This volume constitutes the proceedings of the First International Conference on Constraints in Computational Logics, CCL '94, held in Munich, Germany in September 1994. Besides abstracts or full papers of the 5 invited talks by senior researchers, the book contains revised versions of the 21 accepted research papers selected from a total of 52 submissions. The volume assembles high quality original papers covering major theoretical and practical issues of combining and extending programming paradigms, preferably by using constraints. The topics covered include symbolic constraints, set constraints, numerical constraints, multi-paradigm programming, combined calculi, constraints in rewriting, deduction, symbolic computations, and working systems.

Constraints and constraint solving : an introduction / Jean-Pierre Jouannaud / - Constraint solving on terms / Hubert Comon / - Combining constraint solving / Franz Baader / - Constraints and theorem proving / Harald Ganzinger / - Functional and constraint logic programming / Mario Rodríguez-Artalejo / - Building industrial applications with constraint programming / Helmut Simonis.

Constraints provide a declarative way of representing infinite sets of data. They are well suited for combining different logical or programming paradigms as has been known for constraint logic programming since the 1980s and more recently for functional programming. The use of constraints in automated deduction is more recent and has proved to be very successful, moving the control from the meta-level to the constraints, which are now first-class objects. This monograph-like book presents six thoroughly reviewed and revised lectures given by leading researchers at the summer school organized by the ESPRIT CCL Working Group in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, in September 1999. The book offers coherently written chapters on constraints and constraint solving, constraint solving on terms, combining constraint solving, constraints and theorem proving, functional and constraint logic programming, and building industrial applications.

ACM Monograph Series: A Computational Logic focuses on the use of induction in proving theorems, including the use of lemmas and axioms, free variables, equalities, and generalization. The publication first elaborates on a sketch of the theory and two simple examples, a precise definition of the theory, and correctness of a tautology-checker. Topics include mechanical proofs, informal development, formal specification of the problem, well-founded relations, natural numbers, and literal atoms. The book then examines the use of type information to simplify formulas, use of axioms and lemmas as rewrite rules, and the use of definitions. Topics include nonrecursive functions, computing values, free variables in hypothesis, infinite backwards chaining, infinite looping, computing type sets, and type prescriptions. The manuscript takes a look at rewriting terms and simplifying clauses, eliminating destructors and irrelevance, using equalities, and generalization. Concerns include reasons for eliminating isolated hypotheses, precise statement of the generalization heuristic, restricting generalizations, precise use of equalities, and multiple destructors and infinite looping. The publication is a vital source of data for researchers interested in computational logic.

This book tackles classic problems from operations research and circuit design using a logic programming language embedding consistency techniques, a paradigm emerging from artificial intelligence research. Van Hentenryck proposes a new approach to solving discrete combinatorial problems using these techniques.Logic programming serves as a convenient language for stating combinatorial problems, but its "generate and test" paradigm leads to inefficient programs. Van Hentenryck's approach preserves one of the most useful features of logic programming - the duality of its semantics - yet allows a short development time for the programs while preserving most of the efficiency of special purpose programs written in a procedural language.Embedding consistency techniques in logic programming allows for ease and flexibility of programming and short development time because constraint propagation and tree-search programming are abstracted away from the user. It also enables logic programs to be executed efficiently as consistency techniques permit an active use of constraints to remove combinations of values that cannot appear in a solution Van Hentenryck presents a comprehensive overview of this new approach from its theoretical foundations to its design and implementation, including applications to real life combinatorial problems.The ideas introduced in "Constraint Satisfaction in Logic Programming "have been used successfully to solve more than a dozen practical problems in operations research and circuit design, including disjunctive scheduling, warehouse location, cutting stock car sequencing, and microcode labeling problems.Pascal Van Hentenryck is a member of the research staff at the European Computer Industry Research Centre. "Constraint Satisfaction in Logic Programming" is based on research for the Centre's CHIP project. As an outgrowth of this project, a new language (CHIP) that will include consistency techniques has been developed for commercial use. The book is included in the Logic Programming series edited by Ehud Shapiro.

Constraint logic programming lies at the intersection of logic programming, optimisation and artificial intelligence. It has proved a successful tool in many areas including production planning, transportation scheduling, numerical analysis and bioinformatics. Eclipse is one of the leading software systems that realise its underlying methodology. Eclipse is exploited commercially by Cisco, and is freely available and used for teaching and research in over 500 universities. This book has a two-fold purpose. It's an introduction to constraint programming, appropriate for one-semester courses for upper undergraduate or graduate students in computer science or for programmers wishing to master the practical aspects of constraint programming. By the end of the book, the reader will be able to understand and write constraint programs that solve complex problems. Second, it provides a systematic introduction to the Eclipse system through carefully-chosen examples that guide the reader through the language and illustrate its power, versatility and utility.

Constraints; Simplification, optimization and implication; Finite constraint domains; Constraint logic programming; Simple modeling; Using data structures; Controlling search; Modelling with finite domain constraints; Advanced programming techniques; CLP systems; Other constraint programming languages; Constraint databases; Index.

This volume has a dual significance to the ESPRIT Basic Research efforts towards forging strong links between European academic and industrial teams carrying out research, often interdisciplinary, at the forefront of Information Technology. Firstly, it consists of the proceedings of the "Symposium on Computational Logic" - held on the occasion of the 7th ESPRIT Conference Week in November 1990 - whose organisation was inspired by the work of Basic Research Action 3012 (COMPULOG). This is a consortium which has attracted world-wide interest, with requests for collaboration throughout Europe, the US and Japan. The work of COMPULOG acts as a focal point in this symposium which is broadened to cover the work of other eminent researchers in the field, thus providing a review of the state of the art in computational logic, new and important contributions in the field, but also a vision of the future. Secondly, this volume is the first of an ESPRIT Basic Research Series of publications of research results. It is expected that the quality of content and broad distribution of this series will have a major impact in making the advances achieved accessible to the world of academic and industrial research alike. At this time, all ESPRIT Basic Research Actions have completed their first year and it is most encouraging and stimulating to see the flow of results such as the fine examples presented in this symposium.

The book contains the proceedings of the 12th European Testis Workshop and gives an excellent overview of the state of the art in testicular research. The chapters are written by leading scientists in the field of male reproduction, who were selceted on the basis of their specific area of research. The book covers all important aspects of testicular functioning, for example, Sertoli and Leydig cell functioning, spermatogonial development and transplantation, meiosis and spermiogenesis. Even for those investigators who were not present at the workshop, this volume provides a clear impression of the topics discussed during that meeting.