For a wide class of 2-dimensional periodic elliptic operators, we show that the global extrema of all spectral band functions are isolated.

The general volume of a star body, a notion that includes the usual volume, the $q$th dual volumes, and many previous types of dual mixed volumes, is introduced. A corresponding new general dual Orlicz curvature measure is defined that specializes to the $(p,q)$-dual curvature measures introduced recently by Lutwak, Yang, and Zhang. General variational formulas are established for the general volume of two types of Orlicz linear combinations. One of these is applied to the Minkowski problem for the new general dual Orlicz curvature measure, giving in particular a solution to the Minkowski problem posed by Lutwak, Yang, and Zhang for the $(p,q)$-dual curvature measures when $p>0$ and $q<0$. A dual Orlicz-Brunn-Minkowski inequality for general volumes is obtained, as well as dual Orlicz-Minkowski-type inequalities and uniqueness results for star bodies. Finally, a very general Minkowski-type inequality, involving two Orlicz functions, two convex bodies, and a star body, is proved, that includes as special cases several others in the literature, in particular one due to Lutwak, Yang, and Zhang for the $(p,q)$-mixed volume.

We investigate compact quantum group actions on unital $C^*$-algebras by analyzing invariant subsets and invariant states. In particular, we come up with the concept of compact quantum group orbits and use it to show that countable compact metrizable spaces with infinitely many points are not quantum homogeneous spaces.

Motivated by reformulating Furstenberg's $\times p,\times q$ conjecture via representations of a crossed product $C^*$-algebra, we show that in a discrete $C^*$-dynamical system $(A,\Gamma)$, the space of (ergodic) $\Gamma$-invariant states on $A$ is homeomorphic to a subspace of (pure) state space of $A\rtimes\Gamma$. Various applications of this in topological dynamical systems and representation theory are obtained. In particular, we prove that the classification of ergodic $\Gamma$-invariant regular Borel probability measures on a compact Hausdorff space $X$ is equivalent to the classification a special type of irreducible representations of $C(X)\rtimes \Gamma$.

We consider real interpolation methods defined by means of slowly varying functions$b$and symmetric spaces$E$, for which we present extreme reiteration theorems. As an application we identify, for all possible values of$θ$∈[0,1], the interpolation spaces ($L$_{1},$L$log$L$)_{$θ$,$b$,$E$}and ($L$_{exp},$L$_{∞})_{$θ$,$b$,$E$}.