Art gallery theorems for guarded guards

We prove two art gallery theorems in which the guards must guard one another in addition to the gallery. A set of points (the guards) in a simple closed polygon (the art gallery) is a guarded guard set provided (i) every point in the polygon is visible to some point in and (ii) every point in is visible to some other point in We prove that a polygon with n sides always has a guarded guard set of cardinality (3n−1)/7 and that this bound is sharp (n5); our result corrects an erroneous formula in the literature. We also use a coloring argument to give an entirely new proof that the corresponding sharp function for orthogonal polygons is n/3 for n6; this result was originally established by induction by Hernández-Peñalver.     

Art galleries with guards of uniform range of vision

We are given an art gallery represented by a simple polygon with n sides and an angle (0°,360°]. How many guards of range of vision are required to monitor every point of the polygon in the worst case? After recent results on upper bounds of this problem, we prove new lower bounds for all 0°<<180°. Several lower bounds meet the best known upper bounds, and we expect our lower bounds to be best possible.

Surprisingly, it turns out that n/3 180°-guards are always enough to monitor a polygon of n sides, but if we wish to use (180−)°-guards for any >0, then possibly 2n/3−1 guards are necessary.     

Maximizing the guarded boundary of an Art Gallery is APX-complete

In the Art Gallery problem, given is a polygonal gallery and the goal is to guard the gallery's interior or walls with a number of guards that must be placed strategically in the interior, on walls or on corners of the gallery. Here we consider a more realistic version: exhibits now have size and may have different costs. Moreover the meaning of guarding is relaxed: we use a new concept, that of watching an expensive art item, i.e. overseeing a part of the item. The main result of the paper is that the problem of maximizing the total value of a guarded weighted boundary is APX-complete. This is shown by an appropriate ‘gap-preserving’ reduction from the Max-5-occurrence-3-Sat problem. We also show that this technique can be applied to a number of maximization variations of the art gallery problem. In particular we consider the following problems: given a polygon with or without holes and k available guards, maximize a) the length of walls guarded and b) the total cost of paintings watched or overseen. We prove that all the above problems are APX-complete.     

Full quadrature sums for pth powers of polynomials with Freud weights

In this paper, we provide a solution of the quadrature sum problem of R. Askey for a class of Freud weights. Let r> 0, b (− ∞, 2]. We establish a full quadrature sum estimate

1 p < ∞, for every polynomial P of degree at most n + rn^1/3, where W² is a Freud weight such as exp(−¦x¦), > 1, λ_jn are the Christoffel numbers, x_jn are the zeros of the orthonormal polynomials for the weight W², and C is independent of n and P. We also prove a generalisation, and that such an estimate is not possible for polynomials P of degree M = m(n) if m(n) = n + ξ_nn^1/3, where ξ_n → ∞ as n → ∞. Previous estimates could sum only over those x_jn with ¦x_jn¦ σx_1n, some fixed 0 < σ < 1.     

Sperner systems containing at most k sets of every cardinality

We prove using a direct construction that one can choose n − 2 subsets of an n-element set with different cardinality such that none of them contains any other. As a generalization, we prove that if for any j we can have at most k subsets containing exactly j elements (k> 1), then for n 5 we can choose at most k(n − 3) subsets from an n-element set such that they form a Sperner system. Moreover, we prove that this can be achieved if n is large enough, and give a construction for n 8k − 4.     

Normal art galleries: Wall in – all in

We introduce the notion of a normal gallery, a gallery in which any configuration of guards that visually covers the walls necessarily covers the entire gallery. We show that any star gallery is normal and any gallery with at most two reflex corners is normal. A polynomial time algorithm is provided deciding if, for a given gallery and a finite set of positions within the gallery, there exists a configuration of guards in some of these positions that visually covers the walls, but not the entire gallery.     

On fat partitioning, fat covering and the union size of polygons

The complexity of the contour of the union of simple polygons with n vertices in total can be O(n²) in general. A notion of fatness for simple polygons is introduced that extends most of the existing fatness definitions. It is proved that a set of fat polygons with n vertices in total has union complexity O(n log log n), which is a generalization of a similar result for fat triangles (Matou ek et al., 1994). Applications to several basic problems in computational geometry are given, such as efficient hidden surface removal, motion planning, injection molding, and more. The result is based on a new method to partition a fat simple polygon P with n vertices into O(n) fat convex quadrilaterals, and a method to cover (but not partition) a fat convex quadrilateral with O(l) fat triangles. The maximum overlap of the triangles at any point is two, which is optimal for any exact cover of a fat simple polygon by a linear number of fat triangles.     

On the λY calculus

The λY calculus is the simply typed λ calculus augmented with the fixed point operators. We show three results about λY: (a) the word problem is undecidable, (b) weak normalisability is decidable, and (c) higher type fixed point operators are not definable from fixed point operators at smaller types.     

The game of n-times nim

The following game is considered. The first player can take any number of stones, but not all the stones, from a single pile of stones. After that, each player can take at most n-times as many as the previous one. The player first unable to move loses and his opponent wins. Let f₁,f₂,… be an initial sequence of stones in increasing order, such that the second player has a winning strategy when play begins from a pile of size f_i. It is proved that there exist constants c=c(n) and k₀=k₀(n) such that f_k+1=f_k+f_k−c for all k>k₀, and lim_n→∞ c(n)/(nlogn)=1.     

A Characterization of Homothetic Simplices

For any k we construct a simply connected compact set (art gallery) in R ³ whose every point sees a positive fraction (in fact, more than 5/9) of the gallery, but the whole gallery cannot be guarded by k guards. This disproves a conjecture of Kavraki et al. Received May 2, 1997, and in revised form February 5, 1998.     

Worst-case-optimal algorithms for guarding planar graphs and polyhedral surfaces

We present an optimal Θ(n)-time algorithm for the selection of a subset of the vertices of an n-vertex plane graph G so that each of the faces of G is covered by (i.e., incident with) one or more of the selected vertices. At most n/2 vertices are selected, matching the worst-case requirement. Analogous results for edge-covers are developed for two different notions of “coverage”. In particular, our linear-time algorithm selects at most n−2 edges to strongly cover G, at most n/3 diagonals to cover G, and in the case where G has no quadrilateral faces, at most n/3 edges to cover G. All these bounds are optimal in the worst-case. Most of our results flow from the study of a relaxation of the familiar notion of a 2-coloring of a plane graph which we call a face-respecting 2-coloring that permits monochromatic edges as long as there are no monochromatic faces. Our algorithms apply directly to the location of guards, utilities or illumination sources on the vertices or edges of polyhedral terrains, polyhedral surfaces, or planar subdivisions.     

Intersections of nest algebras in finite dimensions

If are maximal nests on a finite-dimensional Hilbert space H, the dimension of the intersection of the corresponding nest algebras is at least dim H. On the other hand, there are three maximal nests whose nest algebras intersect in the scalar operators. The dimension of the intersection of two nest algebras (corresponding to maximal nests) can be of any integer value from n to n(n+1)/2, where n=dim H. For any two maximal nests there exists a basis {f₁,f₂,…,f_n} of H and a permutation π such that and where M_i=  span{f₁,f₂,…,f_i} and N_i= span{f_π(1),f_π(2),…,f_π(i)}. The intersection of the corresponding nest algebras has minimum dimension, namely dim H, precisely when π(j)=n−j+1,1jn. Those algebras which are upper-triangular matrix incidence algebras, relative to some basis, can be characterised as intersections of certain nest algebras.     

Fast approximations for sums of distances, clustering and the Fermat–Weber problem

We describe two data structures that preprocess a set S of n points in (d constant) so that the sum of Euclidean distances of points in S to a query point q can be quickly approximated to within a factor of . This preprocessing technique has several applications in clustering and facility location. Using it, we derive an O(nlogn) time deterministic and O(n) time randomized -approximation algorithm for the so called Fermat–Weber problem in any fixed dimension.     

Popular distances in 3-space

Let m(n) denote the smallest integer m with the property that any set of n points in Euclidean 3-space has an element such that at most m other elements are equidistant from it. We have that cn^1/3 log log n m(n) n^3/5 β(n), where c> 0 is a constant and β(n) is an extremely slowly growing function, related to the inverse of the Ackermann function.     

An extremal result on convex lattice polygons

The diameter of a convex set C is the length of the longest segment in C, and the local diameter at a point p is the length of the longest segment which contains p. It is easy to see that the local diameter at any point equals at least half of the diameter of C.

This paper looks at the analogous question in a discrete setting; namely we look at convex lattice polygons in the plane. The analogue of Euclidean diameter is lattice diameter, defined as the maximal number of collinear points from a figure. In this setting, lattice diameter and local lattice diameter need not be related. However, for figures of a certain size, the local lattice diameter at any point must equal at least (n − 2)/2, where n is the lattice diameter of the figure. The exact minimal size for which this result holds is determined, as a special case of an exact combinatorial formula.     

Contact metric manifolds whose characteristic vector field is a harmonic vector field

In this paper, contact metric manifolds whose characteristic vector field ξ is a harmonic vector field are called H-contact manifolds. We show that a (2n+1)-dimensional contact metric manifold is an H-contact manifold if and only if ξ is an eigenvector of the Ricci operator (J.C. González-Dávila and L. Vanhecke [J. Geom. 72 (2001) 65–76] proved this result for n=1). Consequently, the class of H-contact manifolds is very large. Moreover, we give some application about the topology of a compact H-contact manifold.     

Hinged dissection of polyominoes and polyforms

A hinged dissection of a set of polygons S is a collection of polygonal pieces hinged together at vertices that can be rotated into any member of S. We present a hinged dissection of all edge-to-edge gluings of n congruent copies of a polygon P that join corresponding edges of P. This construction uses kn pieces, where k is the number of vertices of P. When P is a regular polygon, we show how to reduce the number of pieces to k/2(n−1). In particular, we consider polyominoes (made up of unit squares), polyiamonds (made up of equilateral triangles), and polyhexes (made up of regular hexagons). We also give a hinged dissection of all polyabolos (made up of right isosceles triangles), which do not fall under the general result mentioned above. Finally, we show that if P can be hinged into Q, then any edge-to-edge gluing of n congruent copies of P can be hinged into any edge-to-edge gluing of n congruent copies of Q.     

Covering hypercubes by isometric paths

An isometric path is merely any shortest path between two vertices. If the vertices of the hypercube Q_n are represented by the set of 0–1 vectors of length n, an isometric path is obtained by changing the coordinates of a vector one at a time, never changing the same coordinate more than once. The minimum number of isometric paths required to cover the vertices of Q_n is at least 2ⁿ/(n+1). We show that when n+1 is a power of 2, the lower bound is in fact the minimum. In doing so, we construct a family of disjoint isometric paths which can be used to find an upper bound for additional classes of hypercubes.     

On the multisearching problem for hypercubes

In this paper we give improved bounds for the multisearch problem on a hypercube. This is a parallel search problem where the elements in the structure S to be searched are totally ordered, but where it is not possible to compare in constant time any two given queries q and q′. More precisely, we are given on a n-processor hypercube a sorted n-element sequence S, and a set Q of n queries, and we need to find for each query q Q its location in the sorted S. We present an improved algorithm for the multisearch problem, one that takes O(log n(log log n)³) time on a n-processor hypercube. This problem is fundamental in computational geometry, for example it models planar point location in a slab. We give as application a trapezoidal decomposition algorithm with the same time complexity on a n log n-processor hypercube. The hypercube model for which we claim our bounds is the standard one, SIMD, with O(1) memory registers per processor, and with one-port communication. Each register can store O(log n) bits, so that a processor knows its ID.     

A Hadamard product involving N-matrices

We show that for any pair M,N of n by n M-matrices, the Hadamard (entry-wise) product M°N_-1 is again an M-matrix. For a single M-matrix M, the matrix M°M^-1 is also considered.