Notions of speci cation, implementation, satisfaction, and re nement, together with operators supporting stepwise design, constitute a speci cation theory. We construct such a theory for Markov Chains (MCs) employing a new abstraction of a Constraint MC. Constraint MCs permit rich constraints on probability distributions and thus generalize prior abstractions such as Interval MCs. Linear (polyn...

This paper applies the idea of a winner-take-all constraint satisfaction system like that found in Optimality Theory to human sentence parsing. Three sets of constraints, each of which is derived from a parsing theory from the current literature, are attempted. The empirical data considered here do not seem to be consistent with any of these theories. It is argued that a cumulative constraint w...

This is the fourth paper in our series of five in which we test the Master Constraint Programme for solving the Hamiltonian constraint in Loop Quantum Gravity. We now move on to free field theories with constraints, namely Maxwell theory and linearized gravity. Since the Master constraint involves squares of constraint operator valued distributions, one has to be very careful in doing that and ...

I propose the use of a simple real space constraint for iterative phase retrieval intended for diffractive imaging. The proposed constraint is a single parameter equal to the number of nonzero pixels in the image. This greatly simplifies the procedure to determine the constraint. A series of algorithms using this constraint can be easily deduced from existing algorithms, such as hybrid-input-ou...