Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Various cultures breed different attitudes and interpretations of competition.Previous research tends to associate characteristics such as competitive and self-centered with individualists, while linking collectivists with cooperation and unity.Yet, recent studies indicate that individuals from collectivistic societies compete more intensely and covertly than individualists.Regarding the controversial findings, this paper proposes a potential laboratory experiment with an academic scenario to investigate the cultural variations in perceiving competition when there's no explicit signaling of competitive relationship.The prediction proposes that 1) collectivists might retain a stronger baseline sense of competition across group contexts, 2) collectivists' perceived extent of competition would be highest when they rate ingroup interactions, and 3) the probability of future cooperative behaviors might be negatively associated with perceived competition level.

Urban beekeeping is an innovative tool with which to test hypotheses and practice concepts relating to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) education. STEAM education uses art and design as an approach to STEM disciplines in a creative and engaging way. Here, we provide an overview of what urban beekeeping is, and how students of all ages successfully use bees as a means of project-based learning. We provide an overview of the uses of bees, their nest within the greater hive structure, their pathogens and parasites and their phenotypic gambit, with a special focus on practical applications. We delve into case studies of multiple, actual classrooms to demonstrate practical uses for bees with STEAM learning in elementary through advanced education. Bees are a viable means with which to advance STEAM education for learners of all ages, backgrounds, origins, nationalities, colors, races, and interests.

As an immigrant woman, an academic of diaspora studies, a white in a sea of American whiteness, I navigate the layers of difference that are always contextual, never fixed, at times a deficit, at times an abundance, a surplus. I believe in the practice of counterpoint: When divergent, competing cultural elements come into contact with one another, the continuing processes of adaptation and creation shift existing power dynamics. People and cultures always mutually influence and transform each other through the encounters - and often “crashes” - of languages, customs and worldviews. Naturally, cultural productions come to reflect these processes. My life is a constant, shifting, exhausting and yet rewarding process of counterpoint, an alchemy, a translation. These poems manifest this quality of translation, which is both my curse and my lens through which I observe and make sense of the world.

There is growing appreciation that significant improvements in healthcare quality cannot be achieved by organizations working in isolation. To that end, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) initiative provides multistakeholder alliances-groups of payers, purchasers, providers, and consumers that work together-with funding and technical assistance to improve healthcare community wide. Reducing readmissions was one of the several AF4Q goals. Alliances crafted their own interventions, tailored to address the communities' unique needs, and took advantage of local resources. Our objective was to determine whether readmission rates declined more in AF4Q communities than in non-AF4Q communities by year 7 of the 10-year initiative. We conducted a quasiexperimental study using zip code-level demographics and 30-day readmission rates for all medical and surgical discharges using Medicare claims data for 2008 through 2012. This interim analysis found that AF4Q was not associated with significant reductions in medical or surgical readmissions, suggesting that AF4Q's multistakeholder approach was no more effective at reducing readmissions than other national efforts, such as the Hospital Reduction Program under the Affordable Care Act.

Science is my theme in this paper devoted to a celebration of Susan Petrilli's pathbreaking book, Signifying and Understanding. Why science? Because it has a long conflicted history, yet it is the source of the greatest creative works of humans. I compare Welby's humanistic and unbounded science together with that of Peirce to the bumpy up and down that marks the American anthropological story of science. Welby describes clearly her modern and foresighted program. I believe that we need to accept hers and Peirce's paradigm for global semiotics.

In this video we demonstrate the idea and the prototype of an electromagnetic animation interface, ferro tale.