The present paper deals with a question of M. Mbekhta concerning partial isometries on Banach spaces.

We exhibit new examples of weakly compact strictly singular operators with dual not strictly cosingular and characterize the weakly compact strictly singular surjections with strictly cosingular adjoint as those having strictly singular bitranspose. We then obtain new examples of super-strictly singular quotient maps and show that the strictly singular quotient maps in Kalton-Peck sequences are not super-strictly singular.

We establish interpolation formulæ for operator spaces that are components of a given quasi-normed operator ideal. Sometimes we assume that one of the couples involved is quasi-linearizable, some other times we assume injectivity or surjectivity in the ideal. We also show the necessity of these suppositions.

We first introduce a notion of (a,b,c,d)-orthogonality in a normed linear space, which is a natural generalization of the classical isosceles and Pythagorean orthogonalities, and well known α- and (α,β)-orthogonalities. Then we characterize inner product spaces in several ways, among others, in terms of one orthogonality implying another orthogonality.

Let $F$ be a closed subset of ${ℝ}^n$ and let $P\left(x\right)$ denote the metric projection (closest point mapping) of $x\in {ℝ}^n$ onto $F$ in $l^p$-norm. A classical result of Asplund states that $P$ is (Fréchet) differentiable almost everywhere (a.e.) in ${ℝ}^n$ in the Euclidean case $p=2$. We consider the case $2<p<\infty$ and prove that the $i$th component $P_i\left(x\right)$ of $P\left(x\right)$ is differentiable a.e. if $P_i\left(x\right)\ne x_i$ and satisfies Hölder condition of order $1/(p-1)$ if $P_i\left(x\right)=x_i$.

Let ℛ denote some kind of rotundity, e.g., the uniform rotundity. Let X admit an ℛ-norm and let Y be a reflexive subspace of X with some ℛ-norm ∥·∥. Then we are able to extend ∥·∥ from Y to an ℛ-norm on X.

We show that in the space C[-1,1] there exists an orthogonal algebraic polynomial basis with optimal growth of degrees of the polynomials.

A class of convex functions where the sets of subdifferentials behave like the unit ball of the dual space of an Asplund space is found. These functions, which we called Asplund functions also possess some stability properties. We also give a sufficient condition for a function to be an Asplund function in terms of the upper-semicontinuity of the subdifferential map.

A Banach space X is asymptotically symmetric (a.s.) if for some C < ∞, for all m ∈ ℕ, for all bounded sequences ${\left(x_j^i\right)}_{j=1}^{\infty }\subseteq X$, 1 ≤ i ≤ m, for all permutations σ of 1,...,m and all ultrafilters ₁,...,ₘ on ℕ, $li{m}_{n₁,₁}...li{m}_{nₘ,ₘ}\left|\right|{\sum }_{i=1}^m{x}_{n_i}^i\left|\right|\le Cli{m}_{n_{\sigma \left(1\right)}{,}_{\sigma \left(1\right)}}...li{m}_{n_{\sigma \left(m\right)}{,}_{\sigma \left(m\right)}}\left|\right|{\sum }_{i=1}^m{x}_{n_i}^i\left|\right|$. We investigate a.s. Banach spaces and several natural variations. X is weakly a.s. (w.a.s.) if the defining condition holds when restricted to weakly convergent sequences ${\left(x_j^i\right)}_{j=1}^{\infty }$. Moreover, X is w.n.a.s. if we restrict the condition further to normalized weakly null sequences. If X is a.s. then all spreading...