Trevisan has shown that constructions of pseudo-random generators from
hard functions (the Nisan-Wigderson approach) also produce extractors.
We show that constructions of pseudo-random generators from one-way permutations
(the Blum-Micali-Yao approach) can be used for building extractors as well.
Using this new technique we build extractors that ... more >>>

The rigidity function of a matrix is defined as the minimum number of its entries that need to be changed in order to reduce the rank of the matrix to below a given parameter. Proving a strong enough lower bound on the rigidity of a matrix implies a nontrivial lower ... more >>>

We design a polynomial time 8/7-approximation algorithm for the Traveling Salesman Problem in which all distances are either one or two. This improves over the best known approximation factor of 7/6 for that problem. As a direct application we get a 7/6-approximation algorithm for the Maximum Path Cover Problem, similarily ... more >>>