To help academic and non-profit investigators interested in drug repurposing navigate regulatory approval processes, we compared pathways for repurposed drugs to obtain approval at EMA, UK MHRA, and the US FDA. Though we found no pathways specifically for repurposed drugs, pathways to market are available in all repurposing scenarios.

Upshot: Operational concepts underpinning a proposed cybersemiotic theatrical laboratory are further refined while questions regarding its experimental orientation remain.

Context: The thoroughly second-order cybernetic underpinnings of naturalist theatre have gone almost entirely unremarked in the literature of both theatre studies and cybernetics itself. As a result, rich opportunities for the two fields to draw mutual benefit and break new ground through both theoretical and empirical investigations of these underpinnings have, thus far, gone untapped. Problem: The field of cybernetics continues to remain academically marginalized for, among other things, its alleged lack of experimental rigor. At the same time, the field (...) of theatre studies finds itself at an impasse between post-structuralist semioticians and embodied cognitivists regarding key onto-epistemological issues. A program of research framing and utilizing naturalist theatre as a second-order cybernetic/cybersemiotic laboratory holds much promise in addressing both matters and lending credence to Ross Ashby’s assertion that “the discovery that two fields are related leads to each branch helping in the development of the other.” Method: After establishing the nature of the onto-epistemological deadlock within theatre studies, this article examines the application of cybernetic heuristics within naturalistic theatre, leading to a second-order cybernetic analysis of its processes of production and reception and the outline of an experimental program for exploring these processes further. Results: Foundations for a model of naturalist theatre as a cybersemiotic laboratory grounded in a novel operationalization of Gordon Pask’s conversation theory. Implications: The proposed laboratory could result in the generation of quantitative and qualitative research pertaining to several dimensions of second-order cybernetics; particularly cybersemiotics, which, as a result, may end up better positioned to help dissolve onto-epistemological deadlocks between constructivists and realists of all stripes across the academy and beyond. Constructivist content: I argue that an analysis of naturalistic theatre’s processes of meaning-making filtered through the constructivist ontological agnosticism of second-order cybernetics offers a productive middle way forward for those on both sides of the social constructivist/embodied cognitive realist divide, within and beyond theatre studies. The article draws upon the works of Gregory Bateson, Søren Brier, Ranulph Glanville, Heinz von Foerster, and Niklas Luhmann. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Design Research as a Variety of Second-Order Cybernetic Practice” by Ben Sweeting. Upshot: This commentary adds environmental architect Lawrence Halprin to Sweeting’s list of examples of design research as second-order cybernetic practice.

Druzhinin’s insistence that the behaviour portrayed in fictional films can be considered a “reliable source of evidence for […] experiential analysis” of the cognitive use of ….

Open peer commentary on the article “Designing Academic Conferences in the Light of Second-Order Cybernetics” by Laurence D. Richards. Upshot: Building upon Richards’s notions of “design by constraint” and the usefulness of assigning collaborative tasks to conference participants, this commentary suggests a basic application of Pask’s conversation theory as a potential aide to fruitful knowledge construction in a conference setting.

After several decades of intensive efforts to theorize the global in contemporary society, what are the endeavour’s main accomplishments and future challenges? This article develops five main observations in this regard: (a) that the transdisplinary promise of global theory remains largely elusive; (b) that global thinking might productively give way to transscalar conceptions of social space; (c) that global theory still struggles to move from universalist to transculturalist dispositions; (d) that global theory remains subject to substantial marginal­izing knowledge/power hierarchies; and (...) (e) that global studies can further develop an ethico-political role of helping to improve possibilities in actually lived global lives. (shrink)

Returning genomic research results to family members raises complex questions. Genomic research on life-limiting conditions such as cancer, and research involving storage and reanalysis of data and specimens long into the future, makes these questions pressing. This author group, funded by an NIH grant, published consensus recommendations presenting a framework. This follow-up paper offers concrete guidance and tools for implementation. The group collected and analyzed relevant documents and guidance, including tools from the Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research Consortium. The authors then (...) negotiated a consensus toolkit of processes and documents. That toolkit offers sample consent and notification documents plus decision flow-charts to address return of results to family of living and deceased participants, in adult and pediatric research. Core concerns are eliciting participant preferences on sharing results with family and on choice of a representative to make decisions about sharing after participant death. (shrink)

A core symptom of anxiety disorders is the tendency to interpret ambiguous information as threatening. Using EEG and BOLD-MRI, several studies have begun to elucidate brain processes involved in fear-related perceptual biases, but thus far mainly found evidence for general hypervigilance in high fearful individuals. Recently, multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) has become popular for decoding cognitive states from distributed patterns of neural activation. Here, we used this technique to assess whether biased fear generalization, characteristic of clinical fear, is already present (...) during the initial perception and categorization of a stimulus, or emerges during the subsequent interpretation of a stimulus. Individuals with low spider fear (LSF, n = 20) and high spider fear (HSF, n = 18) underwent functional MRI scanning while viewing series of schematic flowers morphing to spiders. In line with previous studies, individuals with high fear of spiders were behaviorally more likely to classify ambiguous morphs as spiders than individuals with low fear of spiders. Univariate analyses of BOLD-MRI data revealed stronger activation towards spider pictures in high fearful individuals compared to low fearful individuals in numerous areas. Yet, neither average activation, nor support vector machine classification (i.e. a form of MVPA) matched the behavioral results - i.e., a biased response towards ambiguous stimuli - in any of the regions of interest. This may point to limitations of the current design, and to challenges associated with classifying emotional and neutral stimuli in groups that differ in their judgment of emotionality. Improvements for future research are suggested. (shrink)

The article introduces a new perspective on the impact of globalization on identity formation, which marks a shift from traditional understandings of fixed territorial (cultural) identities. It uses Deleuze and Guattari’s theoretical terms of Deterritorialization and Reterritorialization and establishes these as the essence of Globalization Scholte (Globalization: A Critical Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2005), rejecting the pessimism and fear of cultural imperialism as a by-product of globalization or a fear of standardization in multicultural work environments. It presents globalization (...) as a positive force creating new assemblages and a renewed understanding of ourselves in the contemporary society. The approach contributes to leadership and management literature, specifically in International Business and cross-cultural communication contexts, by presenting a new lens through which leaders and decision makers can view the subtle shifts brought about by the dissemination of global modernity and its impact on identity formation, allowing them to better lead a culturally diverse work force. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article ““Black Box” Theatre: Second-Order Cybernetics and Naturalism in Rehearsal and Performance” by Tom Scholte. Upshot: The parallels that Scholte has drawn between cybernetics and theatre open up a new avenue for exploring cybernetic ideas. This complements the way that cybernetics has invoked design as a way of questioning the relationship between cybernetics and action.

Open peer commentary on the article ““Black Box” Theatre: Second-Order Cybernetics and Naturalism in Rehearsal and Performance” by Tom Scholte. Upshot: What von Foerster accomplished in raising the specter of second-order cybernetics now requires experimental design and the heavy lifting of theory to complete his quest for new ways of thinking. Scholte’s “black box theatre” points to research into non-trivial systems as a formal means of grasping living systems.

Open peer commentary on the article ““Black Box” Theatre: Second-Order Cybernetics and Naturalism in Rehearsal and Performance” by Tom Scholte. Upshot: Scholte’s approach to theater as a black box to be probed indicates that the vocabulary of second-order cybernetics provides an analytical repertoire adequate to the complexity of theatrical phenomena, from the construction of the play in rehearsal to the delivery of the play in performance. While it was hard to discern the precise details in some of (...) class='Hi'>Scholte’s experimental protocols, we found his larger discussion to be provocative and effective in mapping the recursivities of theatrical processes. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article ““Black Box” Theatre: Second-Order Cybernetics and Naturalism in Rehearsal and Performance” by Tom Scholte. Upshot: Scholte proposes using the theatre as a laboratory for experimenting with ideas in second-order cybernetics, adding to the repertoire of approaches for advancing this way of thinking. Second-order cybernetics, as art, science and craft, raises questions about the forms of experimentation most useful in such a laboratory. Theatre provides an opportunity to “play” with the dynamics of human (...) interactions and relations and possibly demonstrate value in second-order cybernetic thinking. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article ““Black Box” Theatre: Second-Order Cybernetics and Naturalism in Rehearsal and Performance” by Tom Scholte. Upshot: Scholte’s attempt to link theatre studies with cybernetics faces at least two problems: historically, there could not have been any direct influence between these two fields; and conceptually, do we need second-order cybernetics, and the concept of the black box in particular, to account for the Stanislavski system?

Open peer commentary on the article ““Black Box” Theatre: Second-Order Cybernetics and Naturalism in Rehearsal and Performance” by Tom Scholte. Upshot: This commentary adds historical perspective to the use of improvisation and conversation as models for the promotion of naturalism in acting. It wants to denaturalize naturalism and the concept of embodiment in support of Scholte’s reconceptualization of the naturalist theatre, and concludes with a reflection on the societal function of art and theatre today.

Open peer commentary on the article ““Black Box” Theatre: Second-Order Cybernetics and Naturalism in Rehearsal and Performance” by Tom Scholte. Upshot: My aim is to show that “truthful” acting that emerges through improvisation is equivalent to the development of mutual forward models in the actors. If these models match those of the audience members, this is perceived as “truthful.”.