We argue that there are mutually beneficial connections to be made between ideas in argumentation theory and the philosophy of mathematics, and that these connections can be suggested via the process of producing computational models of theories in these domains. We discuss Lakatos’s work (1976) in which he championed the informal nature of mathematics, and our computational representation of h...

We exhibit a methodology to develop mechanically-checkable parameterized proofs of the correctness of fault-tolerant round-based distributed algorithms in an asynchronous message-passing setting. Motivated by a number of case studies, we sketch how to replace often-used informal and incomplete pseudo code by mostly syntax-free formal and complete definitions of a global-state transition system....

In the article we show an attack on the cryptographic protocol of electronic auction with extended requirements [1]. The found attack consists of authentication breach and secret retrieval. It is a kind of “man in the middle attack”. The intruder impersonates an agent and learns some secret information. We have discovered this flaw using OFMC an automatic tool of cryptographic protocol verifica...

The PCP Theorem is concerned with the notion of “proofs” for mathematical statements. We begin with a somewhat informal definition: Definition 1.1. A traditional proof system works as follows: • A statement is given. (e.g., “this graph G = · · · is 3-colorable” or “this CNF formula F = (x1 ∨ x2 ∨ x10) ∧ · · · is satisfiable”). • A prover writes down a proof, in some agreed-upon format. • A veri...

Railways need to be safe and, at the same time, should offer high capacity. While the notion of safety is well understood in the railway domain, the meaning of capacity is understood only on an intuitive and informal level. In this study, we show how to define and analyse capacity in a rigorous way. Our modelling approach builds on an established modelling technique in the process algebra Csp f...

Software architects seek efficient support for planning and designing models. Many software design tools lack flexibility in combining informal and formal design. In this paper, we present OctoUML, a proof of a concept of a new generation software design environment that supports an effective software design process. The system provides options for collaborative software design and different in...

We suggest a three-level integrated approach to design, specification and verification of distributed system. The approach is based on a newly designed specification language Basic-REAL (bREAL) and comprises (I) translation of a high-level design of distributed systems to executional specifications of bREAL, (II) presentation of high-level properties of distributed systems as logical specificat...

— This informal article is an expanded version of two lectures given in Padova during the “Dwork Trimester” in June 2001. Their goal was to explain the proof of the p-adic monodromy theorem for de Rham representations and to give some background on p-adic representations. Résumé. — Cet article informel est une version longue de deux exposés donnés à Padoue en Juin 2001 au “Trimestre Dwork”. Leu...

A connection graph represents resolvability in a set of clauses explicitly. The corresponding connection graph proof procedure has the deeciency that the graphs may grow, becoming impractical to handle. We present a novel proof procedure for condition graphs, which is a reenement of connection graphs. Our idea is to control the growth of the graph by recognizing tests in clauses and translating...

We present the development and the validation of an algorithm for detecting the termination of diffusing computations. Although such a problem has been extensively studied, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first one which is based on the maximal paths generated by a diffusing computation. After an informal presentation of the algorithm, we proceed to its rigorous development within the...