In parameterized complexity each problem instance comes with a parameter k and the parameterized problem is said to admit a polynomial kernel if there are polynomial time preprocessing rules that reduce the input instance down to an instance with size polynomial in k. Many problems have been shown to admit polynomial kernels, but it is only recently that a framework for showing the non-existence of polynomial kernels for specific problems has been developed by Bodlaender et al. [6] and Fortnow and Santhanam [15]. With few exceptions, all known kernelization lower bounds result have been obtained by directly applying this framework. In this paper we show how to combine these results with combinatorial reductions which use colors and IDs in order to prove kernelization lower bounds for a variety of basic problems. Below we give a summary of our main results. All our results are under the assumption that the polynomial hierarchy does not collapse to the third level. • We show that the Steiner Tree problem parameterized by the number of terminals and solution size, and the Connected Vertex Cover and Capacitated Vertex Cover problems do not admit a polynomial kernel. The two latter results are surprising because the closely related Vertex Cover problem admits a kernel of size 2k.

A subgraph T of a digraph D is an out-branching if T is an oriented spanning tree with only one vertex of in-degree zero (called the root). The vertices of T of out-degree zero are leaves. In the Directed k-Leaf Problem, we are given a digraph D and an integral parameter k, and we are to decide whether D has an out-branching with at least k leaves. Recently, Kneis et al. (2008) obtained an algorithm for the problem of running time 4 k · n O(1). We describe a new algorithm for the problem of running time 3.72 k · n O(1). In Rooted Directed k-Leaf Problem, apart from D and k, we are given a vertex r of D and we are to decide whether D has an out-branching rooted at r with at least k leaves. Very recently, Fernau et al. (2008) found an O(k 3)-size kernel for Rooted Directed k-Leaf. In this paper, we obtain an O(k) kernel for Rooted Directed k-Leaf restricted to acyclic digraphs. 1

In 2000 Alber et al. [SWAT 2000] obtained the first parameterized subexponential algorithm on undirected planar graphs by showing that k-DOMINATING SET is solvable in time 2 O( √ k)

Abstract. In this paper we initiate a systematic study of the Reduced Degree Spanning Tree problem, where given a digraph D and a nonnegative integer k, the goal is to construct a spanning out-tree with at most k vertices of reduced out-degree. This problem is a directed analog of the wellstudied Minimum-Vertex Feedback Edge Set problem. We show that this problem is fixed-parameter tractable and admits a problem kernel with at most 8k vertices on strongly connected digraphs and O(k 2) vertices on general digraphs. We also give an algorithm for this problem on general digraphs with runtime O ∗ (5.942 k). This adds the Reduced Degree Spanning Tree problem to the small list of directed graph problems for which fixed-parameter tractable algorithms are known. Finally, we consider the dual of Reduced Degree Spanning Tree, that is, given a digraph D and a nonnegative integer k, the goal is to construct a spanning out-tree of D with at least k vertices of full out-degree. We show that this problem is W[1]-hard on two important digraph classes: directed acyclic graphs and strongly connected digraphs. 1