An attractive mechanism to specify global constraints in rostering and other domains is via formal languages. For instance, the Regular and Grammar constraints specify constraints in terms of the languages accepted by an automaton and a context-free grammar respectively. Taking advantage of the fixed length of the constraint, we give an algorithm to transform a context-free grammar into an automaton. We then study the use of minimization techniques to reduce the size of such automata and speed up propagation. We show that minimizing such automata after they have been unfolded and domains initially reduced can give automata that are more compact than minimizing before unfolding and reducing. Experimental results show that such transformations can improve the size of rostering problems that we can 'model and run'.

We study the CardPath constraint. This ensures a given constraint holds a number of times down a sequence of variables. We show that SLIDE, a special case of CardPath where the slid constraint must hold always, can be used to encode a wide range of sliding sequence constraints including CardPath itself. We consider how to propagate SLIDE and provide a complete propagator for CardPath. Since propagation is NP-hard in general, we identify special cases where propagation takes polynomial time. Our experiments demonstrate that using SLIDE to encode global constraints can be as efficient and effective as specialised propagators.

A wide range of constraints can be compactly specified using automata or formal languages. In a sequence of recent papers, we have shown that an effective means to reason with such specifications is to decompose them into primitive constraints. We can then, for instance, use state of the art SAT solvers and profit from their advanced features like fast unit propagation, clause learning, and conflict-based search heuristics. This approach holds promise for solving combinatorial problems in scheduling, rostering, and configuration, as well as problems in more diverse areas like bioinformatics, software testing and natural language processing. In addition, decomposition may be an effective method to propagate other global constraints.

We argue that parameterized complexity is a useful tool with which to study global constraints. In particular, we show that many global constraints which are intractable to propagate completely have natural parameters which make them fixed-parameter tractable and which are easy to compute. This tractability tends either to be the result of a simple dynamic program or of a decomposition which has a strong backdoor of bounded size. This strong backdoor is often a cycle cutset. We also show that parameterized complexity can be used to study other aspects of constraint programming like symmetry breaking. For instance, we prove that value symmetry is fixed-parameter tractable to break in the number of symmetries. Finally, we argue that parameterized complexity can be used to derive results about the approximability of constraint propagation.

Constraint programming (CP) has been used with great success to tackle a wide variety of constraint satisfaction problems which are computationally intractable in general. Global constraints are one of the important factors behind the success of CP. In this paper, we study a new global constraint, the multiset ordering constraint, which is shown to be useful in symmetry breaking and searching for leximin optimal solutions in CP. We propose efficient and effective filtering algorithms for propagating this global constraint. We show that the algorithms are sound and complete and we discuss possible extensions. We also consider alternative propagation methods based on existing constraints in CP toolkits. Our experimental results on a number of benchmark problems demonstrate that propagating the multiset ordering constraint via a dedicated algorithm can be very beneficial.

In this paper, we investigate the deductive inference for the interiors and exteriors of Horn knowledge bases, where the interiors and exteriors were introduced by Makino and Ibaraki to study stability properties of knowledge bases. We present a linear time algorithm for the deduction for the interiors and show that it is co-NP-complete for the deduction for the exteriors. Under model-based representation, we show that the deduction problem for interiors is NP-complete while the one for exteriors is co-NP-complete. As for Horn envelopes of the exteriors, we show that it is linearly solvable under model-based representation, while it is co-NP-complete under formula-based representation. We also discuss the polynomially solvable cases for all the intractable problems.

The management and combination of uncertain, imprecise, fuzzy and even paradoxical or high conflicting sources of information has always been, and still remains today, of primal importance for the development of reliable modern information systems involving artificial reasoning. The combination (fusion) of information arises in many fields of applications nowadays (especially in defense, medicine, finance, geo-science, economy, etc). When several sensors, observers or experts have to be combined together to solve a problem, or if one wants to update our current estimation of solutions for a given problem with some new information available, we need powerful and solid mathematical tools for the fusion, specially when the information one has to deal with is imprecise and uncertain. In this paper, we present a survey of our recent theory of plausible and paradoxical reasoning, known as Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) in the literature, developed for dealing with imprecise, uncertain and conflicting sources of information. Recent publications have shown the interest and the ability of DSmT to solve problems where other approaches fail, especially when conflict between sources becomes high. We focus this presentation rather on the foundations of DSmT, and on the main important rules of combination, than on browsing specific applications of DSmT available in literature. Several simple examples are given throughout the presentation to show the efficiency and the generality of DSmT.

Cognitive radio is a breakthrough technology which is expected to have a profound impact on the way radio spectrum will be accessed, managed and shared in the future. In this paper I examine some of the implications of cognitive radio for future management of spectrum. Both a near-term view involving the opportunistic spectrum access model and a longer-term view involving a self-regulating dynamic spectrum access model within a society of cognitive radios are discussed.

We propose Range and Roots which are two common patterns useful for specifying a wide range of counting and occurrence constraints. We design specialised propagation algorithms for these two patterns. Counting and occurrence constraints specified using these patterns thus directly inherit a propagation algorithm. To illustrate the capabilities of the Range and Roots constraints, we specify a number of global constraints taken from the literature. Preliminary experiments demonstrate that propagating counting and occurrence constraints using these two patterns leads to a small loss in performance when compared to specialised global constraints and is competitive with alternative decompositions using elementary constraints.

We investigate cut-elimination and cut-simulation in impredicative (higher-order) logics. We illustrate that adding simple axioms such as Leibniz equations to a calculus for an impredicative logic -- in our case a sequent calculus for classical type theory -- is like adding cut. The phenomenon equally applies to prominent axioms like Boolean- and functional extensionality, induction, choice, and description. This calls for the development of calculi where these principles are built-in instead of being treated axiomatically.