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In 1975, P. Erd\"{o}s proposed the problem of determining the maximum number $f(n)$ of edges in a graph with $n$ vertices in which any two cycles are of different lengths. In this paper, it is proved that $$f(n)\geq n+\frac{107}{3}t+\frac{7}{3}$$ for $t=1260r+169 \,\ (r\geq 1)$ and $n \geq \frac{2119}{4}t^{2}+87978t+\frac{15957}{4}$. Consequently, $\liminf\sb {n \to \infty} {f(n)-n \over \sqrt n} \geq \sqrt {2 + \frac{7654}{19071}},$ which is better than the previous bounds $\sqrt 2$ (Shi, 1988), $\sqrt {2.4}$ (Lai, 2003). The conjecture $\lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} {f(n)-n\over \sqrt n}=\sqrt {2.4}$ is not true.

No abstract uploaded!

No abstract uploaded!

We prove the complete monotonicity on $${(0, \infty)^{n}}$$ for suitable inverse powers of the spanning-tree polynomials of graphs and, more generally, of the basis generating polynomials of certain classes of matroids. This generalizes a result of Szegő and answers, among other things, a long-standing question of Lewy and Askey concerning the positivity of Taylor coefficients for certain rational functions. Our proofs are based on two ab-initio methods for proving that $${P^{-\beta}}$$ is completely monotone on a convex cone$C$: the determinantal method and the quadratic-form method. These methods are closely connected with harmonic analysis on Euclidean Jordan algebras (or equivalently on symmetric cones). We furthermore have a variety of constructions that, given such polynomials, can create other ones with the same property: among these are algebraic analogues of the matroid operations of deletion, contraction, direct sum, parallel connection, series connection and 2-sum. The complete monotonicity of $${P^{-\beta}}$$ for some $${\beta > 0}$$ can be viewed as a strong quantitative version of the half-plane property (Hurwitz stability) for$P$, and is also related to the Rayleigh property for matroids.