August 2014 FACS a C T S
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Issue 2014-1 August 2014 FACS A C T S The Newsletter of the Formal Aspects of Computing Science (FACS) Specialist Group ISSN 0950-1231 FACS FACTS Issue 2014-1 August 2014 About FACS FACTS FACS FACTS (ISSN: 0950-1231) is the newsletter of the BCS Specialist Group on Formal Aspects of Computing Science (FACS). FACS FACTS is distributed in electronic form to all FACS members. Submissions to FACS FACTS are always welcome. Please visit the newsletter area of the BCS FACS website for further details (see http://www.bcs.org/category/12461). Back issues of FACS FACTS are available for download from: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/33135 The FACS FACTS Team Newsletter Editors Tim Denvir [email protected] Brian Monahan [email protected] Editorial Team Jonathan Bowen, Tim Denvir. Brian Monahan, Margaret West. Contributors to this Issue Jonathan Bowen, Tim Denvir, Eerke Boiten, Rob Heirons, Azalea Raad, Andrew Robinson. BCS-FACS websites BCS: http://www.bcs-facs.org LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2427579 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/BCS- FACS/120243984688255 Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCS-FACS If you have any questions about BCS-FACS, please send these to Paul Boca <[email protected]> 2 FACS FACTS Issue 2014-1 August 2014 Editorial Welcome to issue 2014-1 of FACS FACTS. This is the first issue produced by your new joint editors, Tim Denvir and Brian Monahan. One effect of the maturity of formal methods is that researchers in the topic regularly grow old and expire. Rather than fill the issue with Obituaries, we have taken the course of reporting on most of these sad events in brief, with references to fuller obituaries that can be found elsewhere, in particular in the FAC Journal. A full Obituary is given in this issue for Professor Wlad Turski and Obituaries in Brief for John C. Reynolds, Kaisa Sere, Lockwood Morris, and Heinz Zemanek. In the rest of this issue you will find a review by Andrew Robinson and Jonathan Bowen of Mathai Joseph’s book: Digital Republic: India’s Rise to IT Power. Following that there are reports on FACS evening seminars that have taken place so far this year. Azalea Raad reports on the joint LMS-FACS seminar, Computational Reasoning for Computer Programs, given by Philippa Gardner. Rob Heirons reports on his own seminar, Asynchronous Software Testing. Eerke Boiten reports on the EPSRC-funded Network of Excellence, Cryptoforma and the joint Cryptoforma and FACS afternoon event which ended with an evening seminar by Cédric Fourner. Finally, Jonathan Bowen gives summaries of two other recent seminars and announcements of a forthcoming joint evening seminars with LMS on 22nd October and the annual Peter Landin Semantics Seminar on 8th December, to be given by Peter Mosses. In the last issue 2013-1 of FACS FACTS, Margaret West wrote about a meeting at the House of Lords, UK Science Education in the 21st Century: Reporting Turing’s Legacy. She adds a postscript to that report: For some time now there has been interest in the US in teaching children to code. This is an article from the NY Times about the subject: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/us/reading-writing-arithmetic-and-lately- coding.html?_r=0 3 FACS FACTS Issue 2014-1 August 2014 The next FACS AGM is planned for 4.00 p.m. at the BCS offices on December 8th, immediately before the Peter Landin Semantics Seminar. More announcements of this will follow in due course. The FACS committee and, I am sure, membership, would like to congratulate Professor Sir Tony Hoare on his 80th birthday earlier this year, and Professor Cliff Jones on his 70th birthday, which was also this year. Our best wishes to each of them. Many of FACS seminars take place in the offices of the British Computer Society in the Davidson Building, Southampton Street. These excellent facilities are conveniently situated in Central London close to Covent Garden and we would like to thank the BCS for making them available to us. 4 FACS FACTS Issue 2014-1 August 2014 Recent and Forthcoming Events Reported by: Jonathan Bowen To date during 2014, FACS has held the following evening seminars at the BCS offices in London: Wednesday 15th January 2014 Joint Event with CryptoForma network. Reported on below by Eerke Boiten. Thursday 15th May 2014 Model-Driven Software Engineering – Promises and Challenges Prof. Zhiming Liu http://www.bcu.ac.uk/tee/ctn/our-staff/zhiming-liu Birmingham City University 5 FACS FACTS Issue 2014-1 August 2014 Abstract: Software engineering was born with the “software crisis”, caused by the increasing power of computers and growing complexity of software development. Formal methods have been developed to tackle the grand challenge of correctness and dependability of complex software. Today, software programs are everywhere, but they are deployed on different platforms and embedded in different kinds of devices. These platforms and devices are distributed and connected with different networks. Consider smarter meters networked with industry control systems and mobile phone networks for home automation, and eHealth or mHealth. These applications of the “Internet of Things”, “smart cities” and “cyber-physical systems” (CPS) cannot be designed top- down from scratch or synthesised bottom-up from existing pieces. They have to evolve incrementally from existing systems, even non-computerised systems, and be constantly maintained with updated technologies. In this talk, we discuss model-driven software engineering, which shows promises and challenges in dealing with the complexity of these systems and in support of their evolution. In particular, we argue that an architecture-centric modelling method could be the hope to scale up formal method by linking theories to system engineering practice. Thursday 5th June 2014 Alan Turing: The Founder of Computer Science Prof. Jonathan P. Bowen http://www.jpbowen.com Birmingham City University Abstract: Alan Mathison Turing (1912–1954), OBE, FRS, has a rightful claim to the title of father of modern computing. He laid the theoretical groundwork for a universal machine that models a computer in its most general form before World War II. During the war, Turing was instrumental in developing and influencing actual computing devices that have been said to have shortened the war by up to two years by decoding encrypted enemy messages that were believed by others to be unbreakable. Unlike 6 FACS FACTS Issue 2014-1 August 2014 some theoreticians, he was willing to be involved with practical aspects, and was as happy to wield a soldering iron as he was to wrestle with a mathematical problem, normally from a unique angle compared to others. This talk explored Alan Turing’s life, achievements, and legacy, in the month of the 60th anniversary after his death (on 7th June 1954). Slides for all the presentations above are available on the BCS-FACS website in the past events section: http://www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/51924 17th July 2014 Asynchronous Software Testing Professor Rob Heirons Reported on below by Rob Heirons. Further events are planned later in the year, including a joint evening seminar with the London Mathematical Society (LMS), organised by John Cooke: Wednesday 22nd October 2014 London Mathematical Society, De Morgan House, 57–58 Russell Square, London Prof. Joel Ouaknine http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/joel.ouaknine/home.html University of Oxford Abstract: Linear recurrence sequences (LRS), such as the Fibonacci numbers, permeate vast areas of mathematics and computer science. In this talk, Professor Ouaknine considers three natural decision problems for LRS, namely the Skolem Problem (does a given LRS have a zero?), the Positivity Problem (are all terms of a given LRS positive?), and the Ultimate Positivity Problem (are all but finitely many terms 7 FACS FACTS Issue 2014-1 August 2014 of a given LRS positive?). Such problems (and assorted variants) have applications in a wide array of scientific areas, such as theoretical biology (analysis of Lsystems, population dynamics), economics (stability of supplyanddemand equilibria in cyclical markets, multiplier-accelerator models), software verification (termination of linear programs), probabilistic model checking (reachability and approximation in Markov chains, stochastic logics), quantum computing (threshold problems for quantum automata), discrete linear dynamical systems (reachability and invariance problems), as well as combinatorics, statistical physics, formal languages, etc. Perhaps surprisingly, the study of decision problems for LRS involves advanced techniques from a variety of mathematical fields, including analytic and algebraic number theory, Diophantine geometry, and real algebraic geometry. Thursday 25 September The CakeML verified compiler Scott Owens (University of Kent) Abstract: CakeML is a new ML dialect aimed at supporting formally verified programs. The CakeML project has several aspects including formal semantics and metatheory, a verified compiler, a formal connection between its semantics and higher-order logic (in the HOL4 interactive theorem prover), and example verified applications written in CakeML and HOL4. The project is an active collaboration between Ramana Kumar and Magnus Myreen at Cambridge, Michael Norrish at NICTA, and myself. In this talk, I will explain the architecture of CakeML's verified compiler, and then show how we move verified functions from a theorem prover to CakeML (including bootstrapping the compiler itself). Lastly, I will explain how these tools will allow us to support -- with a very small trusted computing base – a verified version of the HOL Light theorem prover. CakeML's web site is https://cakeml.org, and development is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/CakeML/cakeml. 8 FACS FACTS Issue 2014-1 August 2014 8th December 2014 The annual Peter Landin Seminar will be by Prof. Peter Mosses of University of Swansea, on Correspondences between Programming Languages and Semantic Notations, organised by Paul Boca.