#### Volume 2, issue 1 (1998)

 1 D Bennequin, Entrelacements et équations de Pfaff, from: "Third Schnepfenried geometry conference, Vol. 1 (Schnepfenried, 1982)", Astérisque 107, Soc. Math. France (1983) 87 MR753131 2 J S Birman, Braids, links, and mapping class groups, Annals of Mathematics Studies 82, Princeton University Press (1974) MR0375281 3 J S Birman, E Finkelstein, Studying surfaces via closed braids, J. Knot Theory Ramifications 7 (1998) 267 MR1625362 4 J Birman, K H Ko, S J Lee, A new approach to the word and conjugacy problems in the braid groups, Adv. Math. 139 (1998) 322 MR1654165 5 J S Birman, W W Menasco, Studying links via closed braids V: The unlink, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 329 (1992) 585 MR1030509 6 E A El-Rifai, H R Morton, Algorithms for positive braids, Quart. J. Math. Oxford Ser. $(2)$ 45 (1994) 479 MR1315459 7 F A Garside, The braid group and other groups, Quart. J. Math. Oxford Ser. $(2)$ 20 (1969) 235 MR0248801 8 W Haken, Theorie der Normalflächen, Acta Math. 105 (1961) 245 MR0141106 9 J Hass, Algorithms for recognizing knots and 3–manifolds, Chaos Solitons Fractals 9 (1998) 569 MR1628743 10 J Hass, J C Lagarias, N Pippenger, The computational complexity of knot and link problems, J. ACM 46 (1999) 185 MR1693203 11 F Jaeger, D L Vertigan, D J A Welsh, On the computational complexity of the Jones and Tutte polynomials, Math. Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 108 (1990) 35 MR1049758 12 E S Kang, K H Ko, S J Lee, Band-generator presentation for the 4–braid group, Topology Appl. 78 (1997) 39 MR1465024 13 P Vogel, Representation of links by braids: a new algorithm, Comment. Math. Helv. 65 (1990) 104 MR1036132 14 P Xu, The genus of closed 3–braids, J. Knot Theory Ramifications 1 (1992) 303 MR1180404 15 S Yamada, The minimal number of Seifert circles equals the braid index of a link, Invent. Math. 89 (1987) 347 MR894383