V. Chv atal proved that no minimal imperfect graph has a small transversal, that is, a set of vertices of cardinality at most + ! 1 which meets every !-clique and every -stable set. In this paper we prove that a slight generalization of this notion of small transversal leads to a conjecture which is as strong as Berge's Strong Perfect Graph Conjecture for a very large class of graphs, although ...

This paper examines how the fertility of enslaved women was affected by the promise of freedom. Exploiting geographic variation in the effect of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, I demonstrate a negative correlation between fertility and the distance to freedom. This negative correlation is stronger on larger plantations but weaker when the slaveholder is a woman. A similar correlation is not pre...

In order to prove the Strong Perfect Graph Conjecture, the existence of a ”simple” property P holding for any minimal non-quasi-parity Berge graph G would really reduce the difficulty of the problem. We prove here that this property cannot be of type ”G is F-free”, where F is any fixed family of Berge graphs.

An R-module M is called strongly noncosingular if it has no nonzero Rad-small (cosingular) homomorphic image in the sense of Harada. It is proven that (1) an R-module M is strongly noncosingular if and only if M is coatomic and noncosingular; (2) a right perfect ring R is Artinian hereditary serial if and only if the class of injective modules coincides with the class of (strongly) noncosingula...

Let r be a collection of relations on the reals and let M be a set of reals. We call M a perfect set basis for r if every set in r with parameters from M which is not totally included in M contains a perfect subset with code in M. A simple elementary proof is given of the following result (assuming mild regularity conditions on r and M): If M is a perfect set basis for r, the field of every wel...

Let X be any partially ordered set, R any commutative ring, and T = I * (X,R) the weak incidence algebra of X over R. Let Z be a finite nonempty subset of X, L(Z) = {x ∈ X : x z for some z ∈ Z}, and M = Te Z. Various chain conditions on M are investigated. The results so proved are used to construct some classes of right perfect rings that are not left perfect.

an r-module m is called strongly noncosingular if it has no nonzero rad-small (cosingular) homomorphic image in the sense of harada. it is proven that (1) an r-module m is strongly noncosingular if and only if m is coatomic and noncosingular; (2) a right perfect ring r is artinian hereditary serial if and only if the class of injective modules coincides with the class of (strongly) noncosingula...

The construction of joins and secant varieties is studied in the combinatorial context of monomial ideals. For ideals generated by quadratic monomials, the generators of the secant ideals are obstructions to graph colorings, and this leads to a commutative algebra version of the Strong Perfect Graph Theorem. Given any projective variety and any term order, we explore whether the initial ideal o...

A secret sharing scheme is a method to distribute a secret among a set of participants, such that only qualified subsets of the participants can recover the secret. A secret sharing scheme is perfect if any unqualified subset obtains no information regarding the master key. The collection of qualified subsets is called access structure. In a hypergraph, if the size of edges is equal to r, the h...

By using recent results from graph theory, including the Strong Perfect Graph Theorem, we obtain a unifying framework for a number of tractable classes of constraint problems. These include problems with chordal microstructure; problems with chordal microstructure complement; problems with tree structure; and the “all-different” constraint. In each of these cases we show that the associated mic...