Search results for "Cybernetics"
showing 10 items of 331 documents
Exploring the Relationship Between Teacher Confirmation and Student Motivation: The United States and Finland
2021
Teacher communication behaviors have enormous impacts on students’ learning processes and thus have attracted extensive scholarly attention (Mazer, 2013). Teacher confirmation is the process through which teachers communicate to students that they are endorsed, recognized, and acknowledged as valuable individuals (Ellis, 2000). In primarily US-based research, teacher confirmation has been linked to a variety of effective pedagogical practices, student motivation, and emotional outcomes (Ellis, 2004). As McCroskey and McCroskey (2006) stated, it is not likely that instructional practices in other instructional cultures are always as effective as they are in the United States. To understand t…
Decoding the XXI Century’s Marketing Shift: An Agency Theory Framework
2016
Since the beginning of the XXI century, marketing theory has moved through a series of epistemological shifts from modern positivism to postmodern constructivism. This has resulted in a series of changes to the main concepts of “traditional” marketing such as: market, product, customer, and value. These shifts can be better viewed under a social cybernetics approach such as agency theory. This is because there is now a view that the linear concept of value creation needs to give way to the more complex process of value cocreation, where value is created collectively. Agency theory is one approach that is able to shed light on how customers and providers are able to recursively create collec…
The human-computer connection: An overview of brain-computer interfaces
2018
This article introduces the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCI), which allows the control of devices without the generation of any active motor output but directly from the decoding of the user’s brain signals. Here we review the current state of the art in the BCI field, discussing the main components of such an interface and illustrating ongoing research questions and prototypes for controlling a large variety of devices, from virtual keyboards for communication to robotics systems to replace lost motor functions and even clinical interventions for motor rehabilitation after a stroke. The article concludes with some insights into the future of BCI.
Explanatory frameworks for interaction design
2005
Explanatory design means the practice by which design solutions are evidence-based. This practice has been the norm in engineering design, relying as it does on the laws of science, but much less attention has been paid to the necessity of abandoning intuitive practices in designing for the human element within technological systems. One reason for this may have been the variety of explanatory bases within psychology. There is no single psychological framework for explaining human behaviour; instead different types of problems must be solved by using very different types of explanatory frameworks and theory language. Cognitive capacity, emotions and mental contents may serve as examples of …
An experimentalist point of view on quantitative elaboration of theoretical models
1980
Abstract In a number of problems of solute–solute–solvent interaction, information on the geometrical structure of solvent in the near neighborhood of solute is now available. This was obtained from a variety of experiments as well as from numerical calculations. The present trend in computer simulation as well as an experimental techniques seems to appropriately be towards an extension of this information to include thermal disorder. Despite these efforts, other aspects of solute–solute–solvent interaction do not seem likely to find exhaustive answers through a study of the geometrical configurations of solvent molecules around the solute. More detailed calculations of inter- and intra-mol…
The Role Of Complex Leadership In Interfirm Strategic Networks: Enabling Effect Versus Emergence
2014
In today's knowledge-based economy, the sources of competitive advantage lie more and more in webs of relationships among a variety of firms that over time originate the emergence of interfirm strategic networks. The paper aims to shed light on the role of complex leadership exerted by network central firms in promoting and supporting network interactions and the ensuing processes of knowledge and resource transfer and diffusion. Processes on which the network-based sources of competitive advantage are rooted. In the attempt to make the proposed contribution, on the one hand, we underscore the emergent nature of network interactions stemming from the self-organizing behaviors that spontaneo…
Linear Regression Analysis
2010
SUMMARY Background: Regression analysis is an important statistical method for the analysis of medical data. It enables the identification and characterization of relationships among multiple factors. It also enables the identification of prognostically relevant risk factors and the calculation of risk scores for individual prognostication. Methods: This article is based on selected textbooks of statistics, a selective review of the literature, and our own experience. Results: After a brief introduction of the uni- and multivariable regression models, illustrative examples are given to explain what the important considerations are before a regression analysis is performed, and how the resul…
Fuzzy Logic, Knowledge and Natural Language
2012
This is an introductive study on what Fuzzy Logic is, on the difference between Fuzzy Logic and the other many-valued calculi and on the possible relationship between Fuzzy Logic and the complex sciences. Fuzzy Logic is nowadays a very popular logic methodology. Different kinds of applications in cybernetics, in software programming and its growing use in medicine seems to make Fuzzy Logic, according to someone, the “new” logic of science and technology. In his enthusiastic panegyric of Fuzzy Logic, Kosko (1993) argues that after thirty years from the birth of this calculus, it is time to declare the new era of Fuzzy Logic and to forget the old era of classical logic. I think that this poin…
For a “Living (Lab)” Approach to Smart Cities
2016
Thanks to the diffusion of information and communication technologies, and despite the huge margins of improvement of the operating conditions of the Web, sharing an idea can be today the starting point for the birth of either a start-up or a community of interests, able to achieve a variety of goals without the intervention of any public institution. In relation to such a ferment of successful micro-level initiatives, Territorial Living Labs are here interpreted as place-based ecosystems of co-creation of goods, services as well as new organizational and social models of smart urban life. From this interpretation, the necessity strongly emerges of a coherent and viable reference framework …
From Nowhere to Everywhere
2017
International audience; This paper presents a synthetic view of a variety of projects built upon an Erasmuss Mundus Master Course. It highlights double degree programs, European credits transfer, joint PhDs, research collaborations as well as few other related European projects going from Thematic Networks to another Erasmus Mundus Course.