Spatial ability, urban wayfinding and location-based services:a review and first results

Location-Based Services (LBS) are a new industry at the core of which are GISand spatial databases. With increasing mobility of individuals, the anticipatedavailability of broadband communications for mobile devices and growingvolumes of location specific information available in databases there willinevitably be an increase in demand for services providing location relatedinformation to people on the move. New Information and CommunicationTechnologies (NICTs) are providing enhanced possibilities for navigating ?smartcities?. Urban environments, meanwhile, have increasing spatial complexity.Navigating urban environments is becoming an important issue. The time is ripefor a re-appraisal of urban wayfinding. This paper critically reviews the currentLBS applications and raises a series of questions with regard to LBS for urbanwayfinding. Research is being carried out to measure individuals? spatialability/awareness and their degree of preference for using LBS in wayfinding. Themethodology includes both the use of questionnaires and a virtual reality CAVE.Presented here are the results of the questionnaire survey which indicate therelationships between individuals? spatial ability, use of NICTs and modepreference for receiving wayfinding cues. Also discussed are our future researchdirections on LBS, particular on issues of urban wayfinding using NICTs

An improved generalized inverse algorithm for linear inequalities and its applications

Iterative, two-class algorithm for linear inequalitie

Demographics and financial asset prices in the major industrial economies

This paper explores the relationship between demographics and aggregate financial asset prices in 7 OECD countries over the past 50 years. Unlike most extant work it adopts an international as well as US focus, and also includes non-demographic variables usually considered to influence asset prices in the econometric specification. Furthermore, we examine effects on bond yields as well as share prices. The results indicate a significant link between panel, international and US demographics on the one hand, and real stock prices and real bond yields on the other. The international results are of particular interest given their robustness and the logic of international financial integration. Generally, an increase in the fraction of middle-aged people (aged 40-64) tends to boost real asset prices. A corollary is that a decline in this cohort in coming decades will tend to weaken them. More tentative results including estimated effects of the over-65 cohort in the US suggest a more severe downturn is possible, thus underlining the potential market risks associated with sole reliance on fully funded pension schemes