20 Oct 21:19 2014

### CFP: Relational and Algebraic Methods in Computer Science (RAMiCS 2015)

                            CALL FOR PAPERS

15th International Conference on
Relational and Algebraic Methods in Computer Science (RAMiCS 2015)

28 September to 1 October 2015, Braga, Portugal
URL:  http://ramics2015.di.uminho.pt
PDF: http://ramics2015.di.uminho.pt/RAMiCS15-CFP.pdf

Scope
-----

We invite submissions in the general area of Relational and Algebraic
Methods  in Computer Science. Special focus will lie on formal methods
for software engineering, logics of programs and links with neighbouring
disciplines.

Particular topics of interest for the conference cover,
but are not limited to:

* Algebraic approaches to
- specification, development, verification, and analysis of programs
and algorithms
- computational logic, in particular logics of programs, modal and
dynamic logics, interval and temporal logics
- semantics of programming languages

* Applications in fields such as
- relational formal methods such as B or Z, tabular methods
- information systems


19 Oct 13:40 2014

### Journal pricing

Dear Colleagues:

I would like to call your attention to this:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices

If even Harvard cannot keep up with the cost of journals, who can?  As we
know, during the 90s, there were two sharp trends: the cost of publishing
mathematics dropped precipitously as more and more mathematicians were
using tex to typeset their own papers, and the price of journals rose
equally precipitously.  As you all know, the first trend led to the
founding of TAC about 20 years ago which is a cost-free journal.

It is also interesting to look at the linked story:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/09/frustrated-blogpost-boycott-scientific-journals

about how the Fields medalist Tim Gowers has reacted to journals pricing.

Bob has given me permission to post this on the categories list, but NOT
to start a general discussion there.  Any comments should therefore be

Michael

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18 Oct 20:02 2014

Hello,

In particular I am interested in the following two questions:

1. Given a non-unital monad can it have two different "unitality" structures?

2. Is there a concept of a free non-unital monad? For example, I can think of
the "free" non-unital monad generated by the functor X |-> X^2 on sets as the monad
that sends a set X into the set of "homogeneous" expressions made with one binary operation
s such that there is s(x1,x2) and s(s(x1,x2),s(x3,x4)) but no x1 itself and no s(x1,s(x2,x3)).
But what is the universal characterization of it?

Thanks!

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14 Oct 14:18 2014

### PSSL97 - First announcement

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that the 97th Peripatetic Seminar on Sheaves
and Logic will be held on the weekend of 31st January–1st February 2015 in
Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

We will take the occasion to celebrate Rudger Kieboom's 65th birthday.

The website of the conference can be found at the address
http://sites.uclouvain.be/bcts/pssl97/

In order to register, please complete the Registration Form here below,
and send it to any of the organisers before the 15th of December. Saturday's
lunch will be offered to those PSSL participants who register by then.

If you wish to book a room at the hotel Ibis Style (ex-Mercure, the only hotel in
a booking at the UCL special rate (90€ for a single room, breakfast included).

Lecture slots will be attributed on a first come-first serve basis. If you wish to give
a talk, please let us know as soon as possible, preferably before the end of October.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Louvain!

Best regards,

The organisers

Philippe Cara
Tomas Everaert


11 Oct 13:02 2014

### LICS 2015 - First Call for Papers

                         CALL FOR PAPERS

Thirtieth Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on
LOGIC IN COMPUTER SCIENCE (LICS)

July 6–10, 2015, Kyoto, Japan

http://lics.rwth-aachen.de/lics15/

VENUE

LICS 2015 will be hosted in Kyoto, Japan during the week 6-10 July
2015 and will be colocated with ICALP 2015.

SCOPE

The LICS Symposium is an annual international forum on theoretical and
practical topics in computer science that relate to logic, broadly
construed. We invite submissions on topics that fit under that rubric.

Suggested, but not exclusive, topics of interest include: automata
theory, automated deduction, categorical models and logics,
concurrency and distributed computation, constraint programming,
constructive mathematics, database theory, decision procedures,
description logics, domain theory, finite model theory, formal aspects
of program analysis, formal methods, foundations of computability,
higher-order logic, lambda and combinatory calculi, linear logic,
logic in artificial intelligence, logic programming, logical aspects
of bioinformatics, logical aspects of computational complexity,
logical aspects of quantum computation, logical frameworks,  logics of


10 Oct 19:55 2014

### Coherence for tricategories

Hi,

The usual argument that not all tricategories can be strictified appeals to
the existence of nontrivially braided monoidal categories. But this leaves
open the possibility that a tricategory can be strictified completely aside
from interchangors for endomorphisms of unit 1-morphisms, or something
similar. Are results along these lines known?

There are of course the results of Joyal and Kock that it is possible to
put all the weak structure in the unitors. One could see this as mildly in
support of the above proposal, where also the weak structure is closely
related to unit morphisms.

In the absence of hard facts, reasoned speculation would also be good to
hear.

Best wishes,
Jamie

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10 Oct 15:57 2014

### Mathematics of Program Construction (MPC 2015): first call for papers

Apologies for multiple copies.

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

12th International Conference on Mathematics of Program Construction, MPC 2015
Königswinter, Germany, 29 June - 1 July 2015
http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/conferences/MPC2015/

BACKGROUND

The MPC conferences aim to promote the development of mathematical principles
and techniques that are demonstrably practical and effective in the process
of constructing computer programs, broadly interpreted.

The 2015 MPC conference will be held in Königswinter, Germany, from 29th June
to 1st July 2015. The previous conferences were held in Twente, The
Netherlands (1989), Oxford, UK (1992), Kloster Irsee, Germany (1995),
Marstrand, Sweden (1998), Ponte de Lima, Portugal (2000), Dagstuhl, Germany
(2002), Stirling, UK (2004, colocated with AMAST), Kuressaare, Estonia (2006,
colocated with AMAST), Marseille, France (2008), Québec City, Canada (2010,
colocated with AMAST), and Madrid, Spain (2012).

TOPICS

Papers are solicited on mathematical methods and tools put to use in program
construction. Topics of interest range from algorithmics to support for
program construction in programming languages and systems. The notion of
"program" is broad, from algorithms to hardware. Some typical areas are type
systems, program analysis and transformation, programming-language semantics,
security, and program logics. Theoretical contributions are welcome, provided


2 Oct 09:37 2014

### a note on sources of my text of fibered categories

> Renewed study of these ideas, in light of the later exposition by
> Thomas Streicher, should lead to further applications (for example
> to the solution of problems posed in my 1972 Perugia Notes.)

Thanks for mentioning this text. But since I think ownership of ideas
is an important issue I want to point out that the aim of this text
was to exhibit part of the ideas and results of Jean B'enabou's almost
single handed approach to Fibered Categories as a foundation of
Category Theory over most general base categories. I also tried to explain
some work by J.-L. Moens (his 1982 Thesis) where I think I have added
a bit of additional material. As far as B'enabou's work is concerned
my sources were Roisins notes from B'enabou's 1980 Louvain-la-Neuve
lectures. My exposition evolved over the years and I have integrated
which I am very grateful to him.

At one place I have referred to a fibred version of the Special
Adjoint Functor Theorem which one can find in Par'e and Schumacher's
text or alternatively in J.Celeyrette's These d'Etat from 1974 under
supervision of B'enabou.

The references in my text are not exhaustive at all. It's certainly a
mistake not to have formally referred to work by Grothendieck and Giraud.
But I was not using too much these original sources.

Moreover, I have used results from a paper by Mamuka Jibladze. I have
not given the precise reference but made clear in the title of the
appendix that it is Mamuka's result.

The aim of these notes was not to document precisely who did


25 Sep 20:00 2014

### Dietmar Schumacher

I am very sad to learn about the passing of Dietmar Schumacher. I remember
him as a student from Walter Felscher's classroom in Freiburg im Breisgau.
It was 50 years ago on my first visit to Germany. In the classroom Walter
publicly referred to Dietmar and praised him, and the tall, shy student
replied:  'mich?'

I served on his doctoral committee and over the years continued to be
impressed by the seriousness of his approach to mathematics. He was an
important contributor to the Canada-UK collaboration that published in
1978 major advances in the application of Grothendieck's 1961 fibered
categories. To facilitate those applications Pare' and Schumacher devised
a flexible presentation of the basic theory in terms of what they called
indexed categories.

Renewed study of these ideas, in light of the later exposition by Thomas
Streicher, should lead to further applications (for example to the
solution of problems posed in my 1972 Perugia Notes.)  The serene spirit
of Dietmar Schumacher will continue to inspire those who strive to develop
such unifying applications.

My heartfelt condolences go to his family.

Bill Lawvere

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25 Sep 19:31 2014

### Soundness of commutative diagram proofs

A common style of proof in CT papers is to draw a huge commutative
diagram, number some subset of the faces, and justify why each of
these faces commute. However, such an argument alone doesn't imply
that the overall diagram commutes. Consider for example a triangle of
arrows with three additional arrows connecting each of the corners to
a fourth object in the centre. It is very easy to find examples where
the three little triangles commute, but not the big outside triangle.
E.g. take the three inward-pointing arrows to be 0 morphisms, then we
can take f,g,h to be arbitrary on the outside.

So, my question is:

Is there a simple way of judging soundness for a commutative diagram proof?

One answer is to determine what constitutes a legal pasting of
diagrams, then only admit those which were obtained inductively by
legal pastings of commuting faces. However, its not immediately
obvious that, given a diagram without such a decomposition into legal
pastings, we can obtain the decomposition efficiently. Has this
problem been studied formally somewhere?

Best,

Aleks

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25 Sep 17:15 2014

### 5Yr Fellowships

In the heart of Free Glasgow, in the soon to be People's Republic of Scotland, there is a chance to join the
University of Strathclyde with a 5 year research fellowship leading to a permanent full time position.
All you need is a 5-page research plan … a lot less than many Fellowship avenues. The area is data science
and/or security but we intend to interpret this broadly. Very broadly. More details can be found here.

strathvacancies.co.uk

All the best
Neil

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Gmane