Creating Cultures of Innovation

date-added: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000 date-modified: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000date-added: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000 date-modified: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, CreativeWorks London Hub, grant AH/J005142/1, and the European Regional Development Fund, London Creative and Digital Fusion

Understanding Health Plan Types: What\u27s in a Name?

Every year, many employers conduct an open season to let employees select or change their medical plans. Several factors may affect their selection, including choice of care provider and shared cost. Employees can sort out some of these distinctions by identifying the type of plan, but some plan names are unclear, such as “standard medical,” “basic medical,” and “traditional medical plan.” Can employees guess plan types based on such names? Even more specific names like “preferred plan” and “pointof-service plan” might not tell how the plan works. Plan names may reveal some, but not complete, information. If it’s an indemnity plan, what kind? Is that HMO traditional, or open-access? With many plan names so vague, how can we figure out their type? Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began reporting on medical plans over 30 years ago, it has identified them by type. Of course, plans have changed quite a bit in 30 years. Today, BLS classifies medical plans into six types: Fee-for-service plan. A plan that gives participants the same reimbursement no matter what hospital or care provider they choose. Preferred provider organization. A plan that contracts with medical providers, such as hospitals and doctors, to create a network. Patients pay less if they use providers who belong to the network, or they can use providers outside the network for a higher cost. Exclusive provider organization. A plan comprising groups of hospitals and doctors that contract to provide comprehensive medical services. Patients receive coverage only for services from those providers (except in an emergency). Point-of-service plan. Such plans typically have differing coverage levels, based on where service occurs. For example, the plan pays more for service performed by a limited set of providers, less for services in a broad network of providers, and even less for services outside the network. Health maintenance organization. A plan that provides prepaid comprehensive medical care. HMOs both insure and deliver services, and patients usually live within a limited area and must get their nonemergency services within the network (except in an emergency). Open-access HMO. An HMO that covers nonemergency care outside its network for an extra cost. This issue of Beyond the Numbers explores how the BLS National Compensation Survey (NCS) uses plan features to identify these six medical plan types

Digital Innovation: The Hackathon Phenomenon

date-added: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000 date-modified: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000date-added: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000 date-modified: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, CreativeWorks London Hub, grant AH/J005142/1, and the European Regional Development Fund, London Creative and Digital Fusion

Communication and rational responsiveness to the world

Donald Davidson has long maintained that in order to be credited with the concept of objectivity – and, so, with language and thought – it is necessary to communicate with at least one other speaker. I here examine Davidson’s central argument for this thesis and argue that it is unsuccessful. Subsequently, I turn to Robert Brandom’s defense of the thesis in Making It Explicit. I argue that, contrary to Brandom, in order to possess the concept of objectivity it is not necessary to engage in the practice of interpersonal reasoning because possession of the concept is independently integral to the practice of intrapersonal reasoning

Current Research: Current Research in the Upper McGee Creek Drainage, Oklahoma

In recent years the Choctaw Nation has acquired a roughly 80 square mile ranch in the western edge of the Winding Stair Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma. The land is currently a working ranch and timber management area. Choctaw Forestry manages timber activities and range management with the intention of returning the land to an oak savanna setting. Active logging of pine and selected hardwoods and on-going controlled surface burns are included in Forestry activity on the ranch. The project is supported by the Choctaw Nation Historic Preservation Department, which is responsible for the inventory and protection of the cultural resources found on the property. Archeological surveys were conducted in the McGee Creek Reservoir area in the 1970s and 1980s and a wide range of significant cultural resources were located in the reservoir area, less than 10 miles south of the ranch. Only one previous survey was conducted on the ranch property, by the Oklahoma Conservation Commission in the 1980s ahead of construction of an upland flood control reservoir. Significant archeological resources were recorded. Since very little was known about the ranch property itself, it was presumed that this portion of the McGee Creek drainage would also have a similar archeological importance

Bodily awareness and novel multisensory features

According to the decomposition thesis, perceptual experiences resolve without remainder into their different modality-specific components. Contrary to this view, I argue that certain cases of multisensory integration give rise to experiences representing features of a novel type. Through the coordinated use of bodily awareness—understood here as encompassing both proprioception and kinaesthesis—and the exteroceptive sensory modalities, one becomes perceptually responsive to spatial features whose instances couldn’t be represented by any of the contributing modalities functioning in isolation. I develop an argument for this conclusion focusing on two cases: 3D shape perception in haptic touch and experiencing an object’s egocentric location in crossmodally accessible, environmental space

Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception

Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the “two visual systems” hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver’s bodily actions. In this paper, I carefully assess three main sources of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis and argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency