This issue of Mathematical Structures in Computer Science (MSCS) contains a selection of papers presented at the 12th International Colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing (ICTAC 2015), which took place in Cali, Colombia, on October 29–31, 2015.

We study two well-known linear-time metrics on Markov chains (MCs), namely, the strong and strutter trace distances. Our interest in these metrics is motivated by their relation to the probabilistic linear temporal logic (LTL)-model checking problem: we prove that they correspond to the maximal differences in the probability of satisfying the same LTL and LTL−X (LTL without next operator) formulas, respectively.

The threshold problem for these distances (whether their value exceeds a given threshold) is NP-hard and not known to be decidable. Nevertheless, we provide an approximation schema where each lower and upper approximant is computable in polynomial time in the size of the MC.

The upper approximants are bisimilarity-like pseudometrics (hence, branching-time distances) that converge point-wise to the linear-time metrics. This convergence is interesting in itself, because it reveals a non-trivial relation between branching and linear-time metric-based semantics that does not hold in equivalence-based semantics.

We present a comparative study of four product operators on weighted languages: (i) the convolution, (ii) the shuffle, (iii) the infiltration and (iv) the Hadamard product. Exploiting the fact that the set of weighted languages is a final coalgebra, we use coinduction to prove that an operator of the classical difference calculus, the Newton transform, generalises from infinite sequences to weighted languages. We show that the Newton transform is an isomorphism of rings that transforms the Hadamard product of two weighted languages into their infiltration product, and we develop various representations for the Newton transform of a language, together with concrete calculation rules for computing them.

The delay datatype was introduced by Capretta (Logical Methods in Computer Science, 1(2), article 1, 2005) as a means to deal with partial functions (as in computability theory) in Martin-Löf type theory. The delay datatype is a monad. It is often desirable to consider two delayed computations equal, if they terminate with equal values, whenever one of them terminates. The equivalence relation underlying this identification is called weak bisimilarity. In type theory, one commonly replaces quotients with setoids. In this approach, the delay datatype quotiented by weak bisimilarity is still a monad–a constructive alternative to the maybe monad. In this paper, we consider the alternative approach of Hofmann (Extensional Constructs in Intensional Type Theory, Springer, London, 1997) of extending type theory with inductive-like quotient types. In this setting, it is difficult to define the intended monad multiplication for the quotiented datatype. We give a solution where we postulate some principles, crucially proposition extensionality and the (semi-classical) axiom of countable choice. With the aid of these principles, we also prove that the quotiented delay datatype delivers free ω-complete pointed partial orders (ωcppos).

Altenkirch et al. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 10203, Springer, Heidelberg, 534–549, 2017) demonstrated that, in homotopy type theory, a certain higher inductive–inductive type is the free ωcppo on a type X essentially by definition; this allowed them to obtain a monad of free ωcppos without recourse to a choice principle. We notice that, by a similar construction, a simpler ordinary higher inductive type gives the free countably complete join semilattice on the unit type 1. This type suffices for constructing a monad, which is isomorphic to the one of Altenkirch et al. We have fully formalized our results in the Agda dependently typed programming language.

We investigate a new computational interpretation for an intuitionistic focused sequent calculus which is compatible with a resource aware semantics. For that, we associate to Herbelin's syntax a type system based on non-idempotent intersection types, together with a set of reduction rules – inspired from the substitution at a distance paradigm – that preserves (and decreases the size of) typing derivations. The non-idempotent approach allows us to use very simple combinatorial arguments, only based on this measure decreasingness, to characterize linear-head and strongly normalizing terms by means of typability. For the sake of completeness, we also study typability (and the corresponding strong normalization characterization) in the calculus obtained from the former one by projecting the explicit cuts.

We propose a variant of public announcement logic for asynchronous systems. To capture asynchrony, we introduce two different modal operators for sending and receiving messages. The natural approach to defining the semantics leads to a circular definition, but we describe two restricted cases in which we solve this problem. The first case requires the Kripke model representing the initial epistemic situation to be a finite tree, and the second one only allows announcements from the existential fragment. After establishing some validities, we study the model checking problem and the satisfiability problem in cases where the semantics is well-defined, and we provide several complexity results.

This paper deals with runtime enforcement of untimed and timed properties with uncontrollable events. Runtime enforcement consists in defining and using mechanisms that modify the executions of a running system to ensure their correctness with respect to a desired property. We introduce a framework that takes as input any regular (timed) property described by a deterministic automaton over an alphabet of events, with some of these events being uncontrollable. An uncontrollable event cannot be delayed nor intercepted by an enforcement mechanism. Enforcement mechanisms should satisfy important properties, namely soundness, compliance and optimality – meaning that enforcement mechanisms should output as soon as possible correct executions that are as close as possible to the input execution. We define the conditions for a property to be enforceable with uncontrollable events. Moreover, we synthesise sound, compliant and optimal descriptions of runtime enforcement mechanisms at two levels of abstraction to facilitate their design and implementation.