Book Description

Time is a fascinating subject and has long since captured mankind's imagination, from the ancients to modern man, both adult and child alike. It has been studied across a wide range of disciplines, from the natural sciences to philosophy and logic. Today, thirty plus years since Prior's work in laying out foundations for temporal logic, and two decades on from Pnueli's seminal work applying of temporal logic in specification and verification of computer programs, temporal logic has a strong and thriving international research community within the broad disciplines of computer science and artificial intelligence. Areas of activity include, but are certainly not restricted to: Pure Temporal Logic, e. g. temporal systems, proof theory, model theory, expressiveness and complexity issues, algebraic properties, application of game theory; Specification and Verification, e. g. of reactive systems, ofreal-time components, of user interaction, of hardware systems, techniques and tools for verification, execution and prototyping methods; Temporal Databases, e. g. temporal representation, temporal query ing, granularity of time, update mechanisms, active temporal data bases, hypothetical reasoning; Temporal Aspects in AI, e. g. modelling temporal phenomena, in terval temporal calculi, temporal nonmonotonicity, interaction of temporal reasoning with action/knowledge/belief logics, temporal planning; Tense and Aspect in Natural Language, e. g. models, ontologies, temporal quantifiers, connectives, prepositions, processing tempo ral statements; Temporal Theorem Proving, e. g. translation methods, clausal and non-clausal resolution, tableaux, automata-theoretic approaches, tools and practical systems.