Survey on welfare of dairy cow in tie-stalls in mountain area.

The aim of the survey was to study the effect of Alpine pasture and breed on welfare of dairy cattle bred in tie-stalls in mountain area of Friuli Venezia Giulia Region. Twenty-four representative farms were divided into 4 groups following a factorial design: 2 managements (with vs. without summer grazing) x 2 breeds (Italian Simmental vs. Italian Brown). Data were collected following a protocol that considers direct animals' measures or remarks, buildings and equipments information. The results showed that summer grazing affected some physical parameters - BCS, claw conformation and injuries - and some behaviour parameters such as rising movements. In this trial the breed did not seem to markedly influence cows' welfare, except for BCS and lie down time

Quality differences in cheeses produced by lowland and highland units of the Alpine transhumant system

The characteristics of ripened cheeses depend on a large number of factors, of which animal feeding plays an important role. Several researches showed influences of factors linked to forage, such as quality or method of conservation (Verdier-Metz et al., 1998)

Certainty Closure: Reliable Constraint Reasoning with Incomplete or Erroneous Data

Constraint Programming (CP) has proved an effective paradigm to model and solve difficult combinatorial satisfaction and optimisation problems from disparate domains. Many such problems arising from the commercial world are permeated by data uncertainty. Existing CP approaches that accommodate uncertainty are less suited to uncertainty arising due to incomplete and erroneous data, because they do not build reliable models and solutions guaranteed to address the user's genuine problem as she perceives it. Other fields such as reliable computation offer combinations of models and associated methods to handle these types of uncertain data, but lack an expressive framework characterising the resolution methodology independently of the model. We present a unifying framework that extends the CP formalism in both model and solutions, to tackle ill-defined combinatorial problems with incomplete or erroneous data. The certainty closure framework brings together modelling and solving methodologies from different fields into the CP paradigm to provide reliable and efficient approches for uncertain constraint problems. We demonstrate the applicability of the framework on a case study in network diagnosis. We define resolution forms that give generic templates, and their associated operational semantics, to derive practical solution methods for reliable solutions.Comment: Revised versio

Metalevel algorithms for variant satisfiability

Variant satisfiability is a theory-generic algorithm to decide quantifier-free satisfiability in an initial algebra when its corresponding theory has the finite variant property and its constructors satisfy a compactness condition. This paper: (i) gives a precise definition of several meta-level sub-algorithms needed for variant satisfiability; (ii) proves them correct; and (iii) presents a reflective implementation in Maude 2.7 of variant satisfiability using these sub-algorithms.NSF CNS 13-19109Ope

Variant-Based Decidable Satisfiability in Initial Algebras with Predicates

[EN] Decision procedures can be either theory-specific, e.g., Presburger arithmetic, or theory-generic, applying to an infinite number of user-definable theories. Variant satisfiability is a theory-generic procedure for quantifier-free satisfiability in the initial algebra of an order-sorted equational theory (¿,E¿B) under two conditions: (i) E¿B has the finite variant property and B has a finitary unification algorithm; and (ii) (¿,E¿B) protects a constructor subtheory (¿,E¿¿B¿) that is OS-compact. These conditions apply to many user-definable theories, but have a main limitation: they apply well to data structures, but often do not hold for user-definable predicates on such data structures. We present a theory-generic satisfiability decision procedure, and a prototype implementation, extending variant-based satisfiability to initial algebras with user-definable predicates under fairly general conditions.Partially supported by NSF Grant CNS 14-09416, NRL under contract number N00173-17-1-G002, the EU (FEDER), Spanish MINECO project TIN2015-69175- C4-1-R and GV project PROMETEOII/2015/013. Ra´ul Guti´errez was also supported by INCIBE program “Ayudas para la excelencia de los equipos de investigaci´on avanzada en ciberseguridad”.Gutiérrez Gil, R.; Meseguer, J. (2018). Variant-Based Decidable Satisfiability in Initial Algebras with Predicates. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 10855:306-322. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94460-9_18S30632210855Armando, A., Bonacina, M.P., Ranise, S., Schulz, S.: New results on rewrite-based satisfiability procedures. TOCL 10(1), 4 (2009)Armando, A., Ranise, S., Rusinowitch, M.: A rewriting approach to satisfiability procedures. 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Ph.D. thesis, ENS Cachan (2011)Comon, H.: Complete axiomatizations of some quotient term algebras. TCS 118(2), 167–191 (1993)Comon-Lundh, H., Delaune, S.: The finite variant property: how to get rid of some algebraic properties. In: Giesl, J. (ed.) RTA 2005. LNCS, vol. 3467, pp. 294–307. Springer, Heidelberg (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-32033-3_22Dershowitz, N., Jouannaud, J.P.: Rewrite systems. In: Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, North-Holland, vol. B, pp. 243–320 (1990)Dovier, A., Piazza, C., Rossi, G.: A uniform approach to constraint-solving for lists, multisets, compact lists, and sets. TOCL 9(3), 15 (2008)Dross, C., Conchon, S., Kanig, J., Paskevich, A.: Adding decision procedures to SMT solvers using axioms with triggers. JAR 56(4), 387–457 (2016)Escobar, S., Sasse, R., Meseguer, J.: Folding variant narrowing and optimal variant termination. JALP 81, 898–928 (2012)Goguen, J.A., Meseguer, J.: Models and equality for logical programming. In: Ehrig, H., Kowalski, R., Levi, G., Montanari, U. (eds.) TAPSOFT 1987. LNCS, vol. 250, pp. 1–22. Springer, Heidelberg (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0014969Goguen, J., Meseguer, J.: Order-sorted algebra I: equational deduction for multiple inheritance, overloading, exceptions and partial operations. TCS 105, 217–273 (1992)Gutiérrez, R., Meseguer, J.: Variant satisfiability in initial algebras with predicates. Technical report, CS Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2018). http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99039Jouannaud, J.P., Kirchner, H.: Completion of a set of rules modulo a set of equations. SICOMP 15, 1155–1194 (1986)Kroening, D., Strichman, O.: Decision Procedures - An algorithmic point of view. Texts in TCS. An EATCS Series. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74105-3Lynch, C., Morawska, B.: Automatic decidability. In: Proceedings of LICS 2002, p. 7. IEEE Computer Society (2002)Lynch, C., Tran, D.-K.: Automatic decidability and combinability revisited. In: Pfenning, F. (ed.) CADE 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4603, pp. 328–344. Springer, Heidelberg (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73595-3_22Meseguer, J.: Variant-based satisfiability in initial algebras. SCP 154, 3–41 (2018)Meseguer, J.: Strict coherence of conditional rewriting modulo axioms. TCS 672, 1–35 (2017)Meseguer, J., Goguen, J.: Initiality, induction and computability. In: Algebraic Methods in Semantics, Cambridge, pp. 459–541 (1985)Meseguer, J., Goguen, J.: Order-sorted algebra solves the constructor-selector, multiple representation and coercion problems. I&C 103(1), 114–158 (1993)Nelson, G., Oppen, D.C.: Simplification by cooperating decision procedures. TOPLAS 1(2), 245–257 (1979)Shostak, R.E.: Deciding combinations of theories. J. ACM 31(1), 1–12 (1984)Skeirik, S., Meseguer, J.: Metalevel algorithms for variant satisfiability. In: Lucanu, D. (ed.) WRLA 2016. 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Minimizing conservativity violations in ontology alignments: algorithms and evaluation

In order to enable interoperability between ontology-based systems, ontology matching techniques have been proposed. However, when the generated mappings lead to undesired logical consequences, their usefulness may be diminished. In this paper, we present an approach to detect and minimize the violations of the so-called conservativity principle where novel subsumption entailments between named concepts in one of the input ontologies are considered as unwanted. The practical applicability of the proposed approach is experimentally demonstrated on the datasets from the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative

CP Violation in Top Quark Pair Production at Hadron Colliders

CP violating effects in top quark pair production at the future 2 TeV $p\bar p$ Tevatron and 14 TeV $pp$ LHC colliders are investigated. We study three kinds of CP violating sources:the supersymmetric CP-odd phase of the stop trilinear soft breaking term: $arg(A_t)$, the CP-odd parameter in two-Higgs doublet extensions of the standard model(2HDM), and the model-independent top quark chromoelectric dipole moment(CEDM), respectively. Optimal observables as well as simple observables are used. We find that it is possible to observe CP violating effects from $arg(A_t)$ in top quark pair production at the 2 TeV Tevatron with $\sim 30fb^{-1}$ integrated luminosity when $m_{\tilde{g}}\sim 200$ GeV. If the experimental systematic errors are sufficient small, the LHC with $\sim 150fb^{-1}$ can put a limit of order $10^{-1}$ on the phase $arg(A_t)$ and the CP-odd parameter in 2HDM by using optimal observables. The CEDM of the top quark can be measured to an accuracy of $10^{-18} cm g_s$ at the Tevatron and few $\times 10^{-20} cm g_s$ at the LHC.Comment: 28 pages,3 figures, 38 ref

On the relations between Markov chain lumpability and reversibility

In the literature, the notions of lumpability and time reversibility for large Markov chains have been widely used to efficiently study the functional and non-functional properties of computer systems. In this paper we explore the relations among different definitions of lumpability (strong, exact and strict) and the notion of time-reversed Markov chain. Specifically, we prove that an exact lumping induces a strong lumping on the reversed Markov chain and a strict lumping holds both for the forward and the reversed processes. Based on these results we introduce the class of λρ-reversible Markov chains which combines the notions of lumping and time reversibility modulo state renaming. We show that the class of autoreversible processes, previously introduced in Marin and Rossi (Proceedings of the IEEE 21st international symposium on modeling, analysis and simulation of computer and telecommunication systems MASCOTS, pp. 151–160, 2013), is strictly contained in the class of λρ-reversible chains