socio-economic groups. With reference to data from the study and the works of Gadamer, Bernstein, and Dewey, the article concludes that pedagogic engagement through aesthetic experiences in FE can help learners from lower socio-economic groups access their Pedagogic Rights, to which they have been previously denied. Full article

The liturgical and juridical regulation of papal funerals is coeval with the existence of the Church. The perspective that the funeral should also promote unity among Christians appeared early on. Later, it became a stage for political encounters. The Second Vatican Council’s understanding of society also permeated papal funerals. The juridical and liturgical regulations were inherently built upon a philosophy of encounter and dialogue, as they conveyed the Church’s social teaching and its commitment to those living on the peripheries of society, regardless of their religious affiliation. This was further supported by the homily at papal funerals, which discussed issues concerning the good of all humanity, based on the teachings of the respective Pope. The funeral rites of the post-conciliar Popes have eminently demonstrated that the burial ceremony serves as a vital bridge between different religions and countries with diverse political systems. That, contrary to Huntington’s central thesis, which is based on the clash of civilizations, the starting point can be dialogue, gestures, and the promotion of peace. The study employed a qualitative methodology, processing and confronting primary and secondary sources, from which conclusions were drawn. Full article

In George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860), we are cautioned not to judge a book by its cover. Yet, the marketing team at every publisher knows that we, the audience, inevitably do just that. In the case of Arthur Schnitzler’s The Road Into the Open (1908), various editions have featured paintings or drawings by contemporary Austrian artists, including Max Kurzweil, Gustav Klimt, and Egon Schiele, as the cover art. Schnitzler’s novel initially emerges in Pre-World-War-I Austria, a society grappling with political instability, fears about moral decline, and a preoccupation with neuroses. The anxious society that produced Schnitzler, Kurzweil, Klimt, and Schiele has been considered a representation par excellence of fin-de-siècle decadence. Following Gerard Genette’s Paratexts, I inquire as to the effect(s) of cover art and the competing visions of the novel they represent. This study responds to the following questions. How have publishers used or misused decadent imagery in (re)productions of Schnitzler’s novel? What meaning can be made from the use of the works by Kurzweil, Klimt, and Schiele as cover art? What contribution does each work make to our understanding of the Austria in Schnitzler’s novel? How does the reception of the author complement or compete with the reception of each painter? Full article

The transition to renewable energy technologies is one of the most important ways to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of affordable and clean energy (SDG7); industry, innovation and infrastructure (SDG9); responsible production and consumption (SDG12); and climate action (SDG13). The widespread use of renewable energy technologies in developing countries will reduce dependence on imported fossil resources, increase industrial competitiveness, and support low-carbon development. Despite all their advantages, the integration of renewable energy technologies into industrial and domestic systems in developing countries remains slow due to a number of barriers. Financial constraints, technical and technological deficiencies, political restrictions and uncertainties, and organizational and managerial inadequacies are some of the barriers to the widespread adoption of renewable energy technologies. This study aims to identify, classify, and prioritize the barriers to the implementation of renewable energy technologies by applying multi-criteria decision-making methods in a fuzzy environment, with Türkiye considered as a case study. The relative importance of the barriers identified using the Single-Valued Spherical Fuzzy SWARA method was assessed, and their interconnections and significance were systematically demonstrated. The findings will contribute to the development of policy and management strategies aligned with global sustainability goals, thereby facilitating a more effective and equitable transition to clean and resilient energy systems. Full article

This study critically examines the relationship between neoliberal environmentalism and green certification systems by quantitatively analyzing LEED-certified buildings in Istanbul. It explores how green building practices intersect with market-oriented urban environmental governance through an analysis of the spatial distribution, ownership types, access typologies, and functional uses of certified projects. The findings reveal that nearly 80% of LEED-certified buildings in Istanbul are developed by private companies, and that 88.6% of these buildings are private spaces with limited or no public access. These projects are predominantly high-end offices or residential developments, with a large share holding “Gold” certification. Correlation analysis identifies an inverse relationship between LEED project density and socioeconomic vulnerability, raising critical questions about spatial justice and equity in access to sustainable urban environments. This study contributes to the growing body of critical literature that frames urban sustainability not merely as a technocratic checklist of standards but as a normative and contested terrain in which justice, equity, and inclusivity must be placed at the center. Full article

In post-Soviet Georgia, the renewed visibility of religion in the public sphere has generated ambivalent effects, fostering both social cohesion and identity-based exclusion. This article focuses on the work I Am the Way by Georgian Orthodox thinker Zurab Kiknadze to explore how a non-instrumental, ethics-based conception of public religion can be sociologically conceptualized. Drawing on a qualitative, hermeneutic-narrative method, the analysis identifies two core motifs in Kiknadze’s thought—“spiritual journey” and “silent witness”—and interprets them through the lenses of public religion theory (Casanova), lived religion paradigms (McGuire, Ammerman), and post-secular debates (Habermas). The findings indicate that Kiknadze understands faith not as a marker of dogmatic or ethno-political belonging but as a practice contributing to ethical continuity and the reconstruction of social trust. Within this framework, “silent witness” is defined as a form of faith grounded in consistency, humility, and action-oriented conviction; it is proposed as a transferable sociological mechanism that supports trust, reconciliation, and inclusive citizenship in transitional societies. Centering on the Georgian case, this article offers a conceptual contribution to rethinking the public role of religion in post-authoritarian contexts within an ethical framework. Full article

Supervised fine-tuning is key for model alignment, but its mechanisms are debated, with conflicting evidence supporting either a superficial alignment hypothesis or significant task improvements. This paper examines supervised fine-tuning’s impact from the perspective of verbatim memorization. Using the open-source OLMo-2 model series and test datasets (instruction format, safety-sensitive, and factual knowledge) constructed from its pre-training corpus, we analyzed changes across memorization, linguistic styles, and task performance. We found that supervised fine-tuning significantly weakens the model’s verbatim memorization of pre-training data. Simultaneously, it improves generated text in terms of alignment objectives, such as polite expression and structured organization. However, this process also leads to performance degradation on knowledge-intensive downstream tasks. Further representation analysis reveals that these changes are mainly concentrated in the later layers of the model. We conclude that supervised fine-tuning acts as a continuation of the learning process on new data. By adjusting model representations, supervised fine-tuning induces a learning tilt toward the styles and content of the instruction-tuning dataset. This inclination successfully instills alignment objectives while consequently reducing the effective accessibility of previously learned knowledge, which indicates the observed degradation in both pre-training data memorization and factual task performance. The source code is publicly available. Full article

A reading of the American Revolution and the post-Civil War Reconstruction period through the lens of W.E.B. Du Bois’s early writings provides new insights into his theory of racial monopoly capitalism. Many Americans saw the 1776 revolution as an idealistic fight for liberty, for the slaveholding elite who held disproportionate power within the revolutionary coalition; however, consolidating power and defending their property and expansionist ambitions were primary objectives. For them, the Revolution was a strategic move to establish racial nationalism and preserve slaveholder control over economic growth and national power. A century later, Du Bois’s analysis of the “bargain of 1876” revealed a similar consolidation of power, influencing both his research on the revolutionary period and his writings on Reconstruction. The political deal in 1876 abandoned the promise of Reconstruction’s “abolition democracy,” restoring white supremacist rule. Du Bois saw this as the victory of monopoly capital, which used racism to weaken interracial labor solidarity and enforce a system of super-exploitation. By linking 1776 to 1876, Du Bois demonstrated that U.S. capitalist development had been shaped by racial oppression from its settler-colonial roots through the rise of monopoly capitalism, consistently blocking the achievement of a true, non-racial democracy. Full article