Inductive Logic Programming in Databases: from Datalog to DL+log

In this paper we address an issue that has been brought to the attention of the database community with the advent of the Semantic Web, i.e. the issue of how ontologies (and semantics conveyed by them) can help solving typical database problems, through a better understanding of KR aspects related to databases. In particular, we investigate this issue from the ILP perspective by considering two database problems, (i) the definition of views and (ii) the definition of constraints, for a database whose schema is represented also by means of an ontology. Both can be reformulated as ILP problems and can benefit from the expressive and deductive power of the KR framework DL+log. We illustrate the application scenarios by means of examples. Keywords: Inductive Logic Programming, Relational Databases, Ontologies, Description Logics, Hybrid Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Systems. Note: To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).Comment: 30 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables

Inseparable local uniformization

It is known since the works of Zariski in early 40ies that desingularization of varieties along valuations (called local uniformization of valuations) can be considered as the local part of the desingularization problem. It is still an open problem if local uniformization exists in positive characteristic and dimension larger than three. In this paper, we prove that Zariski local uniformization of algebraic varieties is always possible after a purely inseparable extension of the field of rational functions, i.e. any valuation can be uniformized by a purely inseparable alteration.Comment: 66 pages, final version, the paper was seriously revise

Building Rules on Top of Ontologies for the Semantic Web with Inductive Logic Programming

Building rules on top of ontologies is the ultimate goal of the logical layer of the Semantic Web. To this aim an ad-hoc mark-up language for this layer is currently under discussion. It is intended to follow the tradition of hybrid knowledge representation and reasoning systems such as $\mathcal{AL}$-log that integrates the description logic $\mathcal{ALC}$ and the function-free Horn clausal language \textsc{Datalog}. In this paper we consider the problem of automating the acquisition of these rules for the Semantic Web. We propose a general framework for rule induction that adopts the methodological apparatus of Inductive Logic Programming and relies on the expressive and deductive power of $\mathcal{AL}$-log. The framework is valid whatever the scope of induction (description vs. prediction) is. Yet, for illustrative purposes, we also discuss an instantiation of the framework which aims at description and turns out to be useful in Ontology Refinement. Keywords: Inductive Logic Programming, Hybrid Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Systems, Ontologies, Semantic Web. Note: To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP)Comment: 30 pages, 6 figure

3-manifold groups are virtually residually p

Given a prime $p$, a group is called residually $p$ if the intersection of its $p$-power index normal subgroups is trivial. A group is called virtually residually $p$ if it has a finite index subgroup which is residually $p$. It is well-known that finitely generated linear groups over fields of characteristic zero are virtually residually $p$ for all but finitely many $p$. In particular, fundamental groups of hyperbolic 3-manifolds are virtually residually $p$. It is also well-known that fundamental groups of 3-manifolds are residually finite. In this paper we prove a common generalization of these results: every 3-manifold group is virtually residually $p$ for all but finitely many $p$. This gives evidence for the conjecture (Thurston) that fundamental groups of 3-manifolds are linear groups

A magnetic model with a possible Chern-Simons phase

An elementary family of local Hamiltonians $H_{\c ,\ell}, \ell = 1,2,3, ldots$, is described for a $2-$dimensional quantum mechanical system of spin $={1/2}$ particles. On the torus, the ground state space $G_{\circ,\ell}$ is $(\log)$ extensively degenerate but should collapse under \lperturbation" to an anyonic system with a complete mathematical description: the quantum double of the $SO(3)-$Chern-Simons modular functor at $q= e^{2 \pi i/\ell +2}$ which we call $DE \ell$. The Hamiltonian $H_{\circ,\ell}$ defines a \underline{quantum} \underline{loop}\underline{gas}. We argue that for $\ell = 1$ and 2, $G_{\circ,\ell}$ is unstable and the collapse to $G_{\epsilon, \ell} \cong DE\ell$ can occur truly by perturbation. For $\ell \geq 3$, $G_{\circ,\ell}$ is stable and in this case finding $G_{\epsilon,\ell} \cong DE \ell$ must require either $\epsilon > \epsilon_\ell > 0$, help from finite system size, surface roughening (see section 3), or some other trick, hence the initial use of quotes {\l}\quad". A hypothetical phase diagram is included in the introduction.Comment: Appendix by F. Goodman and H. Wenz

Recursive Solution of Initial Value Problems with Temporal Discretization

We construct a continuous domain for temporal discretization of differential equations. By using this domain, and the domain of Lipschitz maps, we formulate a generalization of the Euler operator, which exhibits second-order convergence. We prove computability of the operator within the framework of effectively given domains. The operator only requires the vector field of the differential equation to be Lipschitz continuous, in contrast to the related operators in the literature which require the vector field to be at least continuously differentiable. Within the same framework, we also analyze temporal discretization and computability of another variant of the Euler operator formulated according to Runge-Kutta theory. We prove that, compared with this variant, the second-order operator that we formulate directly, not only imposes weaker assumptions on the vector field, but also exhibits superior convergence rate. We implement the first-order, second-order, and Runge-Kutta Euler operators using arbitrary-precision interval arithmetic, and report on some experiments. The experiments confirm our theoretical results. In particular, we observe the superior convergence rate of our second-order operator compared with the Runge-Kutta Euler and the common (first-order) Euler operators.Comment: 50 pages, 6 figure

Estimation under group actions: recovering orbits from invariants

Motivated by geometric problems in signal processing, computer vision, and structural biology, we study a class of orbit recovery problems where we observe very noisy copies of an unknown signal, each acted upon by a random element of some group (such as Z/p or SO(3)). The goal is to recover the orbit of the signal under the group action in the high-noise regime. This generalizes problems of interest such as multi-reference alignment (MRA) and the reconstruction problem in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). We obtain matching lower and upper bounds on the sample complexity of these problems in high generality, showing that the statistical difficulty is intricately determined by the invariant theory of the underlying symmetry group. In particular, we determine that for cryo-EM with noise variance $\sigma^2$ and uniform viewing directions, the number of samples required scales as $\sigma^6$. We match this bound with a novel algorithm for ab initio reconstruction in cryo-EM, based on invariant features of degree at most 3. We further discuss how to recover multiple molecular structures from heterogeneous cryo-EM samples.Comment: 54 pages. This version contains a number of new result