Towards the Formal Specification and Verification of Maple Programs

In this paper, we present our ongoing work and initial results on the formal specification and verification of MiniMaple (a substantial subset of Maple with slight extensions) programs. The main goal of our work is to find behavioral errors in such programs w.r.t. their specifications by static analysis. This task is more complex for widely used computer algebra languages like Maple as these are fundamentally different from classical languages: they support non-standard types of objects such as symbols, unevaluated expressions and polynomials and require abstract computer algebraic concepts and objects such as rings and orderings etc. As a starting point we have defined and formalized a syntax, semantics, type system and specification language for MiniMaple

Origin of the Scaling Law in Human Mobility: Hierarchical Organization of Traffic Systems

Uncovering the mechanism leading to the scaling law in human trajectories is of fundamental importance in understanding many spatiotemporal phenomena. We propose a hierarchical geographical model to mimic the real traffic system, upon which a random walker will generate a power-law travel displacement distribution with exponent -2. When considering the inhomogeneities of cities' locations and attractions, this model reproduces a power-law displacement distribution with an exponential cutoff, as well as a scaling behavior in the probability density of having traveled a certain distance at a certain time. Our results agree very well with the empirical observations reported in [D. Brockmann et al., Nature 439, 462 (2006)].Comment: 6 figures, 4 page

Magnetic Phase Transitions in One-dimensional Strongly Attractive Three-Component Ultracold Fermions

We investigate the nature of trions, pairing and quantum phase transitions in one-dimensional strongly attractive three-component ultracold fermions in external fields. Exact results for the groundstate energy, critical fields, magnetization and phase diagrams are obtained analytically from the Bethe ansatz solutions. Driven by Zeeman splitting, the system shows exotic phases of trions, bound pairs, a normal Fermi liquid and four mixtures of these states. Particularly, a smooth phase transition from a trionic phase into a pairing phase occurs as the highest hyperfine level separates from the two lower energy levels. In contrast, there is a smooth phase transition from the trionic phase into a normal Fermi liquid as the lowest level separates from the two higher levels.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, minor revisions to text, replacement figure, refs added and update