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Let $G$ be a graph with vertex set $V(G)$ and edge set $E(G)$. A subset $I$ of $V(G)$ is an independent vertex subset if no two vertices in $I$ are adjacent in $G$. We study the number, $\sigma_1(G)$, of all subsets of $v(G)$ that contain exactly one pair of adjacent vertices. We call those subsets 1-nearly independent vertex subsets. Recursive formulas of $\sigma_1$ are provided, as well as some cases of explicit formulas. We prove a tight lower (resp. upper) bound on $\sigma_1$ for graphs of order $n$. We deduce as a corollary that the star $K_{1,n-1}$ (the tree with degree sequence $(n-1,1,\dots,1)$) is the $n$-vertex tree with smallest $\sigma_1$, while it is well known that $K_{1,n-1}$ is the $n$-vertex tree with largest number of independent subsets., Comment: 21 pages, 3 tables

Let $T$ be a rooted tree, and $V(T)$ its set of vertices. A subset $X$ of $V(T)$ is called an infima closed set of $T$ if for any two vertices $u,v\in X$, the first common ancestor of $u$ and $v$ is also in $X$. This paper determines the trees with minimum number of infima closed sets among all rooted trees of given order, thereby answering a question of Klazar. It is shown that these trees are essentially complete binary trees, with the exception of vertices at the last levels. Moreover, an asymptotic estimate for the minimum number of infima closed sets in a tree with $n$ vertices is also provided., Comment: 25 pages, 18 Figures, 3 tables

Let $\eta(G)$ be the number of connected induced subgraphs in a graph $G$, and $\overline{G}$ the complement of $G$. We prove that $\eta(G)+\eta(\overline{G})$ is minimum, among all $n$-vertex graphs, if and only if $G$ has no induced path on four vertices. Since the $n$-vertex star $S_n$ with maximum degree $n-1$ is the unique tree of diameter $2$, $\eta(S_n)+\eta(\overline{S_n})$ is minimum among all $n$-vertex trees, while the maximum is shown to be achieved only by the tree whose degree sequence is $(\lceil n/2\rceil,\lfloor n/2\rfloor,1,\dots,1)$. Furthermore, we prove that every graph $G$ of order $n\geq 5$ and with maximum $\eta(G)+\eta(\overline{G})$ must have diameter at most $3$, no cut vertex and the property that $\overline{G}$ is also connected. In both cases of trees and graphs that have the same order, we find that if $\eta(G)$ is maximum then $\eta(G)+\eta(\overline{G})$ is minimum. As corollaries to our results, we characterise the unique connected graph $G$ of given order and number of vertices of degree $1$, and the unique unicyclic (connected and has only one cycle) graphs $G$ of a given order that minimises $\eta(G)+\eta(\overline{G})$., Comment: 22 pages, 2 figure, 1 table

In the study of topological indices two negative correlations are well known: that between the number of subtrees and the Wiener index (sum of distances), and that between the Merrifield-Simmons index (number of independent vertex subsets) and the Hosoya index (number of independent edge subsets). That is, among a certain class of graphs, the extremal graphs that maximize one index usually minimize the other, and vice versa. In this paper, we first study the numbers of subtrees in unicyclic graphs and unicyclic graphs with a given girth, further confirming its opposite behavior to the Wiener index by comparing with known results. We then consider the unicyclic graphs with a given segment sequence and characterize the extremal structure with the maximum number of subtrees. Furthermore, we show that these graphs are not extremal with respect to the Wiener index. We also identify the extremal structures that maximize the number of independent vertex subsets among unicyclic graphs with a given segment sequence, and show that they are not extremal with respect to the number of independent edge subsets. These results may be the first examples where the above negative correlation failed in the extremal structures between these two pairs of indices., Comment: 21 pages 6 figures

Let $\lambda_1,\dots,\lambda_n$ be the eigenvalues of a graph $G$. For any $k\geq 0$, the $k$-th spectral moment of $G$ is defined by $\M_k(G)=\lambda_1^k+\dots+\lambda_n^k$. We use the fact that $\M_k(G)$ is also the number of closed walks of length $k$ in $G$ to show that among trees $T$ whose degree sequence is $D$ or majorized by $D$, $\M_k(T)$ is maximized by the greedy tree with degree sequence $D$ (constructed by assigning the highest degree in $D$ to the root, the second-, third-, \dots highest degrees to the neighbors of the root, and so on) for any $k\geq 0$. Several corollaries follow, in particular a conjecture of Ili\'c and Stevanovi\'c on trees with given maximum degree, which in turn implies a conjecture of Gutman, Furtula, Markovi\'c and Gli\v{s}i\'c on the Estrada index of such trees, which is defined as $\EE(G)=e^{\lambda_1}+\dots+e^{\lambda_n}$., Comment: 24 pages 5 figures