Three-block exceptional collections over Del Pezzo surfaces

We study complete exceptional collections of coherent sheaves over Del Pezzo surfaces, which consist of three blocks such that inside each block all Ext groups between the sheaves are zero. We show that the ranks of all sheaves in such a block are the same and the three ranks corresponding to a complete 3-block exceptional collection satisfy a Markov-type Diophantine equation that is quadratic in each variable. For each Del Pezzo surface, there is a finite number of these equations; the complete list is given. The 3-string braid group acts by mutations on the set of complete 3-block exceptional collections. We describe this action. In particular, any orbit contains a 3-block collection with the sum of ranks that is minimal for the solutions of the corresponding Markov-type equation, and the orbits can be obtained from each other via tensoring by an invertible sheaf and with the action of the Weyl group. This allows us to compute the number of orbits up to twisting.Comment: LaTex v2.09, 32 pages with 1 figure. To appear in Izvestiya Mat

Formal Compiler Implementation in a Logical Framework

The task of designing and implementing a compiler can be a difficult and error-prone process. In this paper, we present a new approach based on the use of higher-order abstract syntax and term rewriting in a logical framework. All program transformations, from parsing to code generation, are cleanly isolated and specified as term rewrites. This has several advantages. The correctness of the compiler depends solely on a small set of rewrite rules that are written in the language of formal mathematics. In addition, the logical framework guarantees the preservation of scoping, and it automates many frequently-occurring tasks including substitution and rewriting strategies. As we show, compiler development in a logical framework can be easier than in a general-purpose language like ML, in part because of automation, and also because the framework provides extensive support for examination, validation, and debugging of the compiler transformations. The paper is organized around a case study, using the MetaPRL logical framework to compile an ML-like language to Intel x86 assembly. We also present a scoped formalization of x86 assembly in which all registers are immutable

Transforming a Beauty Pageant: Mrs. America Contest in the Palisades Amusement Park and Asbury Park, NJ

The paper examines the history and transformation of the Mrs. America Pageant that was first initiated as a part of the Palisades Amusement Park attractions and later moved to Asbury Park, NJ. It looks at how the idea of model motherhood was enacted in the contest for married women which had begun as a beauty contest emulating the Miss America Pageant. The contest which transformed itself into a "home-making Olympics" after the Second World War testing contestants' skills of cooking, baking, sewing, and even changing diapers in addition to judging their physical appearance truly reflected the social ideal for American women in the Cold War period. The paper assesses how the contest helped to consolidate the notion of the perfect housewife, implying that beauty and home economics went together, and contributed to the professionalization of women's work at home

A Computational Approach to Reflective Meta-Reasoning about Languages with Bindings

We present a foundation for a computational meta-theory of languages with bindings implemented in a computer-aided formal reasoning environment. Our theory provides the ability to reason abstractly about operators, languages, open-ended languages, classes of languages, etc. The theory is based on the ideas of higher-order abstract syntax, with an appropriate induction principle parameterized over the language (i.e. a set of operators) being used. In our approach, both the bound and free variables are treated uniformly and this uniform treatment extends naturally to variable-length bindings. The implementation is reflective, namely there is a natural mapping between the meta-language of the theorem-prover and the object language of our theory. The object language substitution operation is mapped to the meta-language substitution and does not need to be defined recursively. Our approach does not require designing a custom type theory; in this paper we describe the implementation of this foundational theory within a general-purpose type theory. This work is fully implemented in the MetaPRL theorem prover, using the pre-existing NuPRL-like Martin-Lof-style computational type theory. Based on this implementation, we lay out an outline for a framework for programming language experimentation and exploration as well as a general reflective reasoning framework. This paper also includes a short survey of the existing approaches to syntactic reflection

LP → LQ - Estimates for the Fractional Acoustic Potentials and some Related Operators

Mathematics Subject Classification: 47B38, 31B10, 42B20, 42B15.We obtain the Lp → Lq - estimates for the fractional acoustic potentials in R^n, which are known to be negative powers of the Helmholtz operator, and some related operators. Some applications of these estimates are also given.* This paper has been supported by Russian Fond of Fundamental Investigations under Grant No. 40–01–008632 a

A bound on Grassmannian codes

We give a new asymptotic upper bound on the size of a code in the Grassmannian space. The bound is better than the upper bounds known previously in the entire range of distances except very large values.Comment: 5 pages, submitte