Affine Extensions of Integer Vector Addition Systems with States

We study the reachability problem for affine $\mathbb{Z}$-VASS, which are integer vector addition systems with states in which transitions perform affine transformations on the counters. This problem is easily seen to be undecidable in general, and we therefore restrict ourselves to affine $\mathbb{Z}$-VASS with the finite-monoid property (afmp-$\mathbb{Z}$-VASS). The latter have the property that the monoid generated by the matrices appearing in their affine transformations is finite. The class of afmp-$\mathbb{Z}$-VASS encompasses classical operations of counter machines such as resets, permutations, transfers and copies. We show that reachability in an afmp-$\mathbb{Z}$-VASS reduces to reachability in a $\mathbb{Z}$-VASS whose control-states grow linearly in the size of the matrix monoid. Our construction shows that reachability relations of afmp-$\mathbb{Z}$-VASS are semilinear, and in particular enables us to show that reachability in $\mathbb{Z}$-VASS with transfers and $\mathbb{Z}$-VASS with copies is PSPACE-complete. We then focus on the reachability problem for affine $\mathbb{Z}$-VASS with monogenic monoids: (possibly infinite) matrix monoids generated by a single matrix. We show that, in a particular case, the reachability problem is decidable for this class, disproving a conjecture about affine $\mathbb{Z}$-VASS with infinite matrix monoids we raised in a preliminary version of this paper. We complement this result by presenting an affine $\mathbb{Z}$-VASS with monogenic matrix monoid and undecidable reachability relation

Continuous One-Counter Automata

We study the reachability problem for continuous one-counter automata, COCA for short. In such automata, transitions are guarded by upper and lower bound tests against the counter value. Additionally, the counter updates associated with taking transitions can be (non-deterministically) scaled down by a nonzero factor between zero and one. Our three main results are as follows: (1) We prove that the reachability problem for COCA with global upper and lower bound tests is in NC2; (2) that, in general, the problem is decidable in polynomial time; and (3) that it is decidable in the polynomial hierarchy for COCA with parametric counter updates and bound tests

Eliminating Recursion from Monadic Datalog Programs on Trees

We study the problem of eliminating recursion from monadic datalog programs on trees with an infinite set of labels. We show that the boundedness problem, i.e., determining whether a datalog program is equivalent to some nonrecursive one is undecidable but the decidability is regained if the descendant relation is disallowed. Under similar restrictions we obtain decidability of the problem of equivalence to a given nonrecursive program. We investigate the connection between these two problems in more detail

West Nile Virus–associated Flaccid Paralysis

The causes and frequency of acute paralysis and respiratory failure with West Nile virus (WNV) infection are incompletely understood. During the summer and fall of 2003, we conducted a prospective, population-based study among residents of a 3-county area in Colorado, United States, with developing WNV-associated paralysis. Thirty-two patients with developing paralysis and acute WNV infection were identified. Causes included a poliomyelitislike syndrome in 27 (84%) patients and a Guillain-Barré–like syndrome in 4 (13%); 1 had brachial plexus involvement alone. The incidence of poliomyelitislike syndrome was 3.7/100,000. Twelve patients (38%), including 1 with Guillain-Barré–like syndrome, had acute respiratory failure that required endotracheal intubation. At 4 months, 3 patients with respiratory failure died, 2 remained intubated, 25 showed various degrees of improvement, and 2 were lost to followup. A poliomyelitislike syndrome likely involving spinal anterior horn cells is the most common mechanism of WNV-associated paralysis and is associated with significant short- and long-term illness and death

Complexity of two-variable logic on finite trees

Verification of properties expressed in the two-variable fragment of first-order logic FO2 has been investigated in a number of contexts. The satisfiability problem for FO2 over arbitrary structures is known to be NEXPTIME-complete, with satisfiable formulas having exponential-sized models. Over words, where FO2 is known to have the same expressiveness as unary temporal logic, satisfiability is again NEXPTIME-complete. Over finite labelled ordered trees, FO2 has the same expressiveness as navigational XPath, a popular query language for XML documents. Prior work on XPath and FO2 gives a 2EXPTIME bound for satisfiability of FO2 over trees. This work contains a comprehensive analysis of the complexity of FO2 on trees, and on the size and depth of models. We show that different techniques are required depending on the vocabulary used, whether the trees are ranked or unranked, and the encoding of labels on trees. We also look at a natural restriction of FO2, its guarded version, GF2. Our results depend on an analysis of types in models of FO2 formulas, including techniques for controlling the number of distinct subtrees, the depth, and the size of a witness to satisfiability for FO2 sentences over finite trees

Complexity of two-variable logic on finite trees

Verification of properties expressed in the two-variable fragment of first-order logic FO2 has been investigated in a number of contexts. The satisfiability problem for FO2 over arbitrary structures is known to be NEXPTIME-complete, with satisfiable formulas having exponential-sized models. Over words, where FO2 is known to have the same expressiveness as unary temporal logic, satisfiability is again NEXPTIME-complete. Over finite labelled ordered trees, FO2 has the same expressiveness as navigational XPath, a popular query language for XML documents. Prior work on XPath and FO2 gives a 2EXPTIME bound for satisfiability of FO2 over trees. This work contains a comprehensive analysis of the complexity of FO2 on trees, and on the size and depth of models. We show that different techniques are required depending on the vocabulary used, whether the trees are ranked or unranked, and the encoding of labels on trees. We also look at a natural restriction of FO2, its guarded version, GF2. Our results depend on an analysis of types in models of FO2 formulas, including techniques for controlling the number of distinct subtrees, the depth, and the size of a witness to satisfiability for FO2 sentences over finite trees