Nonlinear connections and semisprays on tangent manifolds.
In contrast to the homogeneous case, we show that there are compact cohomogeneity one manifolds that do not support invariant metrics of non-negative sectional curvature. In fact we exhibit infinite families of such manifolds including the exotic Kervaire spheres. Such examples exist for any codimension of the singular orbits except for the case when both are equal to two, where existence of non-negatively curved metrics is known.
We prove a vanishing theorem for the cohomology of the complement of a complex hyperplane arrangement with coefficients in a complex local system. This result is compared with other vanishing theorems, and used to study Milnor fibers of line arrangements, and hypersurface arrangements.
Recent developments in theories of non-Riemannian gravitational interactions are outlined. The question of the motion of a fluid in the presence of torsion and metric gradient fields is approached in terms of the divergence of the Einstein tensor associated with a general connection. In the absence of matter the variational equations associated with a broad class of actions involving non-Riemannian fields give rise to an Einstein-Proca system associated with the standard Levi-Civita connection.
Non-split almost complex supermanifolds and non-split Riemannian supermanifolds are studied. The first obstacle for a splitting is parametrized by group orbits on an infinite dimensional vector space. For almost complex structures, the existence of a splitting is equivalent to the existence of local coordinates in which the almost complex structure can be represented by a purely numerical matrix, i.e. containing no Grassmann variables. For Riemannian metrics, terms up to degree 2 are allowed in...