Canguilhem and the logic of life

In this paper we examine aspects of Canguilhem’s philosophy of biology, concerning the knowledge of life and its consequences on science and vitalism. His concept of life stems from the idea of a living individual, endowed with creative subjectivity and norms, a Kantian view which “disconcerts logic”. In contrast, two different approaches ground naturalistic perspectives to explore the logic of life (Jacob) and the logic of the living individual (Maturana and Varela) in the 1970s. Although Canguilhem is closer to the second, there are divergences; for example, unlike them, he does not dismiss vitalism, often referring to it in his work and even at times describing himself as a vitalist. The reason may lie in their different views of science

Team equilibrium and innovation performance

2013 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other worksToday competition has increased between organizations and they are urged to improve constantly their performance throughout innovation if they want to survive and be profitable. However, an organization can't be innovative if it doesn't counts with creative people and build teams to strength its creative and innovative capabilities. Besides, the impact of technology in innovation has been widely studied but there are others major aspects that need more exploration to understand their influence in it. For example, collaborative work, multicultural teamwork, creative teamwork, entrepreneurial behavior, etc. Some authors suggest more research is needed regarding organization capabilities that promote effective relationships for innovation. According to West (2002), three issues dominated research about creativity and innovation among teams: the characteristics of group tasks and their impact in the creative-innovative process; the role of diversity in knowledge and skills between team members; and team integration. If these issues are relevant for team creativity and innovation, then frameworks and tools to configure teams are necessary. It may be taken by granted that there must be an equilibrium of roles within teams to foster creativity focused on innovation. So, in this paper several approaches of creativity are reviewed. Then a conceptual model to foster Team Equilibrium and strength innovation performance is proposed and applied through a web-based tool. A first empiric exploration is presented. The proposed model can be used as a basis to develop tools that helps teams for self-analysis.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

It’s a long way to Monte-Carlo: probabilistic display in GPS navigation

We present a mobile, GPS-based multimodal navigation system, equipped with inertial control that allows users to explore and navigate through an augmented physical space, incorporating and displaying the uncertainty resulting from inaccurate sensing and unknown user intentions. The system propagates uncertainty appropriately via Monte Carlo sampling and predicts at a user-controllable time horizon. Control of the Monte Carlo exploration is entirely tilt-based. The system output is displayed both visually and in audio. Audio is rendered via granular synthesis to accurately display the probability of the user reaching targets in the space. We also demonstrate the use of uncertain prediction in a trajectory following task, where a section of music is modulated according to the changing predictions of user position with respect to the target trajectory. We show that appropriate display of the full distribution of potential future users positions with respect to sites-of-interest can improve the quality of interaction over a simplistic interpretation of the sensed data

Transformative spaces in the making: key lessons from nine cases in the Global South

Creating a just and sustainable planet will require not only small changes, but also systemic transformations in how humans relate to the planet and to each other, i.e., social–ecological transformations. We suggest there is a need for collaborative environments where experimentation with new configurations of social–ecological systems can occur, and we refer to these as transformative spaces. In this paper, we seek a better understanding of how to design and enable the creation of transformative spaces in a development context. We analyse nine case studies from a previous special issue on Designing Transformative Spaces that aimed to collect examples of cutting-edge action-oriented research on transformations from the Global South. The analysis showed five design phases as being essential: Problem Definition Phase; Operationalisation Phase; Tactical Phase; Outcome Phase; and Reflection Phase. From this synthesis, we distilled five key messages that should be considered when designing research, including: (a) there are ethical dilemmas associated with creating a transformative space in a system; (b) it is important to assess the readiness of the system for change before engaging in it; (c) there is a need to balance between ‘safe’ and ‘safe-enough’ spaces for transformation; (d) convening a transformative space requires an assemblage of diverse methodological frameworks and tools; and (e) transformative spaces can act as a starting point for institutionalising transformative change. Many researchers are now engaging in transdisciplinary transformations research, and are finding themselves at the knowledge–action interface contributing to transformative space-making. We hope that by analysing experiences from across different geographies we can contribute towards better understanding of how to navigate the processes needed for the urgent global transformations that are being called for to create a more equitable and sustainable planet Earth

Where does good evidence come from?

This paper started as a debate between the two authors. Both authors present a series of propositions about quality standards in education research. Cook’s propositions, as might be expected, concern the importance of experimental trials for establishing the security of causal evidence, but they also include some important practical and acceptable alternatives such as regression discontinuity analysis. Gorard’s propositions, again as might be expected, tend to place experimental trials within a larger mixed method sequence of research activities, treating them as important but without giving them primacy. The paper concludes with a synthesis of these ideas, summarising the many areas of agreement and clarifying the few areas of disagreement. The latter include what proportion of available research funds should be devoted to trials, how urgent the need for more trials is, and whether the call for more truly mixed methods work requires a major shift in the community