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The interaction between the study of geometric and analytic aspects of Riemannian manifolds and that of graphs is a very amazing subject. The study of synthetic curvature notions on graphs adds new contributions to this topic. In this thesis, we mainly study two kinds of synthetic curvature notions: the Ollivier-Ricci cuvature on locally finite graphs and the combinatorial curvature on infinite semiplanar graphs. In the first part, we study the Ollivier-Ricci curvature. As known in Riemannian geometry, a lower Ricci curvature bound prevents geodesics from diverging too fast on average. We translate this Riemannian idea into a combinatorial setting using the Olliver-Ricci curvature notion. Note that on a graph, the analogue of geodesics starting in different directions, but eventually approaching each other again, would be a triangle. We derive lower and upper Ollivier-Ricci curvature bounds on graphs in terms of number of triangles, which is sharp for instance for complete graphs. We then describe the relation between Ollivier-Ricci curvature and the local clustering coefficient, which is an important concept in network analysis introduced by Watts-Strogatz. Furthermore, positive lower boundedness of Ollivier-Ricci curvature for neighboring vertices imply the existence of at least one triangle. It turns out that the existence of triangles can also improve Lin-Yau\''s curvature dimension inequality on graphs and then produce an implication from Ollivier-Ricci curvature lower boundedness to the curvature dimension inequality. The existence of triangles prevents a graph from being bipartite. A finite graph is bipartite if and only if its largest eigenvalue equals 2. Therefore it is natural that Ollivier-Ricci curvature is closely related to the largest eigenvalue estimates. We combine Ollivier-Ricci curvature notion with the neighborhood graph method developed by Bauer-Jost to study the spectrum estimates of a finite graph. We can always obtain nontrivial estimates on a non-bipartite graph even if its curvature is nonpositive. This answers one of Ollivier\''s open problem in the finite graph setting. In the second part of this thesis, we study systematically infinite semiplanar graphs with nonnegative combinatorial curvature. Unlike the previous Gauss-Bonnet formula approach, we explore an Alexandrov approach based on the observation that the nonnegative combinatorial curvature on a semiplanar graph is equivalent to nonnegative Alexandrov curvature on the surface obtained by replacing each face by a regular polygon of side length one with the same facial degree and gluing the polygons along common edges. Applying Cheeger-Gromoll splitting theorem on the surface, we give a metric classification of infinite semiplanar graphs with nonnegative curvature. We also construct the graphs embedded into the projective plane minus one point. Those constructions answer a question proposed by Chen. We further prove the volume doubling property and Poincare inequality which make the running of Nash-Moser iteration possible. We in particular explore the volume growth behavior on Archimedean tilings on a plane and prove that they satisfy a weak version of relative volume comparison with constant 1. With the above two basic inequalities in hand, we study the geometric function theory of infinite semiplanar graphs with nonnegative curvature. We obtain the Liouville type theorem for positive harmonic functions, the parabolicity. We also prove a dimension estimate for polynomial growth harmonic functions, which is an extension of the solution of Colding-Minicozzi of a conjecture of Yau in Riemannian geometry.

This thesis concerns two topics. The first topic, that is related to the Dedekind-Mertens Lemma, the notion of the so-called content algebra, is discussed in chapter 2. Let $R$ be a commutative ring with identity and $M$ be a unitary $R$-module and $c$ the function from $M$ to the ideals of $R$ defined by $c(x) = \cap \lbrace I \colon I \text{~is an ideal of~} R \text{~and~} x \in IM \rbrace $. $M$ is said to be a \textit{content} $R$-module if $x \in c(x)M $, for all $x \in M$. The $R$-algebra $B$ is called a \textit{content} $R$-algebra, if it is a faithfully flat and content $R$-module and it satisfies the Dedekind-Mertens content formula. In chapter 2, it is proved that in content extensions, minimal primes extend to minimal primes, and zero-divisors of a content algebra over a ring which has Property (A) or whose set of zero-divisors is a finite union of prime ideals are discussed. The preservation of diameter of zero-divisor graph under content extensions is also examined. Gaussian and Armendariz algebras and localization of content algebras at the multiplicatively closed set $S^ \prime = \lbrace f \in B \colon c(f) = R \rbrace$ are considered as well. In chapter 3, the second topic of the thesis, that is about the grade of the zero-divisor modules, is discussed. Let $R$ be a commutative ring, $I$ a finitely generated ideal of $R$, and $M$ a zero-divisor $R$-module. It is shown that the $M$-grade of $I$ defined by the Koszul complex is consistent with the definition of $M$-grade of $I$ defined by the length of maximal $M$-sequences in I$. Chapter 1 is a preliminarily chapter and dedicated to the introduction of content modules and also locally Nakayama modules.