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In this paper, we study the lower- and upper-bounded covering (LUC) problem, where we are given a set $P$ of $n$ points, a collection $mathcal{B}$ of balls, and parameters $L$ and $U$. The goal is to find a minimum-sized subset $mathcal{B}subseteq mathcal{B}$ and an assignment of the points in $P$ to $mathcal{B}$, such that each point $pin P$ is assigned to a ball that contains $p$ and for each ball $B_iin mathcal{B}$, at least $L$ and at most $U$ points are assigned to $B_i$. We obtain an LP rounding based constant approximation for LUC by violating the lower and upper bound constraints by small constant factors and expanding the balls by again a small constant factor. Similar results were known before for covering problems with only the upper bound constraint. We also show that with only the lower bound constraint, the above result can be obtained without any lower bound violation. Covering problems have close connections with facility location problems. We note that the known constant-approximation for the corresponding lower- and upper-bounded facility location problem, violates the lower and upper bound constraints by a constant factor.
In the Metric Capacitated Covering (MCC) problem, given a set of balls $mathcal{B}$ in a metric space $P$ with metric $d$ and a capacity parameter $U$, the goal is to find a minimum sized subset $mathcal{B}subseteq mathcal{B}$ and an assignment of the points in $P$ to the balls in $mathcal{B}$ such that each point is assigned to a ball that contains it and each ball is assigned with at most $U$ points. MCC achieves an $O(log |P|)$-approximation using a greedy algorithm. On the other hand, it is hard to approximate within a factor of $o(log |P|)$ even with $beta < 3$ factor expansion of the balls. Bandyapadhyay~{et al.} [SoCG 2018, DCG 2019] showed that one can obtain an $O(1)$-approximation for the problem with $6.47$ factor expansion of the balls. An open question left by their work is to reduce the gap between the lower bound $3$ and the upper bound $6.47$. In this current work, we show that it is possible to obtain an $O(1)$-approximation with only $4.24$ factor expansion of the balls. We also show a similar upper bound of $5$ for a more generalized version of MCC for which the best previously known bound was $9$.
Relaxing the sequential specification of shared objects has been proposed as a promising approach to obtain implementations with better complexity. In this paper, we study the step complexity of relaxed variants of two common shared objects: max registers and counters. In particular, we consider the $k$-multiplicative-accurate max register and the $k$-multiplicative-accurate counter, where read operations are allowed to err by a multiplicative factor of $k$ (for some $k in mathbb{N}$). More accurately, reads are allowed to return an approximate value $x$ of the maximum value $v$ previously written to the max register, or of the number $v$ of increments previously applied to the counter, respectively, such that $v/k leq x leq v cdot k$. We provide upper and lower bounds on the complexity of implementing these objects in a wait-free manner in the shared memory model.
Classic dynamic data structure problems maintain a data structure subject to a sequence S of updates and they answer queries using the latest version of the data structure, i.e., the data structure after processing the whole sequence. To handle operations that change the sequence S of updates, Demaine et al. (TALG 2007) introduced retroactive data structures. A retroactive operation modifies the update sequence S in a given position t, called time, and either creates or cancels an update in S at time t. A partially retroactive data structure restricts queries to be executed exclusively in the latest version of the data structure. A fully retroactive data structure supports queries at any time t: a query at time t is answered using only the updates of S up to time t. If the sequence S only consists of insertions, the resulting data structure is an incremental retroactive data structure. While efficient retroactive data structures have been proposed for classic data structures, e.g., stack, priority queue and binary search tree, the retroactive version of graph problems are rarely studied. In this paper we study retroactive graph problems including connectivity, minimum spanning forest (MSF), maximum degree, etc. We provide fully retroactive data structures for maintaining the maximum degree, connectivity and MSF in $tilde{O}(n)$ time per operation. We also give an algorithm for the incremental fully retroactive connectivity with $tilde{O}(1)$ time per operation. We compliment our algorithms with almost tight hardness results. We show that under the OMv conjecture (proposed by Henzinger et al. (STOC 2015)), there does not exist fully retroactive data structures maintaining connectivity or MSF, or incremental fully retroactive data structure maintaining the maximum degree with $O(n^{1-epsilon})$ time per operation, for any constant $epsilon > 0$.
It was recently found that there are very close connections between the existence of additive spanners (subgraphs where all distances are preserved up to an additive stretch), distance preservers (subgraphs in which demand pairs have their distance preserved exactly), and pairwise spanners (subgraphs in which demand pairs have their distance preserved up to a multiplicative or additive stretch) [Abboud-Godwin SODA 16, Godwin-Williams SODA 16]. We study these problems from an optimization point of view, where rather than studying the existence of extremal instances we are given an instance and are asked to find the sparsest possible spanner/preserver. We give an $O(n^{3/5 + epsilon})$-approximation for distance preservers and pairwise spanners (for arbitrary constant $epsilon > 0$). This is the first nontrivial upper bound for either problem, both of which are known to be as hard to approximate as Label Cover. We also prove Label Cover hardness for approximating additive spanners, even for the cases of additive 1 stretch (where one might expect a polylogarithmic approximation, since the related multiplicative 2-spanner problem admits an $O(log n)$-approximation) and additive polylogarithmic stretch (where the related multiplicative spanner problem has an $O(1)$-approximation). Interestingly, the techniques we use in our approximation algorithm extend beyond distance-based problem to pure connectivity network design problems. In particular, our techniques allow us to give an $O(n^{3/5 + epsilon})$-approximation for the Directed Steiner Forest problem (for arbitrary constant $epsilon > 0$) when all edges have uniform costs, improving the previous best $O(n^{2/3 + epsilon})$-approximation due to Berman et al.~[ICALP 11] (which holds for general edge costs).
The point placement problem is to determine the positions of a set of $n$ distinct points, P = {p1, p2, p3, ..., pn}, on a line uniquely, up to translation and reflection, from the fewest possible distance queries between pairs of points. Each distance query corresponds to an edge in a graph, called point placement graph ppg, whose vertex set is P. The uniqueness requirement of the placement translates to line rigidity of the ppg. In this paper we show how to construct in 2 rounds a line rigid point placement graph of size 9n/7 + O(1). This improves the existing best result of 4n/3 + O(1). We also improve the lower bound on 2-round algorithms from 17n/16 to 9n/8.