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We give new partially-dynamic algorithms for the all-pairs shortest paths problem in weighted directed graphs. Most importantly, we give a new deterministic incremental algorithm for the problem that handles updates in $\widetilde{O}(mn^{4/3}\log{W}/\epsilon)$ total time (where the edge weights are from $[1,W]$) and explicitly maintains a $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate distance matrix. For a fixed $\epsilon>0$, this is the first deterministic partially dynamic algorithm for all-pairs shortest paths in directed graphs, whose update time is $o(n^2)$ regardless of the number of edges. Furthermore, we also show how to improve the state-of-the-art partially dynamic randomized algorithms for all-pairs shortest paths [Baswana et al. STOC'02, Bernstein STOC'13] from Monte Carlo randomized to Las Vegas randomized without increasing the running time bounds (with respect to the $\widetilde{O}(\cdot)$ notation). Our results are obtained by giving new algorithms for the problem of dynamically maintaining hubs, that is a set of $\widetilde{O}(n/d)$ vertices which hit a shortest path between each pair of vertices, provided it has hop-length $\Omega(d)$. We give new subquadratic deterministic and Las Vegas algorithms for maintenance of hubs under either edge insertions or deletions.

Exploring large-scale networks is a time consuming and expensive task which is usually operated in a complex and uncertain environment. A crucial aspect of network exploration is the development of suitable strategies that decide which nodes and edges to probe at each stage of the process. To model this process, we introduce the stochastic graph exploration problem. The input is an undirected graph G = (V, E) with a source vertex s, stochastic edge costs drawn from a distribution πe, e ∈ E, and rewards on vertices of maximum value R. The goal is to find a set F of edges of total cost at most B such that the subgraph of G induced by F is connected, contains s, and maximizes the total reward. This problem generalizes the stochastic knapsack problem and other stochastic probing problems recently studied. Our focus is on the development of efficient nonadaptive strategies that are competitive against the optimal adaptive strategy. A major challenge is the fact that the problem has an Ω(n) adaptivity gap even on a tree of n vertices. This is in sharp contrast with O(1) adaptivity gap of the stochastic knapsack problem, which is a special case of our problem. We circumvent this negative result by showing that O(log nR) resource augmentation suffices to obtain O(1) approximation on trees and O(lognR) approximation on general graphs. To achieve this result, we reduce stochastic graph exploration to a memoryless process – the minesweeper problem – which assigns to every edge a probability that the process terminates when the edge is probed. For this problem, interesting in its own, we present an optimal polynomial time algorithm on trees and an O(log nR) approximation for general graphs. We study also the problem in which the maximum cost of an edge is a logarithmic fraction of the budget. We show that under this condition, there exist polynomial-time oblivious strategies that use 1 + ε budget, whose adaptivity gaps on trees and general graphs are 1 + ε and 8 + ε, respectively. Finally, we provide additional results on the structure and the complexity of nonadaptive and adaptive strategies.