This dissertation establishes mathematical foundations for the properties exhibited by generalizations of cliques, as well as algorithms to find such objects in a network. Cliques are a model of an ideal group with roots in social network analysis. They have since found applications as a part of grouping mechanisms in computer vision, coding theory, experimental design, genomics, economics, and telecommunications among other fields. Because only groups with ideal properties form a clique, they are often too restrictive for identifying groups in many real-world networks. This motivated the introduction of clique relaxations that preserve some of the various defining properties of cliques in relaxed form. There are six clique relaxations that are the focus of this dissertation: s-clique, s-club, s-plex, k-core, quasi-clique, and k-connected subgraphs. Since cliques have found applications in so many fields, research into these clique relaxations has the potential to steer the course of much future research. The focus of this dissertation is on bringing organization and rigorous methodology to the formation and application of clique relaxations. We provide the first taxonomy focused on how the various clique relaxations relate on key structural properties demonstrated by groups. We also give a framework for how clique relaxations can be formed. This equips researchers with the ability to choose the appropriate clique relaxation for an application based on its structural properties, or, if an appropriate clique relaxation does not exist, form a new one. In addition to identifying the structural properties of the various clique relaxations, we identify properties and prove propositions that are important computationally. These assist in creating algorithms to find a clique relaxation quickly as it is immersed in a network. We give the first ever analysis of the computational complexity of finding the maximum quasi-clique in a graph. Such analysis identifies for researchers the appropriate set of computational tools to solve the maximum quasiclique problem. We further create a polynomial time algorithm for identifying large 2-cliques within unit disk graphs, a special class of graphs often arising in communication networks. We prove the algorithm to have a guaranteed 1=2-approximation ratio and finish with computational results.

The first result of this thesis is a partial result in the direction of Steinberg's Conjecture. Steinberg's Conjecture states that any planar graph without cycles of length four or five is three colorable. Borodin, Glebov, Montassier, and Raspaud showed that planar graphs without cycles of length four, five, or seven are three colorable and Borodin and Glebov showed that planar graphs without five cycles or triangles at distance at most two apart are three colorable. We prove a statement that implies the first of these theorems and is incomparable with the second: that any planar graph with no cycles of length four through six or cycles of length seven with incident triangles distance exactly two apart are three colorable. The third and fourth chapters of this thesis are concerned with the study of Pfaffian orientations. A theorem proved by William McCuaig and, independently, Neil Robertson, Paul Seymour, and Robin Thomas provides a good characterization for whether or not a bipartite graph has a Pfaffian orientation as well as a polynomial time algorithm for that problem. We reprove this characterization and provide a new algorithm for this problem. In Chapter 3, we generalize a preliminary result needed to reprove this theorem. Specifically, we show that any internally 4-connected, non-planar bipartite graph contains a subdivision of K3,3 in which each path has odd length. In Chapter 4, we make use of this result to provide a much shorter proof using elementary methods of this characterization. In the fourth and fifth chapters we investigate flat embeddings. A piecewise-linear embedding of a graph in 3-space is flat if every cycle of the graph bounds a disk disjoint from the rest of the graph. We provide a structural theorem for flat embeddings that indicates how to build them from small pieces in Chapter 5. In Chapter 6, we present a class of flat graphs that are highly non-planar in the sense that, for any fixed k, there are an infinite number of members of the class such that deleting k vertices leaves the graph non-planar.

In this thesis we will describe the development of software functions that render graphical and textual information of G-Net(A software system for graph theory & algorithms) onto various raster output devices.Graphs are mathematical structures that are used to model very diverse systems such as networks, VLSI design, chemical compounds and many other systems where relations between objects play an important role. The study of graph theory problems requires many manipulative techniques. A software system (such as G-Net) that can automate these techniques will be a very good aid to graph theorists and professionals. The project G-Net, headed by Prof. Kunwarjit S. Bagga of the computer science department has the goal of developing a software system having three main functions. These are: learning basics of graph theory, drawing/manipulating graphs and executing graph algorithms.The thesis will begin with an introduction to graph theory followed by a brief description of the evolution of the G-Net system and its current status. To print on various printers, the G-Net system translates all the printable information into PostScript' files. A major part of this thesis concentrates on this translation. To begin with, the necessity of a standard format for the printable information is discussed. The choice of PostScript as a standard is then justified. Next,the design issues of translator and the translation algorithm are discussed in detail. The translation process for each category of printable information is explained. Issues of printing these PostScript files onto different printers are dealt with at the end. / Department of Computer Science

The crossing number of a graph is the minimum number of pairwise edge crossings in a drawing of a graph. A graph $G$ is $k$-crossing-critical if it has crossing number at least $k$, and any subgraph of $G$ has crossing number less than $k$. A consequence of Kuratowski's theorem is that 1-critical graphs are subdivisions of $K_{3,3}$ and $K_{5}$. The graph $V_{2n}$ is a $2n$-cycle with $n$ diameters. Bokal, Oporowski, Richter and Salazar found in \cite{bigpaper} all the critical graphs except the ones that contain a $V_{8}$ minor and no $V_{10}$ minor. We show that a 4-connected graph $G$ has crossing number at least 2 if and only if for each pair of disjoint edges there are two disjoint cycles containing them. Using a generalization of this result we found limitations for the 2-crossing-critical graphs remaining to classify. We showed that peripherally 4-connected 2-crossing-critical graphs have at most 4001 vertices. Furthermore, most 3-connected 2-crossing-critical graphs are obtainable by small modifications of the peripherally 4-connected ones.

A novel framework based on cluster co-occurrence and graph theory for structure discovery is applied to audio to find new types of audio objects which enable the compression of an input signal. These new objects differ from those found in current object coding schemes as their shape is not restricted by any a priori psychoacoustic knowledge. The framework is novel from an application perspective, as it marks the first time that graph theory is applied to audio, and with regards to theoretical developments, as it involves new extensions to the areas of unsupervised learning algorithms and frequent subgraph mining methods. Tests are performed using a corpus of audio files spanning a wide range of sounds. Results show that the framework discovers new types of audio objects which yield average respective overall and relative compression gains of 15.90% and 23.53% while maintaining a very good average audio quality with imperceptible changes.

Singly-periodic (SP) and doubly-periodic (DP) graphs arc infinite graphs which have translational symmetries in one and two dimensions, respectively. The problem of counting the number of connected components in such graphs is investigated. A method for determining whether or not an SP graph is k-colourable for a given positive integer k is given, and the question of deciding k-colourability of DP graphs is discussed. Colourings of SP and DP graphs can themselves be either periodic or aperiodic, and properties which determine the symmetries of their colourings arc also explored.

For a given graph, G, the crossing number crₐ(G) denotes the minimum number of edge crossings when a graph is drawn on an orientable surface of genus a. The sequence cr₀(G), cr₁(G), ... is said to be the crossing sequence of a G. An equivalent definition exists for non-orientable surfaces. In 1983, Jozef Širáň proved that for every decreasing, convex sequence of non-negative integers, there is a graph G such that this sequence is the crossing sequence of G. This main result of this thesis proves the existence of a graph with non-convex crossing sequence of arbitrary length.

Jackson and Wormald show that every 3-connected K_1,d-free graph, on n vertices, contains a cycle of length at least 1/2 n^g(d) where g(d) = (log_2 6 + 2 log_2 (2d+1))^-1. For d = 3, g(d) ~ 0.122. Improving this bound, we prove that if G is a 3-connected claw-free graph on at least 6 vertices, then there exists a cycle C in G such that |E(C)| is at least c n^g+5, where g = log_3 2 and c > 1/7 is a constant. To do this, we instead prove a stronger theorem that requires the cycle to contain two specified edges. We then use Tutte decomposition to partition the graph and then use the inductive hypothesis of our theorem to find paths or cycles in the different parts of the decomposition.

Thesis (MSc(Comp & InfoSc))--University of South Australia, 2001

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2007. / "Graduate Program in Operations Research." Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-61).