For the first item, can you provide steps to reproduce, or be a bit more descriptive with what you mean with "doesn't work"?
If I got the idea right, that bar should serve for searching among techs, for me it doesn't work in general, tried both russian and english clients, as well as seraching on both languages. None worked.
https://imgur.com/a/1ygNtXc
For the second item, does the dummy research persist in the in-game queue? Also, is it the only technology in the in-game queue?
Yeah, it was the only technology in the in-game queue. Don't remember all the details. It was researching that not existing tech, and also it was removed from the in-game queue as soon as I removed the final research from your queue.