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Given a collection of n objects equipped with a distance function d(·, ·), the Nearest Neighbor Graph (NNG) consists in finding the nearest neighbor of each object in the collection. Without an index the total cost of NNG is quadratic. Using an index the cost would be sub-quadratic if the search for individual items is sublinear. Unfortunately, due to the so called curse of dimensionality the indexed and the brute force methods are almost equally inefficient. In this paper we present an efficient algorithm to build the Near Neighbor Graph (nNG), that is an approximation of NNG, using only the index construction, without actually searching for objects.

Metric space searching is an emerging technique to address the problem of similarity searching in many applications. In order to efficiently answer similarity queries, the database must be indexed. In some interesting real applications dynamism is an indispensable property of the index. There are very few actually dynamic indexes that support not only searches, but also insertions and deletions of elements. The dynamic spatial approximation tree (DSAT) is a data structure specially designed for searching in metric spaces, which compares favorably against other data structures in high dimensional spaces or queries with low selectivity. Insertions are efficient and easily supported in DSAT, but deletions degrade the structure over time. Several methods are proposed to handle deletions over the DSAT. One of them has shown to be superior to the others, in the sense that it permits controlling the expected deletion cost as a proportion of the insertion cost and searches does not overly degrade after several deletions. In this paper we propose and study a new alternative deletion method, based on the better existing strategy. The outcome is a fully dynamic data structure that can be managed through insertions and deletions over arbitrarily long periods of time without any significant reorganization.

Binary pulsar systems are superb probes of stellar and binary evolution and the physics of extreme environments. In a survey with the Arecibo telescope, we have found PSR J1903+0327, a radio pulsar with a rotational period of 2.15 milliseconds in a highly eccentric (e = 0.44) 95-day orbit around a solar mass ([Formula: see text]) companion. Infrared observations identify a possible main-sequence companion star. Conventional binary stellar evolution models predict neither large orbital eccentricities nor main-sequence companions around millisecond pulsars. Alternative formation scenarios involve recycling a neutron star in a globular cluster, then ejecting it into the Galactic disk, or membership in a hierarchical triple system. A relativistic analysis of timing observations of the pulsar finds its mass to be 1.74 ± 0.04 [Formula: see text], an unusually high value.

Binary pulsar systems are superb probes of stellar and binary evolution and the physics of extreme environments. In a survey with the Arecibo telescope, we have found PSR J1903+0327, a radio pulsar with a rotational period of 2.15 milliseconds in a highly eccentric (e = 0.44) 95-day orbit around a solar mass ($M_{\\odot}$) companion. Infrared observations identify a possible main-sequence companion star. Conventional binary stellar evolution models predict neither large orbital eccentricities nor main-sequence companions around millisecond pulsars. Alternative formation scenarios involve recycling a neutron star in a globular cluster, then ejecting it into the Galactic disk, or membership in a hierarchical triple system. A relativistic analysis of timing observations of the pulsar finds its mass to be 1.74 ± 0.04$M_{\\odot}$, an unusually high value.