Process algebraic non-product-forms

AbstractA generalization of the Reversed Compound Agent Theorem of Markovian process algebra is derived that yields separable, but non-product-form solutions for collections of interacting processes such as arise in multi-class queueing networks with Processor Sharing servers. It is based on an analysis of the minimal cycles in the state space of a multi-agent cooperation, which can be simply identified. The extended methodology leads to what we believe are new separable solutions and, more generally, the results represent a viable practical application of the theory of Markovian process algebras in stochastic modelling

Microstructural characterisation of biocompatible sol-gel derived vanadium doped TiO2 on Ti substrates

Sol-gel derived pure titania is compared with vanadium and / or aluminium modified titania deposited by spin coating on pure titanium substrates annealed at 300C and 650C. Reflection high-energy electron diffraction indicated the presence of anatase from the surface layers of samples annealed at 300C with a transition to rutile with increasing annealing temperature and addition of vanadium. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy indicated a gradation of Ti-O phases through the layer with the dominant presence of rutile. Aluminium was found to inhibit grain growth while vanadium promoted crystallisation

Symbolic-Numeric Algorithms for Computer Analysis of Spheroidal Quantum Dot Models

A computation scheme for solving elliptic boundary value problems with axially symmetric confining potentials using different sets of one-parameter basis functions is presented. The efficiency of the proposed symbolic-numerical algorithms implemented in Maple is shown by examples of spheroidal quantum dot models, for which energy spectra and eigenfunctions versus the spheroid aspect ratio were calculated within the conventional effective mass approximation. Critical values of the aspect ratio, at which the discrete spectrum of models with finite-wall potentials is transformed into a continuous one in strong dimensional quantization regime, were revealed using the exact and adiabatic classifications.Comment: 6 figures, Submitted to Proc. of The 12th International Workshop on Computer Algebra in Scientific Computing (CASC 2010) Tsakhkadzor, Armenia, September 5 - 12, 201

Supporting local diversity of habitats and species on farmland: a comparison of three wildlife-friendly schemes

Restoration and maintenance of habitat diversity have been suggested as conservation priorities in farmed landscapes, but how this should be achieved and at what scale are unclear. This study makes a novel comparison of the effectiveness of three wildlife-friendly farming schemes for supporting local habitat diversity and species richness on 12 farms in England. The schemes were: (i) Conservation Grade (Conservation Grade: a prescriptive, non-organic, biodiversity-focused scheme), (ii) organic agriculture and (iii) a baseline of Entry Level Stewardship (Entry Level Stewardship: a flexible widespread government scheme). Conservation Grade farms supported a quarter higher habitat diversity at the 100-m radius scale compared to Entry Level Stewardship farms. Conservation Grade and organic farms both supported a fifth higher habitat diversity at the 250-m radius scale compared to Entry Level Stewardship farms. Habitat diversity at the 100-m and 250-m scales significantly predicted species richness of butterflies and plants. Habitat diversity at the 100-m scale also significantly predicted species richness of birds in winter and solitary bees. There were no significant relationships between habitat diversity and species richness for bumblebees or birds in summer. Butterfly species richness was significantly higher on organic farms (50% higher) and marginally higher on Conservation Grade farms (20% higher), compared with farms in Entry Level Stewardship. Organic farms supported significantly more plant species than Entry Level Stewardship farms (70% higher) but Conservation Grade farms did not (10% higher). There were no significant differences between the three schemes for species richness of bumblebees, solitary bees or birds. Policy implications. The wildlife-friendly farming schemes which included compulsory changes in management, Conservation Grade and organic, were more effective at increasing local habitat diversity and species richness compared with the less prescriptive Entry Level Stewardship scheme. We recommend that wildlife-friendly farming schemes should aim to enhance and maintain high local habitat diversity, through mechanisms such as option packages, where farmers are required to deliver a combination of several habitats

Discovery of a red supergiant counterpart to RX J004722.4-252051, a ULX in NGC 253

We present two epochs of near-infrared spectroscopy of the candidate red supergiant counterpart to RX J004722.4–252051, a ULX in NGC 253. We measure radial velocities of the object and its approximate spectral type by cross-correlating our spectra with those of known red supergiants. Our VLT/X-shooter spectrum is best matched by that of early M-type supergiants, confirming the red supergiant nature of the candidate counterpart. The radial velocity of the spectrum, taken on 2014 August 23, is 417 ± 4 km s−1. This is consistent with the radial velocity measured in our spectrum taken with Magellan/MMIRS on 2013 June 28, of 410 ± 70 km s−1, although the large error on the latter implies that a radial velocity shift expected for a black hole of tens of M⊙ can easily be hidden. Using nebular emission lines we find that the radial velocity due to the rotation of NGC 253 is 351 ± 4 km s−1 at the position of the ULX. Thus the radial velocity of the counterpart confirms that the source is located in NGC 253, but also shows an offset with respect to the local bulk motion of the galaxy of 66 ± 6 km s−1. We argue that the most likely origin for this displacement lies either in a SN kick, requiring a system containing a ≳ 50 M⊙ black hole, and/or in orbital radial velocity variations in the ULX binary system, requiring a ≳ 100 M⊙ black hole. We therefore conclude that RX J004722.4–252051 is a strong candidate for a ULX containing a massive stellar black hole

Enhancing declarative debugging with loop expansion and tree compression

This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Econom´ıa y Competitividad (Secretar´ıa de Estado de Investigaci´on, Desarrollo e Innovaci´on) under grant TIN2008-06622-C03-02 and by the Generalitat Valenciana under grant PROMETEO/2011/052. David Insa was partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Eduaci´on under FPU grant AP2010-4415Insa Cabrera, D.; Silva Galiana, JF.; Tomás Franco, C. (2013). Enhancing declarative debugging with loop expansion and tree compression. En Logic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation. Springer Verlag (Germany). 71-88. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38197-3_6S7188Binks, D.: Declarative Debugging in Gödel. PhD thesis, University of Bristol (1995)Calejo, M.: A Framework for Declarative Prolog Debugging. PhD thesis, New University of Lisbon (1992)Davie, T., Chitil, O.: Hat-delta: One Right Does Make a Wrong. In: Butterfield, A. (ed.) Draft Proceedings of the 17th International Workshop on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages, IFL 2005, p. 11. Tech. Report No: TCD-CS-2005-60, University of Dublin, Ireland (September 2005)Davie, T., Chitil, O.: Hat-delta: One Right Does Make a Wrong. In: Seventh Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming, TFP 2006 (April 2006)Harrison, P.G., Khoshnevisan, H.: A new approach to recursion removal. Theor. Comput. Sci. 93(1), 91–113 (1992)Hirunkitti, V., Hogger, C.J.: A Generalised Query Minimisation for Program Debugging. In: Adsul, B. (ed.) AADEBUG 1993. LNCS, vol. 749, pp. 153–170. Springer, Heidelberg (1993)Insa, D., Silva, J.: An Algorithmic Debugger for Java. In: Proc. of the 26th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, pp. 1–6 (2010)Insa, D., Silva, J.: Debugging with Incomplete and Dynamically Generated Execution Trees. In: Proc. of the 20th International Symposium on Logic-based Program Synthesis and Transformation, LOPSTR 2010, Austria (2010)Insa, D., Silva, J.: A Transformation of Iterative Loops into Recursive Loops. Technical Report DSIC/05/12, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (2012), http://www.dsic.upv.es/~jsilva/research.htm#techsInsa, D., Silva, J., Tomás, C.: Enhancing Declarative Debugging with Loop Expansion and Tree Compression. Technical Report DSIC/11/12, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (2012), http://www.dsic.upv.es/~jsilva/research.htm#techsLiu, Y.A., Stoller, S.D.: From recursion to iteration: what are the optimizations? In: Proceedings of the 2000 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Semantics-Based Program Manipulation, PEPM 2000, pp. 73–82. ACM, New York (2000)Lloyd, J.W.: Declarative error diagnosis. New Gen. Comput. 5(2), 133–154 (1987)Nilsson, H.: Declarative Debugging for Lazy Functional Languages. PhD thesis, Linköping, Sweden (May 1998)NIST: The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing. USA National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST Planning Report 02-3 (May 2002)Riesco, A., Verdejo, A., Martí-Oliet, N., Caballero, R.: Declarative Debugging of Rewriting Logic Specifications. Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming (September 2011)Shapiro, E.Y.: Algorithmic Program Debugging. MIT Press (1982)Silva, J.: A Survey on Algorithmic Debugging Strategies. Advances in Engineering Software 42(11), 976–991 (2011)Yi, Q., Adve, V., Kennedy, K.: Transforming loops to recursion for multi-level memory hierarchies. In: Proceedings of the SIGPLAN 2000 Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, pp. 169–181 (2000

A Stochastic Broadcast Pi-Calculus

In this paper we propose a stochastic broadcast PI-calculus which can be used to model server-client based systems where synchronization is always governed by only one participant. Therefore, there is no need to determine the joint synchronization rates. We also take immediate transitions into account which is useful to model behaviors with no impact on the temporal properties of a system. Since immediate transitions may introduce non-determinism, we will show how these non-determinism can be resolved, and as result a valid CTMC will be obtained finally. Also some practical examples are given to show the application of this calculus.Comment: In Proceedings QAPL 2011, arXiv:1107.074

Probabilistic Bisimulation: Naturally on Distributions

In contrast to the usual understanding of probabilistic systems as stochastic processes, recently these systems have also been regarded as transformers of probabilities. In this paper, we give a natural definition of strong bisimulation for probabilistic systems corresponding to this view that treats probability distributions as first-class citizens. Our definition applies in the same way to discrete systems as well as to systems with uncountable state and action spaces. Several examples demonstrate that our definition refines the understanding of behavioural equivalences of probabilistic systems. In particular, it solves a long-standing open problem concerning the representation of memoryless continuous time by memory-full continuous time. Finally, we give algorithms for computing this bisimulation not only for finite but also for classes of uncountably infinite systems

Composite Spin Waves, Quasi-Particles and Low Temperature resistivity in Double Exchange Systems

We make a quantum description of the electron low temperature properties of double exchange materials. In these systems there is a strong coupling between the core spin and the carriers spin. This large coupling makes the low energy spin waves to be a combination of ion and electron density spin waves. We study the form and dispersion of these composite spin wave excitations. We also analyze the spin up and down spectral functions of the temperature dependent quasi-particles of this system. Finally we obtain that the thermally activated composite spin waves renormalize the carriers effective mass and this gives rise to a low temperature resistivity scaling as T ^{5/2}.Comment: 4 pages, REVTE