Search Results (50)

The capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, the extirpation of various heresies in the twelfth and thirteen centuries, the gradual expansion of Christian rule in the Iberian peninsula, and the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity there during the fourteenth century, all seemed to support a Christian triumphalism that imagined that as the End Time approached, Jews and other infidels would inevitably be absorbed into the Church. Nonetheless, an expanding medieval awareness of the many ‘Others’ beyond Christendom contributed to Christian anxieties that Jews (or Muslims) might expand their number through mass conversion, and not Christians. This paper will examine some sources of this anxiety. Full article

Objective: Marital infidelity significantly impacts both the community and the institution of marriage. This study aims to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing marital infidelity through a game-theoretic lens. Methodology/Design/Approach: This research employs a game-theoretic model to predict the decision-making processes of unfaithful partners. Static game models are utilized to explore the interactions between spouses, focusing on identifying Nash equilibria that encapsulate the complexities and uncertainties inherent in infidelity-related decisions, whether through pure or mixed strategies. Results: The analysis reveals strategic dynamics in marital infidelity, where Nash equilibria indicate scenarios where one or both partners may engage in extramarital affairs. A Nash equilibrium is established when both partners perceive the benefits of infidelity as outweighing the costs, leading to diminished trust and communication. The Mixed-Strategy Nash Equilibrium (MSNE) hypothesis suggests that spouses may oscillate between fidelity and infidelity based on probabilistic strategies. Research Implications: This study provides a game-theoretic perspective on marital infidelity, whose findings may be used to inform legal frameworks and social policies addressing the consequences of infidelity, potentially impacting family counseling and legal services. Value/Originality: This research introduces a game-theoretic approach to understanding trust and transgression in marriages, identifying two primary categories of Nash equilibria. It fills a theoretical gap while providing practical insights into marital behavior. Full article

This study explores the effects of husbands’ post-infidelity behaviors on wives’ forgiveness from a gender perspective. The study employs a longitudinal research design and hermeneutic phenomenology to investigate the wives’ forgiveness potential paths/experiences after their husband’s infidelity. It involves 15 years of in-depth interviews with five wives who had encountered their husbands’ infidelity, with three to six interviews per participant. The findings reveal that husbands’ post-infidelity behaviors are associated with power dynamics in the marriage. At the same time, pressures from culture, gender roles, and social expectations lead wives to adopt “pseudo-forgiveness.” The study proposes two pathways to “genuine forgiveness” for wives. The path includes phases of “Her Rethinking,” leading to the “Balance Marital Relationship and Non-Self-Sacrifice stage.” For low-power-in-relationship wives, the path comprises stages such as “Her Awakening,” “Challenge Women’s Roles in Social Expectations,” and “Take Actions to Enhance Her Power/Ability,” ending in “Balance Marital Roles and Self-Realization.” Both pathways emphasize that forgiveness is a personal decision-making process and that empowerment and enhanced wives’ ability are essential for achieving “genuine forgiveness.” These findings can contribute to marriage and family work and welfare services, helping wives and professionals understand the types and processes of forgiveness and better navigate complex challenges related to marital infidelity. Full article

Protein embeddings are the new main source of information about proteins, producing state-of-the-art solutions to many problems, including protein interaction prediction, a fundamental issue in proteomics. Understanding the embeddings and what causes the interactions is very important, as these models lack transparency due to their black-box nature. In the first study of its kind, we investigate the inner workings of these models using XAI (explainable AI) approaches. We perform extensive testing (3.3 TB of total data) involving nine of the best-known XAI methods on two problems: (i) the prediction of protein interaction sites using the current top method, Seq-InSite, and (ii) the production of protein embedding vectors using three methods, ProtBERT, ProtT5, and Ankh. The results are evaluated in terms of their ability to correlate with six basic amino acid properties—aromaticity, acidity/basicity, hydrophobicity, molecular mass, van der Waals volume, and dipole moment—as well as the propensity for interaction with other proteins, the impact of distant residues, and the infidelity scores of the XAI methods. The results are unexpected. Some XAI methods are much better than others at discovering essential information. Simple methods can be as good as advanced ones. Different protein embedding vectors can capture distinct properties, indicating significant room for improvement in embedding quality. Full article

Stem cells, both normal somatic (SSC) and cancer stem cells (CSC) exist in minimally two states, i.e., quiescent and activated. Regulation of these two states, including their reliance on different metabolic processes, i.e., FAO and glycolysis in quiescent versus activated stem cells respectively, involves the analysis of a complex array of factors (nutrient and oxygen levels, adhesion molecules, cytokines, etc.) to initiate the epigenetic changes to either depart or enter quiescence. Quiescence is a critical feature of SSC that is required to maintain the genomic integrity of the stem cell pool, particularly in long lived complex organisms. Quiescence in CSC, whether they are derived from mutations arising in SSC, aberrant microenvironmental regulation, or via dedifferentiation of more committed progenitors, is a critical component of therapy resistance and disease latency and relapse. At the beginning of vertebrate evolution, approximately 450 million years ago, a gene duplication generated the two members of the Kat3 family, CREBBP (CBP) and EP300 (p300). Despite their very high degree of homology, these two Kat3 coactivators play critical and non-redundant roles at enhancers and super-enhancers via acetylation of H3K27, thereby controlling stem cell quiescence versus activation and the cells metabolic requirements. In this review/perspective, we discuss the unique regulatory roles of CBP and p300 and how specifically targeting the CBP/β-catenin interaction utilizing small molecule antagonists, can correct lineage infidelity and safely eliminate quiescent CSC. Full article

Qudits allow the encoding and manipulation of additional quantum information compared to that stored to a two-level qubit system. Although manipulations of qudit states are generally more complex and can introduce extra sources of noise, qudits can still be used in a number of applications when this error can be kept sufficiently low. One such application is the case of the Bucket Brigade Algorithm for realizing a Quantum RAM (QRAM), which inherently uses qutrits for encoding the state of address switches. In this paper, we study a methodology for qutrit manipulation that leverages efficient encoding techniques and pulse calibration methods for the case of transmon systems. The methodology employs an encoding scheme that allows the execution of controlled operations, using the subspace spanned by the two lowest levels of the transmon; we show how this scheme can be used for generating one- and two-qutrit gates by leveraging the Qiskit and Boulder Opal frameworks to compute the parameters of pulses that implement the quantum gates that are used by the BBA. For this type of gate, simulations show that the pulses perform the required operations with a low infidelity when errors introduced by the qutrit Hamiltonian dynamics are considered. Full article

Following the “intertextual turn” in adaptation studies, scholars of Shakespearean performance have embraced the interpretive possibilities offered by infidelity, focusing increasingly on the corrective potential of recent stagings and adaptations. Such productions are not primarily valuable as progressive rewrites, however. In claiming not to be “Shakespeare”, these productions make testable claims about the nature of the Shakespearean playtext. In this paper, I examine two recent stage productions and one non-traditional film adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing: Kenny Leon’s 2019 Public Theater production, Chris Abraham’s 2023 Stratford Festival production, and Will Gluck’s 2023 romantic comedy Anyone But You. All three performances are consciously unfaithful to Shakespeare’s text or setting, and their revisions attend to making the characters’ behavior more palatable for a contemporary liberal–progressive audience. Yet when we compare these revisions with the original playtext, Shakespeare’s own views come into sharper relief, as does our own inclination to identify with characters that Shakespeare’s immediate audience may have felt quite distanced from. I argue that in their drive to correct the play and make the characters more likable, these productions paper over Shakespeare’s critique of the arbitrary construction—and violent enforcement—of social hierarchy. Drawing upon Jacques Derrida’s notion of the parergon, I show that Shakespeare’s deliberate narrative framing invites a more skeptical, disapproving understanding of his characters. My hope is that this discussion leads to an understanding of Much Ado About Nothing as a “problem play” rather than a “problematic” one. Full article

The prevalence of infidelity is high, although it can have destructive impacts on marital relationships. Most past research has focused on utilitarian concerns against extramarital behavior, analyzing the motivational forces that either deter or foster infidelity as a function of the rewards and costs that unfaithful behavior would involve for the individual. The present research (total N = 1067 Romanian married participants) aimed to highlight the intrinsic moral concerns that deter infidelity in marital relationships by applying the general framework of the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). The first study developed a measure of the moral reasons for fidelity and examined its dimensions and psychometric properties. The second study investigated its factorial validity and its relationships with the actual tendency to engage in unfaithful behaviors, the intensity of moral emotions toward infidelity, and the use of different emotion regulation strategies. Overall, the results suggest four types of moral reasons for fidelity: heeding rules, reciprocal ownership, loyalty, and decency and nonmaleficence, and the new scale emerged as having satisfactory psychometric proprieties. Higher scores were positively associated with moral disgust, anger, and contempt toward unfaithful marital partners and compassion toward their spouses, as well as cognitive reappraisal and endorsement of the five moral domains described by MFT. Also, married individuals scoring higher on this measure were also found to have a lower propensity toward infidelity. These findings pinpoint a fine-grained outline of the moral underpinnings of fidelity and indicate their potential relevance for the actual tendency to engage in extramarital relations. Full article

Tensor networks are a very powerful data structure tool originating from simulations of quantum systems. In recent years, they have seen increased use in machine learning, mostly in trainings with gradient-based techniques, due to their flexibility and performance achieved by exploiting hardware acceleration. As ansatzes, tensor networks can be used with flexible geometries, and it is known that for highly regular ones, their dimensionality has a large impact on performance and representation power. For heterogeneous structures, however, these effects are not completely characterized. In this article, we train tensor networks with different geometries to encode a random quantum state, and see that densely connected structures achieve better infidelities than more sparse structures, with higher success rates and less time. Additionally, we give some general insight on how to improve the memory requirements of these sparse structures and the impact of such improvement on the trainings. Finally, as we use HPC resources for the calculations, we discuss the requirements for this approach and showcase performance improvements with GPU acceleration on a last-generation supercomputer. Full article

Digitized counter-diabatic (CD) optimization algorithms have been proposed and extensively studied to enhance performance in quantum computing by accelerating adiabatic processes while minimizing energy transitions. While adding approximate counter-diabatic terms can initially introduce adiabatic errors that decrease over time, Trotter errors from decomposition approximation persist. On the other hand, increasing the high-order nested commutators for CD terms may improve adiabatic errors but could also introduce additional Trotter errors. In this article, we examine the two-qubit model to explore the interplay between approximate CD, adiabatic errors, Trotter errors, coefficients, and commutators. Through these analyses, we aim to gain insights into optimizing these factors for better fidelity, a shallower circuit depth, and a reduced gate number in near-term gate-based quantum computing. Full article

Justice motivation has been considered one cause of celebrity infidelity scandals becoming flaming incidents. Nevertheless, few studies have examined how the belief in a just world (BJW), one motivation for justice, affects people’s attitudes toward these incidents. This study was conducted to identify the relations among BJW, negative emotions toward infidelity (NE), and celebrity infidelity blaming (CIB). Data were collected from 1186 Japanese adults (mean age = 44.9 years, SD = 13.8; 49.4% male). The results of structural equation modeling revealed that NE positively relates to CIB and plays a mediating role between BJW and CIB. However, BJW neither facilitates NE nor positively predicts CIB; on the contrary, it suppresses both NE and CIB. The findings indicate that BJW decreases people’s blame on celebrity infidelity and suggest future directions for mitigating the issues posed by casting blame on celebrities’ cheating scandals. Full article

We examined the connections that narcissistic and borderline personality traits had with hypothetical responses to romantic infidelity in a sample of Israeli community members (N = 997). We distinguished between four forms of narcissism: extraverted narcissism (characterized by assertive self-enhancement), antagonistic narcissism (characterized by defensiveness and hostility), neurotic narcissism (characterized by emotional distress), and communal narcissism (characterized by attempts to emphasize superiority over others by exaggerating communal characteristics such as being extraordinarily helpful). We also measured levels of borderline personality traits. Results showed that neurotic narcissism was strongly associated with heightened negative emotional responses, particularly in high-threat infidelity scenarios, aligning with predictions regarding emotional volatility. Antagonistic and communal narcissism showed detrimental effects on relationship evaluations primarily under low-threat conditions, indicating distinct patterns of defensiveness and vulnerability. Extraverted narcissism showed no significant association with emotional responses. Borderline traits were linked to intense emotional reactions across conditions, emphasizing their broad impact on perceived relational threats. These findings suggest that while some personality traits exacerbate reactions in less severe conditions, infidelity trauma can overwhelm these differences, underscoring the potential need for personalized therapeutic approaches. Discussion is focused on the implications for understanding personality traits in relational contexts and future research directions exploring varied threat manipulations. Full article

The present study examined how the personality dimensions of the Dark Triad (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) predict infidelity intentions and jealousy and whether these variables predict conflict tactics used in relationships. Adult women (N = 567, 18–73 years old, M_age = 31.91; SD = 10.29) completed self-report scales assessing the Dark Triad traits, jealousy (i.e., cognitive, emotional, and behavioral), intentions towards infidelity, and conflict tactics, including negotiation, psychological aggression, physical assault, sexual coercion, and injury. Our results demonstrated that the Dark Triad traits had strong links to the intention to commit infidelity and jealousy, and at the correlational level, there were small correlations between jealousy and the intention to commit infidelity. Both jealousy and the intention to commit infidelity predicted conflict tactics. As this is possibly one of the first studies to examine these variables jointly, the present results add to our understanding of the role of personality in romantic relationships. Full article

The Sicilian wetlands (Italy) are seriously threatened by human activities and ongoing climate change. The loss of these wetlands as migratory stepping stones could severely hamper the migratory flow of many bird species along the central Mediterranean. Targeted actions for the conservation of the avifauna require thorough knowledge of the utilization that waterbirds make of these habitats. Aiming to inform planning for more satisfactory bird habitat management and bird diversity preservation along the Mediterranean migratory bird flyway, in this study, we inventoried the avian metacommunity of the coastal wetlands in Sicily during the most critical period of the year (July–September) and used a multilevel analytical framework to explore the spatiotemporal dynamics in bird species assemblages. We recorded 73 bird species, of which almost 90% were migratory and 30 belonged to Annex I of the Birds Directive. At the metacommunity level, we found that all the biodiversity metrics were low in July and approximately doubled in the successive sampling sessions (August–September), where they showed little if any change. At the community level, we detected two main clusters of wetlands with regard to species richness, of which one (wetlands Baronello, Gela, Gornalunga, and Roveto) was characterized by higher levels of species richness in nearly all the sampling dates. The pattern of species richness in the Sicilian wetlands was most similar between the first and second half of August, while July was very dissimilar from all the other sampling dates. At the guild level, we found a significant increase during July–September in the number of the species belonging to the “Mediterranean” migration guild and the “divers from the surface” and “surface feeders” foraging guilds. At the species level, we detected a significant temporal sequence of the occurrence of waterbird species: two species were only early dwellers in July, ten species were only late dwellers in September, and twenty-six species made use of the Sicilian wetlands all summer long. The spatial distribution of the waterbird species differed significantly between any pair of sampling dates. Overall, the Little Grebe, the Spotted Redshank, and the Little Tern were the bird species with the highest site infidelity; by contrast, the Black Stork, the Broad-billed Sandpiper, the European Golden Plover, the Common Shelduck, and the Black-necked Grebe changed their spatial distribution among wetlands the least during July–September. Our study allowed us to detect (1) the wetlands and (2) the waterbird species to which the priority for conservation should be assigned, as well as (3) the exact time span during July–September when conservation measures should be mandatory, and not only advisable. These results provide a broader insight of the space–time patterns in bird species assembly in the coastal wetlands of Sicily during the critical summer period. Full article

The current study presents the development and the initial validation of a new questionnaire to assess individual differences in emotional and relational aspects related to cybersex activities (i.e., the ERACA). A total of 246 adults (105 females, mean age = 31.89 years, SD = 10.03) coming from the general adult population participated in the study. The items of the ERACA were developed considering the extant literature, and an exploratory factor analysis approach indicated a three-factor structure (i.e., the gratification of the Self through the objectification of other people, the gratification of the Self through relational aspects, betrayal, and infidelity). The associations between the dimensions of the ERACA and dimensional measures of both attachment styles and online sexual behaviors indicated that different aspects related to the quality of the relationships play a different role in individual differences concerning emotional and relational aspects of cybersex activities. The discussion emphasizes the potential usefulness of the ERACA questionnaire for both research purposes and from a health-promoting point of view. Full article