Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the effectiveness or success of universities' portal implementation from the perspective of students as users. Adopting the model developed by Delone and McLean, portal effectiveness is defined as being composed of information quality, systems quality and service quality. In addition, the paper also…

The reduction in the total numbers of scientists in Russia has been accompanied by negative changes in the age structure of science cadres. According to data of the Center for Research and Statistics of Science, in 1995, the ratio of specialists of the older age cohort (above the age of sixty) and the younger age cohort (up to the age of forty)…

This article describes the latest advancement in the development of prosthetic arms. Bionic researchers are making significant advances in creating more agile prosthetics that users can control via their own nervous system. The bionic arm, which is still under development, can not only execute complex, thought-controlled movements, but also can…

In this paper, an evaluation of web sites regarded like projects is discussed. We give an overview of the Web Assessment Index (WAI), by presenting a web sites of Romanian Faculties of Economics case study. The WAI contains five categories: accessibility, access speed, navigability, content and reliability. We analyzed and presented a detailed…

This paper offers a model that integrates chaos theory and cybernetics, which can be used to describe the structure of decision making within small groups. The paper begins with an overview of cybernetics and chaos. Definitional characteristics of cybernetics are reviewed along with salient constructs, such as goal-seeking, feedback, feedback…

In 1964 the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark decision, in the case of the New York Times v. Sullivan, that was hailed as a tremendous victory for the news media. This decision changed the law of libel by introducing a fourth requirement of "actual malice" in addition to three previously accepted requirements--publication,…

Selected papers presented at the First Scientific Conference of Pedagogical Scholars of Socialist Countries, Moscow, 1971, deal with methodology in relation to science, human development, sociology, psychology, cybernetics, and the learning process. (KM)

The only operational Soviet time-sharing systems are incorporated in special-purpose, fixed-application installations, most of which are intended for industrial applications of process control or management information. Despite the peculiar suitability of time-sharing to the Soviet economic system, with its heavy reliance on centralized planning…

Search for an integrated, comprehensive theory of information science (IS) has so far been unsuccessful. Appearance of a theory has been retarded by one central constraint, the large number of disciplines concerned with human communication. Crossdisciplinary interdependence occurs in two ways: theoretical relation of IS phenomena to a given…

This book contends that we create the world we perceive because we select and edit reality to conform to our beliefs; that our cultural mind has come to a point where the dissonance between reality and false beliefs is so great that it is impossible to avoid the awareness that the world no longer makes sense; and that only once this awareness…

Presents the "Evidence-of-Existence" information system in which the structure is developed, with application of cybernetic concepts, as an isomorphic model in analogy to the system structure of communication technology. Three criteria of structuring are postulated: (1) source-channel-sink, with input-output characteristics, (2) filter-type…

The brief therapy approach to counseling was born in the post-World War II cybernetics movement. The shift from a problem focus to a solution focus altered the way in which counselors approached helping clients out of their inflexible cognitive representations. Alongside this evolution in psychotherapy were the growth of research in artificial…

This concise survey of the vast literature currently available in field-of-systems thinking and cybernetics discusses the areas of systems philosophy, systems analysis (mathematical systems theory), empirical systems research, and systems engineering, and outlines contributions of selected scholars. A bibliography of 148 books and papers is…

Piaget's use of the equilibrium model to define knowledge results in a cybernetic conception of knowledge that cannot explain how knowledge becomes possible. The knowledge that behaviors apply discriminately must be acquired, and cannot be programed, and therefore cannot be learned. (FG)