A retrospective fleet-sizing problem can be solved via bipartite matching, where a maximum cardinality matching corresponds to the minimum number of vehicles needed cover all trips. We prove min-max theorem on this fleet-size problem: pairwise incompatible trips is equal fleet size needed.

We give a fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for the optimum fractional solution to the Steiner forest problem. This can easily be generalized to obtain an FPTAS for a hitting set problem on a collection of clutters. We also identify three other problems on collections of clutters and show how these four problems are related when the clutters have the max-flow min-cut (MFMC) pro...

We study the problem k-SET SPLITTING in fixed parameter complexity. We show that the problem can be solved in time O∗(2.6494k), improving on the best currently known running time of O∗(8k). This is done by showing that a non-trivial instance must have a small minimal SET COVER, and using this to reduce the problem to a series of small instances of MAX SAT. We also give a linear kernel containin...