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The first aim of this paper is to give an example of a virtual knot which vanishes all the known invariants and to show that it is a non-classical (in particular, non-trivial) knot. The second is to study some properties of the Z-polynomial of a virtual knot with virtual crossing number one and to show that there are infinitely many virtual knots with virtual crossing number two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Let M be a closed oriented surface of genus g≥1, let Bn(M) be the braid group of M on n strings, and let SBn(M) be the corresponding singular braid monoid. Our purpose in this paper is to prove that the desingularization map η : SBn(M)→ℤ[Bn(M)], introduced in the definition of the Vassiliev invariants (for braids on surfaces), is injective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been conjectured that the crossing numbers of links are additive under the connected sum of links. This is a difficult problem in knot theory and has been open for more than 100 years. In fact, many questions of much weaker conditions are still open. For instance, it is not known whether Cr(K1#K2)≥Cr(K1) or Cr(K1#K2)≥Cr(K2) holds in general, here K1#K2 is the connected sum of K1 and K2 and Cr(K) stands for the crossing number of the link K. However, for alternating links K1 and K2, Cr(K1#K2)=Cr(K1)+Cr(K2) does hold. On the other hand, if K1 is an alternating link and K2 is any link, then we have Cr(K1#K2)≥Cr(K1). In this paper, we show that there exists a wide class of links over which the crossing number is additive under the connected sum operation. This class is different from the class of all alternating links. It includes all torus knots and many alternating links. Furthermore, if K1 is a connected sum of any given number of links from this class and K2 is a non-trivial knot, we prove that Cr(K1#K2)≥Cr(K1)+3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]