Related papers: The Two-Squirrel Problem and Its Relatives
We present in this article an overview of the problem of neutron star masses. After a brief appraisal of the methods employed to determine the masses of neutron stars in binary systems, the existing sample of measured masses is presented,…
Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane and a multiset $W$ of $k$ weights with $k\leq n$, we assign each weight in $W$ to a distinct point in $P$ to minimize the maximum weighted distance from the weighted center of $P$ to any point in…
Given a point set P in 2D, the problem of finding the smallest set of unit disks that cover all of P is NP-hard. We present a simple algorithm for this problem with an approximation factor of 25/6 in the Euclidean norm and 2 in the max…
In the graph balancing problem the goal is to orient a weighted undirected graph to minimize the maximum weighted in-degree. This special case of makespan minimization is NP-hard to approximate to a factor better than 3/2 even when there…
We study the consensus-halving problem of dividing an object into two portions, such that each of $n$ agents has equal valuation for the two portions. The $\epsilon$-approximate consensus-halving problem allows each agent to have an…
We consider a Two-Bar Charts Packing Problem (2-BCPP), in which it is necessary to pack two-bar charts (2-BCs) in a unit-height strip of minimum length. The problem is a generalization of the Bin Packing Problem (BPP). Earlier, we proposed…
We study the problem of super-resolution, where we recover the locations and weights of non-negative point sources from a few samples of their convolution with a Gaussian kernel. It has been recently shown that exact recovery is possible by…
The attracting properties of gravity enable matter present in cores to collapse into stars with seven orders of magnitude change in space and time making modelling of star formation a challenging multi-scale process. To circumvent this…
A weakly magnetized neutron star (NS) undergoing disk accretion should release about a half of its power in a compact region known as the accretion boundary layer. Latitudinal spread of the accreted matter and efficient radiative cooling…
Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points in the plane. We consider a variation of the classical Erd\H{o}s-Szekeres problem, presenting efficient algorithms with $O(n^3)$ running time and $O(n^2)$ space complexity that compute: (1) A subset $S$ of $P$…
In the Two-Bar Charts Packing Problem (2-BCPP), it is required to pack the bar charts (BCs) consisting of two bars into the horizontal unit-height strip of minimal length. The bars may move vertically within the strip, but it is forbidden…
We present a deterministic distributed $2$-approximation algorithm for the Minimum Weight Vertex Cover problem in the CONGEST model whose round complexity is $O(\log n \log \Delta / \log^2 \log \Delta)$. This improves over the currently…
We study the Subnormal Completion Problem (SCP) for 2-variable weighted shifts. We use tools and techniques from the theory of truncated moment problems to give a general strategy to solve SCP. We then show that when all quadratic moments…
We give a 2-approximation algorithm for the Maximum Agreement Forest problem on two rooted binary trees. This NP-hard problem has been studied extensively in the past two decades, since it can be used to compute the Subtree…
The Colored Points Traveling Salesman Problem (Colored Points TSP) is introduced in this work as a novel variation of the traditional Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) in which the set of points is partitioned into multiple classes, each of…
We introduce a $2$-approximation algorithm for the minimum total covering number problem.
In this paper we consider the Recoverable Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). Here the task is to find two tours simultaneously, such that the intersection between the tours is at least a given minimum size, while the sum of travel distances…
We give the first $2$-approximation algorithm for the cluster vertex deletion problem. This is tight, since approximating the problem within any constant factor smaller than $2$ is UGC-hard. Our algorithm combines the previous approaches,…
We consider the problem of matching a metric space $(X,d_X)$ of size $k$ with a subspace of a metric space $(Y,d_Y)$ of size $n \geq k$, assuming that these two spaces have constant doubling dimension $\delta$. More precisely, given an…
We study the approximation hardness of the Shortest Superstring, the Maximal Compression and the Maximum Asymmetric Traveling Salesperson (MAX-ATSP) problem. We introduce a new reduction method that produces strongly restricted instances of…