We introduce infinitary propositional theories over a set and their models which are subsets of the set, and define a generalized geometric theory as an infinitary propositional theory of a special form. The main result is that the class of models of a generalized geometric theory is set-generated. Here, a class $\mathcal{X}$ of subsets of a set is set-generated if there exists a subset G of $\mathcal{X}$ such that for each α ∈ $\mathcal{X}$ , and finitely enumerable subset τ of α there exists a subset β ∈ G such that τ ⊆ β ⊆ α. We show the main result in the constructive Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (CZF) with an additional axiom, called the set generation axiom which is derivable in CZF, both from the relativized dependent choice scheme and from a regular extension axiom. We give some applications of the main result to algebra, topology and formal topology.

This issue of Mathematical Structures in Computer Science contains a selection of papers presented at the 17th International Workshop on Expressiveness in Concurrency (EXPRESS'10), a satellite event of CONCUR'10, held on August 30th in Paris, France.

The importance of an abstract approach to a computation theory over general data types has been stressed by Tucker in many of his papers. Berger and Seisenberger recently elaborated the idea for extraction out of proofs involving (only) abstract reals. They considered a proof involving coinduction of the proposition that any two reals in [−1, 1] have their average in the same interval, and informally extract a Haskell program from this proof, which works with stream representations of reals. Here we formalize the proof, and machine extract its computational content using the Minlog proof assistant. This required an extension of this system to also take coinduction into account.

We provide a realizability model based on infinite time Turing machines in which there is an injection from the internal Baire space, the object of infinite sequences of numbers, to the object of natural numbers.

The first part of the paper presents a generalization of the well-known Baire category theorem. The generalization consists in replacing the dense open sets of the original formulation by dense UCO sets, where UCO means union of closed and open. This topological theorem is exactly what is needed to prove in the second part of the paper the locale-theoretic result that locales whose frame of opens has a countable presentation (countably many generators and countably many relations) are spatial. This spatiality theorem does not require choice.

The structure of the Wadge degrees on zero-dimensional spaces is very simple (almost well ordered), but for many other natural nonzero-dimensional spaces (including the space of reals) this structure is much more complicated. We consider weaker notions of reducibility, including the so-called Δ0 α-reductions, and try to find for various natural topological spaces X the least ordinal αX such that for every αX ⩽ β < ω1 the degree-structure induced on X by the Δ0 β-reductions is simple (i.e. similar to the Wadge hierarchy on the Baire space). We show that αX ⩽ ω for every quasi-Polish space X, that αX ⩽ 3 for quasi-Polish spaces of dimension ≠ ∞, and that this last bound is in fact optimal for many (quasi-)Polish spaces, including the real line and its powers.

Throughout the years, several typing disciplines for the π-calculus have been proposed. Arguably, the most widespread of these typing disciplines consists of session types. Session types describe the input/output behaviour of processes and traditionally provide strong guarantees about this behaviour (i.e. deadlock-freedom and fidelity). While these systems exploit a fundamental notion of linearity, the precise connection between linear logic and session types has not been well understood.

This paper proposes a type system for the π-calculus that corresponds to a standard sequent calculus presentation of intuitionistic linear logic, interpreting linear propositions as session types and thus providing a purely logical account of all key features and properties of session types. We show the deep correspondence between linear logic and session types by exhibiting a tight operational correspondence between cut-elimination steps and process reductions. We also discuss an alternative presentation of linear session types based on classical linear logic, and compare our development with other more traditional session type systems.

We show that the proof-theoretic notion of logical preorder coincides with the process-theoretic notion of barbed preorder for a CCS-like process calculus obtained from the formula-as-process interpretation of a fragment of linear logic. The argument makes use of other standard notions in process algebra, namely simulation and labelled transition systems. This result establishes a connection between an approach to reason about process specifications, the barbed preorder, and a method to reason about logic specifications, the logical preorder.

The paper is devoted to an analysis of the concurrent features of asynchronous systems. A preliminary step is represented by the introduction of a non-interleaving extension of barbed equivalence. This notion is then exploited in order to prove that concurrency cannot be observed through asynchronous interactions, i.e., that the interleaving and concurrent versions of a suitable asynchronous weak equivalence actually coincide. The theory is validated on some case studies, related to nominal calculi (π-calculus) and visual specification formalisms (Petri nets). Additionally, we prove that a class of systems which is deemed (output-buffered) asynchronous, according to a characterization that was previously proposed in the literature, falls into our theory.

A long-standing and fundamental issue in computer security is to control the flow of information, whether to prevent confidential information from being leaked, or to prevent trusted information from being tainted. While there have been many efforts aimed at preventing improper flows completely (see for example, the survey by Sabelfeld and Myers (2003)), it has long been recognized that perfection is often impossible in practice. A basic example is a login program – whenever it rejects an incorrect password, it unavoidably reveals that the secret password differs from the one that was entered. More subtly, systems may be vulnerable to side channel attacks, because observable characteristics like running time and power consumption may depend, at least partially, on sensitive information.

In this paper, we continue the study of the geometry of Brownian motions which are encoded by Kolmogorov–Chaitin random reals (complex oscillations). We unfold Kolmogorov–Chaitin complexity in the context of Brownian motion and specifically to phenomena emerging from the random geometric patterns generated by a Brownian motion.

Objects and services are pervasive concepts in modern distributed systems. Objects and services, sometimes generically referred to as components, represent the unit of interaction. They offer mechanisms for abstraction and encapsulation, through a well-defined interface that specifies the way in which a given component can be used from the outside, thus hiding the details of the internal implementation. These features are important for building flexible systems, in which components can be used just by inspecting their interface.

Recently, in order to mix algebraic and logic styles of specification in a uniform framework, the notion of a logic labelled transition system (Logic LTS or LLTS for short) has been introduced and explored. A variety of constructors over LLTS, including usual process-algebraic operators, logic connectives (conjunction and disjunction) and standard temporal modalities (always and unless), have been given. However, no attempt has been made so far to develop the general theory concerning (nested) recursive operations over LLTS and a few fundamental problems are still open. This paper intends to study this issue in a pure process-algebraic style. A few fundamental properties, including precongruence and the uniqueness of consistent solutions of equations, will be established.

Event-driven programming is one of the major paradigms in concurrent and communication-based programming, where events are typically detected as the arrival of messages on asynchronous channels. Unfortunately, the flexibility and performance of traditional event-driven programming come at the cost of more complex programs: low-level APIs and the obfuscation of event-driven control flow make programs difficult to read, write and verify.

This paper introduces a π-calculus with session types that models event-driven session programming (called ESP) and studies its behavioural theory. The main characteristics of the ESP model are asynchronous, order-preserving message passing, non-blocking detection of event/message arrivals and dynamic inspection of session types. Session types offer formal safety guarantees, such as communication and event handling safety, and programmatic benefits that overcome problems with existing event-driven programming languages and techniques. The new typed bisimulation theory developed for the ESP model is distinct from standard synchronous or asynchronous bisimulation, capturing the semantic nature of eventful session-based processes. The bisimilarity coincides with reduction-closed barbed congruence.

We demonstrate the features and benefits of ESP and the behavioural theory through two key use cases. First, we examine an encoding and the semantic behaviour of the event selector, a central component of general event-driven systems, providing core results for verifying type-safe event-driven applications. Second, we examine the Lauer–Needham duality, building on the selector encoding and bisimulation theory to prove that a systematic transformation from multithreaded to event-driven session processes is type- and semantics-preserving.