There are uncountably many universal topological planes

We prove the existence of uncountably many nonisomorphic topological projective planes, each universal in the sense that it contains an isomorphic copy of every pseudoline arrangement.     

Generic continuity of restricted weak upper semi-continuous set-valued mappings

Set-valued mappings from a topological space into subsets of a Banach space which satisfy a restricted form of weak upper semi-continuity, have particularly noteworthy properties. We establish a selection theorem for certain set-valued mappings from a (-) unfavourable topological space into subsets of a Banach space and as a consequence derive the property that restricted weak upper semi-continuous set-valued mappings which satisfy a minimality condition, from a (-) unfavourable topological space into subsets of a Banach space are single-valued and norm upper semi-continuous at the points of a residual subset of their domain.     

Reflecting Brownian motions and a deletion result for Sobolev spaces of order (1, 2)

Let D be an open set in ^d and E be a relatively closed subset of D having zero Lebesgue measure. A necessary and sufficient integral condition is given for the Sobolev spaces W ^1,2 (D) and W ^1,2(D\E) to be the same. The latter is equivalent to (normally) reflecting Brownian motion (RBM) on being indistinguishable (in distribution) from RBM on . This integral condition is satisfied, for example, when E has zero (d–1)-dimensional Hausdorff measure. Therefore it is possible to delete from D a relatively closed subset E having positive capacity but nevertheless the RBM on is indistinguishable from the RBM on , or equivalently, W ^1,2(D\E)=W^1,2(D). An example of such kind is: D=² and E is the Cantor set. In the proof of above mentioned results, a detailed study of RBMs on general open sets is given. In particular, a semimartingale decomposition and approximation result previously proved in [3] for RBMs on bounded open sets is extended to the case of unbounded open sets.Research supported in part by NSF Grant DMS 86-57483.     

Isometries of symmetric operator spaces associated with AFD factors of typeII and symmetric vector-valued spaces

If is a surjective isometry of the separable symmetric operator spaceE(M, ) associated with the approximately finite-dimensional semifinite factorM and if · _E(M,) is not proportional to · _{L 2}, then there exist a unitary operatorUM and a Jordan automorphismJ ofM such that(x)=UJ(x) for allxME(M, ). We characterize also surjective isometries of vector-valued symmetric spacesF((0, 1), E(M, )).Research supported by the Australian Research Council     

Stability inL 1 of some integral operators

A class of Markov operators appearing in biomathematics is investigated. It is proved that these operators are asymptotic stable inL ¹, i.e. lim _n P ⁿ f=0 forfL ¹ and f(x) dx=0.     

Nonselfadjoint spectral problems for linear pencilsN-λP of ordinary differential operators with λ-linear boundary conditions: Completeness results

We study nonselfadjoint spectral problems for ordinary differential equationsN(y)–P(y)=0 with -linear boundary conditions where the orderp of the differential operatorP is less than the ordern ofN. The present paper addresses the question of the completeness of the eigenfunctions and associated functions in the Sobolev spacesW ₂ ^k (0,1) fork=0,1,...,n. To this end we associate a pencil – of operators acting fromL ₂(0,1) to the larger spaceL ₂x(0,1) ⁿ with the given problem. We establish completeness results for normal problems in certain finite codimensional subspaces ofW ₂ ^k (0,1) which are characterized by means of Jordan chains in 0 of the adjoint of the compact operator = ^–1.Dedicated to Professor Heinz Langer on the occasion of his 60th birthday     

Topological hochschild homology of extensions of ?/p? by polynomials, and of ?[x]/(xn) and ?[x]/(xn?1)

Topological Hochschild homology is calculated for the rings /p[x]/(f(x)) (where p is prime and f(x) /p[x] any polynomial), [x]/(x ⁿ) and [x]/(x ⁿ–1). A spectral sequence argument is used for calculating the homology of the topological Hochschild homology spectrum, from which its stable homotopy structure can be read off since the spectrum is known for a priori reasons to be a restricted product of Eilenberg-MacLane spectra.     

Extremal problems for linear orders on [n] p

Let be a product order on [n] ^p i.e. for A, B [n] ^p , 1a ₁<a ₂<...<a _p º-n and 1<-b ₁<b ₂<...<b _p <-n we have AB iff a _i<-b _i for all i=1, 2,..., p. For a linear extension < of (ordering [n] ^p as ) let F _< ^[n],p (m) count the number of A _i 's, i<-m such that 1A _i. Clearly, for every m and <, where <l denotes the lexicographic order on [n] ^p . In this note we prove that the colexicographical order, <c, provides a corresponding lower bound i.e. that holds for any linear extension < of .This project together with [2] was initiated by the first author and continued in colaboration with the second author. After the death of the first author the work was continued and finalized by the second and the third author.Research supported by NSF grant DMS 9011850.     

A note on “small representations of finite distributive lattices as congruence lattices”

G. Grätzer, H. Lakser, and E. T. Schmidt proved that every distributive lattice with n join-irreducible elements can be represented as the congruence lattice of a small lattice L, that is, a lattice L with O(n ² ) elements. G. Grätzer, I. Rival, and N. Zaguia proved that, for any <2, O(n ² ) can not be improved to O(n ). In this note we show that the theorem about small representation can be improved further to get a more delicate result.     

Self-intersections of curves on surfaces

Let M be a compact orientable surface with nonempty boundary (x(M)<0) and fundamental group . Let be a geodesic on M (with a fixed hyperbolic structure), and let W be a (cyclically reduced) word in a fixed set of generators of which represents . In this paper, we give an algorithm to count the number of self-intersections of in terms of W, generalizing a result of Birman and Series, where an algorithm was given to decide if was simple. Some applications of the algorithm to surfaces with one boundary and the Markoff spectrum are also given.