Real bounds, ergodicity and negative Schwarzian for multimodal maps

We consider smooth multimodal maps which have finitely many non-flat critical points. We prove the existence of real bounds. From this we obtain a new proof for the non-existence of wandering intervals, derive extremely useful improved Koebe principles, show that high iterates have `negative Schwarzian derivative' and give results on ergodic properties of the map. One of the main complications in the proofs is that we allow to have inflection points.