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We present a framework for addressing several problems on weighted planar graphs and graphs of bounded genus. With that framework, we derive polynomial-time approximation schemes for the following problems in planar graphs or graphs of bounded genus: edge-weighted tree cover and tour cover; vertex-weighted connected dominating set, max-weight-leaf spanning tree, and connected vertex cover. In addition, we obtain a polynomial-time approximation scheme for feedback vertex set in planar graphs. These are the first polynomial-time approximation schemes for all those problems in weighted embedded graphs. (For unweighted versions of some of these problems, polynomial-time approximation schemes were previously given using bidimensionality.)

The glass ceiling effect has been defined in a recent US Federal Commission report as "the unseen, yet unbreakable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements". It is well documented that many societies and organizations exhibit a glass ceiling. In this paper we formally define and study the glass ceiling effect in social networks and propose a natural mathematical model, called the biased preferential attachment model, that partially explains the causes of the glass ceiling effect. This model consists of a network composed of two types of vertices, representing two sub-populations, and accommodates three well known social phenomena: (i) the "rich get richer" mechanism, (ii) a minority-majority partition, and (iii) homophily. We prove that our model exhibits a strong moment glass ceiling effect and that all three conditions are necessary, i.e., removing any one of them will prevent the appearance of a glass ceiling effect. Additionally, we present empirical evidence taken from a mentor-student network of researchers (derived from the DBLP database) that exhibits both a glass ceiling effect and the above three phenomena.

We study the Sherali-Adams lift-and-project hierarchy of linear programming relaxations of the matching polytope. Our main result is an asymptotically tight expression 1+1/k for the integrality gap after k rounds of this hierarchy. The result is derived by a detailed analysis of the LP after k rounds applied to the complete graph K_{2d+1}. We give an explicit recurrence for the value of this LP, and hence show that its gap exhibits a "phase transition," dropping from close to its maximum value 1+1/2d to close to 1 around the threshold k=2d-Θ(√d). We also show that the rank of the matching polytope (i.e., the number of Sherali-Adams rounds until the integer polytope is reached) is exactly 2d-1.

How should players bid in keyword auctions such as those used by Google, Yahoo! and MSN?allWe consider greedy bidding strategies for a repeated auction on a single keyword, where in each round, each player chooses some optimal bid for the next round, assuming that the other players merely repeat their previous bid. We study the revenue, convergence and robustness properties of such strategies. Most interesting among these is a strategy we call the balanced bidding strategy (BB): it is known that BB has a unique fixed point with payments identical to those of the VCG mechanism. We show that if all players use the BB strategy and update each round, BB converges when the number of slots is at most 2, but does not always converge for 3 or more slots. On the other hand, we present a simple variant which is guaranteed to converge to the same fixed point for any number of slots. In a model in which only one randomly chosen player updates each round according to the BB strategy, we prove that convergence occurs with probability 1.We complement our theoretical results with empirical studies.