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This article examines changes in Polish local press at the turn of the second and the third decade of the 21st Century, directly or indirectly related to the coronavirus pandemic. For years, statistics have been showing declining sales of printed press. This is mainly the case of the general-interest newspapers – national, regional, and local alike. Internet media platforms are increasingly important and often take over the role of the leading local media. Due to their limited reach, local publishers felt the losses from reduced advertising revenue and copy sales even more acutely than national publishers. Local press and small publishing teams struggled to cope with the impact of the pandemic and demand for digitization. So, what will the local press look like in the following years? How will the pandemic change the face of the local press? This study addresses these issues based on findings from desk research, case studies, and content analysis of relevant media. The result of the research is the confirmation of changes in the field of local communication, especially in its channels. The printed press arouses less and less interest among recipients and ceases to function as the fourth estate.

Copyright of Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cuadernos.info is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Facultad de Comunicaciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studies in Politics & Society / Polityka & Społeczeństwo is the property of University of Rzeszow and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Aiming at the problem of inaccessible local communication link for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) formation caused by obstacles and electromagnetic interference in complex scenes, a cooperative search under loci communication (CSLC) method is proposed. Firstly, according to the real-time location of each UAV, the communication topology relation at the current time is calculated, thereby establishing a local intercommunication network of UAV formation. On this basis, considering the UAV communication capability and the formation cooperative target search capability, the cooperative search model based on the communication link stability benefit and the cooperative formation revenue is constructed. Finally, the constraints of the safety distance and maximum movement speed required for UAV formation are set to ensure that the model can obtain the feasible solution of the optimal path and improve the efficiency of multi-UAV cooperative search. The experimental results show that, compared with the existing target search methods, the CSLC method not only ensures the feasibility of cooperative path search, but also enhances the capability of multi-UAV cooperative search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research is dedicated to analyzing the life and professional history of journalists from São Félix do Xingu, Canaã dos Carajás and its surroundings, in the southeast region of Pará, through the use of interviews and oral history. The investigation aims to analyze the journalistic work of professionals, from the categories: journalistic structure; professional organization of the company and/or institution of the third sector; profile of the work of journalists; journalistic production -type, format and genres; audience and periodicity; local salience and thematization of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the research tradition in analyzing public communication, local public spheres have been rather neglected by communication science, although they are crucial for social cohesion and democracy. Existing empirical studies about local public spheres are mostly case studies which implicitly assume that cities are alike. Based on a participatory-liberal understanding of democracy, we develop a theoretical framework, from which we derive a monitor covering structural, social, and spatial aspects of local communication to empirically compare local public spheres along four dimensions: (1) information, (2) participation, (3) inclusion, and (4) diversity. In a pilot study, we then apply our monitor to four German cities that are comparable in size and regional function (‘regiopolises’). The monitoring framework is built on local statistical data, some of which was provided by the cities, while some came from our own research. We show that the social structures and the normative assessment of the quality of local public spheres can vary among similar cities and between the four dimensions. We hope the innovative monitor prototype enables scholars and local actors to compare local public spheres across spaces, places, and time, and to investigate the impact of social change and digitalization on local public spheres.

A coordinated autonomous control algorithm of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm was proposed to reduce the complexity of UAV swarm control and solve the problem of changing topological structures in long-distance flight of UAV swarms efficiently. As the UAV swarms, especially fixed-wing ones, fly in a close formation, the influence and benefit of aerodynamic coupling between UAV in swarms should be considered. This paper focused on the application of biological swarm behavior mechanism, which can be used to form the shape of formation and adjust the topological structures of UAV swarm, and not the models of the aerodynamic coupling between UAVs in swarms. The distributed swarm control model of biological swarms based on the behavioral mechanism of Anser cygnoides formation was presented. A novel distributed swarm control system based on the behavioral mechanism of Anser cygnoides formation for low-cost UAVs was developed. Anser cygnoides is a common bird that lives in swarms. Its self-organizing network and formation topology behavior on the manner of migration exhibit high similarities with the application of UAV swarm. The paper designed an experimentation with a UAV swarm system using quadrotors, which communicate wirelessly using a Wi-Fi, to test and verify the feasibility of the proposed novel distributed swarm control algorithm. The field experimentation involved flying the five low-cost quadrotors in a “V” formation, and the position exchange of UAVs was achieved during the experimentation. The whole formation with the five quadrotors flew at a continuous speed during the whole experimentation, whereas the flight mode of fixed-wing UAV was simulated. The field experimentation shows that the formation mechanism of the migrant bird helps in realizing the distributed formation reconfiguration control of the UAV swarm and improves the robustness of the UAV swarm flight and verifies the feasibility of the novel distributed swarm control algorithm.

Despite the research tradition in analyzing public communication, local public spheres have been rather neglected by communication science, although they are crucial for social cohesion and democracy. Existing empirical studies about local public spheres are mostly case studies which implicitly assume that cities are alike. Based on a participatory-liberal understanding of democracy, we develop a theoretical framework, from which we derive a monitor covering structural, social, and spatial aspects of local communication to empirically compare local public spheres along four dimensions: (1) information, (2) participation, (3) inclusion, and (4) diversity. In a pilot study, we then apply our monitor to four German cities that are comparable in size and regional function ('regiopolises'). The monitoring framework is built on local statistical data, some of which was provided by the cities, while some came from our own research. We show that the social structures and the normative assessment of the quality of local public spheres can vary among similar cities and between the four dimensions. We hope the innovative monitor prototype enables scholars and local actors to compare local public spheres across spaces, places, and time, and to investigate the impact of social change and digitalization on local public spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following calls for a spatial turn in communication studies, we investigate the reach and topography of Twitter communication in two case studies of Berlin and Jerusalem. We theorize on the spatial dimensions of social media communication and their potential to establish a public sphere that can reach from the local to the global level. Empirically, we investigate the scope of Twitter communication of local users in Berlin and Jerusalem and ask to what degree their interactions and issues indicate a local public sphere or extend beyond the local level. We use a combination of topic modeling and a novel localization index to explore the spatial dimensions of the two Twitterspheres. Our data point to a considerable share of locally rooted conversations, but the majority of communication reaches beyond the local. At the intersection of interactions and issues, we uncover complex, semilocal configurations of public communication [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information on the management of local administrations and the actions of the political leaders who govern them is essential for citizens to exercise their political rights. It is therefore necessary for these administrations to provide quality information that the media can use as sources for their news stories. At the same time, these media outlets have to compare and report while taking into account the plurality of their audiences. However, in local settings, collusion exists between political power and media owners that restricts the plurality of news, favoring the dominant political interests and hiding the demands, interests and protagonism of other social actors. We study this problem in the Caribbean Region of Colombia. We analyze the information that the town halls of the main cities in the region provide to the media and how the largest print newspapers and main regional television news broadcasters report on local politics. We compare these news stories to establish whether there is a plurality of news reports. In addition, we analyze the key elements of the news items disseminated by private media outlets to establish whether they report a limited vision of reality: the topics covered, the protagonists referred to in headlines and news stories, and the sources against which the news and images are compared. The results reveal shortcomings that result in similar information between public information and private media content, thus limiting the plurality of news reports and the social protagonism of other social agents. Ultimately, this hinders quality journalism that satisfies the interests of citizens.

Aiming at the locality and uncertainty of observations in large-scale multi-agent application scenarios, the model of Decentralized Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (DEC-POMDP) is considered, and a novel multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm based on local communication is proposed. For a distributed learning environment, the elements of reinforcement learning are difficult to describe effectively in local observation situation, and the learning behaviour of each individual agent is influenced by its teammates. The local communication with consensus protocol is utilized to agree on the global observing environment, and thus that a part of strategies generated by repeating observations are eliminated, and the agent team gradually reach uniform opinion on the state of the event or object to be observed, they can thus approach a unique belief space regardless of whether each individual agent can perform a complete or partial observation. The simulation results show that the learning strategy space is reduced, and the learning speed is improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study networks of communicating learning agents that cooperate to solve a common nonstochastic bandit problem. Agents use an underlying communication network to get messages about actions selected by other agents, and drop messages that took more than d hops to arrive, where d is a delay parameter. We introduce Exp3-Coop, a cooperative version of the Exp3 algorithm and prove that with K actions and N agents the average per-agent regret after T rounds is at most of order √ (d + 1 + K/N α≤ (T lnK), where α≤d is the independence number of the d-th power of the communication graph G. We then show that for any connected graph, for d = √ K the regret bound is K1=4 √ T, strictly better than the minimax regret √ KT for noncooperating agents. More informed choices of d lead to bounds which are arbitrarily close to the full information minimax regret √T lnK when G is dense. When G has sparse components, we show that a variant of Exp3-Coop, allowing agents to choose their parameters according to their centrality in G, strictly improves the regret. Finally, as a by-product of our analysis, we provide the first characterization of the minimax regret for bandit learning with delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to determine if women and men participate in a balanced way in the contents offered by the media to the audience. The analysis of the data shows that neither the voices collected in the news nor their positions within them reach parity. Women are generally relegated to scarcely relevant places and, in local news, they often disappear altogether in the course towards the final piece of news. This article presents the results of a case study conducted on the media of Granada for which 1,586 news reports and 187 agenda press calls were evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the problem of exploration of a tree by mobile agents (robots) that have limited energy. The energy constraint bounds the number of edges that can be traversed by a single agent. We use a team of agents to collectively explore the tree and the objective is to minimize the size of this team. The agents start at a single node, the designated root of the tree and the height of the tree is assumed to be less than the energy bound B of the agents. The agents have local vision and communication capabilities; two agents can exchange information only when they are collocated at the same node. We provide an exploration algorithm for visiting all nodes of the unknown tree and we compare our algorithm with the optimal offline algorithm that has complete knowledge of the tree. Our algorithm has a competitive ratio of O(log B), independent of the number of nodes in the tree. We also show that this is the best possible competitive ratio for exploration of unknown trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a networked multi-robot system operating in an obstacle populated planar workspace under a single leader-multiple followers architecture. We propose a distributed reconfiguration strategy of the set of connectivity and formation specifications that assures convergence to the desired point, while guaranteeing global connectivity. In particular, we construct a low-level distributed navigation functions based controller that encodes the goals and safety requirements of the system. However, owing to topological obstructions, stable critical points other than the desired one may appear. In such case, we employ a high-level distributed discrete procedure which attempts to solve a distributed constraint satisfaction problem on a local Voronoi partition, providing the necessary reconfiguration for the system to progress towards its goal. Eventually, we show that the system either converges to the desired point or attains a tree configuration with respect to the formation topology, in which case the system switches to a novel controller based on the prescribed performance control technique, that eventually guarantees convergence. Finally, multiple simulation studies clarify and verify the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the internet changes the form of financing of the media, marks a dividing line between traditional media and new online media; a transition occurs in the social communication system that is evident in technological disruption, media convergence and in the development of social networks that result in a new positioning of local media, those that integrate "the local" in their practices. The objective of the research is to determine the evolution of the business model of the local media of Ecuador. The hypotheses are: 1) More than 50% of Ecuador's local media receive income from advertising on the internet; and, 2) The reason that limits the transition from traditional media to the internet is the minimum content offer. The methodology used is quantitative and qualitative through a survey and semi-structured interviews. The random survey was applied to 34 local media in Ecuador, between December 4, 2017 and March 6, 2018. The interviews were conducted with 22 experts in local communication. The local communication media have a long way to go until they become digital, multiplatform and multimedia media, and there is a strong demand from the audience for their traditional versions, as a result they have not evolved from the conventional business model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metro emergency has always been the social concerned issues in which information diffusion is one of the most important concerns as sometimes it will decide the severity of the emergency. On the background of metro emergency, the local communication and bounded rationality as well as two stages:before and after the subway stops in the station are taken into account based on the traditional bounded confidence model to create the information diffusion model in metro emergency. On the basis of large amounts of simulation experiments, it is found that both local communication and bounded rationality will cause the opinions of passengers fluctuating severely and the whole opinion system in an unstable state but the passenger density has a positive effect on the opinions reaching a consensus. In the stage of subway stopping, the nearer passengers move to the subway door, the more severely the passengers' opinions fluctuate with the end of reaching a consensus sharply. But with evacuation speed increasing, the fluctuation of opinions is weaken. Results in the paper can be adapted to explain the phenomenon as well as the control of information diffusion in the metro emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Media Research / Zeszyty Prasoznawcze is the property of Jagiellonian University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Infoparticipa methodology was introduced in 2012 to achieve improvements in the transparency of public administration in Spain, supplementing the lack of legislation in this regard. In 2015, the evaluation indicators were adapted, taking into account the obligations regulated by the Spanish and Catalan transparency laws. The entry into force of both laws in December 2015 should have achieved a change in the quantity and quality of information that local public administrations publish on their websites. However, the data corresponding to the evaluations of the municipalities of Catalonia in 2015 and 2016 do not provide evidence in favour of this hypothesis. Although the last assessment is more demanding, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the comparison of the results shows that despite the time granted to municipalities to adjust to the law, the information they provide to citizens is still insufficient in many cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of F@ro: Revista Teórica del Departamento de Ciencias de la Comunicación y de la Información is the property of Universidad de Playa Ancha de Ciencias de la Educacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A wider spreading of broadband in Italy in recent years has led to the birth of many web-TVs originating from a variety of actors (educational institutions, public administrations, informal groups, etc.). A specific role is being played by local communities (neighborhoods, social centers, parishes, etc.) which, thanks to the on-line spreading of video content, can have their own TV channel to reach their members and promote themselves in global networks. This essay will map the distribution of these locally-originated web TVs in Italy investigating their ways of strengthening communication within the community and at the wider level of the global Internet network.

In this paper we describe a localization and local communication system which allows situated agents to communicate locally, obtaining at the same time both the range and the bearing of the emitter without the need of any centralized control or any external reference. The system relies on infrared communications with frequency modulation and is composed of two interconnected modules for data and power measurement. Thanks to the open hardware license under which it is released, the research community can easily replicate the system at a low cost and/or adapt it for applications in sensor networks and in robotics.

Overall energy of network is a major issue in current sensor network. This paper proposes (GDCP) GPS (Global Positioning System) based reactive communication protocol for Static WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) to extend the life time of entire network. In GDCP, energy efficient routing is achieved using local communication among sensor nodes. While routing, packets are routed via reliable shortest path from source node to sink node. The shortest path is determined with the help of a Neighbouring Table (NT) of a node. This table stores information such as location, distance to neighbour node and distance to a sink node. If the neighbouring node has sufficient energy and its distance to a sink node is less than other neighbours then it becomes the receiver and packet forwards to neighbour node. After receiving the packet, receiver becomes sender node and it checks its neighbouring table for minimum sink node's distance and sufficient energy. This process continues till the packet reaches the sink node. Sink node is assumed to move from one location to another as its neighbour node's energy becomes less than threshold energy. Energy consumption is analysed on 100 static sensor nodes and one sink node. A simulated result shows that overall energy of network is improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of HiSTOReLo: Revista de Historia Regional y Local is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Centro Editorial Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Economicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We present a study of self-organized multi-robot task-allocation, examining performance under local and centralized communication strategies. The results extend our current understanding of the effects of communication by providing evidence that local strategies can improve system performance over centralized strategies, in terms of total task throughput as well as reduced communication overheads. The framework employed is the attractive field model, a generic model of self-organized division of labour derived from observations of ant, human and robot social systems. The framework provides sufficient abstraction to accommodate both communication strategies. Each of the studies used 16 e-puck robots in a simplified manufacturing environment where sensing and communication was realized using camera-based overhead tracking and centralized communication. In terms of task throughput, communication overhead and energy efficiency, the experimental results show that systems with restricted access to information perform better than systems with free flow of information. This suggests a potential paradigm shift where, for self-organizing systems, diminishing access to information renders a system more efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers a repeated prisoner's dilemma game in a network in which each agent interacts with his neighbors and cannot observe the actions of other agents who are not directly connected to him. If there is global information processing through public randomization and global communication, it is not difficult to construct a sequential equilibrium which supports cooperation and satisfies a property, called stability, which requires that cooperation resumes after any history. In this paper, we allow agents to locally communicate with their neighbors and show that it is possible to construct such an equilibrium without global information processing. Here, the role of local communication is to resolve the discrepancy of agents' expectations about their neighbor's future actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a class of methods for distributed optimization with event-triggered communication. To this end, we extend Nesterov's first order scheme to use event-triggered communication in a networked environment. We then apply this approach to generalize the proximal center algorithm (PCA) for separable convex programs by Necoara and Suykens. Our method uses dual decomposition and applies the developed event-triggered version of Nesterov's scheme to update the dual multipliers. The approach is shown to be well suited for solving the active optimal power flow (DC-OPF) problem in parallel with event-triggered and local communication. Numerical results for the IEEE 57 bus and IEEE 118 bus test cases confirm that approximate solutions can be obtained with significantly less communication while satisfying the same accuracy estimates as solutions computed without event-triggered communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optical/Photonic networks-on-chip (NoC) have been considered as a promising and viable paradigm to interconnect a large number of processing cores at chip level. Hybrid optoelectronic NoCs provide a more practical solution by using the electronic network for local communication while the optical network for global communication. This paper explores how to efficiently combine optical and electronic networks to build a hybrid NoC. A butterfly fat tree-based hybrid optoelectronic NoC architecture is proposed using the generic wavelength-routed optical router. Simulation results demonstrate that, compared with electronic mesh- and CMesh-based NoCs, the proposed hybrid NoC achieves the best power efficiency with comparable throughput and significantly reduces the latency under localized traffic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The improvement of odometry systems in collective robotics remains an important challenge for several applications. Social odometry is an online social dynamics which confers the robots the possibility to learn from the others. Robots neither share any movement constraint nor access to centralized information. Each robot has an estimate of its own location and an associated confidence level that decreases with distance traveled. Social odometry guides a robot to its goal by imitating estimated locations, confidence levels and actual locations of its neighbors. This simple online social form of odometry is shown to produce a self-organized collective pattern which allows a group of robots to both increase the quality of individuals' estimates and efficiently improve their collective performance.

In this paper, we use artificial evolution to design homogeneous neural network controller for groups of robots required to align. Aligning refers to the process by which the robots managed to head towards a common arbitrary and autonomously chosen direction starting from initial randomly chosen orientations. The cooperative interactions among robots require local communications that are physically implemented using infrared signalling. We study the performance of the evolved controllers, both in simulation and in reality for different group sizes. In addition, we analyze the most successful communication strategy developed using artificial evolution.

In this paper, we propose a swarm intelligence localization strategy in which robots have to locate different resource areas in a bounded arena and forage between them. The robots have no knowledge of the arena dimensions and of the number of resource areas. The strategy is based on peer-to-peer local communication without the need for any central unit. Social Odometry leads to a self-organized path selection. We show how collective decisions lead the robots to choose the closest resource site from a central place. Results are presented with simulated and real robots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The improvement of odometry systems in collective robotics remains an important challenge for several applications. Social odometry is an online social dynamics which confers the robots the possibility to learn from the others. Robots neither share any movement constraint nor access to centralized information. Each robot has an estimate of its own location and an associated confidence level that decreases with distance traveled. Social odometry guides a robot to its goal by imitating estimated locations, confidence levels and actual locations of its neighbors. This simple online social form of odometry is shown to produce a self-organized collective pattern which allows a group of robots to both increase the quality of individuals' estimates and efficiently improve their collective performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use artificial evolution to design homogeneous neural network controller for groups of robots required to align. Aligning refers to the process by which the robots managed to head towards a common arbitrary and autonomously chosen direction starting from initial randomly chosen orientations. The cooperative interactions among robots require local communications that are physically implemented using infrared signalling. We study the performance of the evolved controllers, both in simulation and in reality for different group sizes. In addition, we analyze the most successful communication strategy developed using artificial evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to offer an overall view of the state of research in the field of local television in Spain, which is in the middle of the digital transition. It also suggests the main areas that should make up the research agenda in this field, taking the form of five spheres of reflection: the structure of the local television sector; communication policies; local television content and services in the context of digitalization; reception and the audience for local digital television; and political communication in the context of television digitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at cellular automata rules that tackle problems involving Distributed Sensor Networks (DSNs), which are helpful in sensing and monitoring moving objects. The sensors are capable of precisely monitoring the location of an object moving in a noisy environment by communicating locally. By communicating anonymously, these sensors would be able to employ low-powered radio receivers and transmitters to evade complicated digital communication procedures. Computer simulations have revealed that DSNs would be able to employ cellular automata to minimize the amount of required long-range communication and to greatly improved the sensors' detection capabilities.

Copyright of Signo y Pensamiento is the property of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper studies the problem of continuum deformation of a multi-quadcopter system (MQS) under time-varying communication weights. Quadcopters are treated as particles of a deformable body with time-varying parameters, where a desired n -D continuum deformation is planned based on the trajectories of n + 1 leaders placed at the vertices of n -D simplex. The followers distributed inside the simplex acquire the desired continuum deformation by local communication with time varying communication weights, where stability and convergence of the MQS continuum deformation can be proven. This paper formally characterizes safety of the MQS continuum deformation by ensuring inter agent collision avoidance and followers containment. Therefore, a large-scale MQS can safely deform in an obstacle-laden environment with modest computational cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a self-assembly and self-repair method for a homogeneous distributed mechanical system. We focus on a category of distributed systems composed of numbers of identical units which can dynamically change connections among themselves. Each unit has an onboard microprocessor, and local communication between neighboring units is possible. We discuss a distributed method for a group of such units to metamorphose from an arbitrary configuration into a desired configuration through cooperation by the units. This process, called self-assembly, is realized by identical software on each unit with local inter-unit communication. An extension of self-assembly, self-repair, is also examined. In this process, an occasional cut-off of an arbitrary part of the system is assumed. When some part of the system detects damage, the whole system degenerates and reconstructs itself. Computer simulations show the feasibility of self-assembly and self-repair. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Information on the management of local administrations and the actions of the political leaders who govern them is essential for citizens to exercise their political rights. It is therefore necessary for these administrations to provide quality information that the media can use as sources for their news stories. At the same time, these media outlets have to compare and report while taking into account the plurality of their audiences. However, in local settings, collusion exists between political power and media owners that restricts the plurality of news, favoring the dominant political interests and hiding the demands, interests and protagonism of other social actors. We study this problem in the Caribbean Region of Colombia. We analyze the information that the town halls of the main cities in the region provide to the media and how the largest print newspapers and main regional television news broadcasters report on local politics. We compare these news stories to establish whether there is a plurality of news reports. In addition, we analyze the key elements of the news items disseminated by private media outlets to establish whether they report a limited vision of reality: the topics covered, the protagonists referred to in headlines and news stories, and the sources against which the news and images are compared. The results reveal shortcomings that result in similar information between public information and private media content, thus limiting the plurality of news reports and the social protagonism of other social agents. Ultimately, this hinders quality journalism that satisfies the interests of citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe a localization and local communication system which allows situated agents to communicate locally, obtaining at the same time both the range and the bearing of the emitter without the need of any centralized control or any external reference. The system relies on infrared communications with frequency modulation and is composed of two interconnected modules for data and power measurement. Thanks to the open hardware license under which it is released, the research community can easily replicate the system at a low cost and/or adapt it for applications in sensor networks and in robotics.