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    Piercing axis-parallel boxes

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    Let \F be a finite family of axis-parallel boxes in Rd\R^d such that \F contains no k+1k+1 pairwise disjoint boxes. We prove that if \F contains a subfamily \M of kk pairwise disjoint boxes with the property that for every F\in \F and M\in \M with FMF \cap M \neq \emptyset, either FF contains a corner of MM or MM contains 2d12^{d-1} corners of FF, then \F can be pierced by O(k)O(k) points. One consequence of this result is that if d=2d=2 and the ratio between any of the side lengths of any box is bounded by a constant, then \F can be pierced by O(k)O(k) points. We further show that if for each two intersecting boxes in \F a corner of one is contained in the other, then \F can be pierced by at most O(kloglog(k))O(k\log\log(k)) points, and in the special case where \F contains only cubes this bound improves to O(k)O(k)
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