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Abstract Node connectivity plays a central role in temporal network analysis. We provide a broad study of various concepts of walks in temporal graphs, that is, graphs with fixed vertex sets but arc sets changing over time. Taking into account the temporal aspect leads to a rich set of optimization criteria for “shortest” walks. Extending and broadening state-of-the-art work of Wu et al. [IEEE TKDE 2016], we provide an algorithm for computing shortest walks that is capable to deal with various optimization criteria and any linear combination of these. It runs in O(|V|+|E|log|E|) time where |V| is the number of vertices and |E| is the number of time-arcs. A central distinguishing factor to Wu et al.’s work is that our model allows to, motivated by real-world applications, respect waiting-time constraints for vertices, that is, the minimum and maximum waiting time allowed in intermediate vertices of a walk. Moreover, other than Wu et al. our algorithm also allows to search for walks that pass multiple subsequent time-arcs in one time step, and it can deal with a richer set of optimization criteria. Our experimental studies indicate that our richer modeling can be achieved without significantly worsening the running time when compared to Wu et al.’s algorithms.

AbstractThe h-index is an important bibliographic measure used to assess the performance of researchers. Dutiful researchers merge different versions of their articles in their Google Scholar profile even though this can decrease their h-index. In this article, we study the manipulation of the h-index by undoing such merges. In contrast to manipulation by merging articles, such manipulation is harder to detect. We present numerous results on computational complexity (from linear-time algorithms to parameterized computational hardness results) and empirically indicate that at least small improvements of the h-index by splitting merged articles are unfortunately easily achievable.

The NP-hard RAINBOW SUBGRAPH problem, motivated from bioinformatics, is to find in an edge-colored graph a subgraph that contains each edge color exactly once and has at most \(k\) vertices. We examine the parameterized complexity of RAINBOW SUBGRAPH for paths, trees, and general graphs. We show that RAINBOW SUBGRAPH is W[1]-hard with respect to the parameter \(k\) and also with respect to the dual parameter \(\ell:=n-k\) where \(n\) is the number of vertices. Hence, we examine parameter combinations and show, for example, a polynomial-size problem kernel for the combined parameter \(\ell\) and ``maximum number of colors incident with any vertex''. Additionally, we show APX-hardness even if the input graph is a properly edge-colored path in which every color occurs at most twice.

We suggest a user-oriented approach to combinatorial data anonymization. A data matrix is called k-anonymous if every row appears at least k times—the goal of the NP-hard k-ANONYMITY problem then is to make a given matrix k-anonymous by suppressing (blanking out) as few entries as possible. Building on previous work and coping with corresponding deficiencies, we describe an enhanced k-anonymization problem called PATTERN-GUIDED k-ANONYMITY, where the users specify in which combinations suppressions may occur. In this way, the user of the anonymized data can express the differing importance of various data features. We show that PATTERN-GUIDED k-ANONYMITY is NP-hard. We complement this by a fixed-parameter tractability result based on a “data-driven parameterization” and, based on this, develop an exact integer linear program (ILP)-based solution method, as well as a simple, but very effective, greedy heuristic. Experiments on several real-world datasets show that our heuristic easily matches up to the established “Mondrian” algorithm for k-ANONYMITY in terms of the quality of the anonymization and outperforms it in terms of running time.

Co-clustering, that is partitioning a numerical matrix into “homogeneous” submatrices, has many applications ranging from bioinformatics to election analysis. Many interesting variants of co-clustering are NP-hard. We focus on the basic variant of co-clustering where the homogeneity of a submatrix is defined in terms of minimizing the maximum distance between two entries. In this context, we spot several NP-hard, as well as a number of relevant polynomial-time solvable special cases, thus charting the border of tractability for this challenging data clustering problem. For instance, we provide polynomial-time solvability when having to partition the rows and columns into two subsets each (meaning that one obtains four submatrices). When partitioning rows and columns into three subsets each, however, we encounter NP-hardness, even for input matrices containing only values from {0, 1, 2}.