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In this paper, we are interested in the runtime complexity of programs based on multiset rewriting. The motivation behind this work is the study of the complexity of chemistry-inspired programming models, which recently regained momentum due to their adequacy to large autonomous systems. In these models, data are most of the time left unstructured in a container, formally, a multiset. The program to be applied to this multiset is specified as a set of conditioned rules rewriting the multiset. At run time, these rewrite operations are applied concurrently, until no rule can be applied anymore (the set of elements they need cannot be found in the multiset anymore). A limitation of these models stand in their complexity: each computation step may require a complexity in where n denotes the number of elements in the multiset, and k is the size of the subset of elements needed to trigger a given rule. By analogy with chemistry, such elements can be called reactants. In this paper, we explore the possibility of improving the complexity of searching reactants through a static analysis of the rules' condition. In particular, we give a characterisation of this complexity, by analogy to the subgraph isomorphism problem. Given a rule R, we define its rank rk(R) and its calibre C(R), allowing us to exhibit an algorithm with a complexity in for searching reactants, while showing that and that most of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The equivalence of finite automata and regular expressions dates back to the seminal paper of Kleene on events in nerve nets and finite automata from 1956. In the present paper we tour a fragment of the literature and summarize results on upper and lower bounds on the conversion of finite automata to regular expressions and vice versa. As an interesting special case also one-unambiguous regular expressions, a sort of a deterministic version of a regular expression, are considered. We also briefly recall the known bounds for the removal of spontaneous transitions ( ε-transitions) on non- ε-free nondeter-ministic devices. Moreover, we report on recent results on the average case descriptional complexity bounds for the conversion of regular expressions to finite automata and new developments on the state elimination algorithm that converts finite automata to regular expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The random (2 + p)-SAT model has been proposed [18] to study the possible relation between the 'order' of phase transitions and computational complexity. It was also claimed that there exists pc > 0, such that for p < pc the random (2 + p)-SAT instance behaves like 2-SAT. Later, Achlioptas et al. [3] obtained the first rigorous results that 0.4 ≤ pc ≤ 0.695, the methods they use are the first moment method and the simple Unit-Clause algorithm. In this paper, we try to optimize the local maximality condition of the truth assignments when implementing the first moment method. We prove that the phase transition point of clauses-to-variables ratio r (dependent on p) can be improved. Moreover, we show that the upper bound of pc can be reduced to 0.6846. This fact implies that, for a constant λ < 1, a random (2 + p)-SAT formula with λn 2-clauses and 2.17 n 3-clauses is almost surely unsatisfiable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Algorithmic combinatorics on partial words, or sequences of symbols over a finite alphabet that may have some do-not-know symbols or holes, has been developing in the past few years. Applications can be found, for instance, in molecular biology for the sequencing and analysis of DNA, in bio-inspired computing where partial words have been considered for identifying good encodings for DNA computations, and in data compression. In this paper, we focus on two areas of algorithmic combinatorics on partial words, namely, pattern avoidance and subword complexity. We discuss recent contributions as well as a number of open problems. In relation to pattern avoidance, we classify all binary patterns with respect to partial word avoidability, we classify all unary patterns with respect to hole sparsity, and we discuss avoiding abelian powers in partial words. In relation to subword complexity, we generate and count minimal Sturmian partial words, we construct de Bruijn partial words, and we construct partial words with subword complexities not achievable by full words (those without holes). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hairpin completion is an operation on formal languages which is inspired by the hairpin formation in biochemistry. Hairpin formations occur naturally within DNA-computing. It has been known that the hairpin completion of a regular language is linear context-free, but not regular, in general. However, for some time it is was open whether the regularity of the hairpin completion of a regular language is decidable. In 2009 this decidability problem has been solved positively in [5] by providing a polynomial time algorithm. In this paper we improve the complexity bound by showing that the decision problem is actually NL-complete. This complexity bound holds for both, the one-sided and the two-sided hairpin completions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider the computational complexity of deciding the existence of a perfect matching in certain classes of dense k-uniform hypergraphs. It has been known that the perfect matching problem for the classes of hypergraphs H with minimum ((k - 1)-wise) vertex degreeδ(H) at least c|V(H)| is NP-complete for $c < \frac{1}{k}$ and trivial for c ≥ ½, leaving the status of the problem with c in the interval $[\frac{1}{k}, \frac{1}{2})$ widely open. In this paper we show, somehow surprisingly, that ½ is not the threshold for tractability of the perfect matching problem, and prove the existence of an ε > 0 such that the perfect matching problem for the class of hypergraphs H with δ(H) ≥ (½ - ε)|V(H)| is solvable in polynomial time. This seems to be the first polynomial time algorithm for the perfect matching problem on hypergraphs for which the existence problem is nontrivial. In addition, we consider parallel complexity of the problem, which could be also of independent interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, some results concerning the k-truck problem are produced. Firstly, the algorithms and their complexity concerning the off-line k-truck problem are discussed. Following that, a lower bound of competitive ratio (1+θ)·k/(θ·k+2) for the on-line k-truck problem is given, where θ is the ratio of cost of the loaded truck and the empty truck on the same distance, and a relevant lower bound for the on-line k-taxi problem followed naturally. Thirdly, based on the Position Maintaining Strategy (PMS), some new results which are slightly better than those of [11] for general cases are obtained. For example, a c-competitive or (c/θ+1/θ+1)-competitive algorithm for the on-line k-truck problem depending on the value of θ, where c is the competitive ratio of some algorithm to a relevant k-server problem, is developed. The Partial-Greedy Algorithm (PG) is used as well to solve this problem on a line with n nodes and is proved to be a (1+(n-k)/θ)-competitive algorithm for this case. Finally, the concepts of the on-line k-truck problem are extended to obtain a new variant: Deeper On-line k-Truck Problem (DTP). We claim that results of PMS for the STP (Standard Truck Problem) hold for the DTP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of an outdegree-constrained edge-modification problem is to find a spanning subgraph or supergraph H of an input undirected graph G such that either: (Type I) the number of edges in H is minimized or maximized and H can be oriented to satisfy some specified constraints on the vertices' resulting outdegrees; or: (Type II) among all subgraphs or supergraphs of G that can be constructed by deleting or inserting a fixed number of edges, H admits an orientation optimizing some objective involving the vertices' outdegrees. This paper introduces eight new outdegree-constrained edge-modification problems related to load balancing called (Type I) MIN-DEL-MAX, MIN-INS-MIN, MAX-INS-MAX, and MAX-DEL-MIN and (Type II) p -DEL-MAX, p -INS-MIN, p -INS-MAX, and p -DEL-MIN. In each of the eight problems, the input is a graph and the goal is to delete or insert edges so that the resulting graph has an orientation in which the maximum outdegree (taken over all vertices) is small or the minimum outdegree is large. We first present a framework that provides algorithms for solving all eight problems in polynomial time on unweighted graphs. Next we investigate the inapproximability of the edge-weighted versions of the problems, and design polynomial-time algorithms for six of the problems on edge-weighted trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel application of automata algorithms to machine learning. It introduces the first optimization solution for support vector machines used with sequence kernels that is purely based on weighted automata and transducer algorithms, without requiring any specific solver. The algorithms presented apply to a family of kernels covering all those commonly used in text and speech processing or computational biology. We show that these algorithms have significantly better computational complexity than previous ones and report the results of large-scale experiments demonstrating a dramatic reduction of the training time, typically by several orders of magnitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let L ≥ 1, ε > 0 be real numbers, (M, d) be a finite metric space and (N, ρ) be a metric space. A query to a metric space consists of a pair of points and asks for the distance between these points. We study the number of queries to metric spaces (M, d) and (N, ρ) needed to decide whether (M, d) is L-bilipschitz embeddable into (N, ρ) or ∊-far from being L-bilipschitz embeddable into N, ρ). When (M, d) is ∊-far from being L-bilipschitz embeddable into (N, ρ), we allow an o(1) probability of error (i.e., returning the wrong answer "L-bilipschitz embeddable"). However, no error is allowed when (M, d) is L-bilipschitz embeddable into (N, ρ). That is, algorithms with only one-sided errors are studied in this paper. When |M| ≤ |N| are both finite, we give an upper bound of $O(\sqrt{\frac{\ln |N|}{\epsilon |M|}}\, (|M|^2+|N|^2))$ on the number of queries for determining with one-sided error whether (M, d) is L-bilipschitz embeddable into (N, ρ) or ∊-far from being L-bilipschitz embeddable into (N, ρ). For the special case of finite |M| = |N|, the above upper bound evaluates to $O(|N|^{3/2} \sqrt {{{\ln |N|} \over \epsilon }} )$. We also prove a lower bound of Ω(|N|3/2) for the special case when |M| = |N| are finite and L = 1, which coincides with testing isometry between finite metric spaces. For finite |M| = |N|, the upper and lower bounds thus match up to a multiplicative factor of at most $\sqrt{\frac{\ln |N|}{\epsilon}}$, which depends only sublogarithmically in |N|. We also investigate the case when (N, ρ) is not necessarily finite. Our results are based on techniques developed in an earlier work on testing graph isomorphism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A convertible authenticated encryption scheme allows a designated receiver to retrieve an authenticated ciphertext and convert the authenticated ciphertext into an ordinary signature. The receiver can prove the dishonesty of the sender to anyone if the sender repudiates his/her signature. Recently, many researchers have proposed convertible authenticated encryption schemes based on cryptological algorithms. In this paper, the authors shall present a new convertible authenticated encryption scheme based on the ElGamal cryptosystem. The proposed scheme is more efficient than Wu-Hsu's scheme in terms of computational complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present the first distributed algorithm on general graphs for the Minimum Degree Spanning Tree problem. The problem is NP-hard in sequential. Our algorithm give a Spanning Tree of a degree at most 1 from the optimal. The resulting distributed algorithm is asynchronous, it works for named asynchronous arbitrary networks and achieves O(|V|) time complexity and O(|V||E|) message complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss a number of essential questions concerning the state complexity research. The questions include why many basic problems were not studied earlier, whether there is a general algorithm for state complexity of combined operations, and whether there is a new and effective approach in this area of research. The concept of state complexity approximation is also discussed. We show that state complexity approximation can be used to obtain good results when the exact state complexities are difficult to find and when the exact state complexities are too complex to comprehend. We also list a number of questions for future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we show a simple lossless compression heuristic for gray scale images. The main advantage of this approach is that it provides a highly parallelizable compressor and decompressor. In fact, it can be applied independently to each block of 8×8 pixels, achieving 80 percent of the compression obtained with LOCO-I (JPEG-LS), the current lossless standard in low-complexity applications. The compressed form of each block employs a header and a fixed length code, and the sequential implementations of the encoder and decoder are 50 to 60 percent faster than LOCO-I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present three linear algorithms for as many formulations of the problem of finding motifs with gaps. The three versions of the problem are distinct in that they assume different constraints on the size of the gaps. The outline of the algorithm is always the same, although this is adapted each time to the specific problem, while maintaining a linear time complexity with respect to the input size. The approach we suggest is based on a re-writing of the text that uses a new alphabet made of labels representing words of the original input text. The computational complexity of the algorithm allows the use of it also to find long motifs. The algorithm is in fact general enough that it could be applied to several variants of the problem other than those suggested in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the standard definition of a P system, a computation step consists of a parallel application of a "maximal" set of nondeterministically chosen rules. Referring to this system as a parallel P system, we consider in this paper a sequential P system, in which each step consists of an application of a single nondeterministically chosen rule. We show the following: 1. For 1-membrane purely catalytic systems (pure CS's), the sequential version is strictly weaker than the parallel version in that the former defines (i.e., generates) exactly the semilinear sets, whereas the latter is known to define nonrecursive sets. 2. For 1-membrane communicating P systems (CPS's), the sequential version can only define a proper subclass of the semilinear sets, whereas the parallel version is known to define nonrecursive sets. 3. Adding a new type of rule of the form: ab → axbyccomedcome to the CPS (a natural generalization of the rule ab → axbyccome in the original model), where x, y ∈ {here, out}, to the sequential 1-membrane CPS makes it equivalent to a vector addition system. 4. Sequential 1-membrane symport/antiport systems (SA's) are equivalent to vector addition systems, contrasting the known result that the parallel versions can define nonrecursive sets. 5. Sequential 1-membrane SA's whose rules have radius 1, (1,1), (1,2) (i.e., of the form (a, out), (a, in), (a, out; b, in), (a, out; bc, in)) generate exactly the semilinear sets. However, if the rules have radius 1, (1,1), (2,1) (i.e., of the form (ab, out; c, in)), the SA's can only generate a proper subclass of the semilinear sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the average complexity of Brzozowski's minimization algorithm for distributions of deterministic automata with a small number of final states. We show that, as in the case of the uniform distribution, the average complexity is super-polynomial even if we consider random deterministic automata with only one final state. Such results were only known for distributions where the expected number of final states was linear in the number of states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare deterministic finite automata (DFAs) and biautomata under the following two aspects: structural similarities between minimal and hyper-minimal automata, and computational complexity of the minimization and hyper-minimization problem. Concerning classical minimality, the known results such as isomorphism between minimal DFAs, and NL-completeness of the DFA minimization problem carry over to the biautomaton case. But surprisingly this is not the case for hyper-minimization: the similarity between almost-equivalent hyper-minimal biautomata is not as strong as it is between almost-equivalent hyper-minimal DFAs. Moreover, while hyper-minimization is NL-complete for DFAs, we prove that this problem turns out to be computationally intractable, i.e., NP-complete, for biautomata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a restricted variant of the prefix-suffix duplication operation, called bounded prefix-suffix duplication. It consists in the iterative duplication of a length-bounded prefix or suffix of a given word. We give a sufficient condition for the closure of a class of languages under bounded prefix-suffix duplication. Consequently, we get that the class of regular languages is closed under bounded prefix-suffix duplication; furthermore, we propose an algorithm which decides whether a regular language is a finite k-prefix-suffix duplication language. An efficient algorithm solving the membership problem for the k-prefix-suffix duplication of a language is also presented. Finally, we define the k-prefix-suffix duplication distance between two words, extend it to languages and show how it can be computed for regular languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A program which eventually stops but does not halt 'too quickly' halts at a time which is algorithmically compressible. This result - originally proved in [4] - is proved in a more general setting. Following Manin [11] we convert the result into an anytime algorithm for the halting problem and we show that the stopping time (cut-off temporal bound) cannot be significantly improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce two decision problems, STABILIZER D and TRANSLATING COSET D, and give quantum reductions from them to the problem ORBIT SUPERPOSITION, as well as quantum reductions to them from two group theoretic problems GROUP INTERSECTION and DOUBLE COSET MEMBERSHIP. Based on these reductions, efficient quantum algorithms are obtained for GROUP INTERSECTION and DOUBLE COSET MEMBERSHIP in the setting of black-box groups. Specifically, for solvable groups, this gives efficient quantum algorithms for GROUP INTERSECTION if one of the underlying solvable groups has a smoothly solvable commutator subgroup, and for DOUBLE COSET MEMBERSHIP if one of the underlying solvable groups is smoothly solvable. We also show that GROUP INTERSECTION and DOUBLE COSET MEMBERSHIP are in the complexity class SZK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that various aspects of k-automatic sequences - such as having an unbordered factor of length n - are both decidable and effectively enumerable. As a consequence it follows that many related sequences are either k-automatic or k-regular. These include many sequences previously studied in the literature, such as the recurrence function, the appearance function, and the repetitivity index. We also give some new characterizations of the class of k-regular sequences. Many results extend to other sequences defined in terms of Pisot numeration systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is known that an ordinal is the order type of the lexicographic ordering of a regular language if and only if it is less than ωω. We design a polynomial time algorithm that constructs, for each well-ordered regular language L with respect to the lexicographic ordering, given by a deterministic finite automaton, the Cantor Normal Form of its order type. It follows that there is a polynomial time algorithm to decide whether two deterministic finite automata accepting well-ordered regular languages accept isomorphic languages. We also give estimates on the state complexity of the smallest "ordinal automaton" representing an ordinal less than ωω, together with an algorithm that translates each such ordinal to an automaton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study tissue-like P systems which use string objects and communicate by introducing communication symbols in the strings. We prove that these systems are computationally complete and moreover, they are computationally efficient in the sense that NP-complete problems can be solved in this framework in polynomial time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]