An (n; s) Davenport-Schinzel sequence, for positive integers n and s, is a sequence composed of n distinct symbols with the properties that no two adjacent elements are equal, and that it does not contain, as a (possibly non-contiguous) subsequence, any alternation a \Delta \Delta \Delta b \Delta \Delta \Delta a \Delta \Delta \Delta b \Delta \Delta \Delta of length s + 2 between two distinct symbols a and b. The close relationship between Davenport-Schinzel sequences and the combinatorial structure of lower envelopes of collections of functions make the sequences very attractive because a variety of geometric problems can be formulated in terms of lower envelopes. A near-linear bound on the maximum length of Davenport-Schinzel sequences enable us to derive sharp bounds on the combinatorial structure underlying various geometric problems, which in turn yields efficient algorithms for these problems.

This thesis establishes a connection between the Helly theorems, a collection of results from combinatorial geometry, and the class of problems whichwe call Generalized Linear Programming, or GLP, which can be solved by combinatorial linear programming algorithms like the simplex method. We use these results to explore the class GLP and show new applications to geometric optimization, and also to prove Helly theorems. In general, a GLP is a set...

We establish a near-cubic upper bound on the complexity of the space of line transversals of a collection of n balls in three dimensions, and show that the bound is almost tight, in the worst case. We apply this bound to obtain a near-cubic algorithm for computing a smallest infinite cylinder enclosing a given set of points or balls in 3-space. We also present an approximation algorithm for computing a smallest enclosing cylinder.

this paper we briefly survey the most recent results in the area of facility location, concentrating on versions of the problem that are likely to be unfamiliar to the transportation and management science community and we explore the interaction between facility location problems and the field of computational geometry. Such versions of the problem include the standard models of points as customers and facilities but with geodesic rather than the traditional Minkowski metrics as measures of distance, as well as more complicated models of customers and facilities such as

A line intersecting all polyhedra in a set B is called a "stabber" for the set B. This paper addresses some combinatorial and algorithmic questions about the set S(B) of all lines stabbing B. We prove that the combinatorial complexity of S(B) has an O(n 3 2 c p log n ) upper bound, where n is the total number of facets in B, and c a suitable constant. This bound is almost tight. Within the same time bound it is possible to determine if a stabbing line exists and to find one.

A natural extension of point facility location problems are those problems in which facilities are extensive, i.e. those that can not be represented by isolated points but as some dimensional structures, such as straight lines, segments of lines, polygonal curves or circles. In this paper a review of the existing work on the location of extensive facilities in continuous spaces is given. Gaps in the knowledge are identified and suggestions for further research are made.

The problem of computing a representation of the stabbing lines of a set S of segments in the plane was solved by Edelsbrunner et al. We provide efficient algorithms for the following problems: computing the stabbing wedges for S, finding a stabbing wedge for a set of parallel segments with equal length, and computing other stabbers for S such as a double-wedge and a zigzag. The time and space complexities of the algorithms depend on the number of combinatorially different extreme lines, critical lines, and the number of different slopes that appear in S. 1