Constructions for anti‐mitre Steiner triple systems

In this paper, we present a recursive construction for anti‐mitre Steiner triple systems. Furthermore, we present another construction of anti‐mitre STSs by utilizing 5‐sparse ones. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The resolution of the anti‐mitre Steiner triple system conjecture

This paper gives a proof of the existence of anti‐mitre Steiner triple systems of order n for every n ≡ 1,3 mod 6 except for n = 9. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 14: 229–236, 2006     

Anti-mitre steiner triple systems

A mitre in a Steiner triple system is a set of five triples on seven points, in which two are disjoint. Recursive constructions for Steiner triple systems containing no mitre are developed, leading to such anti-mitre systems for at least 9/16 of the admissible orders. Computational results for small cyclic Steiner triple systems are also included.     

On 6-sparse Steiner triple systems

We give the first known examples of 6-sparse Steiner triple systems by constructing 29 such systems in the residue class 7 modulo 12, with orders ranging from 139 to 4447. We then present a recursive construction which establishes the existence of 6-sparse systems for an infinite set of orders. Observations are also made concerning existing construction methods for perfect Steiner triple systems, and we give a further example of such a system. This has order 135,859 and is only the fourteenth known. Finally, we present a uniform Steiner triple system of order 180,907.     

An improved product construction of rotational Steiner quadruple systems

An improved product construction is presented for rotational Steiner quadruple systems. Direct constructions are also provided for small orders. It is known that the existence of a rotational Steiner quadruple system of order υ+1 implies the existence of an optimal optical orthogonal code of length υ with weight four and index two. New infinite families of orders are also obtained for both rotational Steiner quadruple systems and optimal optical orthogonal codes. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 10: 433–443, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/jcd.10025     

Weaving hadamard matrices with maximum excess and classes with small excess

Weaving is a matrix construction developed in 1990 for the purpose of obtaining new weighing matrices. Hadamard matrices obtained by weaving have the same orders as those obtained using the Kronecker product, but weaving affords greater control over the internal structure of matrices constructed, leading to many new Hadamard equivalence classes among these known orders. It is known that different classes of Hadamard matrices may have different maximum excess. We explain why those classes with smaller excess may be of interest, apply the method of weaving to explore this question, and obtain constructions for new Hadamard matrices with maximum excess in their respective classes. With this method, we are also able to construct Hadamard matrices of near‐maximal excess with ease, in orders too large for other by‐hand constructions to be of much value. We obtain new lower bounds for the maximum excess among Hadamard matrices in some orders by constructing candidates for the largest excess. For example, we construct a Hadamard matrix with excess 1408 in order 128, larger than all previously known values. We obtain classes of Hadamard matrices of order 96 with maximum excess 912 and 920, which demonstrates that the maximum excess for classes of that order may assume at least three different values. Since the excess of a woven Hadamard matrix is determined by the row sums of the matrices used to weave it, we also investigate the properties of row sums of Hadamard matrices and give lists of them in small orders. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 12: 233–255, 2004.     

Class‐uniformly resolvable designs

We investigate Class‐Uniformly Resolvable Designs, which are resolvable designs in which each of the resolution classes has the same number of blocks of each size. We derive the fully general necessary conditions including a number of extremal bounds. We present two general constructions. We primarily consider the case of block sizes 2 and 3, where we find two infinite extremal families and finish two other infinite families by difference constructions. We present tables showing the current state of knowledge in the case of block size 2 and 3 for all orders up to 200. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 8: 79–99, 2001     

Constructions for cyclic 3‐designs and improved results on cyclic Steiner quadruple systems

This paper gives some recursive constructions for cyclic 3‐designs. Using these constructions we improve Grannell and Griggs's construction for cyclic Steiner quadruple systems, and many known recursive constructions for cyclic Steiner quadruple systems are unified. Finally, some new infinite families of cyclic Steiner quadruple systems are obtained. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 19:178‐201, 2011     

On perfect deletion‐correcting codes

In this article, we present constructions for perfect deletion‐correcting codes. The first construction uses perfect deletion‐correcting codes without repetition of letters to construct other perfect deletion‐correcting codes. This is a generalization of the construction shown in 1 . In the third section, we investigate several constructions of perfect deletion‐correcting codes using designs. In the last section, we investigate perfect deletion‐correcting codes containing few codewords. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Hill‐climbing to Pasch valleys

Exhaustive enumeration of Steiner Triple Systems is not feasible, due to the combinatorial explosion of instances. The next‐best hope is to quickly find a sample that is representative of isomorphism classes. Stinson's Hill‐Climbing algorithm [ 20 ] is widely used to produce random Steiner Triple Systems, and certainly finds a sample of systems quickly, but the sample is not uniformly distributed with respect to the isomorphism classes of STS with ν ≤ 19, and, in particular, we find that isomorphism classes with a large number of Pasch configurations are under‐represented. No analysis of the non‐uniformity of the distribution with respect to isomorphism classes or the intractability of obtaining a representative sample for ν > 19 is known. We also exhibit a modification to hill‐climbing that makes the sample if finds closer to the uniform distribution over isomorphism classes in return for a modest increase in running time. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 15: 405–419, 2007     

Directed B(K, 1; v) with K = {4, 5} and {4, 6} related to deletion/insertion‐correcting codes

Motivated by the construction of t‐deletion/insertion‐correcting codes, we consider the existence of directed PBDs with block sizes from K = {4, 5} and {4, 6}. The spectra of such designs are determined completely in this paper. For any integer {υ ≥ 4, a DB({4,5} ,1; υ) exists if and only if υ∉{6, 8, 9, 12, 14}, and a DB({4, 6}, 1; υ) exists if and only if υ ≡ 0,1 mod 3 and υ∉{9,15}. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 9: 147–156, 2001     

Recursive constructions for optimal (n,4,2)‐OOCs

In [ 3 ], a general recursive construction for optical orthogonal codes is presented, that guarantees to approach the optimum asymptotically if the original families are asymptotically optimal. A challenging problem on OOCs is to obtain optimal OOCs, in particular with λ > 1. Recently we developed an algorithmic scheme based on the maximal clique problem (MCP) to search for optimal (n, 4, 2)‐OOCs for orders up to n = 44. In this paper, we concentrate on recursive constructions for optimal (n, 4, 2)‐OOCs. While “most” of the codewords can be constructed by general recursive techniques, there remains a gap in general between this and the optimal OOC. In some cases, this gap can be closed, giving recursive constructions for optimal (n, 4, 2)‐OOCs. This is predicated on reducing a series of recursive constructions for optimal (n, 4, 2)‐OOCs to a single, finite maximal clique problem. By solving these finite MCP problems, we can extend the general recursive construction for OOCs in [ 3 ] to obtain new recursive constructions that give an optimal (n · 2^x, 4, 2)‐OOC with x ≥ 3, if there exists a CSQS(n). © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Existence of non‐resolvable Steiner triple systems

We consider two well‐known constructions for Steiner triple systems. The first construction is recursive and uses an STS(v) to produce a non‐resolvable STS(2v + 1), for v ≡ 1 (mod 6). The other construction is the Wilson construction that we specify to give a non‐resolvable STS(v), for v ≡ 3 (mod 6), v > 9. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 13: 16–24, 2005.     

Almost resolvable cycle systems—an analogue of Hanani triple systems

The purpose of this paper is the initiation of an attack on the general existence problem for almost resolvable 2k‐cycle systems. We give a complete solution for 2k=6 as well as a complete solution modulo one possible exception for 2k=10 and 14. We also show that the existence question for almost resolvable 2k‐cycle systems can be settled if we can show the existence for the two smallest possible orders 4k+1 and 8k+1. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 17: 404–410, 2009     

Locally 2‐arc transitive graphs,homogeneous factorizations,and partial linear spaces

We establish natural bijections between three different classes of combinatorial objects; namely certain families of locally 2‐arc transitive graphs, partial linear spaces, and homogeneous factorizations of arc‐transitive graphs. Moreover, the bijections intertwine the actions of the relevant automorphism groups. Thus constructions in any of these areas provide examples for the others. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 14: 139–148, 2006     

A comparison of preconditioned Krylov subspace methods for large‐scale nonsymmetric linear systems

Preconditioned Krylov subspace (KSP) methods are widely used for solving large‐scale sparse linear systems arising from numerical solutions of partial differential equations (PDEs). These linear systems are often nonsymmetric due to the nature of the PDEs, boundary or jump conditions, or discretization methods. While implementations of preconditioned KSP methods are usually readily available, it is unclear to users which methods are the best for different classes of problems. In this work, we present a comparison of some KSP methods, including GMRES, TFQMR, BiCGSTAB, and QMRCGSTAB, coupled with three classes of preconditioners, namely, Gauss–Seidel, incomplete LU factorization (including ILUT, ILUTP, and multilevel ILU), and algebraic multigrid (including BoomerAMG and ML). Theoretically, we compare the mathematical formulations and operation counts of these methods. Empirically, we compare the convergence and serial performance for a range of benchmark problems from numerical PDEs in two and three dimensions with up to millions of unknowns and also assess the asymptotic complexity of the methods as the number of unknowns increases. Our results show that GMRES tends to deliver better performance when coupled with an effective multigrid preconditioner, but it is less competitive with an ineffective preconditioner due to restarts. BoomerAMG with a proper choice of coarsening and interpolation techniques typically converges faster than ML, but both may fail for ill‐conditioned or saddle‐point problems, whereas multilevel ILU tends to succeed. We also show that right preconditioning is more desirable. This study helps establish some practical guidelines for choosing preconditioned KSP methods and motivates the development of more effective preconditioners.     

Bianchi Permutability for the Anti‐Self‐Dual Yang‐Mills Equations

The anti‐self‐dual Yang‐Mills equations are known to have reductions to many integrable differential equations. A general Bäcklund transformation (BT) for the anti‐self‐dual Yang‐Mills (ASDYM) equations generated by a Darboux matrix with an affine dependence on the spectral parameter is obtained, together with its Bianchi permutability equation. We give examples in which we obtain BTs of symmetry reductions of the ASDYM equations by reducing this ASDYM BT. Some discrete integrable systems are obtained directly from reductions of the ASDYM Bianchi system.     

On c‐Bhaskar Rao designs with block size 4

Several new families of c‐Bhaskar Rao designs with block size 4 are constructed. The necessary conditions for the existence of a c‐BRD (υ,4,λ) are that: (1)λ_min=?λ/3 ≤ c ≤ λ and (2a) c≡λ (mod 2), if υ > 4 or (2b) c≡ λ (mod 4), if υ = 4 or (2c) c≠ λ ? 2, if υ = 5. It is proved that these conditions are necessary, and are sufficient for most pairs of c and λ; in particular, they are sufficient whenever λ?c ≠ 2 for c > 0 and whenever c ? λ_min≠ 2 for c < 0. For c < 0, the necessary conditions are sufficient for υ> 101; for the classic Bhaskar Rao designs, i.e., c = 0, we show the necessary conditions are sufficient with the possible exception of 0‐BRD (υ,4,2)'s for υ≡ 4 (mod 6). © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 10: 361–386, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/jcd.10009     

Steiner triple systems with disjoint or intersecting subsystems

The existence of incomplete Steiner triple systems of order υ having holes of orders w and u meeting in z elements is examined, with emphasis on the disjoint (z = 0) and intersecting (z = 1) cases. When and , the elementary necessary conditions are shown to be sufficient for all values of z. Then for and υ “near” the minimum of , the conditions are again shown to be sufficient. Consequences for larger orders are also discussed, in particular the proof that when one hole is at least three times as large as the other, the conditions are again sufficient. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 8: 58–77, 2000     

On the state of strength‐three covering arrays

A covering array of size N, strength t, degree k, and order υ is a k × N array on υ symbols in which every t × N subarray contains every possible t × 1 column at least once. We present explicit constructions, constructive upper bounds on the size of various covering arrays, and compare our results with those of a commercial product. Applications of covering arrays include software testing, drug screening, and data compression. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 10: 217–238, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/jcd.10002