Modeling Distance Decay Effects in Web Server Information Flows

Previous studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between the popularity of a medium and the cost in transmitting information through that medium. On this basis the World Wide Web may become more important as a mass medium than radio and television. Yet despite the enormous growth in Internet information and Internet-supported businesses, there has been, as yet, little in the way of quantitative spatial analysis of information flows on the WWW. One major issue is whether or not distance influences the web sites that a user may visit. If distance is a factor, then the location of servers delivering content becomes important. In this paper an analysis of information flows from U.K. academic web servers to the rest of the world is carried out. Using a UNIX utility called ping, the average time taken for a defined amount of information to travel between the United Kingdom and sixty-six other countries across the Internet was measured. This time measurement known as latency is used as a measure of distance on the Internet. The latency measurements are combined with counts of visitors from each of these countries to approximately one hundred U. K. academic WWW servers and used to build a simple gravity model of WWW information flows. The latency measurements between the United Kingdom and the other countries were gathered over a week in 1996. The counts of visitors relate to the total number of visits to the web servers over various time-scales for the years 1995 and 1996. We make the assumption that the distance measurements used are relevant to the visit counts. We also assume that all visitors from the .edu domain are geographically located in the United States. The gravity model is used to determine the effect of Internet distance on the number of expected visits to a web server. The study shows that latency values are a useful metric for measuring Internet distance. The results also demonstrate that the number of visitors to a web site falls off with distance on the Internet, as measured by latency values.     

数字图书馆与公务员远程教育

近年来,各级行政学院在公务员培训中开展了不同模式、不同层次的远程教育实践活动。在公务员远程教育中,数字图书馆具有为教师备课和各级公务员学习提供文献资料支持与服务的作用,是远程教育培训的第二课堂。远程教育应用于公务员培训领域,有利于扩大培训规模,有效化解工学矛盾,提高培训质量和效率。     

论民间组织对政府职能转变的影响

本文针对民间组织对政府职能转变的影响问题,从三个层次进行了分析和阐述：一是阐释了政府职能转变的内涵和模式,认为转变政府职能的根本就是把部分政府职能回归于社会;二是分析了民间组织产生的理论基础和现实基础,认为民间组织是承接政府职能转变的重要载体;三是对民间组织从多个方面推动政府职能转变和行政管理体制改革进行了分析和论述。     

Planning Pedestrian Flows around a Subway Station: A French Case Study of the Time-Distance Decay Functions

Pedestrian flows to and from a rapid transit line station follow distance-decay functions; an exponential model with a second-degree exponent fits well the data. Observed flows in function of the distance are indicated. The average walking distance is larger than usually assumed: eleven minutes, i.e., one kilometer. The use of the subway by each professional category follows a definite pattern.     

我国旅游产业市场化进程中的政府职能探析

随着我国旅游产业市场化进程的深入、旅游产业的发展进入了一个新的发展阶段,政府的职能应有所调整,其对经济活动的影响将趋向于运用经济的手段和间接的方式进行调控。     

石质文物病害机理研究

导致石质文物产生病害的因素很多,其中近年来日益加剧的环境污染带来的病害加速问题引起文物保护工作者的广泛关注。精确的病害诊断是文物保护的先决条件,因此,多学科综合研究和新技术不断引进到病害机理研究方面。对各种可能的病害原因从最初的定性分析逐渐转变到定量模拟分析方面。目前,石质文物病害研究从地质勘察、室内试验、现场试验等各个方面展开,但是由于各个试验条件不同,会出现不一致,甚至相悖的结论。在对石质文物病害的研究现状进行了总结后,认为试验体系标准的制定可以使得文物保护工作者的研究具有可比性,从而可以得出较具一般性的结论,这也是进行病害机理研究的基础。由于文物完整性保护的特殊要求,无损检测技术的发展及检测结果的判定是整个的试验体系中一个重要方面。同时,由于室内实验存在时间及尺寸等比例效应问题,室外长期观测试验应是今后的研究方向。最终将病害严重程度及发展趋势的判定和有效预防发展成为一个科学体系。     

媒人现象的社会作用及其演变

媒人是历史发展中的特殊民俗现象,也是一种特定的文化符号。媒人随一夫一妻制的聘娶婚的出现而出现,在防止男女乱性、保障婚姻安全、完善规范礼法等方面起着积极的历史作用。媒人不仅不会退出历史舞台,相反,在新的历史时期,媒人的社会作用将更加彰显。     

Decay and the political Gestalt of decline in Bernard Mandeville and his Dutch contemporaries

Rousseau is often seen as the quintessential representative of Swiss republicanism. But to most of his Swiss contemporaries Rousseau's brand of republicanism and his self-professed Protestantism remained deeply suspect. They found his thinking, and especially his discussion of the natural origins of morality, far too sceptical and thus ultimately unsuited for their own attempt to forge a theory of republican reform. The article focuses on the reply by Rousseau's most sympathetic yet also most persistent critics, the Basle secretary of state and author of the famous ‘History of Mankind’.     

Distance Distributions and Trip Behavior in Defined Regions

This paper discusses applications of the statistical distribution of distances between random pairs of points in bounded regions. The existing literature on convex figures is first described, and applications of the analytically tractable distributions to point pattern analysis are given. New statistics are then introduced with applications in shape analysis and trip distribution studies. Finally a brief discussion is made of directional bias, and of alternative sampling rules and distance metrics.     

FACE TO FACE: Connecting proximity and Distance

'Face to face: Connecting proximity and distance', Eighth Biennial Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), Vienna, 8–12 September 2004     

Distance and social interaction in a Victorian city

The paper examines patterns of marriage in a small industrial city—Huddersfield—between 1850 and 1880, when the residential structure of the city was becoming more modern in its spatial organization. The need to interpret distance-decay patterns of interaction in their social context is stressed. The apparently unchanging relationship between physical distance and frequency of interaction is related to the balance between changing patterns of individual mobility, class consciousness and scales of residential segregation. The more extensive interaction fields of the rich are attributed to their greater mobility, but also their lower population density. The close-knit patterns of the poor reflect their higher population density and more particularly the segregation of the Irish community. Finally, the differences between normative (within-class) and non-normative (between-class) marriage distances are considered. It is suggested that physical distance operated independently of social distance, although this conclusion requires further testing at different scales of analysis, and using information on forms of interaction other than marriage.