Encoding monomorphic and polymorphic types

Many automatic theorem provers are restricted to untyped logics, and existing translations from typed logics are bulky or unsound. Recent research proposes monotonicity as a means to remove some clutter when translating monomorphic to un-typed first-order logic. Here we pursue this approach systematically, analysing formally a variety of encodings that further improve on efficiency while retaining soundness and completeness. We extend the approach to rank-1 polymorphism and present alternative schemes that lighten the translation of polymorphic symbols based on the novel notion of “cover”. The new encodings are implemented in Isabelle/HOL as part of the Sledgehammer tool. We include informal proofs of soundness and correctness, and have formalized the monomorphic part of this work in Isabelle/HOL. Our evaluation finds the new encodings vastly superior to previous schemes

Encoding monomorphic and polymorphic types

Most automatic theorem provers are restricted to untyped logics, and existing translations from typed logics are bulky or unsound. Recent research proposes monotonicity as a means to remove some clutter. Here we pursue this approach systematically, analysing formally a variety of encodings that further improve on efficiency while retaining soundness and completeness. We extend the approach to rank-1 polymorphism and present alternative schemes that lighten the translation of polymorphic symbols based on the novel notion of “cover”. The new encodings are implemented, and partly proved correct, in Isabelle/HOL. Our evaluation finds them vastly superior to previous schemes

XWeB: the XML Warehouse Benchmark

With the emergence of XML as a standard for representing business data, new decision support applications are being developed. These XML data warehouses aim at supporting On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) operations that manipulate irregular XML data. To ensure feasibility of these new tools, important performance issues must be addressed. Performance is customarily assessed with the help of benchmarks. However, decision support benchmarks do not currently support XML features. In this paper, we introduce the XML Warehouse Benchmark (XWeB), which aims at filling this gap. XWeB derives from the relational decision support benchmark TPC-H. It is mainly composed of a test data warehouse that is based on a unified reference model for XML warehouses and that features XML-specific structures, and its associate XQuery decision support workload. XWeB's usage is illustrated by experiments on several XML database management systems

The exceptionally high diversity of small carnivorans from the Late Miocene hominid locality of Hammerschmiede (Bavaria, Germany)

The present study deals with new material of carnivorans (Mustelidae, Mephitidae, Ailuridae, Potamotheriinae and Viverridae) from the basal Tortonian (Late Miocene, late Astaracian) hominid-bearing locality of Hammerschmiede (Bavaria, Germany). The small carnivoran fauna includes 20 species belonging to nine different subfamilies (Guloninae, Lutrinae, Mellivorinae, Potamotheriinae, Leptarctinae, Mephitinae, Simocyoninae, Genettinae and Viverrinae). The identified forms include: “Martes” sansaniensis, “Martes” cf. munki, “Martes” sp., Circamustela hartmanni n. sp., Laphyctis mustelinus, Guloninae indet., Eomellivora moralesi, Vishnuonyx neptuni, Paralutra jaegeri, Lartetictis cf. dubia, Trocharion albanense, Palaeomeles pachecoi, Proputorius sansaniensis, Proputorius pusillus, Alopecocyon goeriachensis, Simocyoninae indet., Potamotherium sp., Semigenetta sansaniensis, Semigenetta grandis and Viverrictis modica. The new species Circamustela hartmanni n. sp. is differentiated from the other members of the genus by its small size and the morphology of its dental cusps in the upper and lower carnassials. This is one of the highest reported taxonomic diversities for fossil small carnivorans in the Miocene of Europe, including also first and last occurrences for several genera and species. Additionally, the assemblage comprises some rare taxa such as Palaeomeles pachecoi and Eomellivora moralesi. An ecomorphological comparison of the discovered taxa reveals possible cases of competition and niche partitioning. © 2022 Kargopoulos et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Three soil bacterial communities from an archaeological excavation site of an ancient coal mine near Bennstedt (Germany) characterized by 16S r-RNA sequencing

This metagenomics investigation of three closely adjacent sampling sites from an archaeological excavation of a pre-industrial coal mining exploration shaft provides detailed information on the composition of the local soil bacterial communities. The observed significant differences between the samples, reflected in the 16S r-RNA analyses, were consistent with the archaeologically observed situation distinguishing the coal seam, the rapidly deposited bright sediment inside an exploration shaft, and the topsoil sediment. In general, the soils were characterized by a dominance of Proteobacteria , Actinobacteria , Acidobacteria , and Archaea , whereas the coal seam was characterized by the highest proportion of Proteobacteria ; the topsoil was characterized by very high proportions of Archaea —in particular, Nitrosotaleaceae —and Acidobacteria, mainly of Subgroup 2. Interestingly, the samples of the fast-deposited bright sediment showed a rank function of OTU abundances with disproportional values in the lower abundance range. This could be interpreted as a reflection of the rapid redeposition of soil material during the refilling of the exploration shaft in the composition of the soil bacterial community. This interpretation is supported by the observation of a comparatively high proportion of reads relating to bacteria known to be alkaliphilic in this soil material. In summary, these investigations confirm that metagenomic analyses of soil material from archaeological excavations can provide valuable information about the local soil bacterial communities and the historical human impacts on them

Matching LOFAR sources across radio bands

Aims. With the recent preliminary release of the LOFAR LBA Sky Survey (LoLSS), the first wide-area, ultra-low frequency observations from LOFAR were published. Our aim is to combine this data set with other surveys at higher frequencies to study the spectral properties of a large sample of radio sources. Methods. We present a new cross-matching algorithm taking into account the sizes of the radio sources and apply it to the LoLSS-PR, LoTSS-DR1, LoTSS-DR2 (all LOFAR), TGSS-ADR1 (GMRT), WENSS (WSRT) and NVSS (VLA) catalogues. We then study the number of matched counterparts for LoLSS radio sources and their spectral properties. Results. We find counterparts for 22 607 (89.5%) LoLSS sources. The remaining 2 640 sources (10.5%) are identified either as an artefact in the LoLSS survey (3.6%) or flagged due to their closeness to bright sources (6.9%). We find an average spectral index of $\alpha = -0.77 \pm 0.18$ between LoLSS and NVSS. Between LoLSS and LoTSS-DR2 we find $\alpha = -0.71 \pm 0.31$. The average spectral index is flux density independent above $S_{54} = 181$ mJy. Comparison of the spectral slopes from LoLSS--LoTSS-DR2 with LoTSS-DR2--NVSS indicates that the probed population of radio sources exhibits evidence for a negative spectral curvature.Comment: 13 pages, 22 figures and 2 tables. Accepted for publication in A&

The economic benefit of timely, adequate, and adherence to Parkinson's disease treatment: the Value of Treatment Project 2

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic progressive neurological disorder with a high psychosocial and economic burden. As part of the European Brain Council (EBC)-led Value of Treatment project, this study aimed to capture the economic benefit of timely, adequate, and adherence to PD treatment. Methods: The EBC Value of Treatment Initiative combined different stakeholders to identify unmet needs in the patients’ journey according to Rotterdam methodology. The economic evaluation focused on three major topics identified as major gaps: start of treatment; best treatment for advanced disease; and adherence to treatment. Two separate healthcare systems (Germany and the UK) were chosen. Cost-effectiveness was determined by using decision-analytical modelling approaches. Effectiveness was expressed as quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) gained and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). Results: Treatment intervention in PD was found to be cost-effective regardless of the initial health state of the patient receiving the treatment. Cost savings were between -€1000 and −€5400 with 0.10 QALY gain and -€1800 and -€7600 with 0.10 QALY gain for Germany and the UK, respectively. Treatment remains cost-effective within the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence thresholds. Availability of adequate treatment to more patients was also found to be cost-effective, with an ICER of €15,000–€32,600 across country settings. Achieving the target adherence to treatment would generate cost-savings of €239,000–€576,000 (Germany) and €917,000–€2,980.000 (UK) for every 1,000 patients treated adequately. Conclusions: The analyses confirmed that timely, adequate, and adherence to PD treatment will not only improve care of the patients but is also cost-effective across healthcare systems. Further studies with a distinct identification of gaps in care are necessary to develop better and affordable care

Mining State-Based Models from Proof Corpora

Interactive theorem provers have been used extensively to reason about various software/hardware systems and mathematical theorems. The key challenge when using an interactive prover is finding a suitable sequence of proof steps that will lead to a successful proof requires a significant amount of human intervention. This paper presents an automated technique that takes as input examples of successful proofs and infers an Extended Finite State Machine as output. This can in turn be used to generate proofs of new conjectures. Our preliminary experiments show that the inferred models are generally accurate (contain few false-positive sequences) and that representing existing proofs in such a way can be very useful when guiding new ones.Comment: To Appear at Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics 201