Realizing the chromatic numbers and orders of spinal quadrangulations of surfaces

A method is suggested for construction of quadrangulations of the closed orientable surface with given genus g and either (1) with given chromatic number or (2) with given order allowed by the genus g. In particular, N. Hartsfield and G. Ringel's results [Minimal quadrangulations of orientable surfaces, J. Combin. Theory, Series B 46 (1989) 84-95] are generalized by way of generating new minimal quadrangulations of infinitely many other genera.Comment: 6 pages. This version is only slightly different from the original version submitted on 8 Jul 2012: the author's affiliation has been changed and the presentation has been slightly improve

Irreducible Triangulations are Small

A triangulation of a surface is \emph{irreducible} if there is no edge whose contraction produces another triangulation of the surface. We prove that every irreducible triangulation of a surface with Euler genus $g\geq1$ has at most $13g-4$ vertices. The best previous bound was $171g-72$.Comment: v2: Referees' comments incorporate