Unique Parallel Decomposition for the Pi-calculus

A (fragment of a) process algebra satisfies unique parallel decomposition if the definable behaviours admit a unique decomposition into indecomposable parallel components. In this paper we prove that finite processes of the pi-calculus, i.e. processes that perform no infinite executions, satisfy this property modulo strong bisimilarity and weak bisimilarity. Our results are obtained by an application of a general technique for establishing unique parallel decomposition using decomposition orders.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2016, arXiv:1608.0269

Split-2 Bisimilarity has a Finite Axiomatization over CCS with<br> Hennessy&#39;s Merge

This note shows that split-2 bisimulation equivalence (also known as timed equivalence) affords a finite equational axiomatization over the process algebra obtained by adding an auxiliary operation proposed by Hennessy in 1981 to the recursion, relabelling and restriction free fragment of Milner's Calculus of Communicating Systems. Thus the addition of a single binary operation, viz. Hennessy's merge, is sufficient for the finite equational axiomatization of parallel composition modulo this non-interleaving equivalence. This result is in sharp contrast to a theorem previously obtained by the same authors to the effect that the same language is not finitely based modulo bisimulation equivalence

The countrywide effects of aid

There are three main approaches to analyzing the effects of aid money and aid-supported reform: before-and-after comparison; control group (simple and modified) studies; and modeling. All three approaches have been used to carry out macroeconomic analysis of policy reform. But before-and-after and simple control group approaches are not valid explanatory techniques, say the authors; the results may be used to describe what happened, but not why it happened. Theoretically, the modified control group is the strongest approach. In practice, it has many shortcomings - in particular, its failure to allow for the effects of aid and other capital flows as an explanatory variable. The macroeconomic impact of aid inflows is best understood within the context of an accounting framework, say the authors. The literature on the macroeconomic effects of aid funds has relied almost entirely on modeling. But much work has used only single equations, so that many potentially important relationships - notably aid's effects on output and income - are excluded from the analysis. Even the simultaneous models used are mostly partial, not general, equilibrium models - which makes the findings doubtful. And much of the empirical work suffers from methodological shortcomings. Much research is needed on how aid affects the private sector macroeconomically; more is known about how to analyze the public sector's response to aid inflows. The analysis of aidmoney and aid-supported policy reform can be incorporated into a single framework - but with the effects of each clearly separable. The authors favor a country-specific modeling approach because it allows the separate analysis of policies and money as well as the separate analysis of different policies. Country-specific analysis can capture local factors that may be omitted from cross-country analyses. They argue that counterfactual analysis using econometric or general equilibrium models may be the most legitimate approach to analyzing the relationship between poverty and economic reform. Modeling has yielded results quite different from the common view about the social impact of reform policies, they say, but existing models fail to incorporate aid as an important macroeconomic variable. Project aid, program aid, commodity (mainly food) aid, and technical assistance are the four main types of aid. One problem in much of the literature is that an aggregate aid figure is used, even though the macroeconomic repercussions of these different types of aid will differ. Much analysis is also flawed by considering the effects of a program (despite different intensities and compliance rates) rather than the policies implemented.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,School Health,Poverty Assessment

Sequential Composition in the Presence of Intermediate Termination (Extended Abstract)

The standard operational semantics of the sequential composition operator gives rise to unbounded branching and forgetfulness when transparent process expressions are put in sequence. Due to transparency, the correspondence between context-free and pushdown processes fails modulo bisimilarity, and it is not clear how to specify an always terminating half counter. We propose a revised operational semantics for the sequential composition operator in the context of intermediate termination. With the revised operational semantics, we eliminate transparency, allowing us to establish a close correspondence between context-free processes and pushdown processes. Moreover, we prove the reactive Turing powerfulness of TCP with iteration and nesting with the revised operational semantics for sequential composition.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2017, arXiv:1709.00049. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1706.0840

Branching Bisimilarity with Explicit Divergence

We consider the relational characterisation of branching bisimilarity with explicit divergence. We prove that it is an equivalence and that it coincides with the original definition of branching bisimilarity with explicit divergence in terms of coloured traces. We also establish a correspondence with several variants of an action-based modal logic with until- and divergence modalities

Divergence-Preserving Branching Bisimilarity

This note considers the notion of divergence-preserving branching bisimilarity. It briefly surveys results pertaining to the notion that have been obtained in the past one-and-a-half decade, discusses its role in the study of expressiveness of process calculi, and concludes with some suggestions for future work.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2020, arXiv:2008.1241

Reactive Turing Machines

We propose reactive Turing machines (RTMs), extending classical Turing machines with a process-theoretical notion of interaction, and use it to define a notion of executable transition system. We show that every computable transition system with a bounded branching degree is simulated modulo divergence-preserving branching bisimilarity by an RTM, and that every effective transition system is simulated modulo the variant of branching bisimilarity that does not require divergence preservation. We conclude from these results that the parallel composition of (communicating) RTMs can be simulated by a single RTM. We prove that there exist universal RTMs modulo branching bisimilarity, but these essentially employ divergence to be able to simulate an RTM of arbitrary branching degree. We also prove that modulo divergence-preserving branching bisimilarity there are RTMs that are universal up to their own branching degree. Finally, we establish a correspondence between executability and finite definability in a simple process calculus

Computation Tree Logic with Deadlock Detection

We study the equivalence relation on states of labelled transition systems of satisfying the same formulas in Computation Tree Logic without the next state modality (CTL-X). This relation is obtained by De Nicola & Vaandrager by translating labelled transition systems to Kripke structures, while lifting the totality restriction on the latter. They characterised it as divergence sensitive branching bisimulation equivalence. We find that this equivalence fails to be a congruence for interleaving parallel composition. The reason is that the proposed application of CTL-X to non-total Kripke structures lacks the expressiveness to cope with deadlock properties that are important in the context of parallel composition. We propose an extension of CTL-X, or an alternative treatment of non-totality, that fills this hiatus. The equivalence induced by our extension is characterised as branching bisimulation equivalence with explicit divergence, which is, moreover, shown to be the coarsest congruence contained in divergence sensitive branching bisimulation equivalence

Tree rules in probabilistic transition system specifications with negative and quantitative premises

Probabilistic transition system specifications (PTSSs) in the ntmufnu/ntmuxnu format provide structural operational semantics for Segala-type systems that exhibit both probabilistic and nondeterministic behavior and guarantee that isimilarity is a congruence.Similar to the nondeterministic case of rule format tyft/tyxt, we show that the well-foundedness requirement is unnecessary in the probabilistic setting. To achieve this, we first define an extended version of the ntmufnu/ntmuxnu format in which quantitative premises and conclusions include nested convex combinations of distributions. This format also guarantees that bisimilarity is a congruence. Then, for a given (possibly non-well-founded) PTSS in the new format, we construct an equivalent well-founded transition system consisting of only rules of the simpler (well-founded) probabilistic ntree format. Furthermore, we develop a proof-theoretic notion for these PTSSs that coincides with the existing stratification-based meaning in case the PTSS is stratifiable. This continues the line of research lifting structural operational semantic results from the nondeterministic setting to systems with both probabilistic and nondeterministic behavior.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2012, arXiv:1208.244