This editorial is dedicated in honor of Morris F. Collen, MD, a pioneer in the field of medical informatics. During his remarkable career, Dr. Collen’s has made many important contributions not only to the field of medical informatics, but also to the public health and the creation of new models of payment and prevention. His endeavors and ideas found fertile ground and left a mark not only in the national, but also in the international setting.

The panel intended to collect data, opinions and views for a systematic and multiaxial approach for a comprehensive presentation of “History of Medical Informatics”, treating both general (global) characteristics, but emphasizing the particular features for Europe. The topic was not only a subject of large interest but also of great importance in preparing a detailed material for celebration of forty years of medical informatics in Europe. The panel comprised a list of topics, trying to cover all major aspects to be discussed. Proposals of staging the major periods of medical informatics history were also discussed.

International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and European Federation of Medical Informatics are scientific associations which represents Health/Medical informatics as scientific and profesional disciplines. Those associations have long tradition in spreading knowledge, experiences and strategies in organization, practical applications and education within Health, Medical and Biomedical informatics in approximately 60 countries the world. In this review we present basic facts about IMIA and EFMI.who celebrate this 50 years of their establishing as professional associations.

Medical informatics, as scientific discipline, has to do with all aspects of understanding and promoting the effective organization, analysis, management, and use of information in health care. While the field of Medical informatics shares the general scope of these interests with some other health care specialities and disciplines, Medical (Health) informatics has developed its own areas of emphasis and approaches that have set it apart from other disciplines and specialities. For the last fifties of 20th century and some more years of 21st century, Medical informatics had the five time periods of characteristic development. In this paper author shortly described main scientific innovations and inventors who created development of Medical informatics.

Aim. The aim of this study was to compare urinary alpha 1 microglobulin (A1MG) in healthy individuals with and without family burden for Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN) in an endemic village. Methods. Otherwise healthy inhabitants with microalbuminuria or proteinuria were divided into two groups: with (n = 24) and without (n = 32) family BEN burden and screened for urinary A1MG and A1MG/urine creatinine ratio. Results. Average value of urinary A1MG was 10.35 ± 7.01 mg/L in group with and 10.79 ± 8.27 mg/L in group without family history for BEN (NS, P = 0.87). A1MG was higher than 10 mg/L in eight (33.33%) inhabitants with family history and in 12 (37.5%) without (NS, P = 0.187). Average values of urinary A1MG/creatinine ratio were 1.30 ± 1.59 and 0.94 ± 0.78 in group with and group without family BEN history (NS, P = 0.39, resp.). Elevated values of this ratio were found in 13 (54.17%) inhabitants with and 14 (43.75%) without family history for BEN (NS, P = 0.415). Conclusion. We did not find statistically significant difference in the examined markers between healthy individuals with and without family burden for BEN. We concluded that these markers are not predictive of risk for BEN.

Using interviews, participant observation, and published documents, this article analyzes the co-construction of robotics and culture in Japan through the technical discourse and practices of robotics researchers. Three cases from current robotics research – the seal-like robot PARO, the Humanoid Robotics Project HRP-2 humanoid, and ‘kansei robotics’ – show the different ways in which scientists invoke culture to provide epistemological grounding and possibilities for social acceptance of their work. These examples show how the production and consumption of social robotic technologies are associated with traditional crafts and values, how roboticists negotiate among social, technical, and cultural constraints while designing robots, and how humans and robots are constructed as cultural subjects in social robotics discourse. The conceptual focus is on the repeated assembly of cultural models of social behavior, organization, cognition, and technology through roboticists’ narratives about the development of advanced robotic technologies. This article provides a picture of robotics as the dynamic construction of technology and culture and concludes with a discussion of the limits and possibilities of this vision in promoting a culturally situated understanding of technology and a multicultural view of science.

By using the KAM theory we investigate the stability of equilibrium solutions of the Gumowski-Mira equation: x n+1 = (2ax n)/(1 + x n 2) − x n−1, n = 0,1,…, where x −1, x 0 ∈ (−∞, ∞), and we obtain the Birkhoff normal forms for this equation for different equilibrium solutions.

One of the frequently used strategies in crisis management, i.e. crisis communication used by organizations affected by crisis is public apology for the crisis. Usually it is lightly considered as a strategy which automatically gives results and reduces the effects of crisis, which is far from true. The effectiveness of public apology depends on an entire series of factors such as the nature of crisis, place, time and manner in which the public apology is given and the addressed target public. Wrongly given apology may cause serious counter-effects. Particularly great significance lies on the cultural factors. No function of communication includes more tragic intercultural misunderstandings with more negative consequences than an apology given in a wrong way. Using a form of apology which is not in accordance with the cultural patterns of those to whom it has been addressed, the apology may jeopardize reconciliation, strengthen the resentment, prolong hostilities and additionally complicate resolving of the crisis.