Suchergebnisse

1. Spatial representation and spatial interaction: an overview -- 1.1. Introduction -- 1.2. The multi-criteria aggregation problem -- 1.3. The multi-level specification problem -- I: Multi-Criteria Aggregation Problems -- 2. Sequential treatment of the multi-criteria aggregation problem: a case study of zoning system design -- 3. An empirical investigation of the use of Broadbent's rule in spatial system design -- 4. A simplistic approach to the redistricting problem -- 5. An optimal zoning approach to the study of spatially aggregated data -- 6. Speculations on an information theoretic approach to spatial representation -- II: Multi-Level Specification Problems -- 7. The specification of multi-level systems for spatial analysis -- 8. Hierarchical trip distribution models and the design of accounting systems -- 9. Some suggestions for future research -- References.

Abstract
A closer interdisciplinary engagement by geographers, ethnographers and sociolinguists has resulted in new thematic issues being investigated and more sophisticated methodological approaches being adopted. The development of advanced IT and AI capabilities, particularly the wider adoption of Geographical Information Systems (GIS), has opened up new means of exploring and representing aspects of human behaviour. Of particular note is the appreciation by sociolinguistics of the various spatial perspectives currently being utilised in sub-disciplines such as studies of the interactions within metropolitan multilingual contexts, linguistic landscapes, new speaker research and applied language policy. This paper calls for a greater mutual reciprocity and syncretic interpretation of several key issues and promising methodologies. It also indicates how sociolinguists can contribute to significant societal debates on language policy and planning as part of social planning.

The rapid development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enhances the government services to its citizen. As a consequence affects the exchange of information between citizen and government. However, some groups can experience some difficulties accessing the government services due to disabilities, such as blind people as well as material and geographical constraints. This paper aims to introduce a novel approach for place recognition to help the blind people to navigate inside a government building based on the correlation degree for the covariance feature vectors. However, this approach faces several challenges. One of the fundamental challenges inaccurate indoor place recognition for the visual impaired people is the presence of similar scene images in different places in the environmental space of the mobile robot system, such as a computer or office table in many rooms. This problem causes bewilderment and confusion among different places. To overcome this, the local features of these image scenes should be represented in more discriminatory and robustly way. However, to perform this, the spatial relation of the local features should be considered. The findings revealed that this approach has a stable manner due to its reliability in the place recognition for the robot localization. Finally, the proposed Covariance approach gives an intelligent way for visual place people localization through the correlation of Covariance feature vectors for the scene images.

This article compares two procedures for the externalization of spatial representation. Blind children and adolescents had to learn two unknown environments and to externalize the spatial representation by building a model and estimating distances. High correlations were found between the two externalization methods and between those methods and two systems of measuring mobility.

'The Irish party system is unique. In no other European polity does a small number of programmatically indistinguishable parties, each commanding heterogeneous electoral support, constitute the entire party system.' This bold statement is merely a particularly forthright expression of a commonly held view about political parties in the Republic of Ireland. This view is understandable given that the formal casus belli between the two major parties was the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921; surely this issue must at some stage have been overtaken by events. In the revised edition of his standard text on Irish politics, Chubb points to the year 1948 as the date by which the 'issues which had split Sinn Fein were either resolved or increasingly irrelevant'. He goes on to argue that from the 1950s 'all parties were to a great extent drained of ideology; they overlapped considerably in the policies they proposed; and they competed for the votes of a public increasingly concerned with welfare and consumer politics and less and less with national issues'. What we may call 'the no-differences thesis' has far-reaching implications for our understanding of the Irish party system and of the role it plays in policy formulation and the wider political process.

In the literature on spatial representation in blind people, several parameters of spatial tasks have been used as controlled variables without due consideration of the effects they might have on the type or efficiency of subjects' spatial representation. Two such variables are the size of the object or environment to be represented and the degree of freedom allowed subjects in their exploration of these objects or environments. Data about the blind subjects of the author's previously reported study on spatial representation in blind children were further analyzed using a three-way repeated-measures design to determine the effect of room size and exploration mode in response to questions about the position of furniture in a room. Neither variable produced a significant main effect. The responses of subjects in the free-exploration condition were further analyzed to determine the effect on performance of the actual exploration strategy. In the first trial of the task, the exploration route that corresponded to the route previously used to introduce subjects to the empty room was the most successful strategy. By the final trial, the differences among strategies had decreased. Organized strategies, however, were found to be more successful than random movement.

Theories of spatial representation in blind people have focused on the type of representation of which they, as a group, are capable. This approach overlooks an important issue, namely, the differences among individual blind people and the effects that these differences have on the way spatial information is represented. Data from another article by the author on the same study of spatial representation in blind children were subjected to two step-wise regression analyses to determine the relationships between several subject-related variables and responses to "map" (cognitive map) and "route" (sequential memory) questions about the position of furniture in a recently explored room. The independent variables accounted for 70 percent of the variance on map questions but only 46 percent of the variance on route questions. On map questions, general intellectual ability correlated positively with performance (p < .01), children with visual acuity better than light perception in the first 3 years of life performed better than those with less early vision (p < .05), and children who became blind from retrolental fibroplasia performed more poorly than those whose blindness was due to other causes (p < .05). Fewer independent variables contributed to the variance in performance on route questions. Again children with visual acuity better than light perception in their first 3 years performed better than those with less early vision.

In democratic theory, community-representing organizations play a critical role in mediating between citizens and elites. While proponents argue that neighborhood governance can improve efficacy and responsiveness of urban governance, critics warn that socioeconomic bias privileges the parochial interests of higher-income residents. There is limited knowledge, however, concerning the specific types of activities community-representing organizations undertake. This study illuminates the community mediation process through an analysis of the agenda orientation of community-representing organizations. An analysis of actual meeting agendas from Los Angeles neighborhood councils demonstrates that these community-representing organizations engage with varied issues including community improvement and other types of service needs or preferences in addition to land use. The findings suggest a more complex relationship between income and agenda orientation than is generally acknowledged. In particular, lower-income communities focus heavily on internal maintenance and capacity development activities that may displace engagement with more substantive issues. In contrast to the conventional wisdom that these organizations are likely to channel middle-class NIMBYism, the analysis reveals a U-shaped relationship between income and land-use emphasis, evidence that engagement in land use is also emphasized in lower-income communities that historically have been the target of locally undesirable land uses.

The authors would like to thank I. Sauter for technical supports and A. Sawangjit for helpful discussions. X.S. gratefully acknowledges funding from the China Scholarship Council (grant no. 201808080042). This research was supported by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to M.I. (DFG In 279/1-1), from the European Research Council (ERC AdG 883098 Sleep Balance) to J.B., and from the Spanish Government (PSI2017-83893-R) to M.M. M.I. was supported by the Hertie Foundation (Hertie Network of Excellence in Clinical Neuroscience). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.