In this paper, we characterize the potentially \(C_k\)-graphic sequence for \(k = 3, 4, 5\). These characterizations imply several theorems due to P. Erdős, M. S. Jacobson, and J. Lehel [1], R. J. Gould, M. S. Jacobson, and J. Lehel [2], and C. H. Lai [5] and [6], respectively.

Bailey, Cheng, and Kipnis [3] developed a method for constructing trend-free run orders of factorial experiments called the generalized fold-over method (GFM). In this paper, we use the GFM of constructing run orders of factorial experiments to give a systematic method of constructing magic squares of higher order.

In this paper, we focus on the identification of Latin interchanges in Latin squares that are the direct product of Latin squares of smaller orders. The results we obtain on Latin interchanges will be used to identify critical sets in direct products. This work is an extension of research carried out by Stinson and van Rees in \(1982\).

A \((g,k; \lambda)\)-difference matrix over the group \((G, o)\) of order \(g\) is a \(k\) by \(g\lambda\) matrix \(D = (d_{ij})\) with entries from \(G\) such that for each \(1 \leq i < j \leq k\), the multiset \(\{d_{il}\) o \(d_{jl}^{-1} \mid 1 \leq l \leq g\lambda\}\) contains every element of \(G\) exactly \(\lambda\) times. Some known results on the non-existence of generalized Hadamard matrices, i.e., \((g,g\lambda; \lambda)\)-difference matrices, are extended to \((g, g-1; \lambda)\)-difference matrices.

The notion of convexity in graphs is based on the one in topology: a set of vertices \(S\) is convex if an interval is entirely contained in \(S\) when its endpoints belong to \(S\). The order of the largest proper convex subset of a graph \(G\) is called the convexity number of the graph and is denoted \(con(G)\). A graph containing a convex subset of one order need not contain convex subsets of all smaller orders. If \(G\) has convex subsets of order \(m\) for all \(1 \leq m \leq con(G)\), then \(G\) is called polyconvex. In response to a question of Chartrand and Zhang [3], we show that, given any pair of integers \(n\) and \(k\) with \(2 \leq k < n\), there is a connected triangle-free polyconvex graph \(G\) of order \(n\) with convexity number \(k\).

In this work, \(\Gamma\) denotes a finite, simple, and connected graph. The \(k\)-excess \(e_k(H)\) of a set \(H \subseteq V(\Gamma)\) is defined as the cardinality of the set of vertices that are at distance greater than \(k\) from \(H\), and the \(k\)-excess \(e_k(h)\) of all \(A\)-subsets of vertices is defined as

\[e_k(h) = \max_{H \subset V(\Gamma),|H|=h} \{ e_k(H) \}\]

The \(k\)-excess \(e_k\) of the graph is obtained from \(e_k(h)\) when \(h = 1\). Here we obtain upper bounds for \(e_k(h)\) and \(e_k\) in terms of the Laplacian eigenvalues of \(\Gamma\).