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We investigate the power of voting among diverse, randomized software agents. With teams of computer Go agents in mind, we develop a novel theoretical model of two-stage noisy voting that builds on recent work in machine learning. This model allows us to reason about a collection of agents with different biases (determined by the first-stage noise models), which, furthermore, apply randomized algorithms to evaluate alternatives and produce votes (captured by the second-stage noise models). We analytically demonstrate that a uniform team, consisting of multiple instances of any single agent, must make a significant number of mistakes, whereas a diverse team converges to perfection as the number of agents grows. Our experiments, which pit teams of computer Go agents against strong agents, provide evidence for the effectiveness of voting when agents are diverse.

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In this paper we provide an overview of new knowledge on oxygen depletion (hypoxia) and related phenomena in aquatic systems resulting from the EU-FP7 project HYPOX ("In situ monitoring of oxygen depletion in hypoxic ecosystems of coastal and open seas, and landlocked water bodies", http://www.hypox.net). In view of the anticipated oxygen loss in aquatic systems due to eutrophication and climate change, HYPOX was set up to improve capacities to monitor hypoxia as well as to understand its causes and consequences. Temporal dynamics and spatial patterns of hypoxia were analyzed in field studies in various aquatic environments, including the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, Scottish and Scandinavian fjords, Ionian Sea lagoons and embayments, and Swiss lakes. Examples of episodic and rapid (hours) occurrences of hypoxia, as well as seasonal changes in bottom-water oxygenation in stratified systems, are discussed. Geologically driven hypoxia caused by gas seepage is demonstrated. Using novel technologies, temporal and spatial patterns of water-column oxygenation, from basin-scale seasonal patterns to meter-scale sub-micromolar oxygen distributions, were resolved. Existing multidecadal monitoring data were used to demonstrate the imprint of climate change and eutrophication on long-term oxygen distributions. Organic and inorganic proxies were used to extend investigations on past oxygen conditions to centennial and even longer timescales that cannot be resolved by monitoring. The effects of hypoxia on faunal communities and biogeochemical processes were also addressed in the project. An investigation of benthic fauna is presented as an example of hypoxia-devastated benthic communities that slowly recover upon a reduction in eutrophication in a system where naturally occurring hypoxia overlaps with anthropogenic hypoxia. Biogeochemical investigations reveal that oxygen intrusions have a strong effect on the microbially mediated redox cycling of elements. Observations and modeling studies of the sediments demonstrate the effect of seasonally changing oxygen conditions on benthic mineralization pathways and fluxes. Data quality and access are crucial in hypoxia research. Technical issues are therefore also addressed, including the availability of suitable sensor technology to resolve the gradual changes in bottom-water oxygen in marine systems that can be expected as a result of climate change. Using cabled observatories as examples, we show how the benefit of continuous oxygen monitoring can be maximized by adopting proper quality control. Finally, we discuss strategies for state-of-the-art data archiving and dissemination in compliance with global standards, and how ocean observations can contribute to global earth observation attempts.

The EOLES (Electronics and Optics e-Learning for Embedded Systems) project is a 3-year joint project involving 15 institutions, four from Europe and eleven from the North African countries of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, whose aim is to create a 3rd year Bachelor degree in Electronics and Optics for Embedded Systems. The project started in October 2012 and is scheduled to end in October 2015.

Housing becomes one of the basic necessities for human beings in where the development of housing is an unseparable part of the history of urban development. With population growth and limited land, the community members have to live in the suburban area occupaying the marginal land such as along the river bank and the railroad tracks that creates slum areas. Slum areas in Medan itself are scattered in 48 points. In the RPKPP of the City of Medan in 2010, it is found out that Medan Denai Subdistrict was the slum area handling priority. Various slum settlement restructuring program with various approching method have been implemented by the government to solve the existence of slum settlement areas. One of the many ways completely done was to relocate the slum settlement to the suburban area through relocating them to the apartments in accordance with the 1000 Tower Government Program. The program failed due to poor study in which the government did not pay good attention to the characteristics of the community members to be relocated. This condition initiated this study entitling “Characteristic study on the preparedness of theh community living in slum area to be relocated to the apartment” whose purpose was to find out the characteristic description of the condition of the community of the slum area in the vicinity of Sulang Saling Canal, the attitude and perception of the community toward the apartment, and the characteristics of the preparedness the community living in slum area to live in the apartment. The data for this study were obtained through observation, questionnaire distribution and interviews during the social survey done to the community living along the bank of Sulang Saling Canal. The data obtained were selected, processed and analyzed then this study was assessed based on the characteristic and preparedness of the community members living along the bank of Sulang Saling Canal. The community charactyeristics resulted in 3 (three) variables such as demography, economic status and physical and the community preparedness provided the variables of their will, their loyalty-assessed preparedness, and their involvement and trust toward an organization. The result of the analysis of their characteristics showed that the community of Sulang Saling Canal deserved the relocation to the apartment eventhough, in therms of their preparedness, only 26,56% of them who are resady to be relocated to the apartment due to their less trust to the government. In terms of their attitude to the organization of their environment, their involvement and loyalty to the organization was good enough and this will be important when they are relocated to the apartment later. The result of this study can be used as reference to relocate the community living in the bank of Sulang Saling Canal to the apartments. 107020023

The time spent on Facebook by university students is continuously increasing. This fact is raising many questions as regards the relation between the social networking websites and the university. The educators are challenged to understand the factors that are driving the adoption of social networking websites, the characteristics of the daily use as well as the positive and negative effects on the university work. The social influence has been recognized as one of the factors that are driving the adoption of information systems. On another hand, the excessive use may lead to addiction. The first objective of this research is to explore the correlation between the social influence and the Facebook dependence. A model with these latent variables has been specified and tested on two samples of university students, the first from Romania and the second from Lithuania. The second objective of the research is to comparatively discuss the measures in each country. A multi-group confirmatory factor analysis has been carried on to test the configural and metric invariance. The comparison of means shows that university students reporting higher social influence have a higher risk of Facebook dependence. The comparative analysis revealed that for both variables, the mean values are higher for the Romanian sample

Niphargus dancaui sp. nov., previously referred to as Niphargus cf. stygius, was sampled from various groundwater sites in and near the town of Mangalia (SE Romania) and described with Movile Cave (a sulfidic, chemoautotrophically based ecosystem) as type locality. A short comparison with Niphargus stygius specimens from Slovenia was made, together with a morphological analysis of interpopulational variability. Males of N. dancaui sp. nov. were relatively large (17 mm), with long antennae, pereiopods and uropod III. Females were slightly smaller, with shorter antennae, pereiopods and uropod III. Interpopulational variability was noticed in the chaetotaxy of the telson lobes and uropod III. N. dancaui sp. nov. is morphologically very close to N. lessiniensis and N. tridentinus, two species present in northern Italy, but distinct genetically from them based on 28S rRNA sequences. Instead, the closest relative of N. dancaui sp. nov. sequenced so far for this marker is N. montanarius, which inhabits a sulfidic cave system in central Italy. The work presented here contributes to our knowledge of groundwater crustacean biodiversity in general and of the systematics of the genus Niphargus in particular.

The corona is a key component of most luminous accreting black holes, carrying 5 - 30 % of the power and in non-jetted Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), creating all the X-ray emission above ≃1−2 keV. Its emission illuminates the inner accretion disc, creating the atomic line-rich reflection spectrum used to diagnose and map the accretion flow and measure black hole spin. The corona is likely powered magnetically by the strong differential rotation of the accretion disc and it may be intimately related to relativistic jets. Recent work shows that many black hole coronae may be dominated by electron-positron pairs produced by photon-photon collisions in the compact coronal environment. Despite the corona being an integral component of AGN and black hole binary systems, much is still unknown about the nature of the corona, such as its geometry, location, and the physical mechanisms powering the emission. In this white paper we explore our current understanding of coronal properties, such as its temperature, obtained from measurements with existing hard X-ray telescopes such as NuSTAR, and discuss important questions to be addressed in the coming decade surrounding the nature of the corona. Hard X-ray observations will continue to dispel the mystery of coronae and open up this part of the quasar engine to full understanding.