We discuss how countable subadditivity of operators can be derived from subadditivity under mild forms of continuity, and provide examples manifesting such circumstances.

In the so-called Bernoulli model of the kinetic theory of gases, where (1) the particles are dimensionless points, (2) they are contained in a cube container, (3) no attractive or exterior force is acting on them, (4) there is no collision between the particles, (5) the collisions against the walls of the container are according to the law of elastic collision, we deduce from Newtonian mechanics two basic probabilistic limit laws about particle-counting. The first one is a global central limit theorem, and the second one is a local Poisson law. The key fact is that we can prove the “realistic limit”: first the time interval is fixed and the number of particles tends to infinity (where the density particle/volume remains a fixed constant), and then, in the second step, the time tends to infinity.

We prove that some inequalities, which are considered to be generalizations of Hardy's inequality on the circle, can be modified and proved to be true for functions integrable on the real line. In fact we would like to show that some constructions that were used to prove the Littlewood conjecture can be used similarly to produce real Hardy-type inequalities. This discussion will lead to many questions concerning the relationship between Hardy-type inequalities on the circle and those on the real line.

Let $p$ be a prime, and let $f:\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}\to \mathbb{R}$ be a function with $\mathbb{E}f=0$ and $||\hat{f}|{{|}_{1}}\le 1$. Then ${{\min }_{x\in \mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}}}|f\left( x \right)|=O{{\left( \log p \right)}^{-1/3+\in }}$. One should think of $f$ as being “approximately continuous”; our result is then an “approximate intermediate value theorem”.

As an immediate consequence we show that if $A\subseteq \mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ is a set of cardinality $\left\lfloor {p}/{2}\; \right\rfloor $, then ${{\sum }_{r}}\widehat{|\,{{1}_{A}}}\left( r \right)|\gg {{\left( \log p \right)}^{1/3-\in }}$. This gives a result on a “$\,\bmod \,p$” analogue of Littlewood's well-known problem concerning the smallest possible ${{L}^{1}}$-norm of the Fourier transform of a set of $n$ integers.

Another application is to answer a question of Gowers. If $A\,\subseteq \,{\mathbb{Z}}/{p\mathbb{Z}}\;$ is a set of size $\left\lfloor {p}/{2}\; \right\rfloor $, then there is some $x\,\in \,\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$ such that

$$||A\cap \left( A+x \right)\,-\,p/4|\,=o\left( p \right).$$

It is shown that if a trigonometric series is (R, 3), respectively (R, 4), summable then its (R, 3) sum, respectively (R, 4) sum, is James P3—, respectively P4—, integrable and that such series are Fourier series with respect to these integrals.