Abstract not found

. Existing formalisations of (transfinite) inductive definitions in constructive mathematics are reviewed and strong correspondences with LP under least model and perfect model semantics become apparent. I point to fundamental restrictions of these existing formalisations and argue that the well-founded semantics (wfs) overcomes these problems and hence, provides a superior formalisation of the principle of inductive definition. The contribution of this study for LP is that it (re- )introduces the knowledge theoretic interpretation of LP as a logic for representing definitional knowledge. I point to fundamental differences between this knowledge theoretic interpretation of LP and the more commonly known interpretations of LP as default theories or auto-epistemic theories. The relevance is that differences in knowledge theoretic interpretation have strong impact on knowledge representation methodology and on extensions of the LP formalism, for example for representing uncertainty. Keywo...

In this paper we consider a particular class of algorithms which present certain difficulties to formal verification. These are algorithms which use a single data structure for two or more purposes, which combine program control information with other data structures or which are developed as a combination of a basic idea with an implementation technique. Our approach is based on applying proven semantics-preserving transformation rules in a wide spectrum language. Starting with a set theoretical specification of "reachability" we are able to derive iterative and recursive graph marking algorithms using the "pointer switching" idea of Schorr and Waite. There have been several proofs of correctness of the Schorr-Waite algorithm, and a small number of transformational developments of the algorithm. The great advantage of our approach is that we can derive the algorithm from its specification using only general-purpose transformational rules: without the need for complicated induction arg...

We consider the informal concept of “computability” or “effective calculability” and two of the formalisms commonly used to define it, “(Turing) computability” and “(general) recursiveness.” We consider their origin, exact technical definition, concepts, history, general English meanings, how they became fixed in their present roles, how they were first and are now used, their impact on nonspecialists, how their use will affect the future content of the subject of computability theory, and its connection to other related areas. After a careful historical and conceptual analysis of computability and recursion we make several recommendations in section §7 about preserving the intensional differences between the concepts of “computability” and “recursion.” Specifically we recommend that: the term “recursive ” should no longer carry the additional meaning of “computable” or “decidable;” functions defined using Turing machines, register machines, or their variants should be called “computable” rather than “recursive;” we should distinguish the intensional difference between Church’s Thesis and Turing’s Thesis, and use the latter particularly in dealing with mechanistic questions; the name of the subject should be “Computability Theory” or simply Computability rather than

From a biological motivation of interactions between linear and circular DNA sequences, we propose a new type of splicing models called circular H systems and show that they have the same computational power as Turing machines. It is also shown that there effectively exists a universal circular H system which can simulate any circular H system with the same terminal alphabet, which strongly suggests a feasible design for a DNA computer based on circular splicing. 1 Introduction Since Adleman's breath-taking paper on molecular (DNA) computing ([1]), there have already been quite a few papers on this challenging topic : [10] shows how to solve NP-complete problems using DNA, while [3] discusses a design method for simulating a Turing machine by molecular biological techniques and shows how to compute PSPACE, and [4]) gives a methodology for breaking the DES using techniques in genetic engineering. In response to the rapid stream of experimental research on this new computation paradigm...

Feferman has proposed a system, FS 0 , as an alternative framework for encoding logics and also for reasoning about those encodings. We have implemented a version of this framework and performed experiments that show that it is practical. Specifically, we describe a formalisation of predicate calculus and the development of an admissible rule that manipulates formulae with bound variables. This application will be of interest to researchers working with frameworks that use mechanisms based on substitution in the lambda calculus to implement variable binding and substitution in the declared logic directly. We suggest that meta-theoretic reasoning, even for a theory using bound variables, is not as difficult as is often supposed, and leads to more powerful ways of reasoning about the encoded theory. x 1 Introduction: why metamathematics? A logical framework is a formal theory that is designed for the purpose of describing other formal theories in a uniform way, and for making the work ...

This paper relates to system-level design of signal processing systems, which are often heterogeneous in implementation technologies and design styles. The heterogeneous approach, by combining small, specialized models of computation, achieves generality and also lends itself to automatic synthesis and formal verification. Key to the heterogeneous approach is to define interaction semantics that resolve the ambiguities when different models of computation are brought together. For this purpose, we introduce a tagged signal model as a formal framework within which the models of computation can be precisely described and unambiguously differentiated, and their interactions can be understood. In this paper, we will focus on the interaction between dataflow models, which have partially ordered events, and discrete-event models, with their notion of time that usually defines a total order of events. A variety of interaction semantics, mainly in handling the different notions of time in the two models, are explored to illustrate the subtleties involved. An implementation based on the Ptolemy system from U.C. Berkeley is described and critiqued.

Software reengineering has been described as being "about as easy as reconstructing a pig from a sausage" [11]. But the development of program transformation theory, as embodied in the FermaT transformation system, has made this miraculous feat into a practical possibility. This paper describes the theory...

Well-known principles of induction include monotone induction and different sorts of nonmonotone induction such as inflationary induction, induction over well-founded sets and iterated induction. In this work, we define a logic formalizing induction over well-founded sets and monotone and iterated induction. Just as the principle of positive induction has been formalized in FO(LFP), and the principle of inflationary induction has been formalized in FO(IFP), this paper formalizes the principle of iterated induction in a new logic for Non-Monotone Inductive Definitions (ID-logic). The semantics of the logic is strongly influenced by the well-founded semantics of logic programming. This paper discusses the formalisation of different forms of (non-)monotone induction by the well-founded semantics and illustrates the use of the logic for formalizing mathematical and common-sense knowledge. To model different types of induction found in mathematics, we define several subclasses of definitions, and show that they are correctly formalized by the well-founded semantics. We also present translations into classical first or second order logic. We develop modularity and totality results and demonstrate their use to analyze and simplify complex definitions. We illustrate the use of the logic for temporal reasoning. The logic formally extends Logic Programming, Abductive Logic Programming and Datalog, and thus formalizes the view on these formalisms as logics of (generalized) inductive definitions. Categories and Subject Descriptors:... [...]:... 1.

In this paper we briey introduce a Wide Spectrum Language and its transformation theory and describe a recent success of the theory: a general recursion removal theorem. This theorem includes as special cases the two techniques discussed by Knuth [12] and Bird [7]. We describe some applications of the theorem to cascade recursion, binary cascade recursion, Gray codes, the Towers of Hanoi problem, and an inverse engineering problem. 1 Introduction In this paper we briey introduce some of the ideas behind the transformation theory we have developed over the last eight years at Oxford and Durham Universities and describe a recent result: a general recursion removal theorem. We use a Wide Spectrum Language (called WSL), developed in [19,20,21] which includes lowlevel programming constructs and high-level abstract specications within a single language. Working within a single language means that the proof that a program correctly implements a specication, or that a specication correct...