Parity-energy ATL for Qualitative and Quantitative Reasoning in MAS

In this paper, we introduce a new logic suitable to reason about strategic abilities of multi-agent systems where (teams of) agents are subject to qualitative (parity) and quantitative (energy) constraints and where goals are represented, as usual, by means of temporal properties. We formally define such a logic, named parity-energy-atl (peatl, for short), and we study its model checking problem, which we prove to be decidable with different complexity upper bounds, depending on different choices for the energy range

A novel automata-theoretic approach to timeline-based planning

Timeline-based planning is a well-established approach successfully employed in a number of application domains. A very restricted fragment, featuring only bounded temporal relations and token durations, is expressive enough to capture action-based temporal planning. As for computational complexity, it has been shown to be EXPSPACE-complete when unbounded temporal relations, but only bounded token durations, are allowed. In this paper, we present a novel automata-theoretic characterisation of timeline-based planning where the existence of a plan is shown to be equivalent to the nonemptiness of the language recognised by a nondeterministic finite-state automaton that suitably encodes all the problem constraints (timelines and synchronisation rules). Besides allowing us to restate known complexity results in a fairly natural and compact way, such an alternative characterisation makes it possible to finally establish the exact complexity of the full version of the problem with unbounded temporal relations and token durations, which was still open and turns out to be EXPSPACE-complete. Moreover, the proposed technique is general enough to cope with (infinite) recurrent goals, which received little attention so far, despite being quite common in real-word application scenarios

Decidability and complexity of the fragments of the modal logic of Allen's relations over the rationals

Interval temporal logics provide a natural framework for temporal reasoning about interval structures over linearly ordered domains, where intervals are taken as first-class citizens. Their expressive power and computational behaviour mainly depend on two parameters: the set of modalities they feature and the linear orders over which they are interpreted. In this paper, we consider all fragments of Halpern and Shoham's interval temporal logic hs with a decidable satisfiability problem over the rationals, and we provide a complete classification of them in terms of their expressiveness and computational complexity by solving the last few open problems

Acta Informatica manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) A Complete Classification of the Expressiveness of Interval Logics of Allen’s Relations The General and the Dense Cases

Abstract Interval temporal logics take time intervals, instead of time instants, as their primitive temporal entities. One of the most studied interval temporal logics is Halpern and Shoham’s modal logic of time intervals HS, which associates a modal operator with each binary relation between intervals over a linear order (the so-called Allen’s interval relations). In this paper, we compare and classify the expressiveness of all fragments of HS on the class of all linear orders and on the subclass of all dense linear orders. For each of these classes, we identify a complete set of definabilities between HS modalities, valid in that class, thus obtaining a complete classification of the family of all 4096 fragments of HS with respect to their expressiveness. We show that on the class of all linear orders there are exactly 1347 expressively different fragments of HS, while on the class of dense linear orders there are exactly 966 such expressively different fragments

Renewable beta-elemene based cyclic carbonates for the preparation of oligo(hydroxyurethane)s

Conversion of β-elemene into new β-elemene dicarbonates through epoxidation and halide salt-catalyzed CO2 cycloaddition reactions is reported. Step-growth polyaddition of this dicarbonate to five different, commercial diamines was investigated under neat conditions at 150 °C yielding non-isocyanate-based low molecular weight oligo(hydroxyurethane)s with 1.3≤Mn≤6.3 kDa and 1.3≤Ð≤2.1, and with glass transition temperatures ranging from −59 to 84 °C. The preparation of one selected polyhydroxyurethane material, obtained in the presence of Jeffamine® D-2010 was scaled-up to 43 g. The latter, when combined in a formulation using Irgacure® 2100 and Laromer® LR 9000 allowed the preparation of coatings that were analyzed with several techniques showing the potential of these biobased oligourethanes towards the preparation of commercially relevant materials

The impact of Covid-19 healthcare emergency on the psychological well-being of health professionals: a review of literature

Introduction. The Coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) was first identified in December 2019 in the city of Wuhan, China, and later caused a severe health crisis, causing massive disruptions to most healthcare systems worldwide. The Covid-19 health emergency has seen healthcare workers in the front line facing all the difficulties related to the care burden. One of the most significant and probably underinvestigated aspects is the psychological stress of the healthcare staff managing the emergency. The aim of the paper is to analyze the literature on the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the psychological well-being of health professionals. Methodology. We conducted a systematic review of articles published on this topic during the months from January 2020 to December 2020, searching on Pub Med, Scopus and Web of Science databases. Results. Most of the issues can be summarized into five conceptual categories: Stress, Depression and Infection Anxiety, Anguish, Insomnia, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Suicide. The literature identifies many factors contributing to the onset of anxiety, depression, and stress, like the fear of contracting the disease and transmitting it to family members and friends, stressful shifts, and little rest among several others. The literature highlights the needs for adequate measures, including proper psychological support. Conclusion. The conducted review suggests that the behaviours of healthcare professionals during the emergency phase of the Covid-19 pandemic show psychological disorders that can compromise mental health. Therefore, there is a call for those in chief like hospital managers and policymakers to take action, promoting measures like surveillance, monitoring, and psychological support among others, to increase the resilience of healthcare workers, limiting stress and anxiety and allowing them to keep their performance at work

The impact of Covid-19 healthcare emergency on the psychological well-being of health professionals: a review of literature

Introduction. The Coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) was first identified in December 2019 in the city of Wuhan, China, and later caused a severe health crisis, causing massive disruptions to most healthcare systems worldwide. The Covid-19 health emergency has seen healthcare workers in the front line facing all the difficulties related to the care burden. One of the most significant and probably underinvestigated aspects is the psychological stress of the healthcare staff managing the emergency. The aim of the paper is to analyze the literature on the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the psychological well-being of health professionals.Methodology. We conducted a systematic review of articles published on this topic during the months from January 2020 to December 2020, searching on Pub Med, Scopus and Web of Science databases.Results. Most of the issues can be summarized into five conceptual categories: Stress, Depression and Infection Anxiety, Anguish, Insomnia, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Suicide. The literature identifies many factors contributing to the onset of anxiety, depression, and stress, like the fear of contracting the disease and transmitting it to family members and friends, stressful shifts, and little rest among several others. The literature highlights the needs for adequate measures, including proper psychological support.Conclusion. The conducted review suggests that the behaviours of healthcare professionals during the emergency phase of the Covid-19 pandemic show psychological disorders that can compromise mental health. Therefore, there is a call for those in chief like hospital managers and policymakers to take action, promoting measures like surveillance, monitoring, and psychological support among others, to increase the resilience of healthcare workers, limiting stress and anxiety and allowing them to keep their performance at work

Crustal blocks and seismicity in the Central Apennines of Italy

Kinematics and geodynamics of crustal-block structures separated by compliant zones with viscoelastic rheology play an important role in defining the conditions for many deformation events such as ordinary seismic ruptures, silent and slow earthquakes and aseismic fault creep phenomena. New seismological data from the Latium-Abruzzi carbonatic platform of central Italy fit a block-tectonic modelling previously proposed for this area on the basis of structural and paleomagnetic evidences

Are nonsingular black holes with super-Planckian hair ruled out by S2 star data?

We propose a novel nonsingular black-hole spacetime representing a strong deformation of the Schwarzschild solution with mass $M$ by an additional hair $\ell$, which may be hierarchically larger than the Planck scale. Our black-hole model presents a de Sitter core and $\mathcal{O}(\ell^2/r^2)$ slow-decaying corrections to the Schwarzschild solution. Our black-hole solutions are thermodynamically preferred when $0.2 \lesssim \ell/GM \lesssim \, 0.3$ and are characterized by strong deviations in the orbits of test particles from the Schwarzschild case. In particular, we find corrections to the perihelion precession angle scaling linearly with $\ell$. We test our model using the available data for the orbits of the S2 star around $\text{SgrA}^*$. These data strongly constrain the value of the hair $\ell$, casting an upper bound on it of $\sim \, 0.47 \, GM$, but do not rule out the possible existence of regular black holes with super-Planckian hair.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Revised version: Addendum and some references have been adde