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The independence polynomial of a graph G is $$I(G;x)=\sum _{k=0}^{\alpha (G)} s_{k}\cdot x^{k}$$ , where $$s_{k}$$ and $$\alpha (G)$$ denote the number of independent sets of cardinality k and the independence number of G, respectively. We say that a cycle is a $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycle if its length is divisible by 3, otherwise a non- $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycle. Define $$\phi (G)$$ to be the decycling number of G. Engstrom proved that $$|I(G;-1)| \le 2^{\phi (G)}$$ for any graph G. In this paper, we first prove that $$|I(G;-1)|\le 2^{\beta (G)}-\beta (G)$$ for graphs with non- $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycles, where $$\beta (G)$$ is the cyclomatic number of G. Infinitely many examples show that there do exist graphs satisfying $$\beta (G)=\phi (G)$$ and containing non- $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycles. In such a case, it improves the Engstrom’s result. Furthermore, $$|I(G;-1)|\le 2^{k}$$ provided that all cycles of G are pairwise disjoint, where k is the number of $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycles of G. This provides a new perspective on estimating the independence polynomial at -1 of many special graphs. In the case G contains no vertices of degree 1, $$|I(G;-1)|\le 2^{\beta (G)}-1$$ if $$\beta (G)\ge 2$$ , and $$|I(G;-1)|\le 2^{\beta (G)-1}$$ if G contains a non- $$\tilde{3}$$ -cycle.

In this paper, we study a dynamic coloring of the vertices of a graph G that starts with an initial subset S of colored vertices, with all remaining vertices being uncolored. At each discrete time interval, a colored vertex with exactly one uncolored neighbor forces this uncolored neighbor to be colored. The initial set S is a zero forcing set of G if, by iteratively applying the forcing process, every vertex in G becomes colored. The zero forcing number Z(G) of G is the minimum cardinality of a zero forcing set of G. In this paper, we prove that if G is a connected, cubic, claw-free graph of order $$n \ge 6$$, then $$Z(G) \le \alpha (G) + 1$$ where $$\alpha (G)$$ denotes the independence number of G. Further we prove that if $$n \ge 10$$, then $$Z(G) \le \frac{1}{3}n + 1$$. Both bounds are shown to be best possible.

A set $$S \subseteq V(G)$$ is a k-distance independent set of a graph G if the distance between every two vertices of S is greater than k. The k-distance independence number $$\alpha _k(G)$$ of G is the maximum cardinality over all k-distance independent sets in G. A k-distance coloring of G is a function f from V(G) onto a set of positive integers (colors) such that for any two distinct vertices u and v at distance less than or equal to k we have $$f(u) \not = f(v)$$ . The k-distance chromatic number of a graph G is the smallest number of colors needed to have a k-distance coloring of G. The k-distance independence numbers and 2-distance chromatic numbers of Cartesian products of cycles are considered. A computer-aided method with the isomorphic rejection is used to determine the k-distance independence numbers of Cartesian products of cycles. By using these results, several lower and upper bounds on the maximal cardinality $$A^L_q(n, d)$$ of a q-ary Lee code of length n with a minimum distance at least d are improved. It is also established that the 2-distance chromatic number of G equals $$\left\lceil \frac{|V(G)|}{\alpha (G^2)} \right\rceil $$ for $$G=C_m \Box C_n \Box C_k$$ , whenever $$k \ge 3$$ and $$(m,n)\in \{(3,3), (3,4), (3,5), (4,4)\}$$ or k, m and n are all multiples of seven. Moreover, it is shown that the 2-distance chromatic number of the three-dimensional square lattice is equal to seven.