We present a system for extending standard type systems with flow-sensitive type qualifiers. Users annotate their programs with type qualifiers, and inference checks that the annotations are correct. In our system only the type qualifiers are modeled flow-sensitively - the underlying standard types are unchanged, which allows us to obtain an efficient constraint-based inference algorithm that integrates flow-insensitive alias analysis, effect inference, and ideas from linear type systems to support strong updates. We demonstrate the usefulness of flow-sensitive type qualifiers by finding a number of new locking bugs in the Linux kernel.

This paper shows howalarge class of interprocedural dataflow-analysis problems can be solved precisely in polynomial time. The only restrictions are that the set of dataflowfacts is a finite set, and that the dataflowfunctions distribute overthe confluence operator (either union or intersection). This class of problems includes---but is not limited to---the classical separable problems (also known as "gen/kill" or "bit-vector" problems)---e.g.,reaching definitions, available expressions, and live variables. In addition, the class of problems that our techniques handle includes manynon-separable problems, including trulylive variables, copyconstant propagation, and possibly-uninitialized variables. Anovelaspect of our approach is that an interprocedural dataflow-analysis problem is transformed into a special kind of graph-reachability problem (reachability along interprocedurally realizable paths). The paper presents three polynomial-time algorithms for the realizable-path reachability problem: an exhaustive version, a second exhaustive version that may be more appropriate in the incremental and/or interactive context, and a demand version. The first and third of these algorithms are asymptotically faster than the best previously known realizable-path reachability algorithm. An additional benefit of our techniques is that theylead to improvedalgorithms for twoother kinds of interproceduralanalysis problems: interprocedural flow-sensitive side-effect problems (as studied by Callahan) and interprocedural program slicing (as studied by Horwitz, Reps, and Binkley). CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: D.3.4 [Programming Languages]: Processors - compilers, optimization;E.1 [Data

We define a new formal grammatical system called a link grammar . A sequence of words is in the language of a link grammar if there is a way to draw links between words in such a way that (1) the local requirements of each word are satisfied, (2) the links do not cross, and (3) the words form a connected graph. We have encoded English grammar into such a system, and written a program (based on new algorithms) for efficiently parsing with a link grammar. The formalism is lexical and makes no explicit use of constituents and categories. The breadth of English phenomena that our system handles is quite large. A number of sophisticated and new techniques were used to allow efficient parsing of this very complex grammar. Our program is written in C, and the entire system may be obtained via anonymous ftp. Several other researchers have begun to use link grammars in their own research. 1 Introduction Most sentences of most natural languages have the property that if arcs are drawn connecti...

We investigate new approaches for frequent graph-based pattern mining in graph datasets and propose a novel algorithm called gSpan (graph-based Substructure pattern mining) , which discovers frequent substructures without candidate generation. gSpan builds a new lexicographic order among graphs, and maps each graph to a unique minimum DFS code as its canonical label. Based on this lexicographic order, gSpan adopts the depth-first search strategy to mine frequent connected subgraphs efficiently. Our performance study shows that gSpan substantially outperforms previous algorithms, sometimes by an order of magnitude.

We survey the current techniques to cope with the problem of string matching allowing errors. This is becoming a more and more relevant issue for many fast growing areas such as information retrieval and computational biology. We focus on online searching and mostly on edit distance, explaining the problem and its relevance, its statistical behavior, its history and current developments, and the central ideas of the algorithms and their complexities. We present a number of experiments to compare the performance of the different algorithms and show which are the best choices according to each case. We conclude with some future work directions and open problems. 1

In this paper we present a statistical framework for modeling the appearance of objects. Our work is motivated by the pictorial structure models introduced by Fischler and Elschlager. The basic idea is to model an object by a collection of parts arranged in a deformable configuration. The appearance of each part is modeled separately, and the deformable configuration is represented by spring-like connections between pairs of parts. These models allow for qualitative descriptions of visual appearance, and are suitable for generic recognition problems. We use these models to address the problem of detecting an object in an image as well as the problem of learning an object model from training examples, and present efficient algorithms for both these problems. We demonstrate the techniques by learning models that represent faces and human bodies and using the resulting models to locate the corresponding objects in novel images.

A con.curren.t object is a data structure shared by concurrent processes. Conventional techniques for implementing concurrent objects typically rely on criticaI sections: ensuring that only one process at a time can operate on the object. Nevertheless, critical sections are poorly suited for asynchronous systems: if one process is halted or delayed in a critical section, other, non-faulty processes will be unable to progress. By contrast, a concurrent object implementation is non-blocking if it always guarantees that some process will complete an operation in a finite number of steps, and it is wait-free if it guarantees that each process will complete an operation in a finite number of steps. This paper proposes a new methodology for constructing non-blocking aud wait-free implementations of concurrent objects. The object’s representation and operations are written as st,ylized sequential programs, with no explicit synchronization. Each sequential operation is automatically transformed into a non-blocking or wait-free operation usiug novel synchronization and memory management algorithms. These algorithms are presented for a multiple instruction/multiple data (MIM D) architecture in which n processes communicate by applying read, write, and comparekYswa,p operations to a shared memory. 1

This paper addresses the problem of segmenting an image into regions. We define a predicate for measuring the evidence for a boundary between two regions using a graph-based representation of the image. We then develop an e#cient segmentation algorithm based on this predicate, and show that although this algorithm makes greedy decisions it produces segmentations that satisfy global properties. We apply the algorithm to image segmentation using two different kinds of local neighborhoods in constructing the graph, and illustrate the results with both real and synthetic images. The algorithm runs in time nearly linear in the number of graph edges and is also fast in practice. An important characteristic of the method is its ability to preserve detail in low-variability image regions while ignoring detail in high-variability regions.

There is interest in designing simultaneous auctions for situations in which the value of assets to a bidder depends upon which other assets he or she wins. In such cases, bidders may well wish to submit bids for combinations of assets. When this is allowed, the problem of determining the revenue maximizing set of nonconflicting bids can be a difficult one. We analyze this problem, identifying several different structures of combinatorial bids for which computational tractability is constructively demonstrated and some structures for which computational tractability 1 Introduction Some auctions sell many assets simultaneously. Often these assets, like U.S. treasury bills, are interchangeable. However, sometimes the assets and the bids for them are distinct. This happens frequently, as in the U.S. Department of the Interior's simultaneous sales of off-shore oil leases, in some private farm land auctions, and in the Federal Communications Commission's recent multi-billion dollar sales...

We propose a new form of software transactional memory (STM) designed to support dynamic-sized data structures, and we describe a novel non-blocking implementation. The non-blocking property we consider is obstruction-freedom. Obstruction-freedom is weaker than lock-freedom; as a result, it admits substantially simpler and more efficient implementations. A novel feature of our obstruction-free STM implementation is its use of modular contention managers to ensure progress in practice. We illustrate the utility of our dynamic STM with a straightforward implementation of an obstruction-free red-black tree, thereby demonstrating a sophisticated non-blocking dynamic data structure that would be difficult to implement by other means. We also present the results of simple preliminary performance experiments that demonstrate that an "early release " feature of our STM is useful for reducing contention, and that our STM lends itself to the effective use of modular contention managers.