A DSEL for Studying and Explaining Causation

We present a domain-specific embedded language (DSEL) in Haskell that supports the philosophical study and practical explanation of causation. The language provides constructs for modeling situations comprised of events and functions for reliably determining the complex causal relationships that emerge between these events. It enables the creation of visual explanations of these causal relationships and a means to systematically generate alternative, related scenarios, along with corresponding outcomes and causes. The DSEL is based on neuron diagrams, a visual notation that is well established in practice and has been successfully employed for causation explanation and research. In addition to its immediate applicability by users of neuron diagrams, the DSEL is extensible, allowing causation experts to extend the notation to introduce special-purpose causation constructs. The DSEL also extends the notation of neuron diagrams to operate over non-boolean values, improving its expressiveness and offering new possibilities for causation research and its applications.Comment: In Proceedings DSL 2011, arXiv:1109.032

Spreadsheet Explanation Through Table Abstraction

Spreadsheets are a pervasive technology throughout personal and industrial use. Often times, the user is not the author, contributing to a lack of understanding of the purpose and functionality of a spreadsheet. Furthermore, the lack of understanding is a major reason for mistakes in the use and maintenance of spreadsheets. I present an approach, called explanation sheets, which eases the understanding and maintenance of spreadsheets. I identify the notion of explanation soundness and show that explanation sheets which conform to simple rules of formula convergence provide sound explanations. I also present a practical evaluation of explanation sheets based on samples drawn from widely used spreadsheet corpora and based on a small user study. In addition to facilitating the understanding of spreadsheets, I describe the process of inferring explanation sheets from a spreadsheet. By means of assessing example spreadsheets, I present a set of inference rules to describe the relationship between a spreadsheet and its explanation

Inherited genetic susceptibility to multiple myeloma and related diseases

Monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance is the most common plasma cell dyscrasia present in as high as 3.2% of general population below 50 years of age and up to 6.6% for population aged 80 years or older. It is a premalignant precursor of multiple myeloma, a malignant hematological neoplasia. People with monoclonal gammopathy go on to develop myeloma at a yearly rate of 0.5 - 1%. With a crude rate of incidence of 6.5 per 100,000 people, Europe is set to observe around 48,000 new multiple myeloma diagnosis in 2018. Overall prognosis of myeloma has not been very favorable throughout history nonetheless survival of myeloma patients is improving incrementally over the past few decades due to better management and improved treatment modality. This increased survival led to an increased number of second primary cancer diagnosis. Environmental factors, chemotherapy and radiotherapy induced DNA damage, wide-spread use of alkylating agents and possible induction of immunosuppressed state has been speculated to contribute to this. The fact that both the two diseases show familial clustering and all myeloma diagnoses are preceded by monoclonal gammopathy indicates that there is a certain amount of inherited susceptibility to these diseases. In the current study, the quantity under investigation is inherited genetic susceptibility to monoclonal gammopathy and multiple myeloma as well as the familial risk of second cancers. Three sets were queried for monoclonal gammopathy consisting genotype data on 243, 82 and 326 German individuals respectively identified during routine follow-up of unrelated condition. These three sets were used to carry out separate case-control and case-only discovery, validation and replication studies. For myeloma, patients were recruited from two separate trials in Germany and UK. The German trial consisted of 1717 myeloma patients where as the one in UK recruited 2282 patients. Controls for the investigations were obtained from Heinz-Nixdorf Recall study samples and Welcome Trust Case-Control Consortium samples. For expression quantitative trait analysis, gene expression data was obtained from plasma cell samples of 665 patients enrolled in the German trial. Written consents were obtained from the trial subjects and approval for the studies was procured from respective ethics review board. For the observational study of second cancers, the Swedish Family Cancer Database was used which includes data on all cancer diagnosis in Sweden starting 1958. This database was queried for information on about 2.1 million Swedish residents with cancers matched with their biological parents (when available). Inherited genetic susceptibility to multiple myeloma and related diseases 141 The interaction analyses with genotype data identified a number of paired susceptibility loci for monoclonal gammopathy and myeloma. These loci were found to have key roles in myeloma biology via processes such as and not restricted to Ig trait modulation, osteoclast genesis, Th cell development, interleukin secretion, bone marrow microenvironment mediation in creating myeloma niche. While subjected to enrichment analyses major biological pathways were discovered including EGFR downregulation and B cell receptor signaling pathway for monoclonal gammopathy and Circadian rhythm mediation and SMAD dependent TGFβ activation pathways in myeloma. As some of the pathways and loci were shown shared between monoclonal gammopathy and myeloma, the findings allude to shared inherited susceptibility to the two disorders. Interrogating risk of second cancer in myeloma patients stratified by history of cancer among first degree relatives, numerous cancers were noted to have excess familial risk and overall close to a 1.4-fold increased risk of second cancer was noted among people with an existing family history. Concordant family history of leukemia, lung, squamous cell skin cancer and melanoma increased risk of second cancers at the same site in myeloma patients by more than 5 folds compared to the patients without; whereas that for colorectal cancer is little over than 2-fold and for prostate cancer is 1.6-fold. Although family history was found to have a strong effect on incidence of second cancers no such effect was found in mortality pattern. No linear or multiplicative interaction was found in risks among personal, family history with history of myeloma. All the results indicate there are certain underlying mechanistic principle relating monoclonal gammopathy to myeloma which is regulated by inherited polygenic predisposition to monoclonal gammopathy and myeloma. This study speculates about possible pathways and networks that are influenced in these diseases but conformational studies need to be carried out before any definitive conclusion can be drawn. However, in context of second cancers in myeloma patients, family history of cancer was conclusively shown to have morbid impact on incidence but lack of any such impact on patient survival was also observed which mean efforts in managing second cancer diagnosis by screening with family history information will have positive impact on survival in multiple myeloma

A framework for relating, implementing and verifying argumentation models and their translations

Computational argumentation theory deals with the formalisation of argument structure, conflict between arguments and domain-specific constructs, such as proof standards, epistemic probabilities or argument schemes. However, despite these practical components, there is a lack of implementations and implementation methods available for most structured models of argumentation and translations between them. This thesis addresses this problem, by constructing a general framework for relating, implementing and formally verifying argumentation models and translations between them, drawing from dependent type theory and the Curry-Howard correspondence. The framework provides mathematical tools and programming methodologies to implement argumentation models, allowing programmers and argumentation theorists to construct implementations that are closely related to the mathematical definitions. It furthermore provides tools that, without much effort on the programmer's side, can automatically construct counter-examples to desired properties, while finally providing methodologies that can prove formal correctness of the implementation in a theorem prover. The thesis consists of various use cases that demonstrate the general approach of the framework. The Carneades argumentation model, Dung's abstract argumentation frameworks and a translation between them, are implemented in the functional programming language Haskell. Implementations of formal properties of the translation are provided together with a formalisation of AFs in the theorem prover, Agda. The result is a verified pipeline, from the structured model Carneades into existing efficient SAT-based implementations of Dung's AFs. Finally, the ASPIC+ model for argumentation is generalised to incorporate content orderings, weight propagation and argument accrual. The framework is applied to provide a translation from this new model into Dung's AFs, together with a complete implementation

A framework for relating, implementing and verifying argumentation models and their translations

Computational argumentation theory deals with the formalisation of argument structure, conflict between arguments and domain-specific constructs, such as proof standards, epistemic probabilities or argument schemes. However, despite these practical components, there is a lack of implementations and implementation methods available for most structured models of argumentation and translations between them. This thesis addresses this problem, by constructing a general framework for relating, implementing and formally verifying argumentation models and translations between them, drawing from dependent type theory and the Curry-Howard correspondence. The framework provides mathematical tools and programming methodologies to implement argumentation models, allowing programmers and argumentation theorists to construct implementations that are closely related to the mathematical definitions. It furthermore provides tools that, without much effort on the programmer's side, can automatically construct counter-examples to desired properties, while finally providing methodologies that can prove formal correctness of the implementation in a theorem prover. The thesis consists of various use cases that demonstrate the general approach of the framework. The Carneades argumentation model, Dung's abstract argumentation frameworks and a translation between them, are implemented in the functional programming language Haskell. Implementations of formal properties of the translation are provided together with a formalisation of AFs in the theorem prover, Agda. The result is a verified pipeline, from the structured model Carneades into existing efficient SAT-based implementations of Dung's AFs. Finally, the ASPIC+ model for argumentation is generalised to incorporate content orderings, weight propagation and argument accrual. The framework is applied to provide a translation from this new model into Dung's AFs, together with a complete implementation

La gramaticalización de los tiempos compuestos en español antiguo: cinco cambios diacrónicos

Tesis doctoral inédita. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Departamento de Filología Española. Fecha de lectura: 10-06-201