The face numbers of simplicial complexes without missing faces of dimension larger than$i$are studied. It is shown that among all such ($d$−1)-dimensional complexes with non-vanishing top homology, a certain polytopal sphere has the componentwise minimal$f$-vector; and moreover, among all such 2-Cohen–Macaulay (2-CM) complexes, the same sphere has the componentwise minimal$h$-vector. It is also verified that the$l$-skeleton of a flag ($d$−1)-dimensional 2-CM complex is 2($d$−$l$)-CM, while the$l$-skeleton of a flag piecewise linear ($d$−1)-sphere is 2($d$−$l$)-homotopy CM. In addition, tight lower bounds on the face numbers of 2-CM balanced complexes in terms of their dimension and the number of vertices are established.

The first author has associated in a natural way a profinite group to each irreducible subshift. The group in question was initially obtained as a maximal subgroup of a free profinite semigroup. In the case of minimal subshifts, the same group is shown in the present paper to also arise from geometric considerations involving the Rauzy graphs of the subshift. Indeed, the group is shown to be isomorphic to the inverse limit of the profinite completions of the fundamental groups of the Rauzy graphs of the subshift. A further result involving geometric arguments on Rauzy graphs is a criterion for freeness of the profinite group of a minimal subshift based on the Return Theorem of Berthé et al.

We give a detailed proof of Siu’s theorem on extendibility of holomorphic vector bundles of rank larger than one, and prove a corresponding extension theorem for holomorphic sprays. We apply this result to study ellipticity properties of complements of compact subsets in Stein manifolds. In particular we show that the complement of a closed ball in $\mathbb{C}^{n}, n \geq3$ , is not subelliptic.

We establish a parametric extension$h$-principle for overtwisted contact structures on manifolds of all dimensions, which is the direct generalization of the 3-dimensional result from [12]. It implies, in particular, that any closed manifold admits a contact structure in any given homotopy class of almost contact structures.

We prove an analogue of the Madsen–Weiss theorem for high-dimensional manifolds. In particular, we explicitly describe the ring of characteristic classes of smooth fibre bundles whose fibres are connected sums of$g$copies of$S$^{$n$}×$S$^{$n$}, in the limit $${g \to \infty}$$ . Rationally it is a polynomial ring in certain explicit generators, giving a high-dimensional analogue of Mumford’s conjecture.