Shock fitting applied to the prediction of high-speed rotor noise

A shock fitting method applied to the transonic small disturbance (TSD) potential equation is described. This method is then applied to a simple, two dimensional (2-D) rotating disturbance which is analogous to a shock radiating from the tip of a rotor blade in high speed hover. A comparison is made between the results of this method and the more standard shock capturing method. This comparison makes it clear that the effect of the results on the acoustic signature of the 2-D model is significant, and similar results can be expected when the method is extended to the three dimensional (3-D) case

Four Lessons in Versatility or How Query Languages Adapt to the Web

Exposing not only human-centered information, but machine-processable data on the Web is one of the commonalities of recent Web trends. It has enabled a new kind of applications and businesses where the data is used in ways not foreseen by the data providers. Yet this exposition has fractured the Web into islands of data, each in different Web formats: Some providers choose XML, others RDF, again others JSON or OWL, for their data, even in similar domains. This fracturing stifles innovation as application builders have to cope not only with one Web stack (e.g., XML technology) but with several ones, each of considerable complexity. With Xcerpt we have developed a rule- and pattern based query language that aims to give shield application builders from much of this complexity: In a single query language XML and RDF data can be accessed, processed, combined, and re-published. Though the need for combined access to XML and RDF data has been recognized in previous work (including the W3C’s GRDDL), our approach differs in four main aspects: (1) We provide a single language (rather than two separate or embedded languages), thus minimizing the conceptual overhead of dealing with disparate data formats. (2) Both the declarative (logic-based) and the operational semantics are unified in that they apply for querying XML and RDF in the same way. (3) We show that the resulting query language can be implemented reusing traditional database technology, if desirable. Nevertheless, we also give a unified evaluation approach based on interval labelings of graphs that is at least as fast as existing approaches for tree-shaped XML data, yet provides linear time and space querying also for many RDF graphs. We believe that Web query languages are the right tool for declarative data access in Web applications and that Xcerpt is a significant step towards a more convenient, yet highly efficient data access in a “Web of Data”

Enabling Secure Database as a Service using Fully Homomorphic Encryption: Challenges and Opportunities

The database community, at least for the last decade, has been grappling with querying encrypted data, which would enable secure database as a service solutions. A recent breakthrough in the cryptographic community (in 2009) related to fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) showed that arbitrary computation on encrypted data is possible. Successful adoption of FHE for query processing is, however, still a distant dream, and numerous challenges have to be addressed. One challenge is how to perform algebraic query processing of encrypted data, where we produce encrypted intermediate results and operations on encrypted data can be composed. In this paper, we describe our solution for algebraic query processing of encrypted data, and also outline several other challenges that need to be addressed, while also describing the lessons that can be learnt from a decade of work by the database community in querying encrypted data

Why Just Boogie? Translating Between Intermediate Verification Languages

The verification systems Boogie and Why3 use their respective intermediate languages to generate verification conditions from high-level programs. Since the two systems support different back-end provers (such as Z3 and Alt-Ergo) and are used to encode different high-level languages (such as C# and Java), being able to translate between their intermediate languages would provide a way to reuse one system's features to verify programs meant for the other. This paper describes a translation of Boogie into WhyML (Why3's intermediate language) that preserves semantics, verifiability, and program structure to a large degree. We implemented the translation as a tool and applied it to 194 Boogie-verified programs of various sources and sizes; Why3 verified 83% of the translated programs with the same outcome as Boogie. These results indicate that the translation is often effective and practically applicable

Ontological Relativity reconsidered: Quine on Löwenheim-Skolem, Davidson on Quine

In view of the dramatic contrast between speculative thought dressed in fashionable jargon and Quine's sober accounts of the scientific status quo it might seem frivolous even to suggest that his work exhibits a postmodern touch. The present paper will, nevertheless, focus on Quine's usage of the Löwenheim-Skolem theorems as a prominent example of ontological relativity and will attempt to show that Quine's treatment is unattractive to philosophers of mathematics and -- more generally -- untenable within the very methodology arising from Quine's basic approach. After examining the doctrine of relativity as applied to the Löwenheim-Skolem result two recent reflections on it's theoretical impact will be discussed. Those contributions make a strong case against the kind of attitude exemplified by Quine, but they do not address the general issue of how to deal with relativism. Donald Davidson has provided a remarkably attractive strategy to counter relativistic moves. Stripping away postmodernist pretensions this strategy challenges the peculiar Quinean mix of methodological austerity and anti-foundationalism