In 1943, Hadwiger conjectured that every graph with no $K_t$ minor is $(t-1)$-colorable for every $t\ge 1$. In the 1980s, Kostochka and Thomason independently proved that every graph with no $K_t$ minor has average degree $O(t\sqrt{\log t})$ and hence is $O(t\sqrt{\log t})$-colorable. Recently, Norin, Song and the second author showed that every graph with no $K_t$ minor is $O(t(\log t)^{\beta})$-colorable

The aim of this work is to study the structure and properties of the binary LCD codes having an automorphisms of odd prime order and to present a method for their construction.

A tripartite-circle drawing of a tripartite graph is a drawing in the plane, where each part of a vertex partition is placed on one of three disjoint circles, and the edges do not cross the circles. The tripartite-circle crossing number of a tripartite graph is the minimum number of edge crossings among all tripartite-circle drawings. We determine the tripartite-circle crossing number of $K_{2,2,n}$

Various networks such as cloud computing, water/gas/electricity networks, wireless sensor networks, transportation networks, and 4G/5G networks, have become an integral part of our daily lives. A binary-state network (BN) is often used to model network structures and applications. The BN reliability is the probability that a BN functions continuously; that is, that there is always a simple path connected

The ML-Constructive heuristic is a recently presented method and the first hybrid method capable of scaling up to real scale traveling salesman problems. It combines machine learning techniques and classic optimization techniques. In this paper we present improvements to the computational weight of the original deep learning model. In addition, as simpler models reduce the execution time, the possibility

In the area of beyond-planar graphs, i.e. graphs that can be drawn with some local restrictions on the edge crossings, the recognition problem is prominent next to the density question for the different graph classes. For 1-planar graphs, the recognition problem has been settled, namely it is NP-complete for the general case, while optimal 1-planar graphs, i.e. those with maximum density, can be recognized

In this short note, we show that for any $\epsilon >0$ and $k

For $n > 2k \geq 4$ we consider intersecting families $\mathcal F$ consisting of $k$-subsets of $\{1, 2, \ldots, n\}$. Let $\mathcal I(\mathcal F)$ denote the family of all distinct intersections $F \cap F'$, $F \neq F'$ and $F, F'\in \mathcal F$. Let $\mathcal A$ consist of the $k$-sets $A$ satisfying $|A \cap \{1, 2, 3\}| \geq 2$. We prove that for $n \geq 50 k^2$ $|\mathcal I(\mathcal F)|$ is maximized

This paper is a sequel of our previous paper (N. Kita: Bipartite graft {II}: Cathedral decomposition for combs. arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.06678, 2021). In our previous paper, a graft analogue of the Dulmage-Mendelsohn decomposition has been introduced for comb bipartite grafts. In this paper, we prove how this result can be extended for general bipartite grafts.

Dujmovi\'c, Joret, Micek, Morin, Ueckerdt and Wood [J. ACM 2020] proved that for every planar graph $G$ there is a graph $H$ with treewidth at most 8 and a path $P$ such that $G\subseteq H\boxtimes P$. We improve this result by replacing "treewidth at most 8" by "simple treewidth at most 6".

The reconfiguration graph for the $k$-colourings of a graph $G$, denoted $R_{k}(G)$, is the graph whose vertices are the $k$-colourings of $G$ and two colourings are joined by an edge if they differ in colour on exactly one vertex. For any $k$-colourable $P_4$-free graph $G$, Bonamy and Bousquet proved that $R_{k+1}(G)$ is connected. In this short note, we complete the classification of the connectedness

Local certification consists in assigning labels to the nodes of a network to certify that some given property is satisfied, in such a way that the labels can be checked locally. In the last few years, certification of graph classes received a considerable attention. The goal is to certify that a graph $G$ belongs to a given graph class~$\mathcal{G}$. Such certifications with labels of size $O(\log

A word is square-free if it does not contain any square (a word of the form $XX$), and is extremal square-free if it cannot be extended to a new square-free word by inserting a single letter at any position. Grytczuk, Kordulewski, and Niewiadomski proved that there exist infinitely many ternary extremal square-free words. We establish that there are no extremal square-free words over any alphabet of

This thesis introduces the "method of structural refinement", which serves as a means of transforming the relational semantics of a modal and/or constructive logic into an 'economical' proof system by connecting two proof-theoretic paradigms: labelled and nested sequent calculi. The formalism of labelled sequents has been successful in that cut-free calculi in possession of desirable proof-theoretic

We consider avoiding mesosomes -- that is, words of the form $xx'$ with $x'$ a conjugate of $x$ that is different from $x$ -- over a binary alphabet. We give a structure theorem for mesosome-avoiding words, count how many there are, characterize all the infinite mesosome-avoiding words, and determine the minimal forbidden words.

All kind of networks, e.g., Internet of Things, social networks, wireless sensor networks, transportation networks, 4g/5G, etc., are around us to benefit and help our daily life. The multistate flow network (MFN) is always used to model network structures and applications. The level d reliability, Rd, of the MFN is the success probability of sending at least d units of integer flow from the source

We consider a variant of Cops and Robbers in which the robber may traverse as many edges as he likes in each turn, with the constraint that he cannot pass through any vertex occupied by a cop. We study this model on several classes of grid-like graphs. In particular, we determine the cop numbers for two-dimensional Cartesian grids and tori up to an additive constant, and we give asymptotic bounds for

In the $d$-dimensional hypercube bin packing problem, a given list of $d$-dimensional hypercubes must be packed into the smallest number of hypercube bins. Epstein and van Stee [SIAM J. Comput. 35 (2005)] showed that the asymptotic performance ratio $\rho$ of the online bounded space variant is $\Omega(\log d)$ and $O(d/\log d)$, and conjectured that it is $\Theta(\log d)$. We show that $\rho$ is in

We consider two games between two players Ann and Ben who build a word together by adding alternatively a letter at the end of the shared word. In the nonrepetitive game, Ben wins the game if he can create a square of length at least $4$, and Ann wins if she can build an arbitrarily long word before that. In the erase-repetition game, whenever a square occurs the second part of the square is erased

In this expository note we present simple proofs of the lower bound of Ramsey numbers (Erd\"os theorem), and of the estimation of discrepancy. Neither statements nor proofs require any knowledge beyond high-school curriculum (except a minor detail). Thus they are accessible to non-specialists, in particular, to students. Our exposition is simpler than the standard exposition because no probabilistic

A $k$-stack layout (or $k$-page book embedding) of a graph consists of a total order of the vertices, and a partition of the edges into $k$ sets of non-crossing edges with respect to the vertex order. The stack number of a graph is the minimum $k$ such that it admits a $k$-stack layout. In this paper we study a long-standing problem regarding the stack number of planar directed acyclic graphs (DAGs)

The use of drones in logistics is gaining more and more interest, and drones are becoming a more viable and common way of distributing parcels in an urban environment. As a consequence, there is a flourishing production of articles in the field of operational optimization of the combined use of trucks and drones for fulfilling customers requests. The aim is minimizing the total time required to service

We introduce the fractional version of oriented coloring and initiate its study. We prove some basic results and study the parameter for directed cycles and sparse planar graphs. In particular, we show that for every $\epsilon > 0$, there exists an integer $g_{\epsilon} \geq 12$ such that any oriented planar graph having girth at least $g_{\epsilon}$ has fractional oriented chromatic number at most

We consider generalized Nash equilibrium problems (GNEPs) with non-convex strategy spaces and non-convex cost functions. This general class of games includes the important case of games with mixed-integer variables for which only a few results are known in the literature. We present a new approach to characterize equilibria via a convexification technique using the Nikaido-Isoda function. To any given

In the classical Subset Sum problem we are given a set $X$ and a target $t$, and the task is to decide whether there exists a subset of $X$ which sums to $t$. A recent line of research has resulted in $\tilde{O}(t)$-time algorithms, which are (near-)optimal under popular complexity-theoretic assumptions. On the other hand, the standard dynamic programming algorithm runs in time $O(n \cdot |\mathcal{S}(X

On-demand delivery has become increasingly popular around the world. Brick-and-mortar grocery stores, restaurants, and pharmacies are providing fast delivery services to satisfy the growing home delivery demand. Motivated by a large meal and grocery delivery company, we model and solve a multiperiod driver dispatching and routing problem for last-mile delivery systems where on-time performance is the

The smart grid concept has emerged to address the existing problems in the traditional electric grid, which has been functioning for more than a hundred years. The most crucial difference between traditional grids and smart grids is the communication infrastructure applied to the latter. However, coupling between these networks can increase the risk of significant failures. Hence, assessing the performance

Let $r \geq 2$, $n$ and $k$ be integers satisfying $k \leq \frac{r-1}{r}n$. We conjecture that the family of all $k$-subsets of an $n$-set cannot be partitioned into fewer than $\lceil n-\frac{r}{r-1}(k-1) \rceil$ $r$-wise intersecting families. If true this is tight for all values of the parameters. The case $r=2$ is Kneser's conjecture, proved by Lov\'asz. Here we observe that the assertion also

The busy beaver value BB($n$) is the maximum number of steps made by any $n$-state, 2-symbol deterministic halting Turing machine starting on blank tape, and BB($n,k$) denotes its $k$-symbol generalisation to $k\geq 2$. The busy beaver function $n \mapsto \text{BB}(n)$ is uncomputable and its values have been linked to hard open problems in mathematics and notions of unprovability. In this paper, we

Fluid democracy is a voting paradigm that allows voters to choose between directly voting and transitively delegating their votes to other voters. While fluid democracy has been viewed as a system that can combine the best aspects of direct and representative democracy, it can also result in situations where few voters amass a large amount of influence. To analyze the impact of this shortcoming, we

Given a subset $A$ of the $n$-dimensional Boolean hypercube $\mathbb{F}_2^n$, the sumset $A+A$ is the set $\{a+a': a, a' \in A\}$ where addition is in $\mathbb{F}_2^n$. Sumsets play an important role in additive combinatorics, where they feature in many central results of the field. The main result of this paper is a sublinear-time algorithm for the problem of sumset size estimation. In more detail

In the standard trace reconstruction problem, the goal is to \emph{exactly} reconstruct an unknown source string $\mathsf{x} \in \{0,1\}^n$ from independent "traces", which are copies of $\mathsf{x}$ that have been corrupted by a $\delta$-deletion channel which independently deletes each bit of $\mathsf{x}$ with probability $\delta$ and concatenates the surviving bits. We study the \emph{approximate}

We are interested in solving decision problem $\exists? t \in \mathbb{N}, \cos t \theta = c$ where $\cos \theta$ and $c$ are algebraic numbers. We call this the $\cos t \theta$ problem. This is an exploration of Diophantine equations with analytic functions. Polynomial, exponential with real base and cosine function are closely related to this decision problem: $ \exists ? t \in \mathbb{N}, u^T M^t

How might one test the hypothesis that graphs were sampled from the same distribution? Here, we compare two statistical tests that address this question. The first uses the observed subgraph densities themselves as estimates of those of the underlying distribution. The second test uses a new approach that converts these subgraph densities into estimates of the graph cumulants of the distribution. We

Quantum degeneracy in error correction is a feature unique to quantum error correcting codes unlike their classically counterpart. It allows a quantum error correcting code to correct errors even in cases when they can not uniquely pin point the error. Diagonal distance of a quantum code is an important parameter that characterizes if the quantum code is degenerate or not. If code has distance more

A set $S\subseteq V(G)$ of a graph $G$ is a dominating set if each vertex has a neighbor in $S$ or belongs to $S$. Let $\gamma(G)$ be the cardinality of a minimum dominating set in $G$. The bondage number $b(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the smallest number of edges $A\subseteq E(G)$, such that $\gamma(G-A)=\gamma(G)+1$. The problem of finding $b(G)$ for a graph $G$ is known to be NP-hard even for bipartite

Dawar and Wilsenach (ICALP 2020) introduce the model of symmetric arithmetic circuits and show an exponential separation between the sizes of symmetric circuits for computing the determinant and the permanent. The symmetry restriction is that the circuits which take a matrix input are unchanged by a permutation applied simultaneously to the rows and columns of the matrix. Under such restrictions we

We study the complexity of the decision problem known as Permutation Pattern Matching, or PPM. The input of PPM consists of a pair of permutations $\tau$ (the `text') and $\pi$ (the `pattern'), and the goal is to decide whether $\tau$ contains $\pi$ as a subpermutation. On general inputs, PPM is known to be NP-complete by a result of Bose, Buss and Lubiw. In this paper, we focus on restricted instances

Linear codes in the projective space $\mathbb{P}_q(n)$, the set of all subspaces of the vector space $\mathbb{F}_q^n$, were first considered by Braun, Etzion and Vardy. The Grassmannian $\mathbb{G}_q(n,k)$ is the collection of all subspaces of dimension $k$ in $\mathbb{P}_q(n)$. We study equidistant linear codes in $\mathbb{P}_q(n)$ in this paper and establish that the normalized minimum distance of

The general adwords problem has remained largely unresolved. We define a subcase called {\em $k$-TYPICAL}, $k \in \Zplus$, as follows: the total budget of all the bidders is sufficient to buy $k$ bids for each bidder. This seems a reasonable assumption for a ``typical'' instance, at least for moderate values of $k$. We give a randomized online algorithm achieving a competitive ratio of $\left(1 - {1

It is known that testing isomorphism of chordal graphs is as hard as the general graph isomorphism problem. Every chordal graph can be represented as the intersection graph of some subtrees of a tree. The leafage of a chordal graph, is defined to be the minimum number of leaves in the representing tree. We construct a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm testing isomorphism of chordal graphs with bounded

In this paper, we present a completely radical way to investigate the main problem of symbolic dynamics, the conjugacy problem, by proving that this problem actually relates to a natural question in category theory regarding the theory of traced bialgebras. As a consequence of this theory, we obtain a systematic way of obtaining new invariants for the conjugacy problem by looking at existing bialgebras

We present a new method for assessing homophily in networks whose vertices have categorical attributes, namely when the vertices of networks come partitioned into classes. We apply this method to Protein- Protein Interaction networks, where vertices correspond to proteins, partitioned according to they functional role, and edges represent potential interactions between proteins. Similarly to other

We consider the problem of sampling from the ferromagnetic Potts and random-cluster models on a general family of random graphs via the Glauber dynamics for the random-cluster model. The random-cluster model is parametrized by an edge probability $p \in (0,1)$ and a cluster weight $q > 0$. We establish that for every $q\ge 1$, the random-cluster Glauber dynamics mixes in optimal $\Theta(n\log n)$ steps

There are many applications of max flow with capacities that depend on one or more parameters. Many of these applications fall into the "Source-Sink Monotone" framework, a special case of Topkis's monotonic optimization framework, which implies that the parametric min cuts are nested. When there is a single parameter, this property implies that the number of distinct min cuts is linear in the number

Envy-freeness is one of the most widely studied notions in fair division. Since envy-free allocations do not always exist when items are indivisible, several relaxations have been considered. Among them, possibly the most compelling concept is envy-freeness up to any item (EFX). We study the existence of EFX allocations for general valuations. The existence of EFX allocations is a major open problem

We study how good a lexicographically maximal solution is in the weighted matching and matroid intersection problems. A solution is lexicographically maximal if it takes as many heaviest elements as possible, and subject to this, it takes as many second heaviest elements as possible, and so on. If the distinct weight values are sufficiently dispersed, e.g., the minimum ratio of two distinct weight

This paper presents a profound analysis of the robust job scheduling problem with uncertain release dates on unrelated machines. Our model involves minimizing the worst-case makespan and interval uncertainty where each release date belongs to a well-defined interval. Robust optimization requires scenario-based decision-making. A finite subset of feasible scenarios to determine the worst-case regret

The class of $k$-star caterpillar convex bipartite graphs generalizes the class of convex bipartite graphs. For a bipartite graph with partitions $X$ and $Y$, we associate a $k$-star caterpillar on $X$ such that for each vertex in $Y$, its neighborhood induces a tree. The $k$-star caterpillar on $X$ is imaginary and if the imaginary structure is a path ($0$-star caterpillar), then it is the class of

In this paper, we consider the Minimum-Load $k$-Clustering/Facility Location (MLkC) problem where we are given a set $P$ of $n$ points in a metric space that we have to cluster and an integer $k$ that denotes the number of clusters. Additionally, we are given a set $F$ of cluster centers in the same metric space. The goal is to select a set $C\subseteq F$ of $k$ centers and assign each point in $P$

Many bureaucratic and industrial processes involve decision points where an object can be sent to a variety of different stations based on certain preconditions. Consider for example a visa application that has needs to be checked at various stages, and move to different stations based on the outcomes of said checks. While the individual decision points in these processes are well defined, in a complicated

A position $p$ in a word $w$ is critical if the minimal local period at $p$ is equal to the global period of $w$. According to the Critical Factorisation Theorem all words of length at least two have a critical point. We study the number $\eta(w)$ of critical points of square-free ternary words $w$, i.e., words over a three letter alphabet. We show that the sufficiently long square-free words $w$ satisfy

We investigate the recoverable robust single machine scheduling problem under interval uncertainty. In this setting, jobs have first-stage processing times p and second-stage processing times q and we aim to find a first-stage and second-stage schedule with a minimum combined sum of completion times, such that at least Delta jobs share the same position in both schedules. We provide positive complexity

One-bit compressed sensing (1bCS) is an extreme-quantized signal acquisition method that has been widely studied in the past decade. In 1bCS, linear samples of a high dimensional signal are quantized to only one bit per sample (sign of the measurement). Assuming the original signal vector to be sparse, existing results either aim to find the support of the vector, or approximate the signal within an

In an undirected graph $G=(V,E)$, we say $(A,B)$ is a pair of perfectly matched sets if $A$ and $B$ are disjoint subsets of $V$ and every vertex in $A$ (resp. $B$) has exactly one neighbor in $B$ (resp. $A$). The size of a pair perfectly matched sets $(A,B)$ is $|A|=|B|$. The PERFECTLY MATCHED SETS problem is to decide whether a given graph $G$ has a pair of perfectly matched sets of size $k$. We show

We consider a known variant of bin packing called {\it cardinality constrained bin packing}, also called {\it bin packing with cardinality constraints} (BPCC). In this problem, there is a parameter k\geq 2, and items of rational sizes in [0,1] are to be packed into bins, such that no bin has more than k items or total size larger than 1. The goal is to minimize the number of bins. A recently introduced

Given a digraph $G$, a set $X\subseteq V(G)$ is said to be absorbing set (resp. dominating set) if every vertex in the graph is either in $X$ or is an in-neighbour (resp. out-neighbour) of a vertex in $X$. A set $S\subseteq V(G)$ is said to be an independent set if no two vertices in $S$ are adjacent in $G$. A kernel (resp. solution) of $G$ is an independent and absorbing (resp. dominating) set in

Given a finite set $E$ and an operator $\sigma:2^{E}\longrightarrow2^{E}$, two sets $X,Y\subseteq E$ are \textit{cospanning} if $\sigma\left( X\right) =\sigma\left( Y\right) $. Corresponding \textit{cospanning equivalence relations} were investigated for greedoids in much detail (Korte, Lovasz, Schrader; 1991). For instance, these relations determine greedoids uniquely. In fact, the feasible sets of

We first design an $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ solution for finding a maximum induced matching in permutation graphs given their permutation models, based on a dynamic programming algorithm with the aid of the sweep line technique. With the support of the disjoint-set data structure, we improve the complexity to $\mathcal{O}(m + n)$. Consequently, we extend this result to give an $\mathcal{O}(m + n)$ algorithm

We give a combinatorial proof that congruence permutability is prime in the lattice of interpretability types of varieties. Thereby, we settle a 1984 conjecture of Garcia and Taylor.