We settle a conjecture of Shur on an estimation of the exponential growth rates of the languages of (n/(n-1))-free words and (n/(n-1)) ^+-free words over large alphabets of size k with a correction of order O (1/(k²)).

The problem called "String reconstruction from substrings" is a mathematical model of sequencing by hybridization that plays an important role in DNA sequencing. In this problem, we are given a blackbox oracle holding an unknown string ${\mathcal X}$ and are required to obtain (reconstruct) ${\mathcal X}$ through "substring queries" $Q(S)$. $Q(S)$ is given to the oracle with a string $S$ and the answer of the oracle is Yes if ${\mathcal X}$ includes $S$ as a substring and No otherwise. Our goal is to minimize the number of queries for the reconstruction. In this paper, we deal with only binary strings for ${\mathcal X}$ whose length $n$ is given in advance by using a sequence of good $S$'s. In 1995, Skiena and Sundaram first studied this problem and obtained an algorithm whose query complexity is $n+O(\log n)$. Its information theoretic lower bound is $n$, and they posed an obvious open question; if we can remove the $O(\log n)$ additive term. No progress has been made until now. This paper gives two partially positive answers to this open question. One is a randomized algorithm whose query complexity is $n+O(1)$ with high probability and the other is an average-case algorithm also having a query complexity of $n+O(1)$ on average. The $n$ lower bound is still true for both cases, and hence they are optimal up to an additive constant.

Monadic second order logic can be used to express many classical notions of sets of vertices of a graph as for instance: dominating sets, induced matchings, perfect codes, independent sets or irredundant sets. Bounds on the number of sets of any such family of sets are interesting from a combinatorial point of view and have algorithmic applications. Many such bounds on different families of sets over different classes of graphs are already provided in the literature. In particular, Rote recently showed that the number of minimal dominating sets in trees of order n is at most and that this bound is asymptotically sharp up to a multiplicative constant. We build on his work to show that what he did for minimal dominating sets can be done for any family of sets definable by a monadic second order formula. We first show that, for any monadic second order formula over graphs that characterizes a given kind of subset of its vertices, the maximal number of such sets in a tree can be expressed as the growth rate of a bilinear system. This mostly relies on well known links between monadic second order logic over trees and tree automata and basic tree automata manipulations. Then we show that this “growth rate” of a bilinear system can be approximated from above. We then use our implementation of this result to provide bounds (some sharp and some almost sharp) on the number of independent dominating sets, total perfect dominating sets, induced matchings, maximal induced matchings, minimal perfect dominating sets, perfect codes and maximal irredundant sets on trees. We also solve a question from D. Y. Kang et al. regarding r-matchings and obtain a sharp upper-bound on the number of maximal matchings on trees. Remark that this approach is easily generalizable to graphs of bounded tree width or clique width (or any similar class of graphs where tree automata are meaningful).

A long standing question asks whether $\mathbb{Z}$ is uniformly 2-repetitive, that is, whether or not there is an infinite sequence over a finite subset of $\mathbb{Z}$ avoiding two consecutive blocks of the same size and same sum [J. Justin, J. Combin. Theory Ser. A, 12 (1972), pp. 357--367], [G. Pirillo and S. Varricchio, Semigroup Forum, 49 (1994), pp. 125--129]. Cassaigne et al. [ J. ACM, 61 (2014), 10] showed that $\mathbb{Z}$ is not uniformly 3-repetitive. We show that $\mathbb{Z}^2$ is not uniformly 2-repetitive. Moreover, this problem is related to a question from Mäkelä in combinatorics on words, and we answer a weak version of it.

A long standing question asks whether $\mathbb{Z}$ is uniformly 2-repetitive [Justin 1972, Pirillo and Varricchio, 1994], that is, whether there is an infinite sequence over a finite subset of $\mathbb{Z}$ avoiding two consecutive blocks of same size and same sum or not. Cassaigne \emph{et al.} [2014] showed that $\mathbb{Z}$ is not uniformly 3-repetitive. We show that $\mathbb{Z}^2$ is not uniformly 2-repetitive. Moreover, this problem is related to a question from Mäkelä in combinatorics on words and we answer to a weak version of it.