An'Intimacy Crisis' Is Driving the Dating Divide In his book, sex and relationships researcher Justin Garcia says people have miscalculated their need for human intimacy, which is the real issue at root of the loneliness epidemic. In the US, nearly half of adults are single. A quarter of men suffer from loneliness. Rates of depression are on the rise . And one in four Gen Z adults--the so-called kinkiest generation, according to one study --have never had partnered sex. In an age of endless connection, where hooking up happens with the ease of a swipe and nontraditional relationship structures like polyamory are celebrated, why are people seemingly so disconnected and alone?

A new book explores how humans evolved to be wired for intimacy. It can save our lives. Intimate relationships provide stability, safety, and reassurance, especially when we are in pain. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Adapted from THE INTIMATE ANIMAL by Justin Garcia, PhD. Used with permission of Little, Brown Spark, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. Jen and Dave's second child was born in November 2002. Two weeks later, on a cold Thursday night, the phone rang.

This paper presents a novel strategy for a multi-agent pursuit-evasion game involving multiple faster pursuers with heterogenous speeds and a single slower evader. We define a geometric region, the evader's safe-reachable set, as the intersection of Apollonius circles derived from each pursuer-evader pair. The capture strategy is formulated as a zero-sum game where the pursuers cooperatively minimize the area of this set, while the evader seeks to maximize it, effectively playing a game of spatial containment. By deriving the analytical gradients of the safe-reachable set's area with respect to agent positions, we obtain closed-form, instantaneous optimal control laws for the heading of each agent. These strategies are computationally efficient, allowing for real-time implementation. Simulations demonstrate that the gradient-based controls effectively steer the pursuers to systematically shrink the evader's safe region, leading to guaranteed capture. This area-minimization approach provides a clear geometric objective for cooperative capture.

'A predator in your home': Mothers say chatbots encouraged their sons to kill themselves Megan Garcia had no idea her teenage son Sewell, a bright and beautiful boy, had started spending hours and hours obsessively talking to an online character on the Character.ai It's like having a predator or a stranger in your home, Ms Garcia tells me in her first UK interview. And it is much more dangerous because a lot of the times children hide it - so parents don't know. Within ten months, Sewell, 14, was dead. He had taken his own life.

Bipartisan legislation targets AI companion chatbots following tragic deaths of teenagers who interacted with ChatGPT and Character.AI bots that allegedly encouraged suicide and self-harm.

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. A Gaza Solidarity Encampment was created on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles in 2024. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . The Trump administration launched an investigation into alleged antisemitism in the California State University system.

Fox News contributor Brett Velicovich demands U.S. defenses'adapt' to modern warfare after Ukraine's drone strikes on'The Story.' As sixth-generation fighter programs ramp up, military insiders are divided over whether future warplanes need pilots at all. The Pentagon is pouring billions into next-generation aircraft, pushing the boundaries of stealth and speed. But as America eyes a future of air dominance, one question looms large: Should Americans still be risking their lives in the cockpit? Autonomous drones backed by AI are progressing faster than many expected, and that has some defense leaders rethinking the role of the pilot.

Megan Garcia says her son would still be alive today if it weren't for a chatbot urging the 14-year-old to take his own life. In a lawsuit with major implications for Silicon Valley, she is seeking to hold Google and the artificial intelligence firm Character Technologies responsible for his death. The case over the tragedy that unfolded a year ago in central Florida is an early test of who is legally to blame when kids' interactions with generative AI take an unexpected turn. Garcia's allegations are laid out in a 116-page complaint filed last year in federal court in Orlando. She is seeking unspecified monetary damages from Google and Character Technologies and asking the court to order warnings that the platform isn't suitable for minors and limit how it can collect and use their data.

We investigate efficient exploration strategies of environments with unknown stochastic dynamics and sparse rewards. Specifically, we analyze first the impact of parallel simulations on the probability of reaching rare states within a finite time budget. Using simplified models based on random walks and L\'evy processes, we provide analytical results that demonstrate a phase transition in reaching probabilities as a function of the number of parallel simulations. We identify an optimal number of parallel simulations that balances exploration diversity and time allocation. Additionally, we analyze a restarting mechanism that exponentially enhances the probability of success by redirecting efforts toward more promising regions of the state space. Our findings contribute to a more qualitative and quantitative theory of some exploration schemes in reinforcement learning, offering insights into developing more efficient strategies for environments characterized by rare events.

AI chatbots impersonating Molly Russell and Brianna Ghey have been found on the controversial site Character.ai. Brianna Ghey was murdered by two teenagers in 2023 while Molly Russell took her own life at the age of 14 after viewing self-harm-related content on social media. In an act described as'sickening', the site's users employed the girl's names, pictures, and biographical details to create dozens of automated bots. Despite violating the site's terms of service, these imitation avatars posing as the two girls were allowed to amass thousands of chats. One impersonating Molly Russell even claimed to be an'expert on the final years of Molly's life'.