Enhancing Semantic Bidirectionalization via Shape Bidirectionalizer Plug-ins

Matsuda et al. (2007) and Voigtlander (2009) have introduced two techniques that given a source-to-view function provide an update propagation function mapping an original source and an updated view back to an updated source, subject to standard consistency conditions. Previously, we developed a synthesis of the two techniques, based on a separation of shape and content aspects (Voigtlander et al. 2010). Here, we carry that idea further, reworking the technique of Voigtlander such that any shape bidirectionalizer (based on the work of Matsuda et al. or not) can be used as a plug-in, to good effect. We also provide a data-type-generic account, enabling wider reuse, including the use of pluggable bidirectionalization itself as a plug-in

Ray Strachey ARC1983 -010 - Finding Aid

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/findingaids/1039/thumbnail.jp

Online partial evaluation of sheet-defined functions

We present a spreadsheet implementation, extended with sheet-defined functions, that allows users to define functions using only standard spreadsheet concepts such as cells, formulas and references, requiring no new syntax. This implements an idea proposed by Peyton-Jones and others. As the main contribution of this paper, we then show how to add an online partial evaluator for such sheet-defined functions. The result is a higher-order functional language that is dynamically typed, in keeping with spreadsheet traditions, and an interactive platform for function definition and function specialization. We describe an implementation of these ideas, present some performance data from microbenchmarks, and outline desirable improvements and extensions.Comment: In Proceedings Festschrift for Dave Schmidt, arXiv:1309.455

Orthogonal parallel processing in vector pascal

Despite the widespread adoption of parallel operations in contemporary CPU designs, their use has been restricted by a lack of appropriate programming language abstractions and development environments. To fully exploit the SIMD model of computation such operations offer, programmers depend on CPU specific machine code or implementation dependent libraries. Vector Pascal is a language designed to enable the elegant and efficient expression of SIMD algorithms. It imports into Pascal abstraction mechanisms derived from functional languages, in turn having their origins in APL. In particular, it extends all operators to work on vectors of data. The type system is also extended to handle pixels and dimensional analysis. Code generation is via the ILCG system that allows retargeting to multiple different SIMD instruction sets based on formalised descriptions of the instruction set semantics

“Not walled facts, their essence”: Derek Walcott’s Tiepolo’s Hound and Camille Pissarro

Life-writing — a genre which goes beyond traditional biography, includes both fact and fiction, and is concerned with either entire lives or days-in-the-lives of individuals, communities, objects, or institutions — has always played an important role in Derek Walcott’s work, from Another Life (1973),Walcott’s autobiography in verse, to his last play O Starry Starry Night (2014), where he re-imagines Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh’s (often tempestuous) cohabitation in the so-called “Yellow House” in 1888 Arles. In Tiepolo’s Hound (2000), Walcott’s life rhymes with that of the Impressionist painter Jacob Camille Pissarro, who was born in the Caribbean island of St Thomas in 1830. In this work, biographical and autobiographical impulses, fact and fiction, are productively combined, as “creation” (what “might have happened”) shapes Walcott’s life-writing as much as “recreation” (what “actually” happened). Walcott’s Pissarro is an individual immersed in a set of historical networks but also a figure at the centre of a web of imagined relations which illuminate the predicament of present and past artists in the Caribbean region and the ways in which they articulate their vision vis-à-vis the metropolitan centre, their relationship with their social and natural environment, and their individual and collective identity. Tiepolo’s Hound is enriched by the inclusion of twenty-six of Walcott’s own paintings which engage in conversation with the poet’s words and add complexity to his meditation on the nature and purpose of (re)writing and (re)creating lives. Extending the catholicity of life-writing to animals, in this case dogs and, in particular, mongrels, Tiepolo’s Hound also entails a careful, if counterintuitive, evaluation of anonymity

Fish-borne trematodosis: Potential risk of infection by Ascocotyle (Phagicola) longa (Heterophyidae)

AbstractOwing to the veterinary and medical importance of heterophyid trematodes, a survey on Ascocotyle (Phagicola) longa in different organs of mullets Mugil liza from Rio de Janeiro was undertaken. The prevalence of metacercariae varied greatly between different organs of the mullets: spleen (100%), heart (98%), intestine wall (97%), liver (97%), muscle (87%), stomach wall (77%), brain (47%), gonads (30%) and gall bladder (30%). The high level of the intensity of the infection in relation to different fish organs was confirmed in two experimental infections performed during the spring/summer and autumn/winter seasons when 258 and 47 adult parasites were recovered from hamsters fed only with small pieces of muscle tissue. The potential risk of infection was considered to be high in view of the high prevalence and intensity of A. (P.) longa in the muscles of mullets throughout the year. Additionally new confocal imaging of metacercariae and adults experimentally obtained, enabled for the first time the description of a short genital atrium formed by the union of uterus and ejaculatory duct

‘New and important careers’: how women excelled at the BBC, 1923–1939

From its beginnings in 1923, the BBC employed a sizeable female workforce. The majority were in support roles as typists, secretaries and clerks but, during the 1920s and 1930s, a significant number held important posts. As a modern industry, the BBC took a largely progressive approach towards the ‘career women’ on its staff, many of whom were in jobs that were developed specifically for the new medium of broadcasting. Women worked as drama producers, advertising representatives and Children’s Hour Organisers. They were talent spotters, press officers and documentary makers. Three women attained Director status while others held significant administrative positions. This article considers in what ways it was the modernity and novelty of broadcasting, combined with changing employment possibilities and attitudes towards women evident after the First World War, that combined to create the conditions in which they could excel

The Communist Party and the New Party

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Contemporary British History, vol. 23(4), 2009, pp.477-491 copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13619460903198101The New Party was never at the centre of the concerns of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). However, the CPGB had to take a line on the new organisation when it was formed, and tried to use it to smear Labour and Independent Labour Party politicians as enemies of the working class. As the 1931 political crisis unfolded, the New Party became increasingly an irrelevance at the side of the much more tangible threat of the National government, although communists did campaign against Mosley in late 1931. Ultimately, the New Party was significant for the communists because it seemed to offer some vindication of the 'class against class' line; because it suggested that the CPGB was not always wrong in its analysis; because it led to increased attention to the party's youth movement; and because it led to the leading left-wing polemicist of the 1930s, John Strachey, working with the CPGB for almost a decade

Reassessing Britain’s ‘post-war consensus’: the politics of reason 1945–1979

Since the late-1970s, scholars have been engaged in a vibrant debate about the nature of post-war British politics. While some writers have suggested that the three decades that succeeded the Second World War witnessed a bi-partisan consensus on key policy questions, others have argued that it was conflict, not agreement, that marked the period. This article offers a novel contribution to this controversy by drawing attention to the epistemological beliefs of the Labour and Conservative parties. It argues that once these beliefs are considered, it becomes possible to reconcile some of the competing claims made by proponents and critics of the ‘post-war consensus’ thesis. Labour and Conservative leaders may have been wedded to different beliefs, but they also shared a common enthusiasm for empiricist reasoning and were both reluctant to identify fixed political ‘ends’ that they sought to realise. Consequently, they were both committed to evolutionary forms of change, and they eschewed the notion that any social or political arrangement was of universal value

Java and scala's type systems are unsound: the existential crisis of null pointers

We present short programs that demonstrate the unsoundness of Java and Scala's current type systems. In particular, these programs provide parametrically polymorphic functions that can turn any type into any type without (down) casting. Fortunately, parametric polymorphism was not integrated into the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), so these examples do not demonstrate any unsoundness of the JVM. Nonetheless, we discuss broader implications of these findings on the field of programming languages