Parameterized Algorithmics for Computational Social Choice: Nine Research Challenges

Computational Social Choice is an interdisciplinary research area involving Economics, Political Science, and Social Science on the one side, and Mathematics and Computer Science (including Artificial Intelligence and Multiagent Systems) on the other side. Typical computational problems studied in this field include the vulnerability of voting procedures against attacks, or preference aggregation in multi-agent systems. Parameterized Algorithmics is a subfield of Theoretical Computer Science seeking to exploit meaningful problem-specific parameters in order to identify tractable special cases of in general computationally hard problems. In this paper, we propose nine of our favorite research challenges concerning the parameterized complexity of problems appearing in this context

Neuronal Correlation Parameter in the Idea of Thermodynamic Entropy of an N-Body Gravitationally Bounded System

Understanding how the brain encodes information and performs computation requires statistical and functional analysis. Given the complexity of the human brain, simple methods that facilitate the interpretation of statistical correlations among different brain regions can be very useful. In this report we introduce a numerical correlation measure that may serve the interpretation of correlational neuronal data, and may assist in the evaluation of different brain states. The description of the dynamical brain system, through a global numerical measure may indicate the presence of an action principle which may facilitate a application of physics principles in the study of the human brain and cognition

Quantitative Verification: Formal Guarantees for Timeliness, Reliability and Performance

Computerised systems appear in almost all aspects of our daily lives, often in safety-critical scenarios such as embedded control systems in cars and aircraft or medical devices such as pacemakers and sensors. We are thus increasingly reliant on these systems working correctly, despite often operating in unpredictable or unreliable environments. Designers of such devices need ways to guarantee that they will operate in a reliable and efficient manner. Quantitative verification is a technique for analysing quantitative aspects of a system's design, such as timeliness, reliability or performance. It applies formal methods, based on a rigorous analysis of a mathematical model of the system, to automatically prove certain precisely specified properties, e.g. ``the airbag will always deploy within 20 milliseconds after a crash'' or ``the probability of both sensors failing simultaneously is less than 0.001''. The ability to formally guarantee quantitative properties of this kind is beneficial across a wide range of application domains. For example, in safety-critical systems, it may be essential to establish credible bounds on the probability with which certain failures or combinations of failures can occur. In embedded control systems, it is often important to comply with strict constraints on timing or resources. More generally, being able to derive guarantees on precisely specified levels of performance or efficiency is a valuable tool in the design of, for example, wireless networking protocols, robotic systems or power management algorithms, to name but a few. This report gives a short introduction to quantitative verification, focusing in particular on a widely used technique called model checking, and its generalisation to the analysis of quantitative aspects of a system such as timing, probabilistic behaviour or resource usage. The intended audience is industrial designers and developers of systems such as those highlighted above who could benefit from the application of quantitative verification,but lack expertise in formal verification or modelling

Benchmarks for Parity Games (extended version)

We propose a benchmark suite for parity games that includes all benchmarks that have been used in the literature, and make it available online. We give an overview of the parity games, including a description of how they have been generated. We also describe structural properties of parity games, and using these properties we show that our benchmarks are representative. With this work we provide a starting point for further experimentation with parity games.Comment: The corresponding tool and benchmarks are available from https://github.com/jkeiren/paritygame-generator. This is an extended version of the paper that has been accepted for FSEN 201

Real-time and Probabilistic Temporal Logics: An Overview

Over the last two decades, there has been an extensive study on logical formalisms for specifying and verifying real-time systems. Temporal logics have been an important research subject within this direction. Although numerous logics have been introduced for the formal specification of real-time and complex systems, an up to date comprehensive analysis of these logics does not exist in the literature. In this paper we analyse real-time and probabilistic temporal logics which have been widely used in this field. We extrapolate the notions of decidability, axiomatizability, expressiveness, model checking, etc. for each logic analysed. We also provide a comparison of features of the temporal logics discussed

Computability and analysis: the legacy of Alan Turing

We discuss the legacy of Alan Turing and his impact on computability and analysis.Comment: 49 page