A graph theory approach to subcontracting, machine duplication and intercell moves in cellular manufacturing

We address in this paper the problem of finding an optimal strategy for dealing with bottleneck machines and bottleneck parts in the cell formation process in group technology. Three types of economic decisions are considered: subcontracting, machine duplication and intercell moves. The problem is formulated as a minimum weighted node covering problem in a hypergraph, and we show that it can be solved in polynomial time by finding a maximum weighted stable set in a bipartite graph. We extend this result to cellular manufacturing systems in which the sequence of operations of each part is known in advance.     

The spum and sum-diameter of graphs: Labelings of sum graphs

A sum graph is a finite simple graph whose vertex set is labeled with distinct positive integers such that two vertices are adjacent if and only if the sum of their labels is itself another label. The spum of a graph G is the minimum difference between the largest and smallest labels in a sum graph consisting of G and the minimum number of additional isolated vertices necessary so that a sum graph labeling exists. We investigate the spum of various families of graphs, namely cycles, paths, and matchings. We introduce the sum-diameter, a modification of the definition of spum that omits the requirement that the number of additional isolated vertices in the sum graph is minimal, which we believe is a more natural quantity to study. We then provide asymptotically tight general bounds on both sides for the sum-diameter, and study its behavior under numerous binary graph operations as well as vertex and edge operations. Finally, we generalize the sum-diameter to hypergraphs.     

Minimum vertex degree conditions for loose Hamilton cycles in 3-uniform hypergraphs

We investigate minimum vertex degree conditions for 3-uniform hypergraphs which ensure the existence of loose Hamilton cycles. A loose Hamilton cycle is a spanning cycle in which only consecutive edges intersect and these intersections consist of precisely one vertex.     

Total Domination in Graphs with Given Girth

A set S of vertices in a graph G without isolated vertices is a total dominating set of G if every vertex of G is adjacent to some vertex in S. The minimum cardinality of a total dominating set of G is the total domination number γ _t (G) of G. In this paper, we establish an upper bound on the total domination number of a graph with minimum degree at least two in terms of its order and girth. We prove that if G is a graph of order n with minimum degree at least two and girth g, then γ _t (G) ≤ n/2 + n/g, and this bound is sharp. Our proof is an interplay between graph theory and transversals in hypergraphs. Michael A. Henning: Research supported in part by the South African National Research Foundation and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.     

Dimension of complete simple games with minimum

Weighted majority games have the property that players are totally ordered by the desirability relation (introduced by Isbell in [J.R. Isbell, A class of majority games, Quarterly Journal of Mathematics, 7 (1956) 183–187]) because weights induce it. Games for which this relation is total are called complete simple games. Taylor and Zwicker proved in [A.D. Taylor, W.S. Zwicker, Weighted voting, multicameral representation, and power, Games and Economic Behavior 5 (1993) 170–181] that every simple game (or monotonic finite hypergraph) can be represented by an intersection of weighted majority games and consider the dimension of a game as the needed minimum number of them to get it. They provide the existence of non-complete simple games of every dimension and left open the problem for complete simple games.     

Monomial ideals, edge ideals of hypergraphs, and their graded Betti numbers

We use the correspondence between hypergraphs and their associated edge ideals to study the minimal graded free resolution of squarefree monomial ideals. The theme of this paper is to understand how the combinatorial structure of a hypergraph ℋ appears within the resolution of its edge ideal ℐ(ℋ). We discuss when recursive formulas to compute the graded Betti numbers of ℐ(ℋ) in terms of its sub-hypergraphs can be obtained; these results generalize our previous work (Hà, H.T., Van Tuyl, A. in J. Algebra 309:405–425, 2007) on the edge ideals of simple graphs. We introduce a class of hypergraphs, which we call properly-connected, that naturally generalizes simple graphs from the point of view that distances between intersecting edges are “well behaved.” For such a hypergraph ℋ (and thus, for any simple graph), we give a lower bound for the regularity of ℐ(ℋ) via combinatorial information describing ℋ and an upper bound for the regularity when ℋ=G is a simple graph. We also introduce triangulated hypergraphs that are properly-connected hypergraphs generalizing chordal graphs. When ℋ is a triangulated hypergraph, we explicitly compute the regularity of ℐ(ℋ) and show that the graded Betti numbers of ℐ(ℋ) are independent of the ground field. As a consequence, many known results about the graded Betti numbers of forests can now be extended to chordal graphs. Dedicated to Anthony V. Geramita on the occasion of his 65th birthday.     

Hamilton ?-cycles in uniform hypergraphs

We say that a k-uniform hypergraph C is an ?-cycle if there exists a cyclic ordering of the vertices of C such that every edge of C consists of k consecutive vertices and such that every pair of consecutive edges (in the natural ordering of the edges) intersects in precisely ? vertices. We prove that if 1??<k and k−? does not divide k then any k-uniform hypergraph on n vertices with minimum degree at least contains a Hamilton ?-cycle. This confirms a conjecture of Hàn and Schacht. Together with results of Rödl, Ruciński and Szemerédi, our result asymptotically determines the minimum degree which forces an ?-cycle for any ? with 1??<k.     

Local edge-connectivity augmentation in hypergraphs is NP-complete

We consider a local edge-connectivity hypergraph augmentation problem. Specifically, we are given a hypergraph G=(V,E) and a subpartition of V. We are asked to find the smallest possible integer γ, for which there exists a set of size-two edges F, with |F|=γ, such that in G^′=(V,E∪F), the local edge-connectivity between any pair of vertices lying in the same part of the subpartition is at least a given value k. Using a transformation from the bin-packing problem, we show that the associated decision problem is NP-complete, even when k=2.     

Quantum Prisoner’s Dilemma game on hypergraph networks

We study the possible advantages of adopting quantum strategies in multi-player evolutionary games. We base our study on the three-player Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game. In order to model the simultaneous interaction between three agents we use hypergraphs and hypergraph networks. In particular, we study two types of networks: a random network and a SF-like network. The obtained results show that in the case of a three-player game on a hypergraph network, quantum strategies are not necessarily stochastically stable strategies. In some cases, the defection strategy can be as good as a quantum one.