In this paper we study ruled surfaces which appear as an exceptional surface in a succession of blowing-ups. In particular we prove that the $e$-invariant of such a ruled exceptional surface $E$ is strictly positive whenever its intersection with the other exceptional surfaces does not contain a fiber (of $E$). This fact immediately enables us to resolve an open problem concerning an intersection configuration on such a ruled exceptional surface consisting of three nonintersecting sections. In the second part of the paper we apply the non-vanishing of $e$ to the study of the poles of the well-known topological, Hodge and motivic zeta functions.

Le diagramme d'Eisenbud et Neumann d'un germe est un arbre qui repr\'esente ce germe et permet d'en calculer les invariants. On donne une d\'emonstration alg\'ebrique d'un r\'esultat caract\'erisant l'ensemble des quotients jacobiens d'un germe d'application $(f,g)$ \`a partir du diagramme d'Eisenbud et Neumann de $fg$.

In 1999 V. Arnol'd introduced the local contact algebra: studying the problem of classification of singular curves in a contact space, he showed the existence of the ghost of the contact structure (invariants which are not related to the induced structure on the curve). Our main result implies that the only reason for existence of the local contact algebra and the ghost is the difference between the geometric and (defined in this paper) algebraic restriction of a $1$-form to a singular submanifold. We prove that a germ of any subset $N$ of a contact manifold is well defined, up to contactomorphisms, by the algebraic restriction to $N$ of the contact structure. This is a generalization of the Darboux-Givental' theorem for smooth submanifolds of a contact manifold. Studying the difference between the geometric and the algebraic restrictions gives a powerful tool for classification of stratified submanifolds of a contact manifold. This is illustrated by complete solution of three classification problems, including a simple explanation of V.~Arnold's results and further classification results for singular curves in a contact space. We also prove several results on the external geometry of a singular submanifold $N$ in terms of the algebraic restriction of the contact structure to $N$. In particular, the algebraic restriction is zero if and only if $N$ is contained in a smooth Legendrian submanifold of $M$.

We verify a generalization of (3.3) from \cite{Le} proving that the homotopy type of the Milnor fiber of a reduced hypersurface singularity depends only on the embedded topological type of the singularity. In particular, using \cite{Za,Li1,Oh1,Gau} for irreducible quasi-ordinary germs, it depends only on the normalized distinguished pairs of the singularity. The main result of the paper provides an explicit formula for the Euler-characteristic of the Milnor fiber in the surface case.

Let $X$ be a nonsingular algebraic variety in characteristic zero. To an effective divisor on $X$ Kontsevich has associated a certain motivic integral, living in a completion of the Grothendieck ring of algebraic varieties. He used this invariant to show that birational (smooth, projective) Calabi-Yau varieties have the same Hodge numbers. Then Denef and Loeser introduced the invariant {\it motivic (Igusa) zeta function}, associated to a regular function on $X$, which specializes to both the classical $p$-adic Igusa zeta function and the topological zeta function, and also to Kontsevich's invariant. This paper treats a generalization to singular varieties. Batyrev already considered such a `Kontsevich invariant' for log terminal varieties (on the level of Hodge polynomials of varieties instead of in the Grothendieck ring), and previously we introduced a motivic zeta function on normal surface germs. Here on any $\bbQ$-Gorenstein variety $X$ we associate a motivic zeta function and a `Kontsevich invariant' to effective $\bbQ$-Cartier divisors on $X$ whose support contains the singular locus of~$X$.

We describe the embedded resolution of an irreducible quasi-ordinary surface singularity $(V,p)$ which results from applying the canonical resolution of Bierstone-Milman to $(V,p)$. We show that this process depends solely on the characteristic pairs of $(V,p)$, as predicted by Lipman. We describe the process explicitly enough that a resolution graph for $f$ could in principle be obtained by computer using only the characteristic pairs.

We consider germs of mappings of a line to contact space and classify the first simple singularities up to the action of contactomorphisms in the target space and diffeomorphisms of the line. Even in these first cases there arises a new interesting interaction of local commutative algebra with contact structure.

The semi-affine Coxeter-Dynkin graph is introduced, generalizing both the affine and the finite types.