5,412 research outputs found
Towards Static Analysis of Functional Programs using Tree Automata Completion
This paper presents the first step of a wider research effort to apply tree
automata completion to the static analysis of functional programs. Tree
Automata Completion is a family of techniques for computing or approximating
the set of terms reachable by a rewriting relation. The completion algorithm we
focus on is parameterized by a set E of equations controlling the precision of
the approximation and influencing its termination. For completion to be used as
a static analysis, the first step is to guarantee its termination. In this
work, we thus give a sufficient condition on E and T(F) for completion
algorithm to always terminate. In the particular setting of functional
programs, this condition can be relaxed into a condition on E and T(C) (terms
built on the set of constructors) that is closer to what is done in the field
of static analysis, where abstractions are performed on data.Comment: Proceedings of WRLA'14. 201
Biological Altruism and the cultural-evolutionary roots of religion
The unselfish, altruistic behavior of insect societies can be explained by way of unusually close genetic relatedness, while the cooperative behavior of chimpanzee and other distantly related mammalian social groups results from their daily, social \"fit-for-tat\" trading of favors. These sociobioiogical explanations, however, are inadequate to explain altruistic behavior among human groups with members numbering in the thousands or millions, groups consisting for the most part of genetically unrelated individuals with little or no daily social contact. Religion, cultural evolutionary theory suggests, may be the glue that binds them together
World Community: Searching for a Global Cosmology
Every culture in history has had a cosmology, a myth about origins. Such cosmologies provide societal and religious structure, ethics, and morals. Driven by mass communication, humanity is rapidly moving toward a world community. Individual cultures have been increasingly thrown into conflict, causing fear and defensive reactions. Global humanity needs what no culture has ever been without: a unifying cosmology. Many who are seeking fruitful dialogue between faith and science have become intimately involved in searching for such a cosmology. In the same spirit, others seek a more productive interfaith dialogue. Complex-systems approaches and process thinking may provide a model for both
Reversible compression of an optical piston through Kramers dynamics
We study the reversible crossover between stable and bistable phases of an
over-damped Brownian bead inside an optical piston. The interaction potentials
are solved developing a method based on Kramers' theory that exploits the
statistical properties of the stochastic motion of the bead. We evaluate
precisely the energy balance of the crossover. We show that the deformation of
the optical potentials induced by the compression of the piston is related to a
production of heat which measures the non-adiabatic character of the crossover.
This reveals how specific thermodynamic processes can be designed and
controlled with a high level of precision by tailoring the optical landscapes
of the piston.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figure
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