The Sarkisov program studies birational maps between varieties that are end products of the Minimal Model Program (MMP) on nonsingular uniruled varieties. If $X$ and $Y$ are terminal $ \mathbb{Q} $-factorial projective varieties endowed with a structure of Mori fibre space, a birational map $f: X\dashrightarrow Y$ is the composition of a finite number of elementary Sarkisov links. This decomposition is in general not unique: two such define a relation in the Sarkisov program. I define elementary relations, and show they generate relations in the Sarkisov program. Roughly speaking, elementary relations are the relations among the end products of suitable relative MMPs of $Z$ over $W$ with $\rho (Z/ W)= 3$.

We prove that an automorphism of the group of birational transformations of the complex projective plane is the composition of an interior automorphism and an automorphism of the field $\mathbb{C}$. The proof is based on a study of maximal abelian subgroups of the Cremona group.

The aim of this paper is to give an application of p-adic Hodge theory to stringy Hodge numbers introduced by V. Batyrev for a mathematical formulation of mirror symmetry. Since the stringy Hodge numbers of an algebraic variety are defined by choosing a resolution of singularities, the well-definedness is not clear from the definition. We give a proof of the well-definedness by using arithmetic techniques such as p-adic integration and p-adic Hodge theory. Note that another proof of the well-definedness was obtained by V. Batyrev himself by motivic integration.