Complexity of Timeline-Based Planning over Dense Temporal Domains: Exploring the Middle Ground

In this paper, we address complexity issues for timeline-based planning over dense temporal domains. The planning problem is modeled by means of a set of independent, but interacting, components, each one represented by a number of state variables, whose behavior over time (timelines) is governed by a set of temporal constraints (synchronization rules). While the temporal domain is usually assumed to be discrete, here we consider the dense case. Dense timeline-based planning has been recently shown to be undecidable in the general case; decidability (NP-completeness) can be recovered by restricting to purely existential synchronization rules (trigger-less rules). In this paper, we investigate the unexplored area of intermediate cases in between these two extremes. We first show that decidability and non-primitive recursive-hardness can be proved by admitting synchronization rules with a trigger, but forcing them to suitably check constraints only in the future with respect to the trigger (future simple rules). More "tractable" results can be obtained by additionally constraining the form of intervals in future simple rules: EXPSPACE-completeness is guaranteed by avoiding singular intervals, PSPACE-completeness by admitting only intervals of the forms [0,a] and [b,$\infty$[.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2018, arXiv:1809.0241

Levans production by Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus

Background: Growth of Gluconacetobacterdiazotrophicuswith glucose as carbon an energy source has been extensively studied. However, there are no reports in the literature describing growth of G.diazotrophicusin cultures containing sucrose as carbon source. The first step in sucrose pathway and production of levans was investigated. Biomass, levans, gluconic acid andketogluconic acids production and levansucrase activity were determined in cultures with different sucrose concentration and nitrogen sources. Results: The biomass production was maximal in cultures containing 100 gL-1 sucrose and inorganic nitrogen. Gluconic acid production was observed under all conditions tested, at levels up to 9 gL-1 in cultures with sucrose excess and biological N2-fixation (BNF). Ketogluconic acids were detectable only in cultures with sucrose excess and supplemented with organic nitrogen sources. Levans production, although observed in all cultures, was maximal in batch culture with 100 gL-1 of sucrose and BNF, concomitant with a significant expression of extracellular levansucrase. Conclusions: Ours results not only describe some unknown aspects of G. diazotrophicus physiology, but open up the possibility of developing a technology oflevans production by this organism using culture media with sucrose (or some cheaper substitute, like molasses) and without the addition of any N-source because of its ability of fixing atmospheric N2.Fil: Molinari, Maria Laura. Consejo Nacional de Invest.cientif.y Tecnicas. Centro Cientifico Tecnol.conicet - la Plata. Cent.de Inv En Fermentaciones Industriales (i); ArgentinaFil: Boiardi, Jose Luis. Consejo Nacional de Invest.cientif.y Tecnicas. Centro Cientifico Tecnol.conicet - la Plata. Cent.de Inv En Fermentaciones Industriales (i); Argentin

Levans production by Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus

Background: Growth of Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus with glucose as carbon an energy source has been extensively studied. However, there are no reports in the literature describing growth of G. diazotrophicus in cultures containing sucrose as carbon source. The first step in sucrose pathway and production of levans was investigated. Biomass, levans, gluconic acid and keto gluconic acids production and levansucrase activity were determined in cultures with different sucrose concentration and nitrogen sources. Results: The biomass production was maximal in cultures containing 100 g x L-1 sucrose and inorganic nitrogen. Gluconic acid production was observed under all conditions tested, at levels up to 9 g x L-1 in cultures with sucrose excess and biological N2-fixation (BNF). Keto gluconic acids were detectable only in cultures with sucrose excess and supplemented with organic nitrogen sources. Levans production, although observed in all cultures, was maximal in batch culture with 100 g x L-1 of sucrose and BNF, concomitant with a significant expression of extracellular levansucrase. Conclusions: Ours results not only describe some unknown aspects of G. diazotrophicus physiology, but open up the possibility of developing a technology of levans production by this organism using culture media with sucrose (or some cheaper substitute, like molasses) and without the addition of any N-source because of its ability of fixing atmospheric N2.Facultad de Ciencias ExactasCentro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Fermentaciones Industriale

On the complexity of model checking for syntactically maximal fragments of the interval temporal logic hs with regular expressions

In this paper, we investigate the model checking (MC) problem for Halpern and Shoham's interval temporal logic HS. In the last years, interval temporal logic MC has received an increasing attention as a viable alternative to the traditional (point-based) temporal logic MC, which can be recovered as a special case. Most results have been obtained under the homogeneity assumption, that constrains a proposition letter to hold over an interval if and only if it holds over each component state. Recently, Lomuscio and Michaliszyn proposed a way to relax such an assumption by exploiting regular expressions to define the behaviour of proposition letters over intervals in terms of their component states. When homogeneity is assumed, the exact complexity of MC is a difficult open question for full HS and for its two syntactically maximal fragments AA'BB'E' and AA'EB'E'. In this paper, we provide an asymptotically optimal bound to the complexity of these two fragments under the more expressive semantic variant based on regular expressions by showing that their MC problem is AEXP_pol-complete, where AEXP_pol denotes the complexity class of problems decided by exponential-time bounded alternating Turing Machines making a polynomially bounded number of alternations.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2017, arXiv:1709.0176

Complexity of Timeline-Based Planning over Dense Temporal Domains: Exploring the Middle Ground

In this paper, we address complexity issues for timeline-based planning over dense temporal domains. The planning problem is modeled by means of a set of independent, but interacting, components, each one represented by a number of state variables, whose behavior over time (timelines) is governed by a set of temporal constraints (synchronization rules). While the temporal domain is usually assumed to be discrete, here we consider the dense case. Dense timeline-based planning has been recently shown to be undecidable in the general case; decidability (NP-completeness) can be recovered by restricting to purely existential synchronization rules (trigger-less rules). In this paper, we investigate the unexplored area of intermediate cases in between these two extremes. We first show that decidability and non-primitive recursive-hardness can be proved by admitting synchronization rules with a trigger, but forcing them to suitably check constraints only in the future with respect to the trigger (future simple rules). More "tractable" results can be obtained by additionally constraining the form of intervals in future simple rules: EXPSPACE-completeness is guaranteed by avoiding singular intervals, PSPACE-completeness by admitting only intervals of the forms [0,a] and [b,$\infty$[.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2018, arXiv:1809.0241

Producción de exopolisacáridos tipo fructooligosacáridos por Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus

Como objetivo general para este trabajo se planteó intentar sentar las bases para el desarrollo de una tecnología de producción de FOS y levanos, y de la enzima responsable la síntesis de estos compuestos (LsdA), por G. diazotrophicus en escala de laboratorio utilizando diferentes estrategias de cultivos. Dentro de este planteo general se definieron diferentes objetivos específicos. 1. Debido al desconocimiento de la regulación metabólica de la síntesis de polisacáridos extracelulares por G. diazotrophicus, cuando crece en presencia de sacarosa como fuente de carbono y energía, se propuso como primer objetivo específico generar información sobre el comportamiento metabólico de este microorganismo ante diferentes situaciones nutricionales variando la concentración inicial de la fuente de carbono desde condiciones de limitación hasta condiciones de exceso. Paralelamente se ensayaron variaciones en la fuente de nitrógeno teniendo en cuenta a este nutriente como una variable en el contexto nutricional del microorganismo y dando respuestas a diferentes interrogantes metabólicos. 2. El segundo objetivo específico planteado fue conocer cómo varia la síntesis de fructanos de diferentes pesos moleculares y la expresión de la levansacarasa (como enzima responsable de la síntesis de estas macromoléculas) buscando la/s condición/es nutricional/es de máxima producción de fructanos y/o enzima. 3. El tercer objetivo específico presentado fue la optimización de un sistema de producción de fructanos tanto en cultivos batch de G. diazotrophicus como en sistemas libres de células en incubaciones de soluciones de sacarosa con extractos crudos de LsdA.Facultad de Ciencias Exacta

Model Checking the Logic of Allen's Relations Meets and Started-by is P^NP-Complete

In the plethora of fragments of Halpern and Shoham's modal logic of time intervals (HS), the logic AB of Allen's relations Meets and Started-by is at a central position. Statements that may be true at certain intervals, but at no sub-interval of them, such as accomplishments, as well as metric constraints about the length of intervals, that force, for instance, an interval to be at least (resp., at most, exactly) k points long, can be expressed in AB. Moreover, over the linear order of the natural numbers N, it subsumes the (point-based) logic LTL, as it can easily encode the next and until modalities. Finally, it is expressive enough to capture the {\omega}-regular languages, that is, for each {\omega}-regular expression R there exists an AB formula {\phi} such that the language defined by R coincides with the set of models of {\phi} over N. It has been shown that the satisfiability problem for AB over N is EXPSPACE-complete. Here we prove that, under the homogeneity assumption, its model checking problem is {\Delta}^p_2 = P^NP-complete (for the sake of comparison, the model checking problem for full HS is EXPSPACE-hard, and the only known decision procedure is nonelementary). Moreover, we show that the modality for the Allen relation Met-by can be added to AB at no extra cost (AA'B is P^NP-complete as well)