TITLE: Taut foliations and closed leaves
QUESTION [8 upvotes]: EDITED
A codimension-1 foliation $\mathcal{F}$ of a (closed, connected, oriented) 3-manifold is taut if there exists a simple closed curve $\gamma$ that intersects each leaf of $\mathcal{F}$ transversely. 
Using work of Thurston, you know that if a taut foliation has closed leaves, they must be homologically non-trivial. But how do you know when a taut foliation admits closed leaves at all? Is there some way to tell, or some class of manifolds which you know support a taut foliations with closed leaves? 
Thanks!

REPLY [4 votes]: The existence of compact leaves of codimension 1 foliations defined on 3-manifolds is characterized by Novikov see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov%27s_compact_leaf_theorem
If you read Novikov paper: (Theorem 6.1) and (Theorem 7.1) imply that if the image of $t(A)\rightarrow \pi_1(M)$ has a non trivial kernel, then the foliation has a compact leaf, here $t(A)$ is the semi-group of homotopy class of tranversal through a point $x$ the leaf $A$. In particular, for a taut foliation one can define the class of the closed transversal in $t(A)$ for any leaf and apply the previous theorems if this class is a non trivial element of the kernel $t(A)\rightarrow \pi_1(M)$.
http://www.mi.ras.ru/~snovikov/23.pdf