Zeeman(5) once bravely made the following conjecture:

Conjecture. Suppose K is a contractible 2-complex and I is the unit interval [0, 1]. Then K × I collapses.

This conjecture is interesting since it trivially implies the Poincaré conjecture. For if C is a homotopy 3-cell, then it has a contractible 2-dimensional spine, so that C × I would be a collapsible 4-manifold. But then C × I would be a 4-cell, with C = C × 0 in its 3-sphere boundary, and the PL Schoenfliess theorem shows that C is a 3-cell.

Attempts have been made to extend to higher dimensional varieties the theory of correspondences developed for algebraic curves. So far efforts have been concentrated on ‘point-point’ correspondences (i.e. between two varieties of the same dimension such that a generic point of one corresponds to a 0-dimensional variety of the other), and even in the case of surfaces important problems, such as the base number for the correspondences, are still unsolved (cf. Hodge(3)). The purpose of these papers is to draw attention to, and study in the simpler cases, another class of correspondences, the ‘point-primal’ type, in which to a generic point of one variety corresponds a primal of the other. These correspondences provide at least as natural a generalization of the theory for curves as point-point correspondences, but have so far only been touched on by Severi(7, 8) in two simple cases. In this paper we give a number of general results for point-primal correspondences (mostly immediate generalizations of Severi's results), and embark on a detailed discussion of such correspondences, which we naturally call point-curve correspondences, between two surfaces, the chief result being the determination of the base in that case. Further results on the transformation of the cycles of a surface by a point-curve correspondence, the correspondences induced between curves of the two surfaces and, in the case where the surfaces coincide, the ‘united curve’ of the correspondence, as well as the question of correspondences of non-zero valency, will be dealt with in a later paper, where we shall also consider the case of correspondences between a curve and a surface discussed in Severi's paper(7).

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the foundations of homotopy theory for simplicial sheaves, as we believe this is the natural context for the development of non-abelian, as well as extraordinary, sheaf cohomology.

In [11] we began constructing a theory of classifying spaces for sheaves of simplicial groupoids, and that study is continued here. Such a theory is essential for the development of basic tools such as Postnikov systems, Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequences, characteristic classes, and cohomology operations in extraordinary cohomology of sheaves. Thus, in some sense, we are continuing the program initiated by Illusie[7], Brown[2], and Brown and Gersten[3], though our basic homotopy theory of simplicial sheaves is different from theirs. In fact, the homotopy theory we use is the global one of [10]. As a result, there is some similarity between our theory and the theory of Jardine[8], which is also partially based on [10]

Alfsen and Andersen(2) defined the centre of the complete order-unit space A(K) associated with a compact convex set K to be the set of functions in A(K) which multiply with A(K) pointwise on the extreme boundary of K, thereby generalizing the concept of centres of C*-algebras. It is therefore possible to extend this definition to include the space A (K; B) of continuous affine functions of K into a Banach algebra B. Such spaces arise in the theory of weak tensor products E ⊗λB of B with a Banach space E, which may be embedded in A(K; B) where K is the unit ball of E* in the weak* topology. Andersen and Atkinson(4) considered multipliers in A(K; B) and showed that if B is unital, then the multipliers are precisely those functions which are continuous in the facial topology on the extreme boundary. It is shown here that this result extends to non-unital Banach algebras with trivial left annihilator.

We study surface links whose link groups are free abelian, and construct various stimulating and highly non-trivial examples of such surface links.

This paper gives a criterion for determining whether real, non-zero solutions of a linear differential equation of the second order have an infinite or a finite number of zeros, or, in short, are oscillatory or non-oscillatory, as the independent variable tends to infinity.

A C*-algebra A of operators on a separable Hilbert space H is said to be quasidiagonal if there is an increasing sequence E1, E2, … of finite-rank projections on H tending strongly to the identity and such that

as i → ∞ for T∈A. More generally a C*-algebra is quasidiagonal if there is a faithful *-representation π of A on a separable Hilbert space H such that π(A) is a quasidiagonal algebra of operators. When this is the case, there is a decomposition H = H1 ⊕ H2 ⊕ … where dim Hi < ∞ (i = 1, 2,…) such that each T∈π(A) can be written T = D + K where D= D1 ⊕ D2 ⊕ …, with Di∈L(Hi) (i = 1, 2,…), and K is a compact linear operator on H. As is well known (and readily seen), this is an alternative characterization of quasidiagonality.

Let X be a complex nonsingular projective threefold of general type. Suppose the canonical system of X is composed of a pencil, i.e. dimΦ∼KX∼(X)=1. It is often important to understand birational invariants of X such as pg(X), q(X), h2(OX) and χ(OX) etc. In this paper, we mainly study the irregularity of X.

We may suppose that ∼KX∼ is free of base points. There is a natural fibration f[ratio ]X→C onto a nonsingular curve after the Stein factorization of Φ∼KX∼. Let F be a general fibre of f, then we know that F is a nonsingular projective surface of general type. Set b[ratio ]=g(C) and pg(F), q(F) for the respective invariants of F. The main result is the following theorem.

We prove a conjecture made by Frank Peterson on the global structure of the Dickson algebras arising as odd primary general linear group invariants. The Dickson algebra $W_{n}$ of invariants in a rank $n$ polynomial algebra over $\mathbb{F}_{p}$ is an unstable algebra over the mod $p$ Steenrod algebra. We prove that $W_{n}$ is a free unstable algebra on a certain cyclic module, modulo just one additional relation. The result is both similar to and different from the corresponding result we previously obtained with Frank Peterson at the prime 2. We also extend our characterization to the algebras of invariants under the special linear groups.

If one of the locally compact groups H and K is of type I, the reduced dual of their product is shown to be homeomorphic to the product of the reduced duals.

In this paper we determine the first minimum of a class of linear forms associated with certain cubic fields that depend on a parameter.

The integral, involving the functions Jn+½ and J−n−½(x) where n is a positive integer, arises in a problem in electrical network theory and represents a measure of the overall error in the diagonal Padé approximant to the function e−s. A method of evaluation based on Euler's transformation of series is described, values of the integral are tabulated to five decimal places for n = 1(1)10(5)40, and the asymptotic behaviour for large n is determined.

Essential laminations in 3-manifolds, introduced in [GO], are a natural generalization of both incompressible surfaces and foliations without Reeb components. One of the main reasons why essential laminations are of particular interest is that many manifolds which contain no incompressible surfaces contain essential laminations. Indeed, there is some evidence that almost all irreducible manifolds with infinite fundamental group contain essential laminations [B1; D; GM; GO; H; N; R], the only known exceptions being Seifert manifolds [B2]. So essential laminations are potentially a quite powerful tool for studying non-Haken 3-manifolds.

We refer to a beautiful and important result of Tutte(1), in the theory of graphs; that a linear graph G is prime if and only if it contains a set ∑ of vertices, such that u(G∑) > n(∑); where n(∑) is the number of vertices in ∑, G∑ is the graph obtained from G by deleting the star of ∑ (all the vertices of G in ∑, together with all the edges of G meeting vertices of ∑), and u(G∑) is the number of connected components of G∑ having an odd number of vertices.

For high-dimensional simple knots we give two theorems concerning unique factorization into irreducible knots, and provide examples to show that the hypotheses are necessary in each case.

It is shown that each vector in the Hilbert space of certain quasi-free representations of the CCR can be written uniquely in terms of quantum stochastic integrals. As a consequence, we obtain general vector-valued and operator-valued boson quantum martingale representation theorems.

Let k be a (smooth) knot in S3, → X the infinite cyclic covering of X = S3 – k corresponding to a generator of and let t generate the (infinite cyclic) group of covering transformations of . Various authors (1), (2), have shown that, for iterated torus knots, is of finite order (i.e. some power of t* is the identity).

This paper considers a family of viscous flows closely related to the exact Jeffery-Hamel solution ((l), (2)) of the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations, for diverging or converging flow in a channel. It is known that if the walls of the channel intersect at an angle less than π then there is a unique solution of the Navier-Stokes equations in which the streamlines are straight lines issuing from the point of intersection of the walls and the flow is everywhere diverging or everywhere converging. The flow parameters depend on the total fluid mass M emitted at the point of intersection and the angle 2α between the walls. By taking the Reynolds number R = M/ν, where v is the kinematic viscosity, the stream function can be expanded in a power series in R in which the leading term is a Stokes flow. Alternatively the solution can be developed by perturbing the Stokes flow and is one of very few examples known in which a Stokes flow can be regarded as a uniformly valid first approximation everywhere in an infinite fluid region. The class of flows to be considered is a generalization of the Jeffery–Hamel flow by taking the flow region to be finite and bounded by two circular arcs which intersect at an angle less than π At one point of intersection fluid is forced into the region and an equal amount is absorbed out at the other point. It is found to the first order that the flow at the two points of intersection corresponds to the zero Reynolds number limit for diverging and converging flow, respectively. Now since the flow at these points can be developed by perturbing the Stokes flow solution it is reasonable to assume that the zero Reynolds number flow in the entire finite region bounded by the arcs is a Stokes flow since the most likely region in which this approximation becomes invalid is locally at the points of intersection but here the validity of the approximation is ensured. A comparison of the convection terms with the viscous terms verifies that this conclusion is borne out.

Recently Wang (5) has given some results concerning characterizations of Poisson, normal, gamma, binomial and negative binomial distributions. We shall show here that these results are incorrect and also attempt to rectify them.