Combinatorial Optimization and Applications

The Seventh Annual International Conference on Combinatorial Optimization and Applications, abbreviated as COCOA 2013, was held during December 12–14, 2013 in Chengdu, China. Some of the best papers for COCOA’2013 were invited to be published in this special issue of Theoretical Computer Science. The nine selected papers are across computational geometry, computational biology, on-line algorithms, graph theory, parameterized complexity and social networks. The first paper is “An Inductive Construction of Minimally Rigid Body–Hinge Simple Graphs”, by Yuki Kobayashi et al. The authors showed that a minimally rigid body–hinge simple graph can be constructed with five elementary operations in polynomial time. The second paper “Mining Hidden Links in Social Networks to Achieve Equilibrium”, by Huan Ma et al., focuses on mining interesting links in a complex social network. While the problem is NP-hard, interesting empirical results are obtained. In the third paper “A Loopless Algorithm for Generating Multiple Binary Tree Sequences Simultaneously”, Ro-Yu Wu et al. studied the problem of generating binary trees using two extra LCand RC-sequences. A loopless algorithm is presented. In the fourth paper “Following a Curve with the Discrete Frechet Distance”, Tim Wylie and Binhai Zhu studied the problem of fitting a polygonal curve with a set of given points under the discrete Frechet distance. Several different versions of the problems are studied, some are in P and some are NP-complete. In the fifth paper “Touring a Sequence of Disjoint Polygons: Complexity and Extension”, Arash Ahadi, Amirhossein Mozafari and Alireza Zarei proved that the problem of touring a set of disjoint polygons with a shortest path between a given source and a given sink is NP-hard, solving a long-standing open problem. The previous NP-hardness result only holds when the polygons could be overlapping. In the sixth paper “Circular Convex Bipartite Graphs: Feedback Vertex Sets”, Tian Liu et al. showed that the famous NP-complete feedback vertex set problem is polynomially solvable on a circular convex bipartite graph. The solution is obtained by using Turing reductions. In the seventh paper “Approximating the Maximum Multiple RNA Interaction Problem”, Weitian Tong et al. presented new approximation algorithms for two variations of the maximum multiple RNA interaction problem. In the eighth paper “Online Bin Covering: Expectations vs. Guarantees”, Marie Christ, Lene Favrholdt and Kim Larsen analyzed the performance of two classic online algorithms HARMONIC and NEXT-FIT for the bin covering problem. Several different performance measures are used. In the ninth paper “Parameterized and Approximation Algorithms for Finding two Disjoint Matchings”, Zhi-Zhong Chen, Ying Fan and Lusheng Wang studied the problem of computing two disjoint matching in weighted and unweighted graphs. They gave an FPT algorithm for the problem on unweighted graph and an approximation algorithm for the problem on a weighted graph. We thank Sichuan University for hosting the conference, all the authors for submitting their contributions and the timely work of all the reviewers. Finally, we thank Giorgio Ausiello for his assistance and the program committee of COCOA 2013 (who helped select and review the papers).

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