The exact crossing number is only known for a small number of families of graphs. Many of the families for which crossing numbers have been determined correspond to cartesian products of two graphs. Here, the cartesian product of the sunlet graph, denoted ${\mathcal{S}}_{n}$, and the star graph, denoted $K_{1,m}$, is considered for the first time. It is proved that the crossing number of ${\mathcal{S}}_{n}\Box K_{1,2}$ is $n$, and the crossing number of ${\mathcal{S}}_{n}\Box K_{1,3}$ is $3n$. An upper bound for the crossing number of ${\mathcal{S}}_{n}\Box K_{1,m}$ is also given.

We extend known results concerning crossing numbers by giving the crossing number of the join product $G+D_{n}$, where the connected graph $G$ consists of one $4$-cycle and of two leaves incident with the same vertex of the $4$-cycle, and $D_{n}$ consists of $n$ isolated vertices. The proofs are done with the help of software that generates all cyclic permutations for a given number $k$ and creates a graph for calculating the distances between all $(k-1)!$ vertices of the graph.

A cutset is a non-empty finite subset of ℤd which is both connected and co-connected. A cutset is odd if its vertex boundary lies in the odd bipartition class of ℤd. Peled [18] suggested that the number of odd cutsets which contain the origin and have n boundary edges may be of order eΘ(n/d) as d → ∞, much smaller than the number of general cutsets, which was shown by Lebowitz and Mazel [15] to be of order dΘ(n/d). In this paper, we verify this by showing that the number of such odd cutsets is (2+o(1))n/2d.

Given a graph F, let st(F) be the number of subdivisions of F, each with a different vertex set, which one can guarantee in a graph G in which every edge lies in at least t copies of F. In 1990, Tuza asked for which graphs F and large t, one has that st(F) is exponential in a power of t. We show that, somewhat surprisingly, the only such F are complete graphs, and for every F which is not complete, st(F) is polynomial in t. Further, for a natural strengthening of the local condition above, we also characterize those F for which st(F) is exponential in a power of t.

We consider the problem of enumerating d-irreducible maps, i.e., planar maps all of whose cycles have length at least d, and such that any cycle of length d is the boundary of a face of degree d. We develop two approaches in parallel: the natural approach via substitution, where these maps are obtained from general maps by a replacement of all d-cycles by elementary faces, and a bijective approach via slice decomposition, which consists in cutting the maps along shortest paths. Both lead to explicit expressions for the generating functions of d-irreducible maps with controlled face degrees, summarized in some elegant ‘pointing formula’. We provide an equivalent description of d-irreducible slices in terms of so-called d-oriented trees. We finally show that irreducible maps give rise to a hierarchy of discrete integrable equations which include equations encountered previously in the context of naturally embedded trees.

Let $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}R$ be a commutative ring, $I(R)$ be the set of all ideals of $R$ and $S$ be a subset of $I^*(R)=I(R)\setminus \{0\}$. We define a Cayley sum digraph of ideals of $R$, denoted by $\overrightarrow{\mathrm{Cay}}^+ (I(R),S)$, as a directed graph whose vertex set is the set $I(R)$ and, for every two distinct vertices $I$ and $J$, there is an arc from $I$ to $J$, denoted by $I\longrightarrow J$, whenever $I+K=J$, for some ideal $K $ in $S$. Also, the Cayley sum graph $ \mathrm{Cay}^+ (I(R), S)$ is an undirected graph whose vertex set is the set $I(R)$ and two distinct vertices $I$ and $J$ are adjacent whenever $I+K=J$ or $J+K=I$, for some ideal $K $ in $ S$. In this paper, we study some basic properties of the graphs $\overrightarrow{\mathrm{Cay}}^+ (I(R),S)$ and $ \mathrm{Cay}^+ (I(R), S)$ such as connectivity, girth and clique number. Moreover, we investigate the planarity, outerplanarity and ring graph of $ \mathrm{Cay}^+ (I(R), S)$ and also we provide some characterization for rings $R$ whose Cayley sum graphs have genus one.

Pooling designs are a very helpful tool for reducing the number of tests for DNA library screening. A disjunct matrix is usually used to represent the pooling design. In this paper, we construct a new family of disjunct matrices and prove that it has a good row to column ratio and error-tolerant property.