MFPS 28 Call for Papers

MFPS 28 Call for Papers

[Michael Mislove]

                    MFPS XXVIII
      http://www.math.tulane.edu/~mfps/MFPS28

          Twenty-eighth Conference on the
            Mathematical Foundations of
               Programming Semantics

                University of Bath
                  United Kingdom
                  6 - 9 June 2012

The Twenty-eighth Conference on the Mathematical Foundations of
Programming Semantics will take place on the campus of the
University of Bath, United Kingdom from June 6 through June 9, 2012.
MFPS conferences are devoted to those areas of mathematics, logic,
and computer science that are related to models of computation, in
general, and to the semantics of programming languages, in
particular. The series has particularly stressed providing a forum
where researchers in mathematics and computer science can meet and
exchange ideas about problems of common interest. As the series also
strives to maintain breadth in its scope, the conference strongly
encourages participation by researchers in neighbouring areas.

TOPICS include, but are not limited to, the following: biocomputation;
concurrent qualitative and quantitative distributed systems; process
calculi; probabilistic systems; constructive mathematics; domain
theory and categorical models; formal languages; formal methods; game
semantics; lambda calculus; programming-language theory; quantum
computation; security; topological models; logic; type systems; type
theory. We also welcome contributions that address applications of
semantics to novel areas such as complex systems, markets, and
networks, for example.

INVITED SPEAKERS:

  Steve Awodey, CMU
  Michael Clarkson, GWU
  Patricia Johann, Strathclyde
  Dexter Kozen, Cornell 
  Drew Moshier, Chapman
  John Power, Bath

SPECIAL SESSIONS: There will be four special sessions at the meeting, each associated 
with one of the plenary talks:

  * Logic, computation and algebraic topology, organised by Steve Awodey and Michael Mislove
  * Security, organised by Michael Clarkson and Catherine Meadows. The papers in this session
        will be chosen from the papers submitted in response to this Call.
  * Computational effects, organised by John Power
  * Computability on Continuous Data, organised by Drew Moshier

There also will be a series of four Tutorial Lectures; the topic and speakers will be announced later.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

  Thorsten Altenkirch, U Nottingham, UK
  Steve Awodey, Carnegie Mellon U, USA
  Andrej Bauer, U Ljubljana, Slovenia
  Ulrich Berger, Swansea U, UK (Chair)
  Bob Coecke, U Oxford, UK
  Stephen Brooks, Carnegie Mellon U, USA
  Martin Escardo, U Birmingham, UK
  Marcelo Fiore, U Cambridge, UK
  Neil Ghani, U Strathclyde, UK
  Alexey Gotsman, IMDEA, Madrid, Spain
  Hugo Herbelin, INRIA, Rocquencourt-Paris, France
  Achim Jung, U Birmingham, UK
  Daniel Leivant, U Indiana, USA
  Guy McCusker, U Bath, UK
  Catherine Meadows, NRL, USA
  Michael Mislove, Tulane U, USA
  Peter O'Hearn, Queen Mary U London, UK
  Luke Ong, U Oxford, UK
  Prakash Panangaden, McGill U, Canada
  John Power, U Bath, UK
  Jan Rutten, Radboud Nijmegen, Netherlands
  Alex Simpson, U Edinburgh, UK
  James Worrell, U Oxford, UK

IMPORTANT DATES:

  - 24 February 2012             Title and Short Abstract submission deadline
  - 2 March 2012                 Paper submission deadline
  - 2 April 2012                 Notification to authors
  - 23 April 2012                Preliminary proceedings version due

SUBMISSIONS should be prepared using ENTCS Macros, available from
http://www.entcs.org. Submissions should be in the form of a PDF file not
exceeding 15 pages in length. Submissions will be open shortly after January 1
on the EasyChair website: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mfps2012

PROCEEDINGS: There will be a preliminary proceedings of the conference papers
that will be distributed at the meeting, with a final proceedings published in
ENTCS after the meeting.

The Organisers of the MFPS series are Stephen Brookes (CMU), Achim Jung
(Birmingham), Catherine Meadows (NRL), Michael Mislove (Tulane) and Prakash
Panangaden (McGill). The local arrangements for MFPS XXVIII are being overseen
by Guy McCusker (Bath) and John Power (Bath).

===============================================
Professor Michael Mislove        Phone: +1 504 862-3441
Department of Mathematics      FAX:     +1 504 865-5063
Tulane University       URL: http://www.math.tulane.edu/~mwm
New Orleans, LA 70118 USA
===============================================


[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

Interactive demonstrations of categorical constructions

[Jocelyn Ireson-Paine]

With a new academic year, there will be new people learning category
theory. So I'd like to (re)advertise the online category-theory
demonstrations I've made available at
http://www.j-paine.org/cgi-bin/webcats/webcats.php .

The page contains buttons such as "generate and demonstrate an equaliser"
and "generate and demonstrate a limit". Clicking on one will generate an
example of the construct in the category of finite sets, and display it in
a new Web page as a listing of its objects and arrows, and as a diagram.

For limits and colimits, the demos generate a small random graph, convert
it to a diagram, then compute and display its limit or colimit. For binary
coproducts and products, coequalisers and equalisers, and other constructs
whose diagrams are always the same shape, you can tell the program which
objects (sets) and arrows (functions) to use.

Some people have asked me how the program works. It's written in two
programming languages: PHP and Prolog. PHP is a "scripting language" used
for building interactive Web sites: everything from blogs to online shops.
When you press a button and thereby submit the form, your Web browser
sends a message to my Web server, telling it which button was pressed, and
also encoding the sets and functions to be used, if you typed any.

My Web server extracts and decodes this information, and then runs a
program in the other language - Prolog - passing it the information.
Prolog is a "logic programming language": a Prolog program consists of
predicate definitions in a subset of first-order logic, and you run a
program by asking it to prove from these whether some proposition is true.
For example, I might ask it to prove from the categorical predicates I've
written whether the proposition "there exists a binary coproduct of {a,b}
and {x,y}" is true. The process of proving this may bind variables in the
proposition, and in my case, these will contain graphs representing the
diagram of the product.

Actually, Prolog isn't only logic. It also contains features for doing
non-logical stuff such as input and output. I'd say that writing Prolog
feels 3/5 like doing logic, and 2/5 like using a more conventional
language such as Java or C.

Anyway, my server invokes a Prolog program, telling it which button you
pressed and which sets and functions you wanted to use. If you didn't type
any, the program calls an example generator, which generates small random
sets and functions, chosen so that the construct they're to be used in
does in fact exist.

The program then computes a data structure representing the appropriate
diagram, including new sets and functions to be used as the limit,
coproduct, or whatever, and as the arrows connecting it to the original
objects. For some of these computations, I used Prolog translations of the
algorithms in the book "Computational category theory" by David Rydeheard
and Rod Burstall.

Having generated the diagram, my Prolog program needs to make a picture of
it. It does this by running graph-visualisation program called GraphViz.
This is written by AT&T, and available free from http://www.graphviz.org/
. You can see examples of its output in the gallery at
http://www.graphviz.org/Gallery.php .

So my program converts the diagram to commands in a GraphViz input file,
and then runs GraphViz to convert this into a picture of the diagram as a
GIF file. It then writes out yet another file containing a Web page that
explains the construct. The explanation lists the objects and arrows used,
and also points to the GIF file, which therefore appears as an image near
the bottom of the page.

As an experiment, I also use GraphViz to plot the diagram in VRML,
"virtual reality modelling language". If your browser has the right
software, you can use your mouse to move the VRML picture around and turn
it over. I thought this might make the diagram feel more real.

Finally, my Prolog program terminates, and the PHP script that ran it
takes over. It sends your browser a copy of the demonstrator's input form,
but with a link added to it pointing to the page explaining the construct.
And if you click on that, you see your results.

Jocelyn Ireson-Paine
http://www.j-paine.org

Jocelyn's Cartoons
http://www.j-paine.org/blog/jocelyns_cartoons/


[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]