5336461
The Existence of Homomorphisms to Oriented Cycles
We discuss the existence of homomorphisms of arbitrary digraphs to a fixed oriented cycle $C$. Our main result asserts that if the cycle $C$ is unbalanced then a digraph $G$ is homomorphic to $C$ if and only if (1) every oriented path homomorphic to $G$ is also homomorphic to $C$, and (2) the length of every cycle of $G$ is a multiple of the length of $C$. This answers a conjecture from an earlier paper with H. Zhou and generalizes a result proved there. We also show that this characterization does not hold for balanced cycles. We relate these results to work on the complexity of homomorphism problems.
206792834
Star chromatic numbers of graphs
We investigate the relation between the star-chromatic number χ(G) and the chromatic number χ(G) of a graphG. First we give a sufficient condition for graphs under which their starchromatic numbers are equal to their ordinary chromatic numbers. As a corollary we show that for any two positive integersk, g, there exists ak-chromatic graph of girth at leastg whose star-chromatic number is alsok. The special case of this corollary withg=4 answers a question of Abbott and Zhou. We also present an infinite family of triangle-free planar graphs whose star-chromatic number equals their chromatic number. We then study the star-chromatic number of An infinite family of graphs is constructed to show that for each ε>0 and eachm≥2 there is anm-connected (m+1)-critical graph with star chromatic number at mostm+ε. This answers another question asked by Abbott and Zhou.
5956515
Homomorphisms to oriented paths
Abstract Given an oriented path P , we characterize those digraphs G which are homomorphic to P . The characterization equates the nonexistence of a homomorphism G → P with the existence of a homomorphism W → G , for some oriented path W which is not homomorphic to P . This result complements the recent polynomial time algorithm of Welzl et al. to find such a homomorphism (if one exists).
7791840
Pseudo-Hamiltonian-connected graphs
Abstract Given a graph G and a positive integer k , denote by G[k] the graph obtained from G by replacing each vertex of G with an independent set of size k . A graph G is called pseudo- k Hamiltonian-connected if G[k] is Hamiltonian-connected, i.e., every two distinct vertices of G[k] are connected by a Hamiltonian path. A graph G is called pseudo Hamiltonian-connected if it is pseudo- k Hamiltonian-connected for some positive integer k . This paper proves that a graph G is pseudo-Hamiltonian-connected if and only if for every non-empty proper subset X of V(G) , |N(X)|>|X| . The proof of the characterization also provides a polynomial-time algorithm that decides whether or not a given graph is pseudo-Hamiltonian-connected. The characterization of pseudo-Hamiltonian-connected graphs also answers a question of Richard Nowakowski, which motivated this paper.
42953989
The game coloring number of pseudo partial k-trees
Abstract This paper introduces a new class of graphs: (a,b)-pseudo partial k-trees. In some sense, the parameters (a,b) measure a graph's deviation from being a partial k-tree. In particular, a (0,0)-pseudo partial k-tree is just a partial k-tree. We discuss the game coloring number (as well as the game chromatic number) of (a,b)-pseudo partial k-trees, and prove that the game coloring number of an (a,b)-pseudo partial k-tree is at most 3k+2a+b+2. In particular, the game coloring number of a partial k-tree is at most 3k+2. This reduces considerably the previous known upper bound for the game chromatic number of a partial k-tree. Then we describe another strategy for Alice for playing the game, which gives a better upper bound for the game coloring number of (a,b)-pseudo partial 2-trees. Namely, we prove that the game coloring number of an (a,b)-pseudo partial 2-tree is at most a+b+8. By using this result, we prove that the game coloring number of a graph embeddable on an orientable surface of genus g⩾1 is at most ⌊ 1 2 (3 1+48g +23)⌋. This is the first upper bound for the game coloring number of such graphs, and it also improves considerably the previous known upper bound for the game chromatic number of such graphs. Moreover, the strategy for Alice introduced in this paper for playing the game can be considered as a common generalization of the previous known strategies for playing the game on forests, interval graphs, outerplanar graphs and planar graphs.
17776907
Circular perfect graphs
For 1 ≤ d ≤ k, let Kk/d be the graph with vertices 0, 1, · · · , k − 1, in which i ∼ j if d ≤ |i − j| ≤ k − d. The circular chromatic number χc(G) of a graph G is the minimum of those k/d for which G admits a homomorphism to Kk/d. The circular clique number ωc(G) of G is the maximum of those k/d for which Kk/d admits a homomorphism to G. A graph G is circular perfect if for every induced subgraph H of G we have χc(H) = ωc(H). This paper surveys results on circular perfect graphs.
31029747
Design Tools for Application Specific Embedded Processors
A variety of factors make it increasingly difficult and expensive to design and manufacture traditional Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). Consequently, programmable alternatives are more attractive than ever. The flexibility provided by programmability comes with a performance and power overhead. This can be significantly mitigated by using application specific platforms, also referred to as Application Specific Embedded Processors, or Application Specific Instruction Set Processors (ASIPs).ASIPs and the embedded software applications running on them, require specialized design tools - both during architectural evaluation to provide feedback on the suitability of the architecture for the application; as well as during system implementation to ensure efficient mapping and validation of design constraints. These functions result in requirements different from those of traditional software development environments. The first requirement is retargetability, especially during the early architectural evaluation stage where a rapid examination of design alternatives is essential. The second requirement is for additional metrics such as power consumption, real-time constraints and code size.This paper describes a set of design tools and associated methodology designed to meet the challenges posed by architectural evaluation and software synthesis. This work is part of the MESCAL (Modern Embedded Systems, Compilers, Architectures, and Languages) project.
1052837
Semi-Supervised Learning Using Gaussian Fields and Harmonic Functions
An approach to semi-supervised learning is proposed that is based on a Gaussian random field model. Labeled and unlabeled data are represented as vertices in a weighted graph, with edge weights encoding the similarity between instances. The learning problem is then formulated in terms of a Gaussian random field on this graph, where the mean of the field is characterized in terms of harmonic functions, and is efficiently obtained using matrix methods or belief propagation. The resulting learning algorithms have intimate connections with random walks, electric networks, and spectral graph theory. We discuss methods to incorporate class priors and the predictions of classifiers obtained by supervised learning. We also propose a method of parameter learning by entropy minimization, and show the algorithm's ability to perform feature selection. Promising experimental results are presented for synthetic data, digit classification, and text classification tasks.
14278266
Harmonic mixtures: combining mixture models and graph-based methods for inductive and scalable semi-supervised learning
Graph-based methods for semi-supervised learning have recently been shown to be promising for combining labeled and unlabeled data in classification problems. However, inference for graph-based methods often does not scale well to very large data sets, since it requires inversion of a large matrix or solution of a large linear program. Moreover, such approaches are inherently transductive, giving predictions for only those points in the unlabeled set, and not for an arbitrary test point. In this paper a new approach is presented that preserves the strengths of graph-based semi-supervised learning while overcoming the limitations of scalability and non-inductive inference, through a combination of generative mixture models and discriminative regularization using the graph Laplacian. Experimental results show that this approach preserves the accuracy of purely graph-based transductive methods when the data has "manifold structure," and at the same time achieves inductive learning with significantly reduced computational cost.
6174679
Correlation Clustering for Crosslingual Link Detection
The crosslingual link detection problem calls for identifying news articles in multiple languages that report on the same news event. This paper presents a novel approach based on constrained clustering. We discuss a general way for constrained clustering using a recent, graph-based clustering framework called correlation clustering. We introduce a correlation clustering implementation that features linear program chunking to allow processing larger datasets. We show how to apply the correlation clustering algorithm to the crosslingual link detection problem and present experimental results that show correlation clustering improves upon the hierarchical clustering approaches commonly used in link detection, and, hierarchical clustering approaches that take constraints into account.
7395446
Segmenting hands of arbitrary color
Hand segmentation is a prerequisite for many gesture recognition tasks. Color has been widely used for hand segmentation. However, many approaches rely on predefined skin color models. It is very difficult to predefine a color model in a mobile application where the light condition may change dramatically over time. We propose a novel statistical approach to hand segmentation based on Bayes decision theory. The proposed method requires no predefined skin color model. Instead it generates a hand color model and a background color model for a given image, and uses these models to classify each pixel in the image as either a hand pixel or a background pixel. Models are generated using a Gaussian mixture model with the restricted EM algorithm. Our method is capable of segmenting hands of arbitrary color in a complex scene. It performs well even when there is a significant overlap between hand and background colors, or when the user wears gloves. We show that the Bayes decision method is superior to a commonly used method by comparing their upper bound performance. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.