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In this paper, we firstly give the notion of relative ϵ -approximate bisimulations between two fuzzy two-dimensional on-line tessellation automata (F2OTAs) and elaborate that the relative error between two F2OTAs, accompanying with a relative ϵ -approximate bisimulation between them, is less than or equal to ϵ where ϵ ∈ [ 0 , 1 ]. Moreover, if relative ϵ -approximate bisimulations between two F2OTAs are restricted to be surjective functional, then some properties are drawn and by which relative ϵ -approximate bisimulations on a F2OTA are defined. We construct the factor F2OTA of a F2OTA with respect to a relative ϵ -approximate bisimulation on it and describe the relationship between this factor automaton and the original F2OTA. Whereafter, we novelly design two algorithms to compute all maximal relative ϵ -approximate bisimulations on a given F2OTA. Finally, we discuss some interesting properties of bisimulations on F2OTAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software systems rely on events for logging, coordination, handling unusual situations, and more. Monitoring event streams from systems that provide services can ensure the service complies with policies, regulations, and other business rules. Notably, monitoring to detect violations of rules as early as possible is much desired as, for example, the service may reclaim more resources from erring enactments. The primary goal of this paper is to develop techniques for detecting violations of time constraints as early as possible. We formalize a model for events and a language to specify constraints on event timing and data. We develop algorithms to detect violations of individual rules, then use a chase process to detect violations of acyclic sets of rules. We also present optimization techniques to reduce monitoring overhead. Finally, we implement and evaluate our algorithms through experiments to demonstrate our approach is feasible and beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we prove that the general CNF satisfiability problem can be solved in O ⁎ (1.0638 L) time, where L is the length of the input CNF-formula (i.e., the total number of literals in the formula), which improves the previous result of O ⁎ (1.0652 L) obtained in 2009. Our algorithm was analyzed by using the measure-and-conquer method. Our improvements are mainly attributed to the following two points: we carefully design branching rules to deal with degree-5 and degree-4 variables to avoid previous bottlenecks; we show that some worst cases will not always happen, and then we can use an amortized technique to get further improvements. In our analyses, we provide some general frameworks for analysis and several lower bounds on the decreasing of the measure to simplify the arguments. These techniques may be used to analyze more algorithms based on the measure-and-conquer method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a previous paper, Duchêne and Rigo introduced the notion of invariance for take-away games on heaps. Roughly speaking, these are games whose rulesets do not depend on the position. Given a sequence S of positive tuples of integers, the question of whether there exists an invariant game having S as set of P -positions is relevant. In particular, it was recently proved by Larsson et al. that if S is a pair of complementary Beatty sequences, then the answer to this question is always positive. In this paper, we show that for a fairly large set of sequences (expressed by infinite words), the answer to this question is decidable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider two-person zero-sum stochastic mean payoff games with perfect information, or BWR-games, given by a digraph G = (V , E) , with local rewards r : E → Z , and three types of positions: black V B , white V W , and random V R forming a partition of V. It is a long-standing open question whether a polynomial time algorithm for BWR-games exists, or not, even when | V R | = 0. In fact, a pseudo-polynomial algorithm for BWR-games would already imply their polynomial solvability. In this paper, 1 we show that BWR-games with a constant number of random positions can be solved in pseudo-polynomial time. More precisely, in any BWR-game with | V R | = O (1) , a saddle point in uniformly optimal pure stationary strategies can be found in time polynomial in | V W | + | V B | , the maximum absolute local reward, and the common denominator of the transition probabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Sequence comparison is a prerequisite to virtually all comparative genomic analyses. It is often realised by sequence alignment techniques, which are computationally expensive. This has led to increased research into alignment-free techniques, which are based on measures referring to the composition of sequences in terms of their constituent patterns. These measures, such as q -gram distance, are usually computed in time linear with respect to the length of the sequences. In this paper, we focus on the complementary idea: how two sequences can be efficiently compared based on information that does not occur in the sequences. A word is an absent word of some sequence if it does not occur in the sequence. An absent word is minimal if all its proper factors occur in the sequence. Here we present the first linear-time and linear-space algorithm to compare two sequences by considering all their minimal absent words. In the process, we present results of combinatorial interest, and also extend the proposed techniques to compare circular sequences. We also present an algorithm that, given a word x of length n , computes the largest integer for which all factors of x of that length occur in some minimal absent word of x in time and space O (n). Finally, we show that the known asymptotic upper bound on the number of minimal absent words of a word is tight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Simple Temporal Network with Uncertainty (STNU) is a data structure for reasoning about time constraints on actions that may have uncertain durations. An STNU is dispatchable if it can be executed in real-time with minimal computation 1) satisfying all constraints no matter how the uncertain durations play out and 2) retaining maximum flexibility. The fastest known algorithm for converting STNUs into dispatchable form runs in O (n 3) time, where n is the number of timepoints. This paper presents a faster algorithm that runs in O (m n + k n 2 + n 2 log ⁡ n) time, where m is the number of edges and k is the number of uncertain durations. This performance is particularly meaningful in fields like Business Process Management, where sparse STNUs can represent temporal processes or plans. For sparse STNUs, our algorithm generates dispatchable forms in time O (n 2 log ⁡ n) , a significant improvement over the O (n 3) -time previous fastest algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martin-Löf defined algorithmic randomness, the use of martingales in this definition and several variants were explored by Schnorr, and Lutz introduced resource-bounded randomness. Ambos-Spies et al. have studied resource-bounded randomness under time-bounds and have shown that resource-bounded randomness implies resource-bounded genericity. While the genericity of Ambos-Spies is based on time-bound on finite-extension strategy, the genericity of Dowd, the main topic of this paper, is based on an analogy of the forcing theorem. For a positive integer r , an oracle D is r -generic in the sense of Dowd ( r -Dowd) if the following holds: If a certain formula F on an exponential-sized portion of D is a tautology then a polynomial-sized subfunction of D forces F to be a tautology. Here, r is the number of occurrences of query symbols in F . The relationship between resource-bounded randomness and Dowd-type genericity has been not clear so far. We show that there exists a primitive recursive function t ( n ) with the following property: Every t ( n ) -random set is r -Dowd for each positive integer r . A proof is done by means of constructing resource-bounded martingales. In our former paper, we left an open problem whether there exists a primitive recursive set which is r -Dowd for every positive integer r . In our recent work, we give an affirmative answer to the problem. The main theorem of the present paper gives an alternative proof of the affirmative answer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper introduces an extension of context-free grammars equipped with an operator for referring to the left context of the substring being defined. For example, a rule A→a& B defines a symbol a, as long as it is preceded by a string defined by B. The conjunction operator in this example is taken from conjunctive grammars (Okhotin, 2001), which are an extension of ordinary context-free grammars that maintains most of their practical properties, including many parsing algorithms. This paper gives two equivalent definitions of grammars with left contexts--by logical deduction and by language equations--and establishes their basic properties, including a transformation to a normal form and a cubic-time parsing algorithm, with a square-time version for unambiguous grammars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper an implicit characterization of the complexity classes k - EXP and k - FEXP , for k ≥ 0 , is given, by a type assignment system for a stratified λ -calculus, where types for programs are witnesses of the corresponding complexity class. Types are formulae of Elementary Linear Logic ( ELL ), and the hierarchy of complexity classes k - EXP is characterized by a hierarchy of types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Model checking allows one to automatically verify a specification of the expected properties of a system against a formal model of its behavior (generally, a Kripke structure). Point-based temporal logics, such as LTL, CTL, and CTL ⁎ , that describe how the system evolves state-by-state, are commonly used as specification languages. They proved themselves quite successful in a variety of application domains. However, properties constraining the temporal ordering of temporally extended events as well as properties involving temporal aggregations, which are inherently interval-based, can not be properly dealt with by them. Interval temporal logics (ITLs), that take intervals as their primitive temporal entities, turn out to be well-suited for the specification and verification of interval properties of computations (we interpret all the tracks of a Kripke structure as computation intervals). In this paper, we study the model checking problem for some fragments of Halpern and Shoham's modal logic of time intervals (HS). HS features one modality for each possible ordering relation between pairs of intervals (the so-called Allen's relations). First, we describe an EXPSPACE model checking algorithm for the HS fragment of Allen's relations meets , met-by , starts , started-by , and finishes , which exploits the possibility of finding, for each track (of unbounded length), an equivalent bounded-length track representative. While checking a property, it only needs to consider tracks whose length does not exceed the given bound. Then, we prove the model checking problem for such a fragment to be PSPACE-hard. Finally, we identify other well-behaved HS fragments which are expressive enough to capture meaningful interval properties of systems, such as mutual exclusion, state reachability, and non-starvation, and whose computational complexity is less than or equal to that of LTL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies exact algorithms for the Maximum Induced Matching problem, in which an n -vertex graph is given and we are asked to find a set of maximum number of edges in the graph such that no pair of edges in the set have a common endpoint or are adjacent by another edge. This problem has applications in many different areas. We give several structural properties of the problem and show that the problem can be solved in O ⁎ ( 1.4231 n ) time and polynomial space or O ⁎ ( 1.3752 n ) time and exponential space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of this paper is the distributed and incremental generation of long executions of concurrent systems, uniformly or more generally with weights associated to elementary actions. Synchronizing sequences of letters on alphabets sharing letters are known to produce a trace in the concurrency theoretic sense, i.e. , a labeled partially ordered set. We study the probabilistic aspects by considering the synchronization of Bernoulli sequences of letters, under the light of Bernoulli and uniform measures recently introduced for trace monoids. We introduce two algorithms that produce random traces, using only local random primitives. We thoroughly study some specific examples, the path model and the ring model, both of arbitrary size. For these models, we show how to generate any Bernoulli distributed random traces, which includes the case of uniform generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A largely studied version of the gathering problem asks to move a set of robots initially placed at different vertices of an anonymous graph toward a common vertex, and to let them remain at such a vertex. Asynchronous robots move based on the so-called Look–Compute–Move model. Each time a robot wakes-up, it perceives the current configuration in terms of occupied vertices (Look), it decides whether to move toward one of its neighbors (Compute), and then it performs the computed move (Move), eventually. So far, the main goal has been to detect the minimal assumptions that allow to accomplish the task, without taking care of any cost measure. In this paper, we are interested in optimal algorithms in terms of total number of moves. We consider infinite grids, and we fully characterize when optimal gathering is achievable by providing a distributed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-monitoring is a simple and effective mechanism for surveilling wireless sensor networks, especially to cope against faulty or compromised nodes. A node v can monitor the communication over a link e if both end-nodes of e are neighbors of v . Finding a set of monitoring nodes satisfying all monitoring constraints is called the edge-monitoring problem . The minimum edge-monitoring problem is known to be NP-complete. In this paper, we present a novel self-stabilizing algorithm for computing a minimal edge-monitoring set under the unfair distributed scheduler. For sparse networks the time complexity of this new algorithm is much lower than the currently best known algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-player games on graphs provide the theoretical framework for many important problems such as reactive synthesis. While the traditional study of two-player zero-sum games has been extended to multi-player games with several notions of equilibria, they are decidable only for perfect-information games, whereas several applications require imperfect-information. In this paper we propose a new notion of equilibria, called doomsday equilibria, which is a strategy profile where all players satisfy their own objective, and if any coalition of players deviates and violates even one of the players' objective, then the objective of every player is violated. We present algorithms and complexity results for deciding the existence of doomsday equilibria for various classes of ω -regular objectives, both for imperfect-information games, and for perfect-information games. We provide optimal complexity bounds for imperfect-information games, and in most cases for perfect-information games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A set C of reals is said to be negligible if there is no probabilistic algorithm which generates a member of C with positive probability. Various classes have been proven to be negligible, for example the Turing upper-cone of a non-computable real, the class of coherent completions of Peano Arithmetic or the class of reals of minimal Turing degree. One class of particular interest in the study of negligibility is the class of diagonally non-computable (DNC) functions, proven by Kučera to be non-negligible in a strong sense: every Martin-Löf random real computes a DNC function. Ambos-Spies et al. showed that the converse does not hold: there are DNC functions which compute no Martin-Löf random real. In this paper, we show that the set of such DNC functions is in fact non-negligible using a technique we call ‘fireworks argument’. We also use this technique to prove further results on DNC functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The best lattice reduction algorithm known in theory for approximating the Shortest Vector Problem (SVP) over lattices is the slide reduction algorithm (STOC '08 & CRYPTO '20). In this paper, we first improve the running time analysis of computing slide-reduced bases based on potential functions. This analysis applies to a generic slide reduction algorithm that includes (natural variants of) slide reduction and block-Rankin reduction (ANTS '14). We then present a rigorous dynamic analysis of generic slide reduction using techniques originally applied to a variant of BKZ (CRYPTO '11). This provides guarantees on the quality of the current lattice basis during execution. This dynamic analysis not only implies sharper convergence for these algorithms to find a short nonzero vector (rather than a fully reduced basis), but also allows to heuristically model/trace the practical behaviour of slide reduction. Interestingly, this dynamic analysis inspires us to introduce a new slide reduction variant with better time/quality trade-offs. This is confirmed by both our experiments and simulation, which also show that our variant is competitive with state-of-the-art reduction algorithms. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first attempt of improving the practical performance of slide reduction beyond speeding up the SVP oracle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a pattern language based on regular expressions that allows the introduction of variables that can be instantiated to portions of the path that matches the expression. The paper will define a simple syntax for the language and its formal semantics. It will also study a modification of finite state automata that, through the introduction of actions on transitions, allows the variables to be instantiated while matching the expression. Finally, the paper will show that the problem of answering queries with variables is inherently harder than simple matching, essentially because, even for fairly simple expressions, the size of the results can be exponential in the size of the graph. The class of expressions and a class of graphs for which query answering is polynomial will be identified, and a processing algorithm for these expressions based on the intersection graph will be provided and analyzed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: “Clarithmetic” is a generic name for formal number theories similar to Peano arithmetic, but based on computability logic instead of the more traditional classical or intuitionistic logics. Formulas of clarithmetical theories represent interactive computational problems, and their “truth” is understood as existence of an algorithmic solution. Imposing various complexity constraints on such solutions yields various versions of clarithmetic. The present paper introduces a system of clarithmetic for polynomial time computability, which is shown to be sound and complete. Sound in the sense that every theorem T of the system represents an interactive number-theoretic computational problem with a polynomial time solution and, furthermore, such a solution can be efficiently extracted from a proof of T. And complete in the sense that every interactive number-theoretic problem with a polynomial time solution is represented by some theorem T of the system. The paper is written in a semitutorial style and targets readers with no prior familiarity with computability logic. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Bisimulation equivalence is decidable in polynomial time for both sequential and commutative normed context-free processes, known as BPA and BPP, respectively. Despite apparent similarity between the two classes, different algorithmic techniques were used in each case. We provide one polynomial-time algorithm that works in a superclass of both normed BPA and BPP. It is derived in the setting of partially-commutative context-free processes, a new process class introduced in the paper. It subsumes both BPA and BPP and seems to be of independent interest. Expressibility issue of the new class, in comparison with the normed PA class, is also tackled in the paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, we focus on the edit distance between two given strings where block-edit operations are allowed and better fitting to the human natural edit behaviors. Previous results showed that this problem is NP-hard when block moves are allowed. Various approximations to this problem have been proposed in recent years. However, this problem can be solved by the polynomial-time optimization algorithms if some reasonable restrictions are applied. The restricted variations which we consider involve character insertions, character deletions, block copies and block deletions. In this paper, three problems are defined with different measuring functions, which are , and . Then we show that with some preprocessing, the minimum block edit distances of these three problems can be obtained by dynamic programming in , and time, respectively, where n and m are the lengths of the two input strings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper is about the verification of dynamic properties by model-checking for finite state reactive systems. Properties are expressed as PLTL formulae. Systems are specified through a top-down refinement process. In order to cope with the state explosion problem, we propose partitioning the state space to be verified and to verify the properties independently on each part. Properties that are such that if they hold on every part then they hold for the whole system are called verifiable by parts. In a previous paper, we presented a class of interesting PLTL properties that are always verifiable by parts. That is, they are verifiable by parts with any partitioning of the state space. In addition to these properties, some properties are verifiable by parts on a system provided with a particular partitioning. In this paper, we propose a partitioning of the state space of a system that is guided by the refinement process. We introduce an extended class of PLTL properties that are verifiable by parts with regard to this partitioning. This class includes the first one. In particular, the new class includes liveness properties under fairness assumptions. This class is defined from Büchi automata that accept the language of the negations of the properties. Our work is illustrated by its application to a chip card protocol called . This protocol is specified through successive refinements. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Though complexity theory already extensively studies path-cardinality-based restrictions on the power of nondeterminism, this paper is motivated by a more recent goal: To gain insight into how much of a restriction, it is of nondeterminism to limit machines to have just one contiguous (with respect to some simple order) interval of accepting paths. In particular, we study the robustness—the invariance under definition changes—of the cluster class CL#P. This class contains each #P function that is computed by a balanced Turing machine whose accepting paths always form a cluster with respect to some length-respecting total order with efficient adjacency checks. The definition of CL#P is heavily influenced by the defining paper’s focus on (global) orders. In contrast, we define a cluster class, CLU#P, to capture what seems to us a more natural model of cluster computing. We prove that the naturalness is costless: CL#P=CLU#P. Then we exploit the more natural, flexible features of CLU#P to prove new robustness results for CL#P and to expand what is known about the closure properties of CL#P. The complexity of recognizing edges—of an ordered collection of computation paths or of a cluster of accepting computation paths—is central to this study. Most particularly, our proofs exploit the power of unique discovery of edges—the ability of nondeterministic functions to, in certain settings, discover on exactly one (in some cases, on at most one) computation path a critical piece of information regarding edges of orderings or clusters. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper considers the problem of performing tasks in asynchronous distributed settings. This problem, called Do-All, has been substantially studied in synchronous models, but there is a dearth of efficient algorithms for asynchronous message-passing processors. Do-All can be trivially solved without any communication by an algorithm where each processor performs all tasks. Assuming p processors and t tasks, this requires work Θ(p · t). Thus, it is important to develop subquadratic solutions (when p and t are comparable) by trading computation for communication. Following the observation that it is not possible to obtain subquadratic work when the message delay d is substantial, e.g., d =Θ(t), this work pursues a message-delay-sensitive approach. Here, the upper bounds on work and communication are given as functions of p, t, and d, the upper bound on message delays, however, algorithms have no knowledge of d and they cannot rely on the existence of an upper bound on d. This paper presents two families of asynchronous algorithms achieving, for the first time, subquadratic work as long as d = o (t). The first family uses as its basis a shared-memory algorithm without having to emulate atomic registers assumed by that algorithm. These deterministic algorithms have work O(tp ε + pd⌈t/d⌉ ε ) for any ε >0. The second family uses specific permutations of tasks, with certain combinatorial properties, to sequence the work of the processors. These randomized (deterministic) algorithms have expected (worst-case) work O(t log p + pd log(2+ t/d)). Another important contribution in this work is the first delay-sensitive lower bound for this problem that helps explain the behavior of our algorithms: any randomized (deterministic) algorithm has expected (worst-case) work of Ω(t + pd log d+1 t). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper describes a superposition calculus where quantifiers are eliminated lazily. Superposition and simplification inferences may employ equivalences that have arbitrary formulas at their smaller side. A closely related calculus is implemented in the Saturate system and has shown useful on many examples, in particular in set theory. The paper presents a completeness proof and reports on practical experience obtained with the Saturate system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We study integrated prefetching and caching in single and parallel disk systems. In the first part of the paper we investigate approximation algorithms for the single disk problem. There exist two very popular approximation algorithms called Aggressive and Conservative for minimizing the total elapsed time. We give a refined analysis of the Aggressive algorithm, improving the original analysis by Cao et al. We prove that our new bound is tight. Additionally we present a new family of prefetching and caching strategies and give algorithms that perform better than Aggressive and Conservative. In the second part of the paper we investigate the problem of minimizing stall time in parallel disk systems. We present a polynomial time algorithm for computing a prefetching/caching schedule whose stall time is bounded by that of an optimal solution. The schedule uses at most extra memory locations in cache. This is the first polynomial time algorithm that, using a small amount of extra resources, computes schedules whose stall times are bounded by that of optimal schedules not using extra resources. Our algorithm is based on the linear programming approach of [Journal of the ACM, 47 (2000) 969]. However, in order to achieve minimum stall times, we introduce the new concept of synchronized schedules in which fetches on the disks are performed completely in parallel. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Gossiping is an extensively investigated information dissemination process in which each processor has a distinct item of information and has to collect all the items possessed by the other processors. In this paper we provide an innovative and general lower bound technique relying on the novel notion of delay digraph of a gossiping protocol and on the use of matrix norm methods. Such a technique is very powerful and allows the determination of new and significantly improved lower bounds in many cases. In fact, we derive the first general lower bound on the gossiping time of systolic protocols, i.e., constituted by a periodic repetition of simple communication steps. In particular, given any network of n processors and any systolic period s, in the directed and the undirected half-duplex cases every s-systolic gossip protocol takes at least log(n)/log(1/λ)−O(loglog(n)) time steps, where λ is the unique solution between 0 and 1 of , with p i (λ)=1+ λ 2 +⋯+ λ 2i −2 for any integer i >0. We then provide improved lower bounds in the directed and half-duplex cases for many well-known network topologies, such as Butterfly, de Bruijn, and Kautz graphs. All the results are extended also to the full-duplex case. Our technique is very general, as for s →∞ it allows the determination of improved results even for non-systolic protocols. In fact, for general networks, as a simple corollary it yields a lower bound only an O(loglog(n)) additive factor far from the general one independently proved in [Proc. 1st ACM Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA), 1989, p. 318; Topics in Combinatorics and Graph Theory (1990) 451; SIAM Journal on Computing 21(1) (1992) 111; Discrete Applied Mathematics 42 (1993) 75] for all graphs and any (non-systolic) gossip protocol. Moreover, for specific networks, it significantly improves with respect to the previously known results, even in the full-duplex case. Correspondingly, better lower bounds on the gossiping time of non-systolic protocols are determined in the directed, half-duplex and full-duplex cases for Butterfly, de Bruijn, and Kautz graphs. Even if in this paper we give only a limited number of examples, our technique has wide applicability and gives a general framework that often allows to get improved lower bounds on the gossiping time of systolic and non-systolic protocols in the directed, half-duplex and full-duplex cases. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Information integration systems provide uniform interfaces to varieties of heterogeneous information sources. For query answering in such systems, the current generation of query answering algorithms in local-as-view (source-centric) information integration systems all produce what has been thought of as “the best obtainable” answer, given the circumstances that the source-centric approach introduces incomplete information into the virtual global relations. However, this “best obtainable” answer does not include all information that can be extracted from the sources because it does not allow partial information. Neither does the “best obtainable” answer allow for composition of queries, meaning that querying a result of a previous query will not be equivalentto the composition of the two queries. In this paper, we provide a foundation for information integration, based on the algebraic theory of incomplete information. Our framework allows us to define the semantics of partial facts and introduce the notion of the exact answer—that is the answer that includes partial facts. We show that querying under the exact answer semantics is compositional. We also present two methods for actually computing the exact answer. The first method is tableau-based, and it is a generalization of the “inverse-rules” approach. The second, much more efficient method, is a generalization of the rewriting approach, and it is based on partial containment mappings introduced in the paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents a deterministic and efficient algorithm for online facility location. The algorithm is based on a simple hierarchical partitioning and is extremely simple to implement. It also applies to a variety of models, i.e., models where the facilities can be placed anywhere in the region, or only at customer sites, or only at fixed locations. The paper shows that the algorithm is O(logn)-competitive under these various models, where n is the total number of customers. It also shows that the algorithm is O(1)-competitive with high probability and for any arrival order when customers are uniformly distributed or when they follow a distribution satisfying a smoothness property. Experimental results for a variety of scenarios indicate that the algorithm behaves extremely well in practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents a collection of string algorithms that are at the core of several biological problems such as discovering potential drug targets, creating diagnostic probes, universal primers or unbiased consensus sequences. All these problems reduce to the task of finding a pattern that, with some error, occurs in one set of strings (Closest Substring Problem) and does not occur in another set (Farthest String Problem). In this paper, we break down the problem into several subproblems and prove the following results.

Exploring and mapping an unknown environment is a fundamental problem that is studied in a variety of contexts. Many results have focused on finding efficient solutions to restricted versions of the problem. In this paper, we consider a model that makes very limited assumptions about the environment and solve the mapping problem in this general setting. We model the environment by an unknown directed graph G, and consider the problem of a robot exploring and mapping G. The edges emanating from each vertex are numbered from ‘1’ to ‘d’, but we do not assume that the vertices of G are labeled. Since the robot has no way of distinguishing between vertices, it has no hope of succeeding unless it is given some means of distinguishing between vertices. For this reason we provide the robot with a “pebble”—a device that it can place on a vertex and use to identify the vertex later. In this paper we show: (1) If the robot knows an upper bound on the number of vertices then it can learn the graph efficiently with only one pebble. (2) If the robot does not know an upper bound on the number of vertices n, then Θ(log log n) pebbles are both necessary and sufficient. In both cases our algorithms are deterministic. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Simple stochastic games are turn-based 2½-player zero-sum graph games with a reachability objective. The problem is to compute the winning probabilities as well as the optimal strategies of both players. In this paper, we compare the three known classes of algorithms – value iteration, strategy iteration and quadratic programming – both theoretically and practically. Further, we suggest several improvements for all algorithms, including the first approach based on quadratic programming that avoids transforming the stochastic game to a stopping one. Our extensive experiments show that these improvements can lead to significant speed-ups. We implemented all algorithms in PRISM-games 3.0, thereby providing the first implementation of quadratic programming for solving simple stochastic games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple stochastic games are turn-based 2½-player zero-sum graph games with a reachability objective. The problem is to compute the winning probabilities as well as the optimal strategies of both players. In this paper, we compare the three known classes of algorithms – value iteration, strategy iteration and quadratic programming – both theoretically and practically. Further, we suggest several improvements for all algorithms, including the first approach based on quadratic programming that avoids transforming the stochastic game to a stopping one. Our extensive experiments show that these improvements can lead to significant speed-ups. We implemented all algorithms in PRISM-games 3.0, thereby providing the first implementation of quadratic programming for solving simple stochastic games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we establish an algorithmic framework between bin packing and strip packing, with which strip packing can be very well approximated by applying some bin packing algorithms. More precisely we obtain the following results: (1) Any off-line bin packing algorithm can be applied to strip packing maintaining almost the same asymptotic worst-case ratio. (2) A class of Harmonic-based algorithms for bin packing, such as Refined Harmonic, Modified Harmonic, Harmonic++, can be applied to online strip packing. In particular, we show that online strip packing admits an upper bound of 1.58889 + ϵ on the asymptotic competitive ratio, for any arbitrarily small ϵ > 0 . This significantly improves the previously best bound of 1.6910 and affirmatively answers an open question posed by Csirik and Woeginger (1997). Moreover, the time complexity mainly depends on a sorting procedure and the bin packing algorithms employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of probabilistic automata, time-efficient algorithms for simulation have been proposed lately. The space complexity thereof is quadratic in the size of the transition relation, thus space requirements often become the practical bottleneck. In this paper, we propose a space-efficient algorithm for computing simulation based on partition refinement. Experimental evidence is given showing that not only the space efficiency is improved drastically: The experiments often require orders of magnitude less time. In practice, they are even faster than the (asymptotically) optimal algorithm by Crafa and Ranzato (2012). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vertex coloring is a central concept in graph theory and an important symmetry-breaking primitive in distributed computing. Whereas degree- Δ graphs may require palettes of Δ + 1 colors in the worst case, it is well known that the chromatic number of many natural graph classes can be much smaller. In this paper we give new distributed algorithms to find ( Δ / k ) -coloring in graphs of girth 4 (triangle-free graphs), girth 5, and trees. The parameter k can be at most ( 1 4 − o ( 1 ) ) ln ⁡ Δ in triangle-free graphs and at most ( 1 − o ( 1 ) ) ln ⁡ Δ in girth-5 graphs and trees, where o ( 1 ) is a function of Δ . Specifically, for Δ sufficiently large we can find such a coloring in O ( k + log ⁎ ⁡ n ) time. Moreover, for any Δ we can compute such colorings in roughly logarithmic time for triangle-free and girth-5 graphs, and in O ( log ⁡ Δ + log Δ ⁡ log ⁡ n ) time on trees. As a byproduct, our algorithm shows that the chromatic number of triangle-free graphs is at most ( 4 + o ( 1 ) ) Δ ln ⁡ Δ , which improves on Jamall's recent bound of ( 67 + o ( 1 ) ) Δ ln ⁡ Δ . Finally, we show that ( Δ + 1 ) -coloring for triangle-free graphs can be obtained in sublogarithmic time for any Δ . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main problem in information storage has previously been how large amounts of data can be stored. However, the technological development over the years has been able to give rather satisfactory answers to this problem. Recently, the focus has shifted towards determining how stored information can be efficiently retrieved. This problem is addressed in an article by E. Yaakobi and J. Bruck (2012), where information retrieval in associative memories is studied. In this paper, we focus on the case where the retrieved information unit is unambiguous. In particular, we present characterizations and study various extremal properties of such associative memories. Moreover, the algorithmic complexity of certain naturally rising problems is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pseudopalindromes are words that are fixed points for some antimorphic involution. In this paper we discuss a newer word operation, that of pseudopalindromic completion, in which symbols are added to either side of the word such that the new obtained words are pseudopalindromes. This notion represents a particular type of hairpin completion, where the length of the hairpin is at most one. We give precise descriptions of regular languages that are closed under this operation and show that the regularity of the closure under the operation is decidable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we make the first step beyond bidimensionality by obtaining subexponential time algorithms for problems on directed graphs. We develop two different methods to achieve subexponential time parameterized algorithms for problems on sparse directed graphs. We exemplify our approaches with two well studied problems. For the first problem, k-Leaf Out-Branching, which is to find an oriented spanning tree with at least k leaves, we obtain an algorithm solving the problem in time on directed graphs whose underlying undirected graph excludes some fixed graph H as a minor. For the special case when the input directed graph is planar, the running time can be improved to . The second example is a generalization of the Directed Hamiltonian Path problem, namely k-Internal Out-Branching, which is to find an oriented spanning tree with at least k internal vertices. We obtain an algorithm solving the problem in time on directed graphs whose underlying undirected graph excludes some fixed apex graph H as a minor. Finally, we observe that on these classes of graphs, the k-Directed Path problem is solvable in time , for any , where f is some function of ε. Our methods are based on non-trivial combinations of obstruction theorems for undirected graphs, kernelization, problem-specific combinatorial structures, and a layering technique similar to the one employed by Baker to obtain PTAS for planar graphs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A t-interval is a union of at most t half-open intervals on the real line. An interval is the special case where . In this paper we study the problems of online selection of intervals and t-intervals. We derive lower bounds and (almost) matching upper bounds on the competitive ratios of randomized algorithms for selecting intervals, 2-intervals and t-intervals, for any . While offline t-interval selection has been studied before, the online version is considered here for the first time. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We consider the conditional covering problem in an undirected network, in which each vertex represents a demand point that must be covered by a facility as well as a potential facility site. Each facility can cover all vertices within a given coverage radius, except the vertex at which the facility is located. The objective is to locate facilities to cover all vertices such that the total facility location cost is minimized. In this paper, new upper bounds are proposed for the conditional covering problem on paths, cycles, extended stars, and trees. In particular, we provide an -time algorithm for paths, an -time algorithm for cycles, an -time algorithm for extended stars, and an -time algorithm for trees. Our algorithms for paths, extended stars, and trees improve the previous upper bounds from , , and , respectively. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In the graph searching game the opponents are a set of searchers and a fugitive in a graph. The searchers try to capture the fugitive by applying some sequence of moves that include placement, removal, or sliding of a searcher along an edge. The fugitive tries to avoid capture by moving along unguarded paths. The search number of a graph is the minimum number of searchers required to guarantee the capture of the fugitive. In this paper, we initiate the study of this game under the natural restriction of connectivity where we demand that in each step of the search the locations of the graph that are clean (i.e. non-accessible to the fugitive) remain connected. We give evidence that many of the standard mathematical tools used so far in classic graph searching fail under the connectivity requirement. We also settle the question on “the price of connectivity”, that is, how many searchers more are required for searching a graph when the connectivity demand is imposed. We make estimations of the price of connectivity on general graphs and we provide tight bounds for the case of trees. In particular, for an n-vertex graph the ratio between the connected searching number and the non-connected one is while for trees this ratio is always at most 2. We also conjecture that this constant-ratio upper bound for trees holds also for all graphs. Our combinatorial results imply a complete characterization of connected graph searching on trees. It is based on a forbidden-graph characterization of the connected search number. We prove that the connected search game is monotone for trees, i.e. restricting search strategies to only those where the clean territories increase monotonically does not require more searchers. A consequence of our results is that the connected search number can be computed in polynomial time on trees, moreover, we show how to make this algorithm distributed. Finally, we reveal connections of this parameter to other invariants on trees such as the Horton–Strahler number. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The error function erf is a special function. It is widely used in statistical computations for instance, where it is also known as the standard normal cumulative probability. The complementary error function is defined as . In this paper, the computation of and in arbitrary precision is detailed: our algorithms take as input a target precision and deliver approximate values of or with a relative error guaranteed to be bounded by . We study three different algorithms for evaluating erf and erfc. These algorithms are completely detailed. In particular, the determination of the order of truncation, the analysis of roundoff errors and the way of choosing the working precision are presented. The scheme used for implementing erf and erfc and the proofs are expressed in a general setting, so they can directly be reused for the implementation of other functions. We have implemented the three algorithms and studied experimentally what is the best algorithm to use in function of the point x and the target precision . [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper concerns a robust algorithm for the 2D orientation problem which is one of the basic tasks in computational geometry. Recently, a fast and accurate floating-point summation algorithm is investigated by Rump, Ogita and Oishi in [S.M. Rump, T. Ogita, S. Oishi, Accurate floating-point summation. Part I: Faithful rounding, SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 31 (1) (2008) 189–224], in which a new kind of an error-free transformation of floating-point numbers is used. Based on it, a new algorithm of error-free determinant transformation for the 2D orientation problem is proposed, which gives a correct result. Numerical results are presented for illustrating that the proposed algorithm has some advantage over preceding algorithms in terms of measured computing time. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Haplotyping, also known as haplotype phase prediction, is the problem of predicting likely haplotypes based on genotype data. One fast computational haplotyping method is based on an evolutionary model where a perfect phylogenetic tree is sought that explains the observed data. An extension of this approach tries to incorporate prior knowledge in the form of a set of candidate haplotypes from which the right haplotypes must be chosen. The objective is to increase the accuracy of haplotyping methods, but it was conjectured that the resulting formal problem constrained perfect phylogeny haplotyping might be NP-complete. In the paper at hand we present a polynomial-time algorithm for it. Our algorithmic ideas also yield new fixed-parameter algorithms for related haplotyping problems based on the maximum parsimony assumption. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A rational and selfish environment may have an incentive to cheat the system it interacts with. Cheating the system amounts to reporting a stream of inputs that is different from the one corresponding to the real behavior of the environment. The system may cope with cheating by charging penalties to cheats it detects. In this paper, we formalize this setting by means of weighted automata and their resilience to selfish environments. Automata have proven to be a successful formalism for modeling the on-going interaction between a system and its environment. In particular, weighted finite automata (WFAs), which assign a cost to each input word, are useful in modeling an interaction that has a quantitative outcome. Consider a WFA over the alphabet Σ. At each moment in time, the environment may cheat by reporting a letter different from the one it actually generates. A penalty function maps each possible false-report to a penalty, charged whenever the false-report is detected. A detection-probability function gives the probability of detecting each false-report. We say that is -resilient to cheating if ensures that the minimal expected cost of an input word is achieved with no cheating. Thus, a rational environment has no incentive to cheat . We study the basic problems arising in the analysis of this setting. In particular, we consider the problem of deciding whether a given WFA is -resilient with respect to a given penalty function η and a detection-probability function p; and the problem of achieving resilience with minimum resources, namely, given and η, finding the minimal (with respect to ) detection-probability function p, such that is -resilient. While for general WFAs both problems are shown to be PSPACE-hard, we present polynomial-time algorithms for deterministic WFAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Goldʼs original paper on inductive inference introduced a notion of an optimal learner. Intuitively, a learner identifies a class of objects optimally iff there is no other learner that: requires as little of each presentation of each object in the class in order to identify that object, and, for some presentation of some object in the class, requires less of that presentation in order to identify that object. Beick considered this notion in the context of function learning, and gave an intuitive characterization of an optimal function learner. Jantke and Beick subsequently characterized the classes of functions that are algorithmically, optimally identifiable. Herein, Goldʼs notion is considered in the context of language learning. It is shown that a characterization of optimal language learners analogous to Beickʼs does not hold. It is also shown that the classes of languages that are algorithmically, optimally identifiable cannot be characterized in a manner analogous to that of Jantke and Beick. Other interesting results concerning optimal language learning include the following. It is shown that strong non-U-shapedness, a property involved in Beickʼs characterization of optimal function learners, does not restrict algorithmic language learning power. It is also shown that, for an arbitrary optimal learner F of a class of languages , F optimally identifies a subclass of iff F is class-preserving with respect to . [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Let S be a string over a finite, ordered alphabet Σ. For any substring of S, the set of distinct characters contained in is called its fingerprint. The text fingerprinting indexing problem is to construct a data structure for the string S in advance, so that on given any input subset C of Σ, we can answer the following queries efficiently: (1) determine if C represents a fingerprint of some substrings in S; (2) find all maximal substrings of S whose fingerprint is C. The best known results solved these two queries in and time, respectively, where K is the number of maximal substrings. In this paper, we propose two improved algorithms for the text fingerprinting indexing problem. The first one solves the two queries in and time, respectively. For the second one, the query time complexities are further reduced to and . Both results answer an open problem proposed by Amir et al. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A compressed full-text self-index is a data structure that replaces a text and in addition gives indexed access to it, while taking space proportional to the compressed text size. This is very important nowadays, since one can accommodate the index of very large texts entirely in main memory, avoiding the slower access to secondary storage. In particular, the LZ-index [G. Navarro, Indexing text using the Ziv–Lempel trie, Journal of Discrete Algorithms (JDA) 2 (1) (2004) 87–114] stands out for its good performance at extracting text passages and locating pattern occurrences. Given a text over an alphabet of size σ, the LZ-index requires bits of space, where is the size of the LZ78-compression of T. This can be bounded by , where is the k-th order empirical entropy of T, for any . The LZ-index is built in time, yet requiring bits of main memory in the worst case. In practice, the LZ-index occupies 1.0–1.5 times the text size (and replaces the text), but its construction requires around 5 times the text size. This limits its applicability to medium-sized texts. In this paper we present a space-efficient algorithm to construct the LZ-index in time and requiring bits of main memory, that is, asymptotically the same space of the final index. We also adapt our algorithm to construct more recent reduced versions of the LZ-index, which occupy from 1 to 3 times bits, and show that these can also be built using asymptotically the same space of the final index. Finally, we study an alternative model in which we are given only a limited amount of main memory to carry out the indexing process (less than that required by the final index), and must use the disk for the rest. We show how to build all the LZ-index variants in time, and within bits of main memory, that is, asymptotically just the space to hold the LZ78-compressed text. Our experimental results show that our method is efficient in practice, needing an amount of memory close to that of the final index, and being competitive with the best construction times of other compressed indexes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]