This paper summarizes a theory to support the design of assemblies. It describes a top-down process for designing kinematically constrained assemblies that deliver geometric key characteristics (KCs) that achieve top-level customer requirements. The theory applies to assemblies that take the form of mechanisms (e.g., engines) or structures (e.g., aircraft fuselages). The process begins by creat...

We introduce a general scheme for handling clauses whose variables are constrained by an underlying constraint theory. In general, constraints can be seen as quantifier restrictions as they filter out the values that can be assigned to the variables of a clause (or an arbitrary formulae with restricted universal or existential quantifier) in any of the models of the constraint theory. We presen...

The advent of Optimality Theory has revived the interest in articulatorily and perceptually driven markedness in phonological research. To some researchers, the cross-linguistic prevalence of such markedness relations is indication that synchronic phonological grammar should include phonetic details. However, there are at least two distinct ways in which phonetics can be incorporated in an opti...

We study a three dimensional symmetric nonAbelian Chern-Simons theory with a general covariance and it turns out that the original Chern-Simons theory is just a gauge fixed action of the symmetric Chern-Simons theory whose constraint algebra belongs to fully first class constraint system. Furthermore a higher dimensional generalization of the analysis is performed and a five dimensional symmetr...

Assuming that grammar is best modeled as a set of modules each representing a constraint system, like other human cognitive faculties, these constraint systems are bound to disagree and soft constraints are needed for conflict resolution among modules. This paper outlines an approach to incorporate soft constraints among grammar modules. The paper first goes over the issue of modularity and con...

We show that Hořava’s theory of gravitation with the global Hamiltonian constraint does not reproduce General Relativity in the infrared domain. There is one extra propagating degree of freedom, besides those two associated with massless graviton, which does not decouple. Introduction. Recently, Hořava proposed power-counting renormalizable higher-derivative theory of gravitation where the full...

For a fixed graph H, let Ret(H) denote the problem of deciding whether a given input graph is retractable to H. We classify the complexity of Ret(H) when H is a graph (with loops allowed) where each connected component has at most one cycle, i.e., a pseudoforest. In particular, this result extends the known complexity classifications of Ret(H) for reflexive and irreflexive cycles to general cyc...