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We study the computational complexity of several problems connected with finding a maximal distance-$k$ matching of minimum cardinality or minimum weight in a given graph. We introduce the class of $k$-equimatchable graphs which is an edge…
The k-Clique problem is a canonical hard problem in parameterized complexity. In this paper, we study the parameterized complexity of approximating the k-Clique problem where an integer k and a graph G on n vertices are given as input, and…
Given a set of $n$ weighted points on the $x$-$y$ plane, we want to find a step function consisting of $k$ horizontal steps such that the maximum vertical weighted distance from any point to a step is minimized. We solve this problem in…
Let integers $r\ge 2$ and $d\ge 3$ be fixed. Let ${\cal G}_d$ be the set of graphs with no induced path on $d$ vertices. We study the problem of packing $k$ vertex-disjoint copies of $K_{1,r}$ ($k\ge 2$) into a graph $G$ from parameterized…
The clustering problem, in its many variants, has numerous applications in operations research and computer science (e.g., in applications in bioinformatics, image processing, social network analysis, etc.). As sizes of data sets have grown…
Tracking of moving objects is crucial to security systems and networks. Given a graph $G$, terminal vertices $s$ and $t$, and an integer $k$, the \textsc{Tracking Paths} problem asks whether there exists at most $k$ vertices, which if…
We introduce the problem of finding a satisfying assignment to a CNF formula that must further belong to a prescribed input subspace. Equivalent formulations of the problem include finding a point outside a union of subspaces (the…
A $k$-star is a complete bipartite graph $K_{1,k}$. A partial $k$-star design of order $n$ is a pair $(V,\mathcal{A})$ where $V$ is a set of $n$ vertices and $\mathcal{A}$ is a set of edge-disjoint $k$-stars whose vertex sets are subsets of…
A set of points $P$ in a metric space and a constant integer $k$ are given. The $k$-center problem finds $k$ points as centers among $P$, such that the maximum distance of any point of $P$ to their closest centers $(r)$ is minimized.…
A $(\delta\geq k_1,\delta\geq k_2)$-partition of a graph $G$ is a vertex-partition $(V_1,V_2)$ of $G$ satisfying that $\delta(G[V_i])\geq k_i$ for $i=1,2$. We determine, for all positive integers $k_1,k_2$, the complexity of deciding…
Closeness is a widely-studied centrality measure. Since it requires all pairwise distances, computing closeness for all nodes is infeasible for large real-world networks. However, for many applications, it is only necessary to find the k…
In this paper, we study the $k$-forest problem in the model of resource augmentation. In the $k$-forest problem, given an edge-weighted graph $G(V,E)$, a parameter $k$, and a set of $m$ demand pairs $\subseteq V \times V$, the objective is…
$k$-center is one of the most popular clustering models. While it admits a simple 2-approximation in polynomial time in general metrics, the Euclidean version is NP-hard to approximate within a factor of 1.93, even in the plane, if one…
In the classical NP-hard metric $k$-median problem, we are given a set of $n$ clients and centers with metric distances between them, along with an integer parameter $k\geq 1$. The objective is to select a subset of $k$ open centers that…
In the k-center problem, given a metric space V and a positive integer k, one wants to select k elements (centers) of V and an assignment from V to centers, minimizing the maximum distance between an element of V and its assigned center.…
We study the k-median and k-center problems in probabilistic graphs. We analyze the hardness of these problems, and propose several algorithms with improved approximation ratios compared with the existing proposals.
Given a complete graph with $n$ vertices and non-negative edge weights, where $n$ is divisible by 3, the maximum weight 3-path packing problem is to find a set of $n/3$ vertex-disjoint 3-paths such that the total weight of the 3-paths in…
The main focus of this paper is a pair of new approximation algorithms for certain integer programs. First, for covering integer programs {min cx: Ax >= b, 0 <= x <= d} where A has at most k nonzeroes per row, we give a k-approximation…
Column-sparse packing problems arise in several contexts in both deterministic and stochastic discrete optimization. We present two unifying ideas, (non-uniform) attenuation and multiple-chance algorithms, to obtain improved approximation…
In the Upper Degree-Constrained Partial Orientation problem we are given an undirected graph $G=(V,E)$, together with two degree constraint functions $d^-,d^+ : V \to \mathbb{N}$. The goal is to orient as many edges as possible, in such a…