30195525
Nondefinite vs. Definite Causal Theories
Nonmonotonic causal logic can be used to represent properties of actions, including actions with conditional and indirect effects, nondeterministic actions, and concurrently executed actions. The definite fragment of causal logic can be mapped to propositional logic by the process of completion, and this idea has led to the development of the Causal Calculator. In this note, we show how to turn arbitrary causal theories into definite theories without changing the sets of models. The translation consists of two parts: one is a set of definite rules which is obtained from the given theory by translating each rule one by one, in a modular way, and the other is a set of constraints similar to loop formulas for logic programs. Our result characterizes the semantics of causal logic in terms of propositional logic and tells us that an essential difference between the semantics of causal logic and the answer set semantics is related to the definition of a loop in each.
18253568
Additive Fluents
An "additive" fluent is a fluent with numerical values such that the effect of several concurrently executed actions on it can be computed by adding the effects of the individual actions. We show how queries about additive fluents can be answered using the Causal Calculator. The examples discussed in this paper involve buying and selling, applying forces and moving groups of objects. The additive fluent mechanism can be used to instruct the Causal Calculator to generate more efficient plans.
6731652
Nonmonotonic causal theories
The nonmonotonic causal logic defined in this paper can be used to represent properties of actions, including actions with conditional and indirect effects, nondeterministic actions, and concurrently executed actions. It has been applied to several challenge problems in the theory of commonsense knowledge. We study the relationship between this formalism and other work on nonmonotonic reasoning and knowledge representation, and discuss its implementation, called the Causal Calculator.
6458022
Representing the Zoo World and the Traffic World in the language of the Causal Calculator
The work described in this report is motivated by the desire to test the expressive possibilities of action language C+. The Causal Calculator (CCALC) is a system that answers queries about action domains described in a fragment of that language. The Zoo World and the Traffic World have been proposed by Erik Sandewall in his Logic Modelling Workshop--an environment for communicating axiomatizations of action domains of nontrivial size.The Zoo World consists of several cages and the exterior, gates between them, and animals of several species, including humans. Actions in this domain include moving within and between cages, opening and closing gates, and mounting and riding animals. The Traffic World includes vehicles moving continuously between road crossings subject to a number of restrictions, such as speed limits and keeping a fixed safety distance away from other vehicles on the road. We show how to represent the two domains in the input language of CCALC, and how to use CCALC to test these representations.
207081381
Enumeration of Regular Graph Coverings Having Finite Abelian Covering Transformation Groups
Several isomorphism classes of graph coverings of a graph G have been enumerated by many authors. An enumeration of the isomorphism classes of n-fold coverings of a graph G was done by Kwak and Lee [Canad. J. Math., XLII (1990), pp. 747--761] and independently by Hofmeister [Discrete Math., 98 (1991), pp. 437--444]. An enumeration of the isomorphism classes of connected n-fold coverings of a graph G was recently done by Kwak and Lee [J. Graph Theory, 23 (1996), pp. 105--109]. But the enumeration of the isomorphism classes of regular coverings of a graph G has been done for only a few cases. In fact, the isomorphism classes of ${\cal A}$-coverings of G were enumerated when ${\cal A}$ is the cyclic group $\BZ_n$, the dihedral group $\BD_n$ (n: odd), and the direct sum of $m$ copies of $\BZ_p$. (See [Discrete Math., 143 (1995), pp. 87--97], [J. Graph Theory, 15 (1993), pp. 621--627], and [Discrete Math., 148 (1996), pp. 85--105]). 
In this paper, we discuss a method to enumerate the isomorphism classes of connected ${\cal A}$-coverings of a graph G for any finite group ${\cal A}$ and derive some formulas for enumerating the isomorphism classes of regular n-fold coverings for any natural number n. In particular, we calculate the number of the isomorphism classes of ${\cal A}$-coverings of G when ${\cal A}$ is a finite abelian group or the dihedral group $\BD_n$. Our method gives partial answers to the open problems 1 and 2 in [Discrete Math., 148 (1996), pp. 85--105] and also gives a formula to calculate the number of the subgroups of a given index of any finitely generated free abelian group.
30123293
Key Management in Wireless Sensor Networks
Wireless sensor networks hold the promise of facilitating large-scale, real-time data processing in complex environments. As sensor networks edge closer towards widespread deployment, security issues become a central concern. Key management in wireless sensor networks is a challenging problem. Computationally complex asymmetric crypto techniques are unsuitable for use in resource-constrained sensor nodes and use of symmetric cryptography makes the entire network vulnerable in the event of node compromise. This paper presents a key management scheme that satisfies both operational and security requirements of distributed wireless sensor networks. The proposed scheme accommodates other techniques like data aggregation for energy efficiency and watchdog mechanism for intrusion monitoring. Also, the proposed scheme is generic enough so that it can be applied to variety of sensor network protocols.
11623554
Downlink power allocation for multi-class CDMA wireless networks
We use a utility based power allocation framework in the downlink to treat multi-class CDMA wireless services in a unified way. Our goal is to obtain a power allocation which maximizes the total system utility. Natural utility functions for each mobile are non-concave. Hence we cannot use existing techniques on convex optimization problems to derive a social optimal solution. We propose a simple distributed algorithm to obtain an approximation to the social optimal power allocation. The algorithm is based on dynamic pricing and allows partial cooperation between mobiles and the base station. The algorithm consists of two stages. At the first stage, the base station selects mobiles to which power is allocated, considering their partial-cooperative nature. This is called partial-cooperative optimal selection, since in a partial-cooperative setting and pricing scheme, this selection is optimal and satisfies system feasibility. At the next stage, the base station allocates power to the selected mobiles. This power allocation is a social optimal power allocation among mobiles in the partial-cooperative optimal selection, thus, we call it a partial-cooperative optimal power allocation. We compare the partial-cooperative optimal power allocation with the social optimal power allocation for the single class case. From these results, we infer that the system utility obtained by partial-cooperative optimal power allocation is quite close to the system utility obtained by social optimal allocation.
7043785
A new family of authentication protocols
We present a related family of authentication and digital signature protocols based on symmetric cryptographic primitives which perform substantially better than previous constructions. Previously, one-time digital signatures based on hash functions involved hundreds of hash function computations for each signature; we show that given online access to a timestamping service, we can sign messages using only two computations of a hash function. Previously, techniques to sign infinite streams involved one such one-time signature for each message block; we show that in many realistic scenarios a small number of hash function computations is sufficient. Previously, the Diffie Hellman protocol enabled two principals to create a confidentiality key from scratch: we provide an equivalent protocol for integrity, which enables two people who do not share a secret to set up a securely serialised channel into which attackers cannot subsequently intrude. In addition to being of potential use in real applications, our constructions also raise interesting questions about the definition of a digital signature, and the relationship between integrity and authenticity.
14431473
Two-Phase Barrier: A Synchronization Primitive for Improving the Processor Utilization
Barrier is widely used for synchronization in parallel programs. Since the process arrived earlier than others should wait at the barrier, the total processor utilization decreases. In this paper, to find the sources of the barrier waiting time, parallel programs are executed on the various grain sizes through execution-driven simulations. In simulation studies, we found that even if approximately equal amounts of work are distributed to each processor, all processes may not arrive at a barrier at the same time. The reasons are that the different numbers of cache misses and instructions within in partitioned grains result in the difference in arrival time of processors at the barrier. In this paper, the two-phased barrier is considered to reduce the blind waiting time in the traditional barrier scheme, which can be simply constructed by dividing one specific stage for the synchronization into two stages. On each stage, processes decide their stall or not, which is dependent on the current execution state of grains running on any given processors. Simulation results show that the reduced barrier waiting times attributed to the two-phased barrier contribute to the performance improvement of parallel programs.