Abstract:
I will be giving my comprehensive exam talk which I gave last week. My talk will begin with some definitions and known results regarding quasipositive knots and links before I introduce almost quasipositive knots and links. I will share my results about a specific family of almost quasipositive knots and links that we constructed which involve Rasmussen's $s$ invariant, Ozsvath and Szabo's $\tau$ invariant, and the concordance invariants $\psi$ and $\hat{\theta}$. I welcome any questions about the comprehensive exam process including the proposal or preparing for the talk.