Marathon runners tend to form clusters during competition, possibly as a means of improving their performance. Studies of international competitors in Fukuoka and Tokyo races have shown a density of 0.44 to 0.80 runners.m2 among those maintaining a pace of 4.8-5.6 m.s-1, clustering being most marked among elite performers. Some 95% of clustered runners maintained a minimum distance of 0.5-1.5 m...

in restructured power systems and in a wholesale power market, a distribution company as a market player intends to maximize its profit by utilizing its options. hence determining an optimal energy acquisition strategy for a distribution company is vital, for attaining to this goal. however an important challenge for determining these strategies is forecasting other competitors and generation c...

We consider a multi-player situation in an illiquid market in which one player tries to liquidate a large portfolio in a short time span, while some competitors know of the seller’s intention and try to make a profit by trading in this market over a longer time horizon. We show that the liquidity characteristics, the number of competitors and their trading time horizons determine the optimal st...

A bidder's strategy in one auction may affect his competitors' behavior in subsequent auctions. When this occurs, bidding in a sequence of auctions can be modeled fruitfully as a multistage control process. This paper presents such a model. In it the control is the bidder's strategy, the state characterizes the competitors' behavior and the state transition represents the competitors' reaction ...

Several studies indicate that the number of similar sounding words that are activated during recognition is a powerful predictor of performance on auditory targets. Words with few competitors are processed more quickly and accurately than words with many competitors. In the present study, we examined the contribution of the competitor set size in determining the magnitude of the inhibitory prim...