Very Large Cyclic Compounds

Very large ring systems, containing more than 50 ring members, are becoming increasingly important in different topics in natural sciences. These so-called gigantocycles differ from smaller macrocycles in physical properties, special structural features and chemical behaviour. This article is meant to be the first summary of such ring systems and a synopsis of the most remarkable examples with their fascinating nano-scaled structures and ingenious synthesis. To restrict the scope of the article, only isolated and completely characterized, monodisperse compounds are presented. Furthermore, attention is mainly directed at organic gigantocycles. Some ultracycles with more than 100 ring members, mainly occurring in polymer chemistry and nature, will also be described.     

On a conjecture of Bredon

Using the localization technique for equivariant cohomology theory we prove a conjecture of G.Bredon (s. [4], p.381) which states that under certain conditions (s. the theorem below) the cohomology with Z_p-coefficients of each component of the fixpoint set of a Z_p-space can be generated as an algebra by (at most) the same number of elements as the cohomology of the space itself.     

Deformations of algebras and cohomology of fixed point sets

In [13] it is shown that under certain conditions the cohomology algebra of the fixed point set of a space with group action is in an algebraic sense a deformation of the cohomology algebra of the space itself. Here we attempt to prove a converse of the above statement, i.e. we try to realize geometrically a given algebraic deformation of a (commutative) graded algebras as the cohomology algebra of the fixed point set of a suitable space with group action. The first part of this note in a sense reduces this realization problem in equivariant topology to a non-equivariant problem while the second part uses Sullivan's theory of minimal models to actually obtain a converse for S¹-actions, where cohomology is taken with rational coefficients.