Journal of
Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics
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 ISSN: 1690-4524 (Online)




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TABLE OF CONTENTS





Does Learning Multidisciplinary Field of Biomedical Engineering Help Pandemic of COVID-19?
Shigehiro Hashimoto
Pages: 1-6
ABSTRACT:
The global community has accelerated the spread of the virus. Medicine alone cannot solve the pandemic. The change of the lifestyle by new technology helps to coexist with viruses. The academic field has been divided into each specialized field. The modern communication tools (internet, and database), on the other hand, promote multidisciplinary academic fields. The multidisciplinary field is not just a collection of fields, but a fusion among fields. Many problems in global society cannot be solved by a single disciplinarian. The global society is waiting for a multi-disciplinarian. For students, it is not easy to find the way to learn a multidisciplinary field: the curriculum, the textbook, the learning team, and the teacher (the adviser). “Biomedical Engineering” is one of the multidisciplinary fields. It has many related fields: biology, medicine, informatics, and engineering. The topic includes case studies related to COVID-19 (education for the undergraduate and the graduate courses) based on the author’s experiences: from cross cultural to symbiosis.


Interdisciplinarity and Universality of Foreign Languages Education
Rusudan Makhachashvili, Ivan Semenist
Pages: 7-17
ABSTRACT:
Transformative potential of the knowledge economy of the XXI century, establishment of networked society, emergency digitization due to the COVID-19 pandemic measures have imposed elaborate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary demands on the marketability of Liberal Arts university graduates’ skills and competences, upon entering the workforce. The study is focused on the in-depth diagnostics of the development of multipurpose orientation, universality and interdisciplinarity of skillsets for students of European (English, Spanish, French, Italian, German) and Oriental (Mandarin Chinese, Japanese) Languages major programs through the span of educational activities in the time-frame of COVID-19 quarantine measures of March 2020 to January 2021. A computational framework of foreign languages education interdisciplinarity is introduced in the study. The survey analysis is used to evaluate the dimensions of interdisciplinarity, universality and transdiciplinarity, informed by the interoperability of soft skills and digital communication skills for Foreign Languages Education across contrasting timeframes and stages of foreign languages acquisition and early career training.


Discovering Patterns across Disciplines: Cybernetics, Existentialism and Contemporary Arts
Steve Dixon
Pages: 18-23
ABSTRACT:
Gregory Bateson observed that cybernetics is not essentially about “exchanging information across lines of discipline, but in discovering patterns common to many disciplines”. This paper adopts his line of thought to join the dots between cybernetics and the philosophy of Existentialism, and then interconnect both with contemporary art. It demonstrates that while terminologies may differ, many of the three fields’ primary concerns closely cohere. The world’s most ground-breaking artists are found to apply and fuse cybernetic paradigms and Existentialist themes, from Robert Rauschenberg and Marina Abramovic to Damien Hirst, Stelarc and Anish Kapoor.

The research offers the first detailed comparison between cybernetics and Existentialism, and reveals surprising commonalities. Feedback loops, circular causality and negative entropy are not only central tenets of cybernetics, but also of Existentialism. Autonomy, autopoiesis and interactivity equally unite both fields, and each is visionary and forward looking in seeking radical change and transformations. Both explored artistic endeavours, with Existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus equally renowned for their powerful novels and plays as their philosophical works, while cybernetic art became a major phenomenon in the 1960s following the landmark exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity: the Computer in the Arts (1968), and influenced artistic practices thereafter.


Improving Life' as a North Star for Research
Teresa H. Langness
Pages: 24-34
ABSTRACT:
This paper evaluates the impact of research centered on enhancing the quality of life. It presents examples of research in which the essential question, pivoting around altruistic possibilities, set in motion long-term outcomes that extended beyond the life of the project. The examples listed occur across the disciplines, in engineering, science, social science, social action research, education, and communications technologies. The human processes that redounded to human progress pointed to the concept that research may matter most when it sustains life, improves the quality of life or otherwise enhances the cohesion and destiny of humans and other species, and that continually holding this as an ideal has the potential to shape the researcher, the research field, and human progress itself. Findings include the long-term outcomes accrued during and beyond the lifetime of the researchers involved. Conclusions are reinforced by transdisciplinary trends inaugurated as the result of research.


Benefits of Computer Assistive Software and Minimum Requirements
Russell Jay Hendel
Pages: 35-39
ABSTRACT:
Use of computer assisted software (CAS), typically combined with a problem-solving pedagogy, is common in 1) mathematics, 2) STEM, 3) writing, 4) certification exam preparation, and 5) business training. Since there are many competing CAS products, a user must know I) what benefits to expect from good CAS, and II) what the minimum requirements are. I) The benefits of good CAS are I-A) increased student mastery due to increased practice leading to self-efficacy, I-B) heightened awareness of objectivity, encouraging a perception that achievement is based on effort and work, thus increasing inclusion and diversity, and I-C) increased outreach to weaker students who benefit from graduated levels of problem difficulty afforded by the CAS . II) The requirements for a good CAS are II-A) a large database of problems, II-B) a classification of problems using the two-four dozen topics corresponding to the daily topics in a 15-week course syllabus, taught two to three days a week, and II-C) at least 3 levels of graduated difficulty (easy, moderate, advanced) of practice problems for each topic. Note especially that minimally the software is exclusively used for storage implying that these ideas can be implemented manually without using any computer. Simple implementation methods for creating such software are presented for both mathematics and writing courses (both education and business oriented). The assurance that the minimum requirements enumerated lead to the benefits listed is provided by the four educational pillars of Hendel.



The Role of Human in the Loop in Threat Recognition in Homeland Protection Systems
Mario La Manna
Pages: 40-45
ABSTRACT:
Threat Recognition is a primary task in Homeland Protection systems. When performing this task, Human in the Loop is the main part of a multidisciplinary reasoning process, that allows to achieve a high probability of correct classification. This reasoning process relies on two important factors, namely the past recognition history and the threat scenario. The Human in the Loop agent contributes both in controlling the automated process and in acting as a decision support system in different situations, such as dynamic changes in the scenario and occurrence of anomalous conditions. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of a multidisciplinary system, which uses a combination of a multisensory classification algorithm and a multidisciplinary fusion rule. This fusion rule combines the decisions coming from different channels with the reasoning process of a Human in the Loop agent. The performance evaluation of the multidisciplinary threat recognition system is carried out by considering different case studies. The evaluation demonstrates that a multidisciplinary system with a Human in the Loop agent can classify different threats, by using a set of methods and algorithms, with a high probability of correct classification, when compared to a completely automated recognition criterium.


Issues of Form
Stefano Follesa, Sabrina Cesaretti, Francesco Armato
Pages: 46-50
ABSTRACT:
In a scene radically varied by the effects of the pandemic, a reflection opens on which guidelines and methods should turn today educational research, an area no less spared, which also manifests the fragility of a system made of static habits. The knowledge of how design originates from the ability to adapt to the changes of a society in continuous evolution, in which modernity has however unquestionably marked the loss of forms built over the centuries, implementing a radical break with the past.

Investigating the variations of teaching through the comparison between historical models and new tools and processes of the digital age, the paper questions the concept of form, proper to the design project but also immaterial tool of culture, a means of coexistence and a place of mutual exchange, to define the changeability we are witnessing in the transition from classrooms to home desks. In fact, it is increasingly necessary to re-establish relations between the parties involved, to restore a communicative capacity that knows how to overcome difficulties and fears in the awareness that, as in the most famous physical law, nothing is created or destroyed, but it only changes in its form.


Interdisciplinary Background Helps Communication in Pandemic: Learning Multidisciplinary Field of Biomedical Engineering
Shigehiro Hashimoto
Pages: 51-56
ABSTRACT:
The global community has accelerated the spread of the virus. Medicine alone cannot solve the pandemic. Understanding information from specialists is not easy. Information is overflowing due to the progress of networks. Individuals are required to have the ability to sort huge information. How do you use information for your personal behavior? Following social campaign can lead to inconsistencies in individual behavior. The field of biomedical engineering is not limited to the fusion of medicine and engineering, but is a complex field including various fields: biology, informatics, etc. In the courses, students have the opportunity to learn pandemic-related techniques: air purification techniques (clean room), sterilization techniques (cell culture). Multi-disciplinary fields supply education to understand complex issues. They improve communication skills of students on global problems.


Interdisciplinary Trends of Digital Education in the COVID-19 Paradigm: Global Event Horizon
Rusudan Makhachashvili, Ivan Semenist
Pages: 57-64
ABSTRACT:
Transformative shifts in the knowledge economy of the XXI century, Industry 4.0 and Web 4.0 development and elaboration of networked society, emergency digitization of all social communicative spheres due to pandemic measures have imposed pressing revisions onto interdisciplinary and cross-sectorial job market demands of university level education, curriculum design and learning outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic induced amplified digitalization measures in the higher education sphere, informed by the need to take quick comprehensive action in order to achieve the overarching result to transform educational and communicative scenarios into interdisciplinary digital, remote, and hybrid formats.

The consequent functional tasks to meet this challenge in the educational sphere worldwide are estimated as 1) to adapt the existent educational scenarios to digital, remote and hybrid formats; 2) to upgrade e-competence and digital literacy of all stakeholders of the educational process and industry; 3) to activate complex interdisciplinary skillsets, otherwise latent or underutilized in the professional interaction; 4) to introduce functional technical solutions for facilitation of formal and informal educational workflow and communication.

The findings of the comprehensive framework research project ‘TRANSITION’ disclose a wide scope of generalized theoretical and applied issues, permeating the social and educational context worldwide: global event horizon and paradigm shifts in the interdisciplinary trends of digital education in the Covid-19 timeframe and beyond; transformative changes and avenues of development of the network society and education as an interdisciplinary socio-cultural institution and industry in the digital age; global experiences, universal/generic challenges, technical advances and specific national gains in quality assurance of online and hybrid learning in the Covid-19 paradigm.