A set of operat ions for construct ing a lgebra ic specif icat ions in an arbi t rary logical system is presented. This builds on the f ramework provided by Goguen and Burstal l 's work on the not ion of an inst i tut ion as a formal isat ion of the concept of a logical system for wri t ing specif icat ions. We show how to introduce free variables into the sentences of an arbi t rary institutio...

An important feature of speech-gesture integration is that speech and gesture content influence each other in interpretation. To analyse this, we sketch an approach based on three assumptions: (i) the interpreter infers by abduction an explanation for why a particular gesture is synchronized with a particular utterance (part), (ii) semantic composition amounts to the identification of free vari...

This paper demonstrates that genetic programming can be used to automatically create the design for both the topology and parameter values (tuning) for a common parameterized controller for all the plants in two families of plants that are representative of typical industrial processes. The genetically evolved controller is "general" in the sense that it contains free variables representing the...

We make a formal sociologic study of the concept of free will. By using the language of mathematics and logic, we define what we call everlasting societies. Everlasting societies never age: persons never age, and the goods of the society are indestructible. The infinite history of an everlasting society unfolds by following deterministic and probabilistic laws that do their best to satisfy the ...

In ordinary rst order logic, a valid inference in a language L is one in which the conclusion is true in every model of the language in which the premises are true. To accommodate inductive/uncertain/probabilistic/nonmonotonic inference, we weaken that demand to the demand that the conclusion be true in a large proportion of the models in which the relevant premises are true. More generally, we...

Introduction: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching communication skills and sexual difference (sexual knowledge) on marital satisfaction in couples referred to the Mashhad city Health Center, Iran. Methods: In This Quazi-experimental study, with pre test and post-test methods, 25 coups who referred to a Mashhad city health center, were randomly selected. Enrich marital sa...

This study examined Omani EFL learners’ perceptions toward their willingness to communicate (WTC) in English. To this end, 204 students majoring in English language at a private university in Oman were assigned a questionnaire adapted from McCroskey’s (1992) WTC scale to determine possible effects of communication and affective variables on their WTC in English. After assessing the normality di...

We show how and why it makes sense to use a relational formalisation instead of the usual functional one in the treatment of term graphs. Special attention is paid to term graphs with bound variables, that have, to our knowledge, never been formalised with such a generality before. Besides the novel treatment of term graphs themselves, we present an innovative relational homomorphism concept th...