It is proved that if a compact manifold admits a smooth action by a compact, connected, non-abelian Lie group, then it admits a metric of positive scalar curvature. This result is used to prove that if ^<i>n</i> is an exotic<i>n</i>-sphere which does not bound a spin manifold, then the only possible compact connected transformation groups of ^<i>n</i> are tori of dimension [(<i>n</i>+1)/2].

In [4] the authors observed that the topological methods in the theory of three-dimensional manifolds can be modified to settle some old problems in the classical theory of minimal surfaces in euclidean space (see also [1],[12]). In [4] and [5] we found that we could use the theory of minimal surfaces to extend the theorems of Papakriakopoulous, Whitehead and Shapiro, Stalling and Epstein on the Dehn's lemma, loop theorem and sphere theorem. The key point to our approach to these topological theorems is the following: Given a certain family of maps of the disk or sphere into our three-dimensional manifold M, we minimize the area of the maps (with respect to the pulled back metric) in this family and prove the existence of the minimal map. Then by using the area minimizing property of the map and the tower construction in topology, we prove that any area minimizing map in the family is an embedding. In this way

This paper describes a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-assisted real-time three-dimensional shape measurement system. Our experiments demonstrated that the absolute coordinates calculation and rendering speed of a GPU is more than four times faster than that of a dual CPU workstation with the same graphics card. By implementing the GPU into our system, we realized simultaneous absolute coordinate acquisition, reconstruction and display at 30 frames per second with a resolution of approximately 266K points per frame. Moreover, a 2+1 phase-shifting algorithm was employed to alleviate the measurement error caused by motion. Applications of the system include medical imaging, manufacturing, entertainment, and security.

This paper provides a rigorous proof of the existence of an infinite number of black hole solutions to the Einstein-Yang/Mills equations with gauge group<i>SU</i>(2), for any event horizon. It is also demonstrated that the ADM mass of each solutions is finite, and that the corresponding Einstein metric tends to the associated Schwarzschild metric at a rate 1/<i>r</i> ², as<i>r</i> tends to infinity.

We consider a graph G and a covering G of G and we study the relations of their eigenvalues and heat kernels. We evaluate the heat kernel for an infinite k-regular tree and we examine the heat kernels for general k-regular graphs. In particular, we show that a k-regular graph on n vertices has at most (1+ o (1)) 2 log n knlog k