Mungo and StMungo: tools for typechecking protocols in Java

We present two tools that support static typechecking of communica- tion protocols in Java. Mungo associates Java classes with typestate specifications, which are state machines defining permitted sequences of method calls. StMungo translates a communication protocol specified in the Scribble protocol description language into a typestate specification for each role in the protocol by following the message sequence. Role implementations can be typechecked by Mungo to ensure that they satisfy their protocols, and then compiled as usual with javac. We demonstrate the Scribble, StMungo and Mungo toolchain via a typechecked POP3 client that can communicate with a real-world POP3 server

Divorce and the birth control pill

This paper explores the role of the birth control pill on divorce. To identify its effect, we use a quasi experiment exploiting the differences in the language of the Comstock anti-obscenity statutes approved in the 1800s and early 1900s in the US. Results suggest that banning the sales of oral contraceptive methods has a negative impact on divorce. These findings are robust to alternative specifications and controls for observed (such as female labour force participation, or changes in the early legal access to the birth control pill) and unobserved state-specific factors, and time-varying factors at the state level. Additional analysis, developed to examine whether the impact of subsequent divorce law reforms on divorce is modified after controlling for the birth control pill effect, shows that, although sales bans matter, the impact of divorce law reforms on divorce rate does not vary.Divorce rate; birth control pill; sales bans; unilateral divorce

Creative writing in A level English literature

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, 6(3), 187 - 195, 2009, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14790720903556155.This is a time of change and real development for creative writing at A level. Whilst it has been an important part of English Language and English Language & Literature A level specifications for some time, its presence within English Literature has been marginal, and is an option that has rarely been adopted by teachers of the subject. Recent changes to English Literature specifications, however, mean that creative writing (along with recreative and transformative writing) now exists in a much more formalised way on all A level English Literature specifications. As the largest of the three A level Englishes, this is a significant development. The advent of creative writing in English Literature makes this an important issue in teachers' Continuing Professional Development (Green, 2008) and raises important questions for the teaching body in schools and lecturers in further education. What is the role of creative writing in teaching literature? How do creative and analytical writing relate to each other? What is the relationship between creative writing and reading? This paper offers an initial response to these and other issues, and suggests some of the ways in which creative writing can be used both in its own right and to enhance the study of English Literature at A level

A Researcher’s Digest of GQL

International audienceGQL (Graph Query Language) is being developed as a new ISO standard for graph query languages to play the same role for graph databases as SQL plays for relational. In parallel, an extension of SQL for querying property graphs, SQL/PGQ, is added to the SQL standard; it shares the graph pattern matching functionality with GQL. Both standards (not yet published) are hard-to-understand specifications of hundreds of pages. The goal of this paper is to present a digest of the language that is easy for the research community to understand, and thus to initiate research on these future standards for querying graphs. The paper concentrates on pattern matching features shared by GQL and SQL/PGQ, as well as querying facilities of GQL

SOFIA: An Algebraic Specification Language for Developing Services

Describing the semantics of services accurately plays a crucial role in service discovery, execution, composition and interaction. Formal specification techniques, having evolved over the past 30 years, can define the semantics of software systems in a verifiable and testable manner. This paper presents a new algebraic specification language called SOFIA for describing the semantics of services. It unifies the approaches using algebras and co-algebras for software specifications. A case study with a real industry example, the GoGrid cloud's resource management services, demonstrates that the semantics of services can be specified in SOFIA