A note on circular chromatic number of graphs with large girth and similar problems

In this short note, we extend the result of Galluccio, Goddyn, and Hell, which states that graphs of large girth excluding a minor are nearly bipartite. We also prove a similar result for the oriented chromatic number, from which follows in particular that graphs of large girth excluding a minor have oriented chromatic number at most $5$, and for the $p$th chromatic number $\chi_p$, from which follows in particular that graphs $G$ of large girth excluding a minor have $\chi_p(G)\leq p+2$

Complexity of planar signed graph homomorphisms to cycles

We study homomorphism problems of signed graphs. A signed graph is an undirected graph where each edge is given a sign, positive or negative. An important concept for signed graphs is the operation of switching at a vertex, which is to change the sign of each incident edge. A homomorphism of a graph is a vertex-mapping that preserves the adjacencies; in the case of signed graphs, we also preserve the edge-signs. Special homomorphisms of signed graphs, called s-homomorphisms, have been studied. In an s-homomorphism, we allow, before the mapping, to perform any number of switchings on the source signed graph. This concept has been extensively studied, and a full complexity classification (polynomial or NP-complete) for s-homomorphism to a fixed target signed graph has recently been obtained. Such a dichotomy is not known when we restrict the input graph to be planar (not even for non-signed graph homomorphisms). We show that deciding whether a (non-signed) planar graph admits a homomorphism to the square $C_t^2$ of a cycle with $t\ge 6$, or to the circular clique $K_{4t/(2t-1)}$ with $t\ge2$, are NP-complete problems. We use these results to show that deciding whether a planar signed graph admits an s-homomorphism to an unbalanced even cycle is NP-complete. (A cycle is unbalanced if it has an odd number of negative edges). We deduce a complete complexity dichotomy for the planar s-homomorphism problem with any signed cycle as a target. We also study further restrictions involving the maximum degree and the girth of the input signed graph. We prove that planar s-homomorphism problems to signed cycles remain NP-complete even for inputs of maximum degree~$3$ (except for the case of unbalanced $4$-cycles, for which we show this for maximum degree~$4$). We also show that for a given integer $g$, the problem for signed bipartite planar inputs of girth $g$ is either trivial or NP-complete.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure

Modeling and Tuning of Energy Harvesting Device Using Piezoelectric Cantilever Array

Piezoelectric devices have been increasingly investigated as a means of converting ambient vibrations into electrical energy that can be stored and used to power other devices, such as the sensors/actuators, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) devices, and microprocessor units etc. The objective of this work was to design, fabricate, and test a piezoelectric device to harvest as much power as possible from vibration sources and effectively store the power in a battery.;The main factors determining the amount of collectable power of a single piezoelectric cantilever are its resonant frequency, operation mode and resistive load in the charging circuit. A proof mass was used to adjust the resonant frequency and operation mode of a piezoelectric cantilever by moving the mass along the cantilever. Due to the tiny amount of collected power, a capacitor was suggested in the charging circuit as an intermediate station. To harvest sufficient energy, a piezoelectric cantilever array, which integrates multiple cantilevers in parallel connection, was investigated.;In the past, most prior research has focused on the theoretical analysis of power generation instead of storing generated power in a physical device. In this research, a commercial solid-state battery was used to store the power collected by the proposed piezoelectric cantilever array. The time required to charge the battery up to 80% capacity using a constant power supply was 970 s. It took about 2400 s for the piezoelectric array to complete the same task. Other than harvesting energy from sinusoidal waveforms, a vibration source that emulates a real environment was also studied. In this research the response of a bridge-vehicle system was used as the vibration sources such a scenario is much closer to a real environment compared with typical lab setups