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To provide a coherent theoretical framework for interdisciplinary research on happiness, integrating the psychological, physiological/biological, and social/cultural levels, permitting integration of disparate approaches within and across disciplines.

Principles and findings of cybernetics are combined to shed light on difficulties encountered by research on happiness. Using a problem‐oriented approach, the reference system is defined as a psychological information‐processing and decision‐making system. This is an actor system in the social world needing orientation to act. Bossel's systems theory of orientation is applied to emotionality as a subsystem of the psychological system. Happiness, in terms of orientation theory, can be conceived as a meta‐orientor indicating wholeness, health, and the functioning of the overall‐system.

Emotionality and rationality are complementary decision‐making systems. Conditions are identified for developing the capability for emotional orientation and happiness in individuals. These conditions are strongly dependent on the social/cultural environment. Among them are the need for diversity in real‐life experience and for psychological acceptance of both oneself and the (sociocultural) environment. They can permit (relative) stability of happiness defined as an emotional state.

Further research can produce methods to improve happiness both by coaching individuals and by developing social conditions more conducive to happiness, e.g. in education. Happiness is a subjective indicator for physical, psychological, and social wellbeing taken together, which is the definition of health of WHO.

This sociocybernetic approach, combining systems concepts with orientation theory, can serve as an integrative theoretical framework for so far separate theoretical approaches.

A method peculiar to sociocybernetics as a paradigm is dynamic simulation. In the case of information technological (IT) systems, which are socio‐technical systems, a qualitative (conceptual, cognitive) approach is more appropriate than a quantitative one. Already intermediate results of conceptual work aimed at a computer model have been found useful. Illustrates this via three case studies from IT in health care, in which the sociocybernetic problem‐functionalist conceptual (SPC) modelling technique was used. Two studies are from the “EUROCARDS Concerted Action on Extending the Use of Patient Data Cards”; the third concerns the development of health information systems in the Aral Basin. In all cases, a wide variety of information and materials was needed for modelling. To keep track of this, proposes a sociocybernetic standard variable number (SC‐SVN).

This study aims to investigate the effect of the material thickness and build orientation on the mass transfer of low molecular weight substances through polyamide 12 (PA12) structures produced by laser sintering (LS).

Disc-shaped PA12 sheets having a nominal thickness ranging from 700 to 2,000 µm were built in horizontal, vertical and diagonal orientations and their permeation properties to oxygen and water vapor were measured. The structural properties of the sheets were examined by X-ray micro-computed tomography, differential scanning calorimetry and polarized light microscopy.

All the LS sheets that were investigated had water vapor and oxygen permeation coefficients that are in the range of those of PA12 produced by traditional manufacturing technologies. Despite significant differences in the porosity characteristics, the permeation properties of sheets built in different orientations were similar. The pores seem to have no measurable effect on the mass transfer rates in the sheets, and the transport processes seem to predominantly follow the rules of a regular solution-diffusion mechanism. The results showed a non-significant trend toward thickness-dependent permeation coefficients, which agrees with the observed differences in the crystal structures of the sheets.

The results are an important basis for the qualification of LS technology for direct manufacturing in applications requiring special barrier performance.

This study provides new information on mechanisms of mass transport through LS PA12 and the effect of the material thickness and build orientation. Furthermore, the results enhance understanding of the structural properties of thin polymeric sheets produced by LS.