9791685
Symmetry Breaking
Symmetry occurs in many problems in aritifical intelligence. For example, in the n-queens problem, the chessboard can be rotated 90°. As a second example, several machines in a factory might have the same capacity. In a production schedule, we might therefore be able to swap the jobs on machines with the same capacity. As a third example, two people within a company might have the same skills. Given a staff roster, we might therefore be able to interchange these two people. And as a fourth example, when configuring a computer, two memory boards might be identical. We might therefore be able to swap them around without changing the performance of the computer.
11070611
The Constrainedness of Arc Consistency
We show that the same methodology used to study phase transition behaviour in NP-complete problems works with a polynomial problem class: establishing arc consistency. A general measure of the constrainedness of an ensemble of problems, used to locate phase transitions in random NP-complete problems, predicts the location of a phase transition in establishing arc consistency. A complexity peak for the AC3 algorithm is associated with this transition. Finite size scaling models both the scaling of this transition and the computational cost. On problems at the phase transition, this model of computational cost agrees with the theoretical worst case. As with NP-complete problems, constrainedness — and proxies for it which are cheaper to compute — can be used as a heuristic for reducing the number of checks needed to establish arc consistency in AC3. 
 
The authors are supported by EPSRC awards GR/L/24014 and GR/K/65706, and the EU award EU20603. The authors wish to thank other members of the APES research group for their help, and Gene Freuder.
5055655
The Complexity of Global Constraints
We study the computational complexity of reasoning with global constraints. We show that reasoning with such constraints is intractable in general. We then demonstrate how the same tools of computational complexity can be used in the design and analysis of specific global constraints. In particular, we illustrate how computational complexity can be used to determine when a lesser level of local consistency should be enforced, when decomposing constraints will lose pruning, and when combining constraints is tractable. We also show how the same tools can be used to study symmetry breaking, meta-constraints like the cardinality constraint, and learning nogoods.
17485829
Beyond Finite Domains: The All Different and Global Cardinality Constraints
We describe how the propagator for the ALL-DIFFERENT constraint can be generalized to prune variables whose domains are not just simple finite integer domains. We show, for example, how it can be used to propagate set, multiset and tuple variables.
12061015
Automatic Invention of Integer Sequences
We report on the application of the HR program (Colton, Bundy, & Walsh 1999) to the problem of automatically inventing integer sequences. Seventeen sequences invented by HR are interesting enough to have been accepted into the Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (Sloane 2000) and all were supplied with interesting conjectures about their nature, also discovered by HR. By extending HR, we have enabled it to perform a two stage process of invention and investigation. This involves generating both the definition and terms of a new sequence, relating it to sequences already in the Encyclopedia and pruning the output to help identify the most surprising and interesting results.
2156641
Multiset Ordering Constraints
We identify a new and important global (or nonbinary) constraint which ensures that the values taken by two vectors of variables, when viewed as multisets, are ordered. This constraint is useful for a number of different applications including breaking symmetry and fuzzy constraint satisfaction. We propose and implement a linear time algorithm for enforcing generalised arc-consistency on such a multiset ordering constraint. Experimental results show considerable promise.
3106079
Efficient Exploration With Latent Structure
When interacting with a new environment, a robot can improve its online performance by efficiently exploring the effects of its actions. The efficiency of exploration can be expanded significantly by modeling and using latent structure to generalize experiences. We provide a theoretical development of the problem of exploration with latent structure, analyze several algorithms and prove matching lower bounds. We demonstrate our algorithmic ideas on a simple robot car repeatedly traversing a path with two different surface properties.
14691140
Counting unlabelled three-connected and homeomorphically irreducible two-connected graphs
A graph will be assumed to be finite and unoriented, with no loops or multiple edges; if multiple edges are to be allowed, the term multigraph will be used. A graph or multigraph. will be called k-connected if at least k vertices and their incident edges must be removed to disconnect it (a complete graph is considered to be k-connected for any k). A block (respectively, multiblock) is a 2-connected graph (respectively, multigraph) with at least 2 vertices, and a brick is a 3-connected graph with at least 4 vertices. A Iabelling of a graph or multigraph with n vertices is a l-l correspondence from the set { 1, 2,..., n} onto the set of its vertices. Let A(x, y) be the mixed exponential generating function C,,, An,,,,x”.vmln!, where A,,, is the number of labelled graphs with n vertices and m edges, and let C(x, y) and B(x, y) be analogous generating functions which count labelled connected graphs and labelled blocks, respectively. The following formulae, due to Riddell [lo], appear in one-variable form in [6, pp. 3-111:
28528633
Total Vertex Enumeration in Rooted Planar Maps
1960492
Challenges in securing voice over IP
Although VoIP offers lower cost and greater flexibility, it can also introduce significant risks and vulnerabilities. This article explains the challenges of VoIP security and outlines steps for helping to secure an organization's VoIP network.
15854568
Enumeration of eulerian and unicursal planar maps
Sum-free enumerative formulae are derived for several classes of rooted planar maps with no vertices of odd valency (eulerian maps) and with two vertices of odd valency (unicursal maps). As corollaries we obtain simple formulae for the numbers of unrooted eulerian and unicursal planar maps. Also, we obtain a sum-free formula for the number of rooted bi-eulerian (eulerian and bipartite) maps and some related results.