On some families of languages related to developmental systems

OL systems and TOL systems are the simplest mathematical models for the study of the development of biological organisms with or without a variable environment, respectively. This paper contributes to the study of the properties of the languages generated by these systems and by their generalizations. Macro OL (TOL) languages are languages obtained by substituting languages of a given type in OL (TOL) languages. We study properties of certain families of macro OL (TOL) languages in particular we show that they are full AFL's.

We observe that OL, TOL systems and many of their generalizations can be viewed as special classes of index grammars.     

On a family of acceptors for some classes of developmental languages

A machine model, which consists essentially of a finite state control and an array of counters with first-in-last-out access, is formulated and it is proved that, under certain restrictions, the class of languages accepted is identical to the class of developmental languages without interactions.     

The finiteness of synchronous,tabled picture languages is decidable

In the present paper, synchronous, tabled chain code picture systems based on Lindenmayer systems (sT0L system) are studied with respect to the finiteness of their picture languages. The finiteness is proved to be decidable. Additionally, a method is given for deciding whether or not an sT0L system generates a finite picture language.     

A survey of systems programming languages: Concepts and facilities

In recent years, high-level programming languages have evolved specifically for systems programming. In this paper, systems programming languages are surveyed to find common characteristics and individual differences and limitations of a number of current languages, including Ada, Concurrent Pascal, CLU, Pascal-Plus, Modula-2, Mesa, Edison, PLZ/SYS and C. The survey is based on the following classification of systems programming concepts and facilities: types, sequential control, concurrency, encapsulation, environment specifications and programming support environments.     

On the transformation of symmetric sparse matrices to the triple diagonal form

The problem of minimizing the number of zero elements that become non-zero during the computation when a sparse symmetric matrix is reduced to a triple diagonal form, either by Givens' or Householder's method, is discussed. Algorithms for minimizing the growth of such non-zero elements are given.     

Development systems with finite axiom sets

In this paper the notion of a developmental system without interactions is generalized to include a finite number of axioms (rather than one). It is shown that whereas this generalization considerably increases the class of languages generated, the main properties of the larger class of languages are basically the same as those of the smaller class.     

Side-effect free functions in object-oriented languages

This paper presents a method for statically verifying that functions do not produce side-effects, in an object-oriented language. The described model, although not allowing any changes to pre-existing objects during a function call, permits an imperative style of programming, where new objects can be freely created and manipulated.     

Parallel implementation of OPS5 on the encore multiprocessor: Results and analysis

Until now, most results reported for parallelism in production systems (rulebased systems) have been simulation results-very few real parallel implementations exist. In this paper, we present results from our parallel implementation of OPS5 on the Encore multiprocessor. The implementation exploits very finegrained parallelism to achieve significant speed-ups. For one of the applications, we achieve 12.4 fold speed-up using 13 processes. Our implementation is also distinct from other parallel implementations in that we parallelize a highly optimized C-based implementation of OPS5. Running on a uniprocessor, our C-based implementation is 10–20 times faster than the standard lisp implementation distributed by Carnegie Mellon University. In addition to presenting the performance numbers, the paper discusses the details of the parallel implementation-the data structures used, the amount of contention observed for shared data structures, and the techniques used to reduce such contention.     

Hierarchies of parallel rewriting P systems — A survey

The paper is about some families of rewriting P systems, where the application of evolution rules is extended from the classical sequential rewriting to the parallel one (as, for instance, in Lindenmayer systems). As a result, consistency problems for the communication of strings may arise. Three variants of parallel rewriting P systems (already present in the literature) are considered here, together with the strategies they use to face the communication problem, and some parallelism methods for string rewriting are defined. We give a survey of all known results about each variant and we state some relations among the three variants, thus establishing hierarchies of parallel rewriting P systems. Various open problems related to the subject are also presented. Danicla Besozzi: She is assistant professor at the University of Milano. She received her M.S. in Mathematics (2000) from the University of Como and Ph.D. in Computer Science (2004) from the University of Milano. Her research interests cover topics in Formal Language Theory, Molecular Computing, Systems Biology. She is member of EATCS (European Association for Theoretical Computer Science) and EMCC (European Molecular Computing Consortium). Giancarlo Mauri: He is full professor of Computer Science at the University of Milano-Bicocca. His research interests are mainly in the area of theoretical computer science, and include: formal languages and automata, computational complexity, computational learning theory, soft computing techniques, cellular automata, bioinformatics and molecular computing. On these subjects, he published more than 150 scientific papers in international journals, contributed volumes and conference proceedings. Claudio Zandron: He received Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Milan, Italy, in 2001. Since 2002 he is assistant professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. He is member of the EATCS (European Association for Theoretical Computer Science) and of EMCC (European Molecular Computing Consortium). His research interests are Molecular Computing (DNA and Membrane Computing) and Formal Languages.     

Fundamentals of systems ergonomics/human factors

Ergonomics/human factors is, above anything else, a systems discipline and profession, applying a systems philosophy and systems approaches. Many things are labelled as system in today's world, and this paper specifies just what attributes and notions define ergonomics/human factors in systems terms. These are obviously a systems focus, but also concern for context, acknowledgement of interactions and complexity, a holistic approach, recognition of emergence and embedding of the professional effort involved within organization system. These six notions are illustrated with examples from a large body of work on rail human factors.     

Event rates and aggregation in hierarchical discrete event systems

A discrete event system (DES) is a dynamical system whose evolution in time develops as the result of the occurrence of physical events at possibly irregular time intervals. Although many DES's operation is asynchronous, others have dynamics which depend on a clock or some other complex timing schedule. Here we provide a formal representation of the advancement of time for logical DES via interpretations of time. We show that the interpretations of time along with a timing structure provide a framework to study principles of the advancement of time for hierarchical DES (HDES). In particular, it is shown that for a wide class of HDES the event rate is higher for DES at the lower levels of the hierarchy than at the higher levels of the hierarchy. Relationships between event rate and event aggregation are shown. We define a measure for event aggregation and show that there exists an inverse relationship between the amount of event aggregation and the event rate at any two successive levels in a class of HDES. Next, we study how to design the timing structure to ensure that there will be a decrease in the event rate (by some constant factor) between any two levels of a wide class of HDES. It is shown that if the communications between the various DES in the HDES satisfy a certain admissibility condition then there will be a decrease in the event rate. These results for HDES constitute the main results of this paper, since they provide the first mathematical characterization of the relationship between event aggregation and event rates of the HDES and show how to design the interconnections in a HDES to achieve event rate reduction. Several examples are provided to illustrate the results.The authors gratefully acknowledge the partial support of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Please address all correspondence to K. Passino (email: passino@eagle.eng.ohio-state.edu).     

Reactive C: An extension of C to program reactive systems

Reactive systems are interactive programs that react continuously to sequences of activations coming from the external world. Reactive programming leads to a new programming style where one programs in terms of reactions to activations and reasons in a logic of instants. This paper describes an extension of the C programming language called RC (for ‘Reactive C’) to program reactive systems. The language RC is described, then some programming examples are given to illustrate the reactive approach. The main RC notions come directly from the Esterel synchronous programming language. Finally, the Esterel and RC languages are compared.     

Parallel developments in programming languages and operating systems

Three stages of the development of programming languages are examined and compared with similar stages in the development of operating systems. It is noted that not only do these stages agree but particular developments within these stages also have remarkable similarities; some of these are superficial while others are deeper. The parallels are used to note that certain developments have yet to occur in operating systems. Finally, the essential identity of purpose of programming languages and operating systems is discussed.     

Subword complexities of various classes of deterministic developmental languages with interactions

Lee has shown that ifL is aDOL language, then ink(L) <C · k² for some constantC, where ink(L) denotes the number of subwords of lengthk inL. We show that the result does not hold forDIL languages. It is also shown that each everywhere growing (uniform)DIL language is the image under a coding of an everywhere growing (uniform)DOL language. A similar result holds for languages generated by systems with tables. These enable us to solve the subword complexity problems for developmental languages with interactions.This paper is based on part of K.P.L.'s Ph.D. thesis.     

Controllability of predicates and languages in discrete-event systems

In discrete-event systems, two control techniques, called supervisory control and state feedback logic, are applicable if control specifications are given in terms of predicates on the set of states. The concepts of controllability for both techniques has been proposed for the analysis and design of these techniques. First it is shown that controllability of the legal language for a given predicate is equivalent to that for the corresponding reachability set. Next we deal with the relationship between the supremal controllable subpredicate of the predicate and the supremal controllable sublanguage of the corresponding legal language     

Recursive functions of context free languages (I)

It is intended to establish the recursive function theory on context free languages (CFLs). In this paper, the function class CFRF and its proper subclass CFPRF were defined on CFLs; it is quite straightforward to use them for describing non-numerical algorithms. In fact, they are respectively the partial recursive functions and primitive recursive functions of context free languages. The structure induction method for proving CFPRF function properties was presented. A method for CFL sentence enumeration was given, the minimization operator was defined. Based on CFL sentence enumeration, the minimization operator evaluation method was given. Finally, the design and implementation principles of executable specification languages with the CFRF as theoretical basis were discussed. This paper is based on the Technical Report ISCAS-LCS-2k-03 (SAQ Report No. 30): Recursive Functions Defined on Context Free Languages (I), August 2000, with minor revisions.     

Recursive functions of context free languages (II)

In this paper we proved that the function class CFRF and its proper subclass CFPRF are respectively the partial recursive functions and primitive recursive functions of context free languages (CFLs). Also we discussed the relation between them and recursive functions defined on other domains. It is indicated that the functions of natural numbers and/or symbol strings (words) are functions of CFLs. Several frequently used primitive recursive functions on words were given, including logical connectives, conditional expressions. Also the powerful operators (bounded maximization and minimization operators) for constructing primitive recursive functions were defined. Two important nontrivial algorithms, the characteristic function of arbitrary CFL and the parse function of CFL sentences were constructed. Based on them, the method for extending or restricting function domain was described. This paper is based on the Technical Report ISCAS-LCS-2k-03 (SAQ Report no.30): Recursive Functions Defined on Context Free Languages (I) August 2000 with minor revisions.