This paper discusses the basic philosophical assumptions of objectivism and constructivism including their implications for course design, interaction, and evaluation in distance education. First, I provide a brief overview of the construct of interaction as it is used in the field of distance education. Second, I address the major philosophical ideas of objectivism and constructivism as they r...

Two experiments utilized a new experimental paradigm – the IPD-MD game – to study how relative deprivation at the group level affects intergroup competition. The IPD-MD game enables group members to make a costly contribution to either a within-group pool that benefits fellow in-group members, or a between-group pool, which, in addition harms out-group members. We found that when group members ...

In this paper we give a new method to convert results dealing with graph theoretic (or Markov chain) Laplacians into results concerning Laplacians in analysis, such as on Riemannian manifolds. We illustrate this method by using the results of [CGY97] to prove λ1 ≤ 1 dist(X,Y ) ( cosh−1 √ μXc μY c μX μY )2 . for λ1 the first positive Neumann eigenvalue on a connected compact Riemannian manifold,...

This paper deals with the reverse inequalities of Erdös-Mordell type. Our result contains as special case the following reverse Erdös-Mordell inequality: R1 +R2 +R3 < √ 2 (ρ1 +ρ2 +ρ3) , where Ri and ρi (i=1, 2, 3) denote respectively the distances from an interior point Q of A1A2A3 to the vertexes A1, A2, A3 and to the circumcenters of A2QA3 , A3QA1 , A1QA2 . Some other closely related inequali...

Social cohesion theory is tested using data on ethnic intermarriage in former Yugoslavia. Before the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the proportion of marriages outside the own ethnic group was generally low, but in this respect large differences among the groups existed. The proportion of mixed marriages with a Serbian partner was much higher among the Montenegrins and Hungarians than among the ...

This paper bears on the comparison of two well-known metrics between linear orders called the Kendall and Spearman metrics or/and of their normalized versions respectively known as the Kendall tau and the Spearman rho. Using a combinatorial approach based on the partial order intersection of the two compared linear orders, we first prove a relation between these two metrics and a semi-metric, e...

We show an inequality involving the third largest or second smallest dual eigenvalues of Q-polynomial association schemes of class at least three. Also we characterize dual-tight Q-polynomial association schemes of class three. Our method is based on tridiagonal matrices and can be applied to distance-regular graphs as well.

Humans' ability to represent their body state from within through interoception has been proposed to predict different aspects of human cognition and behaviour. We focused on the possible contribution of interoceptive sensitivity to social behaviour as mediated by adaptive modulation of autonomic response. We, thus, investigated whether interoceptive sensitivity to one's heartbeat predicts part...

Average distance of a graph is expressed in terms of its canonical metric representation. The equality can be modified to an inequality in such a way that it characterizes isometric subgraphs of Hamming graphs. This approach simplifies recognition of these graphs and computation of their average distance. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MSC: 05C12; 05C75; 05C85