Keywords: cube recurrence, grove, Gale-Robinson theorem

The Kneser conjecture (1955) was proved by Lovasz (1978) using the Borsuk-Ulam theorem; all subsequent proofs, extensions and generalizations also relied on Algebraic Topology results, namely the Borsuk-Ulam theorem and its extensions. Only in 2000, Matousek provided the rst combinatorial proof of the Kneser conjecture. Here we provide a hypergraph coloring theorem, with a combinatorial proof, which has as special cases the Kneser conjecture as well as its extensions and generalization by (hyper)graph coloring theorems of Dol'nikov, Alon-Frankl-Lovasz, Sarkaria, and Kriz. We also give a combinatorial proof of Schrijver's theorem.

this paper is to present mathematical ideas and

A combinatorial abstraction of the linear complementarity theory in the setting of oriented matroids was rst considered by M.J. Todd. In this paper, we take a fresh look at this abstraction, and attempt to give a simple treatment of the combinatorial theory of linear complementarity. We obtain new theorems, proofs and algorithms in oriented matroids whose specializations to the linear case are also new. For this, the notion of suciency of square matrices, introduced by Cottle, Pang and Venkateswaran, is extended to oriented matroids. Then, we prove a sort of duality theorem for oriented matroids, which roughly states: exactly one of the primal and the dual system has a complementary solution if the associated oriented matroid satisfies "weak" sufficiency. We give two different proofs for this theorem, an elementary inductive proof and an algorithmic proof using the criss-cross method which solves one of the primal or dual problem by using surprisingly simple pivot rules (without any pertur...

We describe a set of necessary conditions for a given graph to be the visibility graph of a simple polygon. For every graph satisfying these conditions we show that a uniform rank 3 oriented matroid can be constructed in polynomial time, which if affinely coordinatizable yields a simple polygon whose visibility graph is isomorphic to the given graph.

We discuss methods for the generation of oriented matroids and of isomorphism classes of oriented matroids. Our methods are based on single element extensions and graph theoretical representations of oriented matroids, and all these methods work in general rank and for nonuniform and uniform oriented matroids as well. We consider two types of graphs, cocircuit graphs and tope graphs, and discuss the single element extensions in terms of localizations which can be viewed as partitions of the vertex sets of the graphs. Whereas localizations of the cocircuit graph are well characterized, there is no graph theoretical characterization known for localizations of the tope graph. In this paper we prove a connectedness property for tope graph localizations and use this for the design of algorithms for the generation of single element extensions by use of tope graphs. Furthermore we discuss similar algorithms which use the cocircuit graph. The characterization of localizations of cocircuit graphs nally leads to a backtracking algorithm which is a simple and efficient method for the generation of single element extensions. We compare this method with a recent algorithm of Bokowski and Guedes de Oliveira for uniform oriented matroids.

The purpose of this paper is to survey the various pivot rules of the simplex method or its variants that have been developed in the last two decades, starting from the appearance of the minimal index rule of Bland. We are mainly concerned with the finiteness property of simplex type pivot rules. There are some other important topics in linear programming, e.g. complexity theory or implementations, that are not included in the scope of this paper. We do not discuss ellipsoid methods nor interior point methods. Well known classical results concerning the simplex method are also not particularly discussed in this survey, but the connection between the new methods and the classical ones are discussed if there is any. In this paper we discuss three classes of recently developed pivot rules for linear programming. The first class (the largest one) of the pivot rules we discuss is the class of essentially combinatorial pivot rules. Namely these rules only use labeling and signs of the variab...

We prove a natural bijection between the polytopal tilings of a zonotope Z by zonotopes, and the one-element-liftings of the oriented matroid M(Z) associated with Z. This yields a simple proof and a strengthening of the Bohne-Dress Theorem on zonotopal tilings. Furthermore we prove that not every oriented matroid can be represented by a zonotopal tiling.

We prove that all combinatorial differential manifolds involving only Euclidean oriented matroids are PL manifolds. In doing so we introduce a new notion of triangulations of oriented matroids, and show that any triangulation of a Euclidean oriented matroid is a PL sphere. In Section 5 we adapt these results to get a new definition of triangulations of oriented matroid polytopes, and show that any triangulation of a Euclidean oriented matroid polytope is a PL ball. 1 Introduction In [M], MacPherson introduced a new class of combinatorial objects called combinatorial differential manifolds, or CD manifolds. The idea of a CD manifold is to give a simplicial complex a combinatorial analog to a differential structure. The role of "tangent spaces" in this theory is played by oriented matroids, objects about which we will have much more to say later. If M is a real differential manifold and j : jjXjj !M is a smooth triangulation of M , then we shall see in Section 2.2 that the differentia...

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