Search results for "DISTANCE"

Hand-Held texting is less distracting than texting with the phone in a holder: anyway, don't do it

2015

We studied the effects of texting while driving and the effects of mobile phone position (hand-held, holder) on drivers' lane-keeping performance, experienced workload, and in-car glance durations in a motion-platform driving simulator with 24 participants. Overall, we found the known negative effects of texting on lane-keeping performance, workload, and visual attention on road, suggesting that texting on the road in any manner is not risk-free. As a novel finding, we found that hand-held texting led to fewer lane-keeping errors and shorter total glance times off road compared to texting with the phone in a holder. We suggest the explanation is that the drivers had considerably more experi…

Toward Successfully Integrating Mini Learning Games into Social Virtual Reality Environments : Recommendations for Improving Open and Distance Learni…

2017

Social virtual reality environments, also known as 3D virtual immersive environments, are threedimensional computer-generated virtual spaces that are increasingly used in attendance-based and distance education. Thanks to their unique characteristics that separate them from two-dimensional virtual learning environments, social virtual reality environments can enhance distance education efficacy when used in combination with applying instructional methodologies such as situated learning, experiential learning and game-based learning. The authors of this paper describe the design and findings of a research study on game-based learning in social virtual immersive environments. The research met…

Entry in a Psychically Distant Market: Finnish Small and Medium-sized Software Firms in Japan

2008

This paper investigates the market entry and entry mode choice of eight small and medium-sized Finnish software firms in the Japanese market. The findings in this study reveal that, despite of the psychic distance between Finland and Japan, most of the firms entered Japan at a very early stage of their internationalization process by using direct entry modes. This was mainly due to the market size, sophisticated industry structure, and requirements for intensive cooperation with the customers during the sales process. The firms were able to overcome psychic distance by hiring local employees and western managers who already had working experience in the Japanese market. This finding indicat…

Shadow prices of emerging pollutants in wastewater treatment plants: Quantification of environmental externalities.

2017

Conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are designed to remove mainly the organic matter, nitrogen and phosphorus compounds and suspended solids from wastewater but are not capable of removing chemicals of human origin, such as pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs). The presence of PPCPs in wastewater has environmental effects on the water bodies receiving the WWTP effluents and renders the effluent as unsuitable as a nonconventional water source. Considering PPCPs as non-desirable outputs, the shadow prices methodology has been implemented using the output distance function to measure the environmental benefits of removing five PPCPs (acetaminophen, ibuprofen, naproxen…

The dark side of curvature

2009

Geometrical tests such as the combination of the Hubble parameter H(z) and the angular diameter distance d(A)(z) can, in principle, break the degeneracy between the dark energy equation of state parameter w(z), and the spatial curvature Omega(k) in a direct, model-independent way. In practice, constraints on these quantities achievable from realistic experiments, such as those to be provided by Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) galaxy surveys in combination with CMB data, can resolve the cosmic confusion between the dark energy equation of state parameter and curvature only statistically and within a parameterized model for w(z). Combining measurements of both H(z) and d(A)(z) up to suffici…

Heterogeneous Firms, Globalisation and the Distance Puzzle

2015

Despite the strong pace of globalisation, the distance effect on trade is persistent or even growing over time (Disdier and Head, 2008). To solve this distance puzzle, we use the recently developed gravity equation estimator from Helpman et al. (2008) (HMR henceforth). Using three different data sets, we find that the distance coefficient increases over time when ordinary least squares (OLS) is used, while the non-linear estimation of HMR leads to a decline in the distance coefficient over time. The distance puzzle, thus, arises from a growing bias of OLS estimates. The latter is explained by an increase in the importance of the bias from omitting the number of heterogeneous exporting firms…

What's So Speciall About Euclidean Distance? A Characterization Result with Applications to Mobility and Spatial Voting

2009

In this paper we investigate the problem of measuring social mobility when the social status of individuals is given by their rank. In order to sensibly rep- resent the rank mobility of subgroups within a given society, we address the problem in terms of partial permutation matrices which include standard (“global”) matrices as a special case. We first provide a characterization of a partial ordering on partial matrices which, in the standard case of global matrices, coincides with the well-known “concordance” ordering. We then provide a characterization of an index of rank mo- bility based on partial matrices and show that, in the standard case of comparing two global matrices, it is equiv…

CUDA-Accelerated Alignment of Subsequences in Streamed Time Series Data

2014

Euclidean Distance (ED) and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) are cornerstones in the field of time series data mining. Many high-level algorithms like kNN-classification, clustering or anomaly detection make excessive use of these distance measures as subroutines. Furthermore, the vast growth of recorded data produced by automated monitoring systems or integrated sensors establishes the need for efficient implementations. In this paper, we introduce linear memory parallelization schemes for the alignment of a given query Q in a stream of time series data S for both ED and DTW using CUDA-enabled accelerators. The ED parallelization features a log-linear calculation scheme in contrast to the naive …

Some inequalities involving the euclidean condition of a matrix

1960

Mass transport problems for the Euclidean distance obtained as limits of p-Laplacian type problems with obstacles

2014

In this paper we analyze a mass transportation problem that consists in moving optimally (paying a transport cost given by the Euclidean distance) an amount of a commodity larger than or equal to a fixed one to fulfil a demand also larger than or equal to a fixed one, with the obligation of paying an extra cost of −g1(x) for extra production of one unit at location x and an extra cost of g2(y) for creating one unit of demand at y. The extra amounts of mass (commodity/demand) are unknowns of the problem. Our approach to this problem is by taking the limit as p→∞ to a double obstacle problem (with obstacles g1, g2) for the p-Laplacian. In fact, under a certain natural constraint on the extra …