15,524 research outputs found
Object orientation without extending Z
The good news of this paper is that without extending Z,
we can elegantly specify object-oriented systems, including encapsulation,
inheritance and subtype polymorphism (dynamic dispatch). The
bad news is that this specification style is rather different to normal
Z specifications, more abstract and axiomatic, which means that it is
not so well supported by current Z tools such as animators. It also enforces
behavioural subtyping, unlike most object-oriented programming
languages. This paper explains the proposed style, with examples, and
discusses its advantages and disadvantages
Coisotropic deformations of associative algebras and dispersionless integrable hierarchies
The paper is an inquiry of the algebraic foundations of the theory of
dispersionless integrable hierarchies, like the dispersionless KP and modified
KP hierarchies and the universal Whitham's hierarchy of genus zero. It stands
out for the idea of interpreting these hierarchies as equations of coisotropic
deformations for the structure constants of certain associative algebras. It
discusses the link between the structure constants and the Hirota's tau
function, and shows that the dispersionless Hirota's bilinear equations are,
within this approach, a way of writing the associativity conditions for the
structure constants in terms of the tau function. It also suggests a simple
interpretation of the algebro-geometric construction of the universal Whitham's
equations of genus zero due to Krichever.Comment: minor misprints correcte
Two Forms of Inconsistency in Quantum Foundations
Recently, there has been some discussion of how Dutch Book arguments might be
used to demonstrate the rational incoherence of certain hidden variable models
of quantum theory (Feintzeig and Fletcher 2017). In this paper, we argue that
the 'form of inconsistency' underlying this alleged irrationality is deeply and
comprehensively related to the more familiar 'inconsistency' phenomenon of
contextuality. Our main result is that the hierarchy of contextuality due to
Abramsky and Brandenburger (2011) corresponds to a hierarchy of
additivity/convexity-violations which yields formal Dutch Books of different
strengths. We then use this result to provide a partial assessment of whether
these formal Dutch Books can be interpreted normatively.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figure
Towards Intelligent Databases
This article is a presentation of the objectives and techniques
of deductive databases. The deductive approach to databases aims at extending
with intensional definitions other database paradigms that describe
applications extensionaUy. We first show how constructive specifications can
be expressed with deduction rules, and how normative conditions can be defined
using integrity constraints. We outline the principles of bottom-up and
top-down query answering procedures and present the techniques used for
integrity checking. We then argue that it is often desirable to manage with
a database system not only database applications, but also specifications of
system components. We present such meta-level specifications and discuss
their advantages over conventional approaches
Institutionalising Ontology-Based Semantic Integration
We address what is still a scarcity of general mathematical foundations for ontology-based semantic integration underlying current knowledge engineering methodologies in decentralised and distributed environments. After recalling the first-order ontology-based approach to semantic integration and a formalisation of ontological commitment, we propose a general theory that uses a syntax-and interpretation-independent formulation of language, ontology, and ontological commitment in terms of institutions. We claim that our formalisation generalises the intuitive notion of ontology-based semantic integration while retaining its basic insight, and we apply it for eliciting and hence comparing various increasingly complex notions of semantic integration and ontological commitment based on differing understandings of semantics
Infectious Disease Ontology
Technological developments have resulted in tremendous increases in the volume and diversity of the data and information that must be processed in the course of biomedical and clinical research and practice. Researchers are at the same time under ever greater pressure to share data and to take steps to ensure that data resources are interoperable. The use of ontologies to annotate data has proven successful in supporting these goals and in providing new possibilities for the automated processing of data and information. In this chapter, we describe different types of vocabulary resources and emphasize those features of formal ontologies that make them most useful for computational applications. We describe current uses of ontologies and discuss future goals for ontology-based computing, focusing on its use in the field of infectious diseases. We review the largest and most widely used vocabulary resources relevant to the study of infectious diseases and conclude with a description of the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) suite of interoperable ontology modules that together cover the entire infectious disease domain
Phase space polarization and the topological string: a case study
We review and elaborate on our discussion in hep-th/0606112 on the interplay
between the target space and the worldsheet description of the open topological
string partition function, for the example of the conifold. We discuss the
appropriate phase space and canonical form for the system. We find a map
between choices of polarization and the worldsheet description, based on which
we study the behavior of the partition function under canonical
transformations.Comment: 18 pages, invited review for MPL
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