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It is well known that every cycle of a graph must intersect every cut in an even number of edges. For planar graphs, Ford and Fulkerson proved that, for any edge e, there exists a cycle containing e that intersects every minimal cut containing e in exactly two edges. The main result of this paper generalizes this result to any nonplanar graph G provided G does not have a K3,3 minor containing the given edge e. Ford and Fulkerson used their result to provide an efficient algorithm for solving the maximum-flow problem on planar graphs. As a corollary to the main result of this paper, it is shown that the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm naturally extends to this more general class of graphs.

A {0, 1}-matrix M is arborescence graphic if there exists an arborescence T such that the arcs of T are indexed on the rows of M and the columns of M are the incidence vectors of the arc sets of dipaths of T. If such a T exists, then T is an arborescence realization for M. This paper presents an almost-linear-time algorithm to determine whether a given {0, 1}-matrix is arborescence graphic and, if so, to construct an arborescence realization. The algorithm is then applied to recognize a subclass of the extended-Horn satisfiability problems introduced by Chandru and Hooker (1991).