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Homeostatics is a new science, which, it is considered, advances at a rate which may supersede cybernetics. It reveals the informational laws that govern the living matter and projects them on to all systems. Homeostasis (Gk: homoios – “similar” and stasis – “state” or “standing”) can be represented as a dynamic maintenance of assigned values, parameters, functions and trends of development (decay).

After relatively a short period of neglect, cybernetics has been recognized in the former USSR and attracted a broad range of scientists. A brief review of some cybernetical researches in the former USSR and in modern Russia is presented. On the basis of Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener’s concept of homeostasis, a special approach to studying systems of various kinds has been formed in the last ten years. A brief picture of the main features of this approach, called “Homeostatics” and its results during the last five years, is displayed. In the line of Stafford Beer the foremost attention is paid to social systems and organizations, their control and survivability. A few other important cybernetical directions in the Russian science, such as artificial intelligence and informatization, are described.

Focuses on homeostatics which deals with the problems of maintaining dynamic stability of vital parameters, functions, rhythms, cycles and trends of development. The paper also considers the problems of harmony and disharmony in living organisms, natural, social and artificial systems.

Describes how homeostatic models can be applied to modelling the normal processes, as well as the critical phenomena, such as paralysis, shock or collapse, which work in the polarised world. Discusses the development of civilisation against a background of the fight for resources, territories, spheres of influence, as well as the war between the technologies, behind which are the people. This produces an ultimately bad effect upon the ecology. Thus, unless the human race does not think better of it and changes the prevailing paradigm in relation to the nature and to the people themselves, a bitter pay‐off – the global ecological catastrophe – is due. Outlines a created simulating model of the community, which shows that a global ecological catastrophe is likely to occur between 2020 and 2050. This time frame represents a zone of bifurcation, which, it is said, may result in either the death of civilisation, or an excruciating process of rebirth, which would also involve a transition to the new information technologies (based on the principles of the plasma, vacuum, or torsion fields, and so forth). In order to avert the global ecological catastrophe, suggests that it is necessary to accept the noospheric thinking code and, among other changes the organisational structure of the United Nations Organization (UNO), and the relationships between countries.

Discusses the conjecture that mankind is moving towards global crises and catastrophes because of the lack of strategies and policies to deal with information. Sees the need for new concepts in information as paramount. Outlines how a transition to noospheric thinking may be a way to the survival of human civilisation. Presents new concepts in information that are backed by a mathematical methodology.

The purpose of this paper is to define suitable tracers that are particularly significant in assessing the impact on the surrounding environment caused by a steel making plant.

The authors focussed on the detection and quantification of inorganic pollutants such as heavy metals in the soil and in the air in the surrounding area of the steel making plant. The presented data, concerning a plant in the North part of Italy, come from an approach that took into account the advantages of different devices and sampling criteria: apart from conventional devices, two kinds of deposimeters have been used (for characterizing either total or wet/dry depositions). Their locations have been chosen taking into account the distance from the plant.

The paper demonstrates that the presence of diffused emissions plays an important (negative) role still today; thus a modern plant should reduce this kind of emission in order to be accepted from the population living in the surroundings. In the analyzed case study, the benefits of adopting the best available technologies can be seen from the temporal variability of the incidence of the plant.

The value of the paper is in the support that it can give to decision makers that must manage a steel making plant in an area.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the qualitative and quantitative knowledge on ultrafine particles in air near a steel making plant located in an Italian site.

A combination of experimental methodologies was used for the online and offline monitoring and chemical characterization of particulate matter (PM) in the air near the plant. Two unfiltered twin-sampling systems were adopted, working when the plant was on/off. All condensed air samples were submitted to Ion Chromatography analysis. The same samples were submitted to acid digestion before Graphite Furnace Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy Analysis. Continuous daily PM10 samples were collected to characterize ambient air. PM10 samples were also analysed to estimate metals content. The PM size distribution was achieved by continuous online monitoring. The adopted ultrafine particulate monitor classifies particles in the range 20-200 nm. The overall size distribution was inferred from an Optical Particulate Counter able to classify particles in the range 0.3-10 µm.

The obtained results show that no causal relationship can be found between the measurements of anions and metal in the air near the plant under investigation and the presence of the steel making plant. The trend in emissions of micro-particles was found quite characteristic of similar semi-urban areas.

The paper demonstrates that a steel making plant adopting best available techniques could have a local impact compatible with the surrounding environment.

This paper proposes a progressive, multi-level framework for diagnosing maintenance performance: rapid performance health checks of key performance for different equipment groups and end-to-end process diagnostics to further locate potential performance issues. A question-based performance evaluation approach is introduced to support the selection and derivation of case-specific indicators based on diagnostic aspects.

The case research method is used to develop the proposed framework. The generic parts of the framework are built on existing maintenance performance measurement theories through a literature review. In the case study, empirical maintenance data of 196 emergency shutdown valves (ESDVs) are collected over a two-year period to support the development and validation of the proposed approach.

To improve processes, companies need a separate performance measurement structure. This paper suggests a hierarchical model in four layers (objective, domain, aspect and performance measurement) to facilitate the selection and derivation of indicators, which could potentially reduce management complexity and help prioritize continuous performance improvement. Examples of new indicators are derived from a case study that includes 196 ESDVs at an offshore oil and gas production plant.

Methodological approaches to deriving various performance indicators have rarely been addressed in the maintenance field. The proposed diagnostic framework provides a structured way to identify and locate process performance issues by creating indicators that can bridge generic evaluation aspects and maintenance data. The framework is highly adaptive as data availability functions are used as inputs to generate indicators instead of passively filtering out non-applicable existing indicators.

The purpose of this paper is to report a further step in the authors' research and suggest a new – 4th order cybernetics, applying it to the issue of a sustainable future, that must unavoidably result from the current socio‐economic crisis surfacing in 2008 as the top of an iceberg, or humankind of the current civilization has poor chances to survive. One‐sided solutions do not prove to work; they make us think of systems and cybernetics.

Qualitative research with application to real‐life cases.

While cybernetics is about steering, i.e. influencing, cybernetics of the 1st and 2nd order might be insufficient for solving the problem, and cybernetics of the 3rd order might serve us better, but not enough either. The authors' thesis reads: they might better be put in a new synergy with the (Universal) Dialectical Systems Theory and Cybernetics of Conceptual Systems to make a new kind of systems theory/cybernetics called cybernetics of the 4th order. It should help human beings to attain the requisite holism of the human approach and the requisite wholeness of outcomes of human action.

A more holistic concept of cybernetics is suggested.

Control of ecological problems of today might be made easier.

This is the first publication about the concept of the 4th order cybernetics, especially with application to issues of sustainability.

The paper seeks to introduce a process for assuring the creation of quality educational metadata based on the ISO/IEC 19796‐1 standard to describe the agricultural learning resources in the repository of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

The paper describes the general notion of quality in education and in the creation of educational metadata. It introduces a quality framework based on the ISO/IEC 19796‐1 standard on quality management and quality assurance for learning, education and training. This standard consists of a reference framework for the description of quality approaches (RFDQ) to describe, compare, and analyze quality management and quality assurance approaches, which has been adapted to the creation of educational metadata in the context of the learning object repository of the CGIAR.

In order to achieve consistency in the description of learning resources in a repository through quality educational metadata, a standardized process for metadata creators is essential. The reference framework of the ISO/IEC 19796‐1 standard provides a flexible approach that allows the optimization of the metadata creation process while assuring quality of the descriptive information.

The paper proposes a standardized process for the creation of learning object metadata based on the ISO/IEC 19796‐1 standard, and makes suggestions on how to use the reference framework when adapting a quality model for educational metadata.

ISO/IEC 19796‐1 is a very recent standard with a flexible reference framework to develop a quality model in education and training. It provides a novel approach for organizations maintaining learning repositories that are interested in standardizing the educational metadata creation process, especially when multiple stakeholders are involved.