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Vertex coloring of plane graphs with nonrepetitive boundary paths

A sequence $s_1,s_2,...,s_k,s_1,s_2,...,s_k$ is a repetition. A sequence $S$ is nonrepetitive, if no subsequence of consecutive terms of $S$ form a repetition. Let $G$ be a vertex colored graph. A path of $G$ is nonrepetitive, if the sequence of colors on its vertices is nonrepetitive. If $G$ is a plane graph, then a facial nonrepetitive vertex coloring of $G$ is a vertex coloring such that any facial path is nonrepetitive. Let $π_f(G)$ denote the minimum number of colors of a facial nonrepetitive vertex coloring of $G$. Jendro\vl and Harant posed a conjecture that $π_f(G)$ can be bounded from above by a constant. We prove that $π_f(G)\le 24$ for any plane graph $G$.