Linear Tabulated Resolution Based on Prolog Control Strategy

Infinite loops and redundant computations are long recognized open problems in Prolog. Two ways have been explored to resolve these problems: loop checking and tabling. Loop checking can cut infinite loops, but it cannot be both sound and complete even for function-free logic programs. Tabling seems to be an effective way to resolve infinite loops and redundant computations. However, existing tabulated resolutions, such as OLDT-resolution, SLG- resolution, and Tabulated SLS-resolution, are non-linear because they rely on the solution-lookup mode in formulating tabling. The principal disadvantage of non-linear resolutions is that they cannot be implemented using a simple stack-based memory structure like that in Prolog. Moreover, some strictly sequential operators such as cuts may not be handled as easily as in Prolog. In this paper, we propose a hybrid method to resolve infinite loops and redundant computations. We combine the ideas of loop checking and tabling to establish a linear tabulated resolution called TP-resolution. TP-resolution has two distinctive features: (1) It makes linear tabulated derivations in the same way as Prolog except that infinite loops are broken and redundant computations are reduced. It handles cuts as effectively as Prolog. (2) It is sound and complete for positive logic programs with the bounded-term-size property. The underlying algorithm can be implemented by an extension to any existing Prolog abstract machines such as WAM or ATOAM.Comment: To appear as the first accepted paper in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (http://www.cwi.nl/projects/alp/TPLP

Emerging Technologies

This monograph investigates a multitude of emerging technologies including 3D printing, 5G, blockchain, and many more to assess their potential for use to further humanity’s shared goal of sustainable development. Through case studies detailing how these technologies are already being used at companies worldwide, author Sinan Küfeoğlu explores how emerging technologies can be used to enhance progress toward each of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and to guarantee economic growth even in the face of challenges such as climate change. To assemble this book, the author explored the business models of 650 companies in order to demonstrate how innovations can be converted into value to support sustainable development. To ensure practical application, only technologies currently on the market and in use actual companies were investigated. This volume will be of great use to academics, policymakers, innovators at the forefront of green business, and anyone else who is interested in novel and innovative business models and how they could help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This is an open access book

Judging democratisation: courts as democracy builders in the post-war world

Can courts really build democracy in a state emerging from undemocratic rule? If so, how they do this, and what are their limits in this regard? This thesis seeks to explore the development since 1945 of a global model of democracy-building for post-authoritarian states, which accords a central position to courts. In essence, constitutional courts and regional human rights courts have come to be viewed as integral to the achievement of, or even constitutive of, a functioning democratic state. The roles courts play in supporting a democratisation process are onerous, and differ starkly from the roles of such courts in long-established democracies of the Global North. Courts in the new democracies of the post-war world have been freighted with weighty expectations to ‘deliver’ on the promises of a new democratic order, while navigating their own place within that developing order–or, in the case of regional human rights courts, inserting themselves into the democratisation process from without. At both the domestic and regional levels, from within and without the state, they are somehow expected to ‘judge’ democratisation. They are required to assess what is needed to support the democratisation process at any given point, especially in light of key deficiencies of the newly democratic order, and to judge when the democratisation context requires a different approach than may be appropriate in a mature democracy, such as the US or Ireland. However, the grand claims made for these courts as democracy-builders in existing scholarship have never been subjected to systematic analysis, nor have the overlapping roles of constitutional courts and regional human rights courts been considered in tandem. This thesis addresses a very significant research gap by drawing together a scattered and fragmented scholarship on the roles of courts in new democracies, integrating discussion of regional human rights courts, providing an innovative conceptual framework for how courts at each level act and interact as democracy-builders, and tracing connections between different normative arguments concerning the roles courts should play. As the first attempt at a wholesale exploration of the effectiveness and viability of the existing global court-centric model for democratisation, this thesis examines what we think courts do as democracy-builders, what they actually do, and what they should do. In doing so, it argues for a significant re-evaluation of how we conceive of, and employ, courts as democracy-builders

Reports to the President

A compilation of annual reports for the 1988-1989 academic year, including a report from the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as reports from the academic and administrative units of the Institute. The reports outline the year's goals, accomplishments, honors and awards, and future plans

Examining bureaucratic performance of South African local government: local municipalities in Limpopo province

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Public Management) at Wits school of governance Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management University of the Witwatersrand South Africa 2016In democratic South Africa, power regarding the provision of public goods and services is decentralised to local government level simply because municipalities are the coalface of service delivery and are closer to the people than national and provincial spheres of government. As a result, municipalities are assigned service delivery responsibilities by the Constitution. To discharge these constitutional responsibilities and functions in terms of public goods and service provision effectively and efficiently, municipalities are, firstly, expected to have high institutional capacity to deliver and be held accountable to their municipal councils and to behave in a fiscally responsible manner. Secondly, they are further expected to be characterised by strong and powerful municipal councils to exercise their formal powers of oversight function over municipal administration. Despite huge and continuous resource investment in terms of funding and capacity building and training interventions from the centre to build and strengthen the local government capacity to fulfil its public goods and service delivery responsibilities, South African local government, with specific reference to Limpopo local government, continues to be afflicted by persistent poor bureaucratic performance in relation to water and sanitation provision as well as financial management. In Limpopo Province, there are, however, a very few pockets of good performance (e.g. the Waterberg District Municipality) pertaining to financial management. Generally, manifestation of these governance problems is illustrated by high rates of negative audit outcomes, high levels of underspending, high levels of financial misconduct, high consumer debt and increasing sporadic community protests against poor municipal service delivery. Using a qualitative research approach and methods (i.e. interviews, observations, focus group discussions, questionnaire and document review), this study has explored the determinants of bureaucratic performance of South Africa’s local government with specific reference to Limpopo local government. A multiple qualitative case study approach, consisting of five municipalities (i.e. Capricorn and Waterberg District Municipalities, and Fetakgomo, Greater Tubatse and Greater Tzaneen Local Municipalities) was, thus, applied. This multiple case study approach assisted in enhancing the validity and reliability as well as replication of the study results to the entire system of Limpopo local government. Both purposive and random sampling techniques were used to sample the above mentioned five case studies and select the research participants. The added value of this study is, of course, the new dimension it has suggested such as theory of bureaucracy and the principal-agent model to explore and analyse the determinants of municipal bureaucratic performance in Limpopo Province. In effect, these two theories have rarely been tested together in analysing local government bureaucratic performance, but, in this study, they are used together to analyse the phenomena. In spite of their commonalities and variations, the study has discovered that not all bureaucratic performance failures within Limpopo local government are related to the lack of meritocracy, especially at managerial level. In effect, the level of meritocracy is very low at operational and implementation level in municipalities. The study, for example, has found that the percentage of the total municipal workforce with university or college qualifications at National Qualification Framework level 6 and above stood at 17 percent in the Greater Tubatse Municipality as compared to 58 percent and 76 percent in Fetakgomo and Greater Tzaneen Local Municipalities respectively. At the management level, the study, in contrast, found that the percentage of senior managers with professional qualifications at NQF level 6 and above stood at more than 80 percent in all the above-mentioned local municipalities. At the district level, the study further found that the percentage of total municipal workforce with university qualifications at NQF level 6 and above, as prescribed by municipal regulations on minimum competency level requirements and qualifications, stood at 7.4 percent and 59 percent respectively in the Capricorn and Waterberg District Municipalities in the period the study was undertaken. The study, however, has revealed serious paradoxes at management level regarding the possession of university qualifications by senior managers. For instance, the study found that the percentage of section 54A and 56 managers with professional qualifications at NQF level 6 and above in the Waterberg District Municipality was 86 percent as opposed to 33.3 percent in the Capricorn District Municipality. On the matter of the municipal council oversight function over municipal administration, the study findings confirmed the initial study proposition that strong and independent municipal councils, as opposed to weak or less-independent councils, play a vital role in determining bureaucratic quality or performance of municipalities. In effect, the study found that municipal councils or their council oversight committees in selected case studies were ineffective in exercising their formal powers of oversight. According to the study, the ineffectiveness of municipal council oversight committees was attributed to the following; institutional instability that characterised these municipalities between 2011 and 2014; the influence of political parties; or the prolonged and sustained single dominance of the municipal councils by one political party. Given the parliamentary governance system generally adopted by the South African state, the study further observed that municipal councils are effectively rendered inefficient by the fusion of both legislative and executive powers in the same person, being the municipal council. In contrast, this is, however, not the case in national and provincial spheres of government where the separation of powers between the legislature and the executive is clear and unambiguous compared with the local sphere of government. The study concluded that the persistent poor bureaucratic performance of South African local government, with specific reference to Limpopo local government, is as a result of none institutionalisation and none enforcement of a meritocratic recruitment culture at operational and implementation level as opposed to that at a management level. In addition, weak and less-independent municipal councils account for persistent poor bureaucratic performance of municipalities in Limpopo Province. If Limpopo local government is to become more developmental and meet the minimum service delivery expectations of communities, the study suggests that institutionalisation of meritocracy must be enforced by well-resourced and independent municipal councils vis-a-vis mayoral executive committees.MT 201