Computing and Combinatorics [electronic resource] : 4th Annual International Conference, COCOON’98, Taipei, Taiwan, R.o.C., August 12–14, 1998 /

Invited Presentations -- Algorithmic Approaches to Information Retrieval and Data Mining -- Combinatorial Problems Arising in Massive Data Sets -- Estimating Parameters of Monotone Boolean Functions -- De-amortization of Algorithms -- Computational Geometry -- On Computing New Classes of Optimal Triangulations with Angular Constraints -- Maximum Weight Triangulation and Its Application on Graph Drawing -- The Colored Sector Search Tree: A Dynamic Data Structure for Efficient High Dimensional Nearest-Foreign-Neighbor Queries -- Space-Efficient Algorithms for Approximating Polygonal Curves in Two Dimensional Space -- Parallel Geometric Algorithms in Coarse-Grain Network Models -- Algorithms and Data Structures -- On the Bahncard Problem -- The Ultimate Strategy to Search on m Rays? -- Better Approximation of Diagonal-Flip Transformation and Rotation Transformation -- A Cost Optimal Parallel Algorithm for Computing Force Field in N-Body Simulations -- Efficient 2 and 3-Flip Neighborhood Search Algorithms for the MAX SAT -- Algorithms for Almost-Uniform Generation with an Unbiased Binary Source -- Improved Algorithms for Chemical Threshold Testing Problems -- Min-Max-Boundary Domain Decomposition -- Computational Complexity -- On Boolean Lowness and Boolean Highness -- The Inherent Dimension of Bounded Counting Classes -- An Exact Characterization of Symmetric Functions in q AC 0[2] -- Robust Reductions -- Approaches to Effective Semi-continuity of Real Functions -- On the Power of Additive Combinatorial Search Model -- Parallel and Distributed Processing, and Switching Networks -- The Number of Rearrangements in a 3-stage Clos Network Using an Auxiliary Switch -- Lower Bounds for Wide-Sense Non-blocking Clos Network -- Multirate Multicast Switching Networks -- Efficient Randomized Routing Algorithms onthe Two-Dimensional Mesh of Buses -- Executing Divisible Jobs on a Network with a Fixed Number of Processors -- Graph Theory -- On the Ádám Conjecture on Circulant Graphs -- Proof of Toft’s Conjecture: Every Graph Containing No Fully Odd K 4 Is 3-Colorable -- A New Family of Optimal 1-Hamiltonian Graphs with Small Diameter -- A Linear-Time Algorithm for Constructing an Optimal Node-Search Strategy of a Tree -- A Graph Optimization Problem in Virtual Colonoscopy -- Approximation and Exact Algorithms for Constructing Minimum Ultrametric Trees from Distance Matrices -- An Optimal Algorithm for Finding the Minimum Cardinality Dominating Set on Permutation Graphs -- Combinatorics and Cryptography -- Similarity in Two-Dimensional Strings -- On Multi-dimensional Hilbert Indexings -- Combinatorial Properties of Classes of Functions Hard to Compute in Constant Depth -- Eulerian Secret Key Exchange -- One-Time Tables for Two-Party Computation.

The papers in this volume were selected for presentation at the Fourth Annual International Computing and Combinatorics Conference (COCOON’98), held on August 12–14, 1998, in Taipei. The topics cover most aspects of theoretical computer science and combinatorics related to computing. Submissions to the conference this year was only conducted electronically. Thanks to the excellent software developed by the system team of the Institute of Information Science, we were able to make virtually all communications through the World Wide Web. A total of 69 papers was submitted in time to be considered, of which 36 papers were accepted for presentation at the conference. In addition to these contributed papers, the conference also included four invited presentations by Christo Papadimitriou, Michael Fishcher, Fan Chung Graham and Rao Kosaraju. It is expected that most of the accepted papers will appear in a more complete form in scienti?c journals. Moreover, selected papers will appear in a special issue of Theoretical Computer Science. We thank all program committee members, their support sta? and referees for excellent work within demanding time constraints. We thank all authors who submitted papers for consideration. We are especially grateful to our colleagues who worked hard and o?ered widely di?ering talents to make the conference both possible and enjoyable. August 1998 Wen-Lian Hsu and Ming-Yang Kao Program Co-chairs COCOON’98 Organization COCOON’98 is organized by the Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC and in cooperation with Institute of Information and Computing Machinery (IICM), Taiwan, ROC.