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A wide literature is devoted to the study of the relevance of space, encompassing several fields and disciplines, such as geography, economics, epidemiology, environmental and regional sciences. For example, space-time modelling has been a relevant focus of research in spatial economics starting from Hagerstrand (1967) and Wilson (1967, 1970). While the former paid attention to the modelling of spatial diffusion phenomena, the latter unified movements of spatial flows under the umbrella of statistical and information theory, by means of spatial interaction models. In these models, the relevance of spatial structure emerged in the associated cost/impedance functions. In parallel, starting from Zipf (1932) and Simon (1955), the importance of spatial structures (homogeneous or heterogeneous) has been discussed extensively in the literature, by focusing on the relationships between urban growth, agglomeration economies, and commuting costs (see, among others, Krugman 1991; Rossi-Hansberg and Wright 2006). A point of concern is that, in these spatial (growth and interaction) models, the effects of spatial topology and connectivity are only implicitly included, but never explicitly considered and discussed.

This paper is on balancing reactivity and deliberation in cooperative multi-robot systems. We outline which are the challenging issues that has to be addressed to get an effective solution. Then, a balancing method, based on introducing a concept of "Map Focus", is proposed. The framework is also enhanced with "Cooperative Behaviors", useful for robotic cooperation for accomplishing tasks in dynamic environments. We provide the details of the implementation and of the experimental results.

The crystallite size, the residual lattice strain, the components of Gaussian and Cauchy functions of the line profiles obtained by Fourier analysis of X-diffraction lines, are correlated for a better knowledge of mechanical properties of infiltrated composites with ceramic reinforcements of different volume fractions (27, 19, 10%) and types (SiC whiskers, Al2O3 fibers and particles) after fast and slow deformation. The results are discussed taking into account the role of the reinforcing phase on the generation and relocation of dislocations along different crystallographic directions (111,200,220).