Abstract We analyze the axiomatic strength of the following theorem due to Rival and Sands [28] in the style of reverse mathematics. Every infinite partial order P of finite width contains an infinite chain C such that every element of P is either comparable with no element of C or with infinitely many elements of C. Our main results are the following. The Rival–Sands theorem for infinite partial orders of arbitrary finite width is equivalent to $\mathsf {I}\Sigma ^0_{2} + \mathsf {ADS}$ over $\mathsf {RCA}_0$ . For each fixed $k \geq 3$ , the Rival–Sands theorem for infinite partial orders of width $\leq \!k$ is equivalent to $\mathsf {ADS}$ over $\mathsf {RCA}_0$ . The Rival–Sands theorem for infinite partial orders that are decomposable into the union of two chains is equivalent to $\mathsf {SADS}$ over $\mathsf {RCA}_0$ . Here $\mathsf {RCA}_0$ denotes the recursive comprehension axiomatic system, $\mathsf {I}\Sigma ^0_{2}$ denotes the $\Sigma ^0_2$ induction scheme, $\mathsf {ADS}$ denotes the ascending/descending sequence principle, and $\mathsf {SADS}$ denotes the stable ascending/descending sequence principle. To the best of our knowledge, these versions of the Rival–Sands theorem for partial orders are the first examples of theorems from the general mathematics literature whose strength is exactly characterized by $\mathsf {I}\Sigma ^0_{2} + \mathsf {ADS}$ , by $\mathsf {ADS}$ , and by $\mathsf {SADS}$ . Furthermore, we give a new purely combinatorial result by extending the Rival–Sands theorem to infinite partial orders that do not have infinite antichains, and we show that this extension is equivalent to arithmetical comprehension over $\mathsf {RCA}_0$ .

Abstract Cohesive powersof computable structures are effective analogs of ultrapowers, where cohesive sets play the role of ultrafilters. Let $\omega $ , $\zeta $ , and $\eta $ denote the respective order-types of the natural numbers, the integers, and the rationals when thought of as linear orders. We investigate the cohesive powers of computable linear orders, with special emphasis on computable copies of $\omega $ . If $\mathcal {L}$ is a computable copy of $\omega $ that is computably isomorphic to the usual presentation of $\omega $ , then every cohesive power of $\mathcal {L}$ has order-type $\omega + \zeta \eta $ . However, there are computable copies of $\omega $ , necessarily not computably isomorphic to the usual presentation, having cohesive powers not elementarily equivalent to $\omega + \zeta \eta $ . For example, we show that there is a computable copy of $\omega $ with a cohesive power of order-type $\omega + \eta $ . Our most general result is that if $X \subseteq \mathbb {N} \setminus \{0\}$ is a Boolean combination of $\Sigma _2$ sets, thought of as a set of finite order-types, then there is a computable copy of $\omega $ with a cohesive power of order-type $\omega + \boldsymbol {\sigma }(X \cup \{\omega + \zeta \eta + \omega ^*\})$ , where $\boldsymbol {\sigma }(X \cup \{\omega + \zeta \eta + \omega ^*\})$ denotes the shuffle of the order-types inXand the order-type $\omega + \zeta \eta + \omega ^*$ . Furthermore, ifXis finite and non-empty, then there is a computable copy of $\omega $ with a cohesive power of order-type $\omega + \boldsymbol {\sigma }(X)$ .

Abstract For every partial combinatory algebra (pca), we define a hierarchy of extensionality relations using ordinals. We investigate the closure ordinals of pca’s, i.e., the smallest ordinals where these relations become equal. We show that the closure ordinal of Kleene’s first model is ${\omega _1^{\textit {CK}}}$ and that the closure ordinal of Kleene’s second model is $\omega _1$ . We calculate the exact complexities of the extensionality relations in Kleene’s first model, showing that they exhaust the hyperarithmetical hierarchy. We also discuss embeddings of pca’s.

Abstract We investigate the strength of a randomness notion ${\cal R}$ as a set-existence principle in second-order arithmetic: for eachZthere is anXthat is ${\cal R}$ -random relative toZ. We show that the equivalence between 2-randomness and being infinitely oftenC-incompressible is provable in $RC{A_0}$ . We verify that $RC{A_0}$ proves the basic implications among randomness notions: 2-random $\Rightarrow$ weakly 2-random $\Rightarrow$ Martin-Löf random $\Rightarrow$ computably random $\Rightarrow$ Schnorr random. Also, over $RC{A_0}$ the existence of computable randoms is equivalent to the existence of Schnorr randoms. We show that the existence of balanced randoms is equivalent to the existence of Martin-Löf randoms, and we describe a sense in which this result is nearly optimal.

Abstract We prove that the statement “there is aksuch that for everyfthere is ak-bounded diagonally nonrecursive function relative tof” does not imply weak König’s lemma over ${\rm{RC}}{{\rm{A}}_0} + {\rm{B\Sigma }}_2^0$ . This answers a question posed by Simpson. A recursion-theoretic consequence is that the classic fact that everyk-bounded diagonally nonrecursive function computes a 2-bounded diagonally nonrecursive function may fail in the absence of ${\rm{I\Sigma }}_2^0$ .

Abstract We prove that the first-order theory of the Medvedev degrees, the first-order theory of the Muchnik degrees, and the third-order theory of true arithmetic are pairwise recursively isomorphic (obtained independently by Lewis, Nies, and Sorbi [7]). We then restrict our attention to the degrees of closed sets and prove that the following theories are pairwise recursively isomorphic: the first-order theory of the closed Medvedev degrees, the first-order theory of the compact Medvedev degrees, the first-order theory of the closed Muchnik degrees, the first-order theory of the compact Muchnik degrees, and the second-order theory of true arithmetic. Our coding methods also prove that neither the closed Medvedev degrees nor the compact Medvedev degrees are elementarily equivalent to either the closed Muchnik degrees or the compact Muchnik degrees.

BACKGROUND: Existing biological databases support a variety of queries such as keyword or definition search. However, they do not provide any measure of relevance for the instances reported, and result sets are usually sorted arbitrarily. RESULTS: We describe a system that builds upon the complex infrastructure of the Biozon database and applies methods similar to those of Google to rank documents that match queries. We explore different prominence models and study the spectral properties of the corresponding data graphs. We evaluate the information content of principal and non-principal eigenspaces, and test various scoring functions which combine contributions from multiple eigenspaces. We also test the effect of similarity data and other variations which are unique to the biological knowledge domain on the quality of the results. Query result sets are assessed using a probabilistic approach that measures the significance of coherence between directly connected nodes in the data graph. This model allows us, for the first time, to compare different prominence models quantitatively and effectively and to observe unique trends. CONCLUSION: Our tests show that the ranked query results outperform unsorted results with respect to our significance measure and the top ranked entities are typically linked to many other biological entities. Our study resulted in a working ranking system of biological entities that was integrated into Biozon at http://biozon.org.