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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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to present an artificial homeostatic system whose parameters are defined by means of an evolutionary process. The objective is to design a more biologically plausible system inspired by homeostatic regulations observed in nature, which is capable of exploring key issues in the context of robot behaviour adaptation and coordination.

The proposed system consists of an artificial endocrine system that coordinates two spatially unconstrained GasNet artificial neural network models, called non‐spatial GasNets. Both systems are dedicated to the definition of control actions in autonomous navigation tasks via the use of an artificial hormone and a hormone receptor. A series of experiments are performed in a real and simulated scenario in order to investigate the performance of the system and its robustness to novel environmental conditions and internal sensory disruptions.

The designed system shows to be robust enough to self‐adapt to a wider variety of disruptions and novel environments by making full use of its in‐built homeostatic mechanisms. The system is also successfully tested on a real robot, indicating the viability of the proposed method for coping with the reality gap, a well‐known issue for the evolutionary robotics community.

The proposed framework is inspired by the homeostatic regulations and gaseous neuro‐modulation that are intrinsic to the human body. The incorporation of an artificial hormone receptor stands for the novelty of this paper. This hormone receptor proves to be vital to control the network's response to the signalling promoted by the presence of the artificial hormone. It is envisaged that the proposed framework is a step forward in the design of a generic model for coordinating many and more complex behaviours in simulated and real robots, employing multiple hormones and potentially coping with further severe disruptions.

Organisations use a variety of technical, formal and informal security controls but also rely on employees to safeguard information assets. This relies heavily on compliance and constantly challenges employees to manage security-related risks. The purpose of this research is to explore the homeostatic mechanism proposed by risk homeostasis theory (RHT), as well as security fatigue, in an organisational context.

A case study approach was used to investigate the topic, focusing on data specialists who regularly work with sensitive information assets. Primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 12 data specialists in a large financial services company.

A thematic analysis of the data revealed risk perceptions, behavioural adjustments and indicators of security fatigue. The findings provide examples of how these concepts manifest in practice and confirm the relevance of RHT in the security domain.

This research illuminates homeostatic mechanisms in an organisational security context. It also illustrates links with security fatigue and how this could further impact risk. Examples and indicators of security fatigue can assist organisations with risk management, creating “employee-friendly” policies and procedures, choosing appropriate technical security solutions and tailoring security education, training and awareness activities.

The deteriorating relationship between humans and the environment is a cause for our concern. On one hand, the human influence on nature has resulted in global climate change and a decline in the health of the world's oceans. On the other hand, it is evident that humans cannot adapt to new ecological conditions, as evidenced by new diseases. Is there any way out of the crisis?

This paper explores the history of Stafford Beer's work in management cybernetics, from his early conception and simulation of an adaptive automatic factory and associated experimentation in biological computing, through the development of the Viable System Model and the Team Syntegrity technique for discussion and planning. It also pursues Beer into the fields of micro‐ and macropolitics and spirituality. The aim is to show that all of Beer's projects can be understood as specific instantiations and workings out of a cybernetic ontology of unknowability and becoming: a stance that recognises that the world can always surprise us and that we can never dominate it through knowledge. The thrust of Beer's work was, thus, to construct systems that could adapt performatively to environments they could not fully control.

Drive and motivation are central to affective neuroscience. Here, we describe the development of conceptualizations from early behaviorist theories to contemporary theories linking motivation closely to reward. Current experimental data suggest key roles of drive and motivation in the wanting, liking, and learning processes underlying the pleasure cycle supporting survival of individuals and species. In particular, the underlying functional neuroanatomy of drive and motivation is now becoming clearer in humans and other mammals, which provides hope for novel more effective interventions for the pervasive problems of drive and motivation in affective and addictive disorders.