Lambda the Ultimate

Luke Simon, Ajay Bansal, Ajay Mallya and Gopal Gupta Co-Logic Programming: Extending Logic Programming with Coinduction 2007

In this paper we present the theory and practice of co-logic programming (co-LP for brevity), a paradigm that combines both inductive and coinductive logic programming. Co-LP is a natural generalization of logic programming and coinductive logic programming, which in turn generalizes other extensions of logic programming, such as infinite trees, lazy predicates, and concurrent communicating predicates. Co-LP has applications to rational trees, verifying infinitary properties, lazy evaluation, concurrent LP, model checking, bisimilarity proofs, etc.

It is nice to see that coinduction is making its way into Logic Programming.

I couldn't find a free link to this paper [Edit: The link now points directly to the paper], but I found the following useful slides on Gopal Gupta's webpage. Slides from ICLP'07

I wrote a tutorial a couple months ago on programming models for shared-memory concurrent pseudorandom number generation:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mhoemmen/cs194/Tutorials/prng.pdf

It was meant for upper-division computer science undergraduates, but I was wondering if you all think it has potential to be adapted for more general use.

The article argues for making PRNGs efficiently thread-safe by choice of programming model, and offers examples of how different kinds of parallel PRNGs fit into the offered models.

mfh

Solomon Feferman. Gödel, Nagel, minds and machines. Ernest Nagel Lecture, Columbia University, Sept. 27, 2007.

Just fifty years ago, Ernest Nagel and Kurt Goedel became involved in a serious imbroglio about the possible inclusion of Goedel’s original work on incompleteness in the book, Goedel’s Proof, then being written by Nagel with James R. Newman. What led to the conflict were some unprecedented demands that Goedel made over the use of his material and his involvement in the contents of the book - demands that resulted in an explosive reaction on Nagel’s part. In the end the proposal came to naught. But the story is of interest because of what was basically at issue, namely their provocative related but contrasting views on the possible significance of Goedel’s theorems for minds vs. machines in the development of mathematics.

This is not directly PLT related, and more philosophical than what we usually discuss on LtU, but I think it will be of interest to some members of the community.

While the historical details are interesting, I am not sure I agree with the analysis. It would be interesting to here what others make of this.

To make this item slightly more relevant to LtU, let me point out that both the LC and category theory are mentioned (although they are really discussed only in the references).