Past, Present, and Infinite Future

I was supposed to deliver one of the speeches at Wolfgang Thomas\u27s retirement ceremony. Wolfgang had called me on the phone earlier and posed some questions about temporal logic, but I hadn\u27t had good answers at the time. What I decided to do at the ceremony was to take up the conversation again and show how it could have evolved if only I had put more effort into answering his questions. Here is the imaginary conversation with Wolfgang. The contributions are (1) the first direct translation from counter-free omega-automata into future temporal formulas, (2) a definition of bimachines for omega-words, (3) a translation from arbitrary temporal formulas (including both, future and past operators) into counter-free omega-bimachines, and (4) an automata-based proof of separation: every arbitrary temporal formula is equivalent to a boolean combination of pure future, present, and pure past formulas when interpreted in omega-words

Time Management in the Nigerian Civil Service: An Imperative Value For Nigeria's Reforming Economy

The Nigerian public service has been undergoing gradual and systematic reforms and restructuring since 1999 after decades of military nile. The reforms are meant to meet the challenges of civil rule, democracy, good governance, and globalization. Despite the various public and civil service reforms of the Nigerian civil service is still slow in responding to technological changes and modern organizational methods. It is characterized by poor working an'angements and gross indiscipline. In most organizations in Nigeria, lots of man-hour is wasted on unproductive activities. This problem of wasted man-hour seems to have been taken for granted in Nigeria and it has not been deliberately addressed in our refonn agenda. Time management is an important factor in organizational efficiency and effectiveness. It is against this backdrop that this paper examines the role of time management in achieving the reform agenda. Secondary data was used to examine the concept of time in advanced capItalist eccmomies, Africa and Nigeria. It was found that poor remuneration, lack of motivation, especially intrinsic motivation and poor work arrangements were responsible for poor work ethics in the publici civil service in Nigeria

On Canonical Models for Rational Functions over Infinite Words

This paper investigates canonical transducers for rational functions over infinite words, i.e. functions of infinite words defined by finite transducers. We first consider sequential functions, defined by finite transducers with a deterministic underlying automaton. We provide a Myhill-Nerodelike characterization, in the vein of Choffrut’s result over finite words, from which we derive an algorithm that computes a transducer realizing the function which is minimal and unique (up to the automaton for the domain). The main contribution of the paper is the notion of a canonical transducer for rational functions over infinite words, extending the notion of canonical bimachine due to Reutenauer and Schützenberger from finite to infinite words. As an application, we show that the canonical transducer is aperiodic whenever the function is definable by some aperiodic transducer, or equivalently, by a first-order transduction. This allows to decide whether a rational function of infinite words is first-order definable.SCOPUS: cp.pinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Justification of the concept of time in Africa

The metaphorical concept of African time is one in which tardiness, lousiness and a total disregard for schedules and program is made out to characterize all Africans. Tardiness is a universal phenomenon; it should not be made to hang around African’s neck like a milestone meant to drawn a criminal. This preposterous tag is seen as a harbinger of the continuous cycles of poverty, bad governance, monumental backwardness and a seemingly perpetual over-dependence on other peoples of the world for minimal survival. This, however, cannot be read to mean that Africans lack the notion of time or that of future time. The best we can say is that they lack “time-discipline.” With hermeneutic method, this paper seeks to give some justifications to this notion of African of time or Africans posture to time and observes that Africans relational attitude, her polychromous nature, even lack of some basic amenities, etc. are some of the justifications to these and concludes that there needs to be a balancing (prioritizing) of time vs. events considerations and that most people are usually somewhere in between the two extremes. It is usually necessary to adapt to the time and event orientation of a culture group

Litigating Time in America at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Time may have become a television celebrity this season, but telling time is something taken for granted by most people alive in 2002. Telling time however, has not always been as easy, straightforward, and mechanical, as it is today. By the late nineteenth century, there was already sufficient conflict over how to tell time to force Americans to litigate the subject. The courts wrestled with this dilemma while legislatures reluctantly moved toward establishing a uniform method of telling time. Congress did not act until 1918.6 Why did it take so long to legally establish standard time in the United States? This article will describe just how incredibly complex time determination has been in human history. Focusing on the United States, 1870-1920, two theories will be offered as to why American courts in at least sixteen cases were left to struggle with inconsistent methods of telling time and why Congress took so long to step into the fray and finally resolve the issue