In the Telephone Broadcasting problem, the goal is to disseminate a message from a given source vertex of an input graph to all other vertices in the minimum number of rounds, where at each round, an informed vertex can send the message to at most one of its uninformed neighbors. For general graphs of n vertices, the problem is NP-complete, and the best existing algorithm has an approximation factor of O(log n/ log log n). The existence of a constant factor approximation for the general graphs is still unknown. In this paper, we study the problem in two simple families of sparse graphs, namely, cacti and graphs of bounded pathwidth. There have been several efforts to understand the complexity of the problem in cactus graphs, mostly establishing the presence of polynomial-time solutions for restricted families of cactus graphs. Despite these efforts, the complexity of the problem in arbitrary cactus graphs remained open. We settle this question by establishing the NP-completeness of telephone broadcasting in cactus graphs. For that, we show the problem is NP-complete in a simple subfamily of cactus graphs, which we call snowflake graphs. These graphs not only are cacti but also have
Motivated by string topology and the arc operad, we introduce the notion of quasi-operads and consider four (quasi)-operads which are different varieties of the operad of cacti. These are cacti without local zeros (or spines) and cacti proper as well as both varieties with fixed constant size one of the constituting loops. Using the recognition principle of Fiedorowicz, we prove that spineless cacti are equivalent as operads to the little discs operad. It turns out that in terms of spineless cacti Cohen's Gerstenhaber structure and Fiedorowicz' braided operad structure are given by the same explicit chains. We also prove that spineless cacti and cacti are homotopy equivalent to their normalized versions as quasi-operads by showing that both types of cacti are semi-direct products of the quasi-operad of their normalized versions with a re-scaling operad based on R>0. Furthermore, we introduce the notion of bi-crossed products of quasi-operads and show that the cacti proper are a bi-crossed product of the operad of cacti without spines and the operad based on the monoid given by the circle group S^1. We also prove that this particular bi-crossed operad product is homotopy equivale
We present CACTI, a masked autoencoding approach for imputing tabular data that leverages the structure in missingness patterns and contextual information. Our approach employs a novel median truncated copy masking training strategy that encourages the model to learn from empirical patterns of missingness while incorporating semantic relationships between features - captured by column names and text descriptions - to better represent feature dependence. These dual sources of inductive bias enable CACTI to outperform state-of-the-art methods - an average $R^2$ gain of 7.8% over the next best method (13.4%, 6.1%, and 5.3% under missing not at random, at random and completely at random, respectively) - across a diverse range of datasets and missingness conditions. Our results highlight the value of leveraging dataset-specific contextual information and missingness patterns to enhance imputation performance.
A resolving set for a simple graph $G$ is a subset of vertex set of $G$ such that it distinguishes all vertices of $G$ using the shortest distance from this subset. This subset is a metric basis if it is the smallest set with this property. A resolving set is a fault tolerant resolving set if the removal of any vertex from the subset still leaves it a resolving set. The smallest set satisfying this property is the fault tolerant metric basis, and the cardinality of this set is termed as fault tolerant metric dimension of $G$, denoted by $β'(G)$. In this article, we determine the fault tolerant metric dimension of bicyclic graphs of type-I and II and show that it is always $4$ for both types of graphs. We then use these results to form our basis to consider leafless cacti graphs, and calculate their fault tolerant metric dimensions in terms of \textit{inner cycles} and \textit{outer cycles}. We then consider a detailed real world example of supply and distribution center management, and discuss the application of fault tolerant metric dimension in such a scenario. We also briefly discuss some other scenarios where leafless cacti graphs can be used to model real world problems.
The purpose of this paper is to enumerate various classes of cyclically colored m-gonal plane cacti, called m-ary cacti. This combinatorial problem is motivated by the topological classification of complex polynomials having at most m critical values, studied by Zvonkin and others. We obtain explicit formulae for both labelled and unlabelled m-ary cacti, according to i) the number of polygons, ii) the vertex-color distribution, iii) the vertex-degree distribution of each color. We also enumerate m-ary cacti according to the order of their automorphism group. Using a generalization of Otter's formula, we express the species of m-ary cacti in terms of rooted and of pointed cacti. A variant of the m-dimensional Lagrange inversion is then used to enumerate these structures. The method of Liskovets for the enumeration of unrooted planar maps can also be adapted to m-ary cacti.
We give a quasi-isometric characterization of cacti, which is similar to Manning's characterization of quasi-trees by the bottleneck property. We also give another quasi-isometric characterization of cacti using fat theta curves.
We define an action of the operad of projective spineless cacti on each stage of the Taylor tower for the space of framed 1-dimensional long knots in any Euclidean space. By mapping a subspace of the overlapping intervals operad to the subspace of normalized cacti, we prove a space-level compatibility of our action with Budney's little 2-cubes action on the space of framed long knots itself. Our result improves upon previous joint work of the first author related to the conjecture that the Taylor tower for classical long knots is a universal Vassiliev invariant over the integers. As a corollary, we reprove the nontriviality of a certain Browder bracket class first detected by Sakai.
Hosoya index and Merrifield-Simmons index are two well-known topological descriptors that reflex some physical properties, boiling point or heat of formation for instance, of bezenoid hydrocarbon compounds. In this paper, we establish the generating functions of the expected values of these two indices of random hexagonal cacti. This generalizes the results of Doslic and Maloy, published in Discrete Mathemaics, in 2010. By applying the ideas on meromorphic functions and the growth of power series coefficients, the asymptotic behaviors of these indices on the random cacti have been established.
Large-scale training have propelled significant progress in various sub-fields of AI such as computer vision and natural language processing. However, building robot learning systems at a comparable scale remains challenging. To develop robots that can perform a wide range of skills and adapt to new scenarios, efficient methods for collecting vast and diverse amounts of data on physical robot systems are required, as well as the capability to train high-capacity policies using such datasets. In this work, we propose a framework for scaling robot learning, with specific focus on multi-task and multi-scene manipulation in kitchen environments, both in simulation and in the real world. Our proposed framework, CACTI, comprises four stages that separately handle: data collection, data augmentation, visual representation learning, and imitation policy training, to enable scalability in robot learning . We make use of state-of-the-art generative models as part of the data augmentation stage, and use pre-trained out-of-domain visual representations to improve training efficiency. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. On a real robot setup, CACTI enables effici
A multigraph is locally irregular if the degrees of the end-vertices of every multiedge are distinct. The locally irregular coloring is an edge coloring of a multigraph $G$ such that every color induces a locally irregular submultigraph of $G$. A locally irregular colorable multigraph $G$ is any multigraph which admits a locally irregular coloring. We denote by ${\rm lir}(G)$ the locally irregular chromatic index of a multigraph $G$, which is the smallest number of colors required in the locally irregular coloring of the locally irregular colorable multigraph $G$. In case of graphs the definitions are similar. The Local Irregularity Conjecture for 2-multigraphs claims that for every connected graph $G$, which is not isomorphic to $K_2$, multigraph $^2G$ obtained from $G$ by doubling each edge satisfies ${\rm lir}(^2G)\leq 2$. We show this conjecture for cacti. This class of graphs is important for the Local Irregularity Conjecture for 2-multigraphs and the Local Irregularity Conjecture which claims that every locally irregular colorable graph $G$ satisfies ${\rm lir}(G)\leq 3$. At the beginning it has been observed that all not locally irregular colorable graphs are cacti. Recently
Motivated by the second author's construction of a classifying space for the group of pure symmetric automorphisms of a free product, we introduce and study a family of topological operads, the operads of based cacti, defined for every pointed topological space $(Y,\bullet)$. These operads also admit linear versions, which are defined for every augmented graded cocommutative coalgebra $C$. We show that the homology of the topological operad of based $Y$-cacti is the linear operad of based $H_*(Y)$-cacti. In addition, we show that for every coalgebra $C$ the operad of based $C$-cacti is Koszul. To prove the latter result, we use the criterion of Koszulness for operads due to the first author, utilising the notion of a filtered distributive law between two quadratic operads. We also present a new proof of that criterion which works over the ground field of arbitrary characteristic.
The Game of Cycles is a two-player impartial mathematical game, introduced by Francis Su in his book Mathematics for Human Flourishing (2020). The game is played on simple planar graphs in which players take turns marking edges using a sink-source rule. In Alvarado et al., the authors determine who is able to win on graphs with certain types of symmetry using a mirror-reverse strategy. In this paper, we analyze the game for specific types of cactus graphs using a modified version of the mirror-reverse strategy.
In this note, we show that the normalized Hochschild co--chains of an associative algebra with a non--degenerate, symmetric, invariant inner product are an algebra over a chain model of the framed little discs operad which is given by cacti. In particular, in this sense they are a BV algebra up to homotopy and the Hochschild cohomology of such an algebra is a BV algebra whose induced bracket coincides with Gerstenhaber's bracket. To show this, we use a cellular chain model for the framed little disc operad in terms of normalized cacti. This model is given by tensoring our chain model for the little discs operad in terms of spineless cacti with natural chain models for $(S^1)^{\times n}$ adapted to cacti.
A graph is locally irregular if the degrees of the end-vertices of every edge are distinct. An edge coloring of a graph G is locally irregular if every color induces a locally irregular subgraph of G. A colorable graph G is any graph which admits a locally irregular edge coloring. The locally irregular chromatic index X'irr(G) of a colorable graph G is the smallest number of colors required by a locally irregular edge coloring of G. The Local Irregularity Conjecture claims that all colorable graphs require at most 3 colors for locally irregular edge coloring. Recently, it has been observed that the conjecture does not hold for the bow-tie graph B [7]. Cacti are important class of graphs for this conjecture since B and all non-colorable graphs are cacti. In this paper we show that for every colorable cactus graph G != B it holds that X'irr(G) <= 3. This makes us to believe that B is the only colorable graph with X'irr(B) > 3, and consequently that B is the only counterexample to the Local Irregularity Conjecture.
A connected graph $G$ is a cactus if any two of its cycles have at most one common vertex. Let $\ell_n^m$ be the set of cacti on $n$ vertices with matching number $m.$ S.C. Li and M.J. Zhang determined the unique graph with the maximum signless Laplacian spectral radius among all cacti in $\ell_n^m$ with $n=2m$. In this paper, we characterize the case $n\geq 2m+1$. This confirms the conjecture of Li and Zhang(S.C. Li, M.J. Zhang, On the signless Laplacian index of cacti with a given number of pendant vetices, Linear Algebra Appl. 436, 2012, 4400--4411). Further, we characterize the unique graph with the maximum signless Laplacian spectral radius among all cacti on $n$ vertices.
The zeroth-order general Randić index $R^{0}_{a+1}$ of an $n$-vertices oriented graph $D$ is equal to the sum of $(d^{+}_{u_i})^{a}+(d^{-}_{u_j})^{a}$ over all arcs $u_iu_j$ of $D$, where we denote by $d^{+}_{u_i}$ the out-degree of the vertex $u_i$ and $d^{-}_{u_j}$ the in-degree of the vertex $u_j$, $a$ is an arbitrary real number. In the paper, we determine the orientations of cacti with the maximum value of the zeroth-order general Randić index for $a\geq 1$.
Preventing abuse of web services by bots is an increasingly important problem, as abusive activities grow in both volume and variety. CAPTCHAs are the most common way for thwarting bot activities. However, they are often ineffective against bots and frustrating for humans. In addition, some recent CAPTCHA techniques diminish user privacy. Meanwhile, client-side Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) are becoming increasingly widespread (notably, ARM TrustZone and Intel SGX), allowing establishment of trust in a small part (trust anchor or TCB) of client-side hardware. This prompts the question: can a TEE help reduce (or remove entirely) user burden of solving CAPTCHAs? In this paper, we design CACTI: CAPTCHA Avoidance via Client-side TEE Integration. Using client-side TEEs, CACTI allows legitimate clients to generate unforgeable rate-proofs demonstrating how frequently they have performed specific actions. These rate-proofs can be sent to web servers in lieu of solving CAPTCHAs. CACTI provides strong client privacy guarantees, since the information is only sent to the visited website and authenticated using a group signature scheme. Our evaluations show that overall latency of gener
Recently, a novel topological index, Sombor index, was introduced by Gutman, defined as $SO(G)=\sum\limits_{uv\in E(G)}\sqrt{d_{u}^{2}+d_{v}^{2}}$, where $d_{u}$ denotes the degree of vertex $u$. In this paper, we first determine the maximum Sombor index among cacti with $n$ vertices and $t$ cycles, then determine the maximum Sombor index among cacti with perfect matchings. We also characterize corresponding maximum cacti.
The next generation of giant ground and space telescopes will have the light-collecting power to detect and characterize potentially habitable terrestrial exoplanets using high-contrast imaging for the first time. This will only be achievable if the performance of Giant Segmented Mirror Telescopes (GSMTs) extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) systems are optimized to their full potential. A key component of an ExAO system is the wavefront sensor (WFS), which measures aberrations from atmospheric turbulence. A common choice in current and next-generation instruments is the pyramid wavefront sensor (PWFS). ExAO systems require high spatial and temporal sampling of wavefronts to optimize performance, and as a result, require large detectors for the WFS. We present a closed-loop testbed demonstration of a three-sided pyramid wavefront sensor (3PWFS) as an alternative to the conventional four-sided pyramid wavefront (4PWFS) sensor for GSMT-ExAO applications on the new Comprehensive Adaptive Optics and Coronagraph Test Instrument (CACTI). The 3PWFS is less sensitive to read noise than the 4PWFS because it uses fewer detector pixels. The 3PWFS has further benefits: a high-quality three-sided pyr
The subpath number of a graph G is defined as the total number of subpaths in G, and it is closely related to the number of subtrees, a well-studied topic in graph theory. This paper is a continuation of our previous paper [5], where we investigated the subpath number and identified extremal graphs within the classes of trees, unicyclic graphs, bipartite graphs, and cycle chains. Here, we focus on the subpath number of cactus graphs and characterize all maximal and minimal cacti with n vertices and k cycles. We prove that maximal cacti are cycle chains in which all interior cycles are triangles, while the two end-cycles differ in length by at most one. In contrast, minimal cacti consist of k triangles, all sharing a common vertex, with the remaining vertices forming a tree attached to this joint vertex. By comparing extremal cacti with respect to the subpath number to those that are extremal for the subtree number and the Wiener index, we demonstrate that the subpath number does not correlate with either of these quantities, as their corresponding extremal graphs differ.