Theory of partial-order programming

This paper shows the use of partial-order program clauses and lattice domains for declarative programming. This paradigm is particularly useful for expressing concise solutions to problems from graph theory, program analysis, and database querying. These applications are characterized by a need to solve circular constraints and perform aggregate operations, a capability that is very clearly and efficiently provided by partial-order clauses. We present a novel approach to their declarative and operational semantics, as well as the correctness of the operational semantics. The declarative semantics is model-theoretic in nature, but the least model for any function is not the classical intersection of all models, but the greatest lower bound/least upper bound of the respective terms defined for this function in the different models. The operational semantics combines top-down goal reduction with memo-tables. In the partial-order programming framework, however, memoization is primarily needed in order to detect circular circular function calls. In general we need more than simple memoization when functions are defined circularly in terms of one another through monotonic functions. In such cases, we accumulate a set of functional-constraint and solve them by general fixed-point-finding procedure. In order to prove the correctness of memoization, a straightforward induction on the length of the derivation will not suffice because of the presence of the memo-table. However, since the entries in the table grow monotonically, we identify a suitable table invariant that captures the correctness of the derivation. The partial-order programming paradigm has been implemented and all examples shown in this paper have been tested using this implementation

Aorto-occlusive disease causing pregnancy complications: A serendipitous diagnosis

Takayasu arteritis or pulse-less disease is known to present in myriad forms. Here, we report the case of a 22-year-old young pregnant female who presented to us with pregnancy complications was finally diagnosed to have Takayasu Arteritis but not before her disease course took a lot of diagnostic turns. It highlights the fact that the disease is very variable in its presentation. The other unique presentations reported in literature along with a brief review of the treatment options are also given

Temporal constrained objects for modelling neuronal dynamics

Background Several new programming languages and technologies have emerged in the past few decades in order to ease the task of modelling complex systems. Modelling the dynamics of complex systems requires various levels of abstractions and reductive measures in representing the underlying behaviour. This also often requires making a trade-off between how realistic a model should be in order to address the scientific questions of interest and the computational tractability of the model. Methods In this paper, we propose a novel programming paradigm, called temporal constrained objects, which facilitates a principled approach to modelling complex dynamical systems. Temporal constrained objects are an extension of constrained objects with a focus on the analysis and prediction of the dynamic behaviour of a system. The structural aspects of a neuronal system are represented using objects, as in object-oriented languages, while the dynamic behaviour of neurons and synapses are modelled using declarative temporal constraints. Computation in this paradigm is a process of constraint satisfaction within a time-based simulation. Results We identified the feasibility and practicality in automatically mapping different kinds of neuron and synapse models to the constraints of temporal constrained objects. Simple neuronal networks were modelled by composing circuit components, implicitly satisfying the internal constraints of each component and interface constraints of the composition. Simulations show that temporal constrained objects provide significant conciseness in the formulation of these models. The underlying computational engine employed here automatically finds the solutions to the problems stated, reducing the code for modelling and simulation control. All examples reported in this paper have been programmed and successfully tested using the prototype language called TCOB. The code along with the programming environment are available at http://github.com/compneuro/TCOB_Neuron. Discussion Temporal constrained objects provide powerful capabilities for modelling the structural and dynamic aspects of neural systems. Capabilities of the constraint programming paradigm, such as declarative specification, the ability to express partial information and non-directionality, and capabilities of the object-oriented paradigm especially aggregation and inheritance, make this paradigm the right candidate for complex systems and computational modelling studies. With the advent of multi-core parallel computer architectures and techniques or parallel constraint-solving, the paradigm of temporal constrained objects lends itself to highly efficient execution which is necessary for modelling and simulation of large brain circuits

Subset-Equational Programming in Intelligent Decision Systems

Subset-equational programming is a paradigm of programming with subset and equality assertions. The underlying computational model is based on innermost reduction of expressions and restricted associative-commutative (a-c) matching for iteration over setvalued terms, where [ is the a-c constructor. Subset assertions incorporate a `collect-all' capability, so that the different subset assertions matching a goal expression and the different a-c matches with each subset assertion are all considered in defining the resulting set of the goal expression. We provide several examples to illustrate the paradigm, and also describe extensions to improve programming convenience: negation by failure, relative sets, and quantifiers. We also discuss the use of subset-equational programming for intelligent decision systems: the rule-based notation is well-suited for expressing domain knowledge and rules; subset assertions are especially appropriate in backchaining systems like MYCIN, which performs an..