Exceptional curves on smooth rational surfaces with not nef and of self-intersection zero

A -curve is a smooth rational curve of self-intersection , where is a positive integer. In 1998 Hirschowitz asked whether a smooth rational surface defined over the field of complex numbers, having an anti-canonical divisor not nef and of self-intersection zero, has -curves. In this paper we prove that for such a surface , the set of -curves on is finite but non-empty, and that may have no -curves. Related facts are also considered.

     

-actions with

Suppose that is a smooth -action on a closed smooth -dimensional manifold such that all Stiefel-Whitney classes of the tangent bundle to each connected component of the fixed point set vanish in positive dimension. This paper shows that if 2^k\dim F$"> and each -dimensional part possesses the linear independence property, then bounds equivariantly, and in particular, is the best possible upper bound of if is nonbounding.

     

-bounding and -induction

Working in the base theory of , we show that for all , the bounding principle for -formulas ( ) is equivalent to the induction principle for -formulas ( ). This partially answers a question of J. Paris.

     

The projective -character bounds the order of a -base

All spaces below are Tychonov. We define the projective - character of a space as the supremum of the values where ranges over all (Tychonov) continuous images of . Our main result says that every space has a -base whose order is ; that is, every point in is contained in at most -many members of the -base. Since for compact , this is a significant generalization of a celebrated result of Shapirovskii.

     

Weak norms of random sums

Let denote a sequence of measurable functions on , and let denote the weak norm. It is shown that

where is a sequence of independent random variables taking on values and with equal probability. Moreover, it is shown that

The paper concludes by providing an example indicating that, if , then the estimate

is the best possible.

     

On the - boundedness of operators

We prove that if is in , is a Banach space, and is a linear operator defined on the space of finite linear combinations of -atoms in with the property that

then admits a (unique) continuous extension to a bounded linear operator from to . We show that the same is true if we replace -atoms by continuous -atoms. This is known to be false for -atoms.

     

A hereditarily subspace of without the Schur property

Let p_1 > p_2 > \cdots > 1$">. We construct an easily determined -symmetric basic sequence in , which spans a hereditarily subspace without the Schur property. An immediate consequence is the existence of hereditarily subspaces of without the Schur property.

     

Set-theoretic complete intersections in characteristic

We describe a class of toric varieties which are set-theoretic complete intersections only over fields of one positive characteristic .

     

Real -flats tangent to quadrics in

Let and denote the dimension and the degree of the Grassmannian , respectively. For each there are (a priori complex) -planes in tangent to general quadratic hypersurfaces in . We show that this class of enumerative problems is fully real, i.e., for there exists a configuration of real quadrics in (affine) real space so that all the mutually tangent -flats are real.

     

-invariant subspaces of

In this note, we give a new proof of the characterization of the -invariant subspaces of for in using ideas from approximation theory.     

Symplectic tori in homotopy 's

This short note presents a simple construction of nonisotopic symplectic tori representing the same primitive homology class in the symplectic -manifold , obtained by knot surgery on the rational elliptic surface with the left-handed trefoil knot . has the simplest homotopy type among simply-connected symplectic -manifolds known to exhibit such a property.

     

Purely periodic -expansions with Pisot unit base

Let 1$"> be a Pisot unit. A family of sets defined by a -numeration system has been extensively studied as an atomic surface or Rauzy fractal. For the purpose of constructing a Markov partition, a domain constructed by an atomic surface has appeared in several papers. In this paper we show that the domain completely characterizes the set of purely periodic -expansions.

     

Discrete spectra of -algebras and orthogonally closed submodules in Hilbert -modules

Let and be -algebras and let be an --imprimitivity bimodule. Then it is shown that if the spectrum of (resp. of ) is discrete, then every closed --submodule of is orthogonally closed in , and conversely that if (resp. ) is a -space and if every closed --submodule of is orthogonally closed in , then (resp. ) is discrete.

     

The Russo-Dye Theorem in a weakly closed -module

Suppose that is admissible. It is shown that the convex hull of unitary elements of a weakly closed -module contains the whole unit ball of if and only if and for any 0$">, 0$">.

     

Embedding as Lipschitz functions

Let be a compact Hausdorff space and let be a lower semicontinuous metric on it. We prove that is fragmented by if, and only if, contains no copy of made up of Lipschitz functions with respect to . As applications we obtain a characterization of Asplund Banach spaces and Radon-Nikodým compacta.

     

Local isometries of

In this paper we study the structure of local isometries on . We show that when is first countable and is uniformly convex and the group of isometries of is algebraically reflexive, the range of a local isometry contains all compact operators. When is also uniformly smooth and the group of isometries of is algebraically reflexive, we show that a local isometry whose adjoint preserves extreme points is a -module map.

     

-algebras whose torsion part is not cyclic

We consider algebras over a Dedekind domain with the property and generalize Schultz' structure theory of the case to Dedekind domains. We construct examples of mixed -algebras, which are non-split extensions of the submodule of elements infinitely divisible by the relevant prime ideals. This is also new in the case .

     

Almost everywhere convergence of series in

We answer positively a question of J. Rosenblatt (1988), proving the existence of a sequence with , such that for every dynamical system and , converges almost everywhere. A similar result is obtained in the real variable context.

     

Closed sets which are not -critical

In this paper we first observe that the complement of a countable closed subset of an -dimensional manifold has large -homology group. In the last section we use this information to prove that, under some topological conditions on the given manifold, certain families of fibers, in the total space of a fibration over , are not critical sets for some special real or -valued functions.

     

Local automorphisms and derivations on certain -algebras

It is shown that continuous -local derivations on -algebras are derivations and surjective -local *-automorphisms on prime -algebras or on -algebras such that the identity element is properly infinite are *-automorphisms.