Let S be a complex smooth projective surface and L be a line bundle on S. G¨ottsche conjectured that for every integer r, the number of r-nodal curves in |L| is a universal polynomial of four topological numbers when L is sufficiently ample. We prove G¨ottsche’s conjecture using the algebraic cobordism group of line bundles on surfaces and degeneration of Hilbert schemes of points. In addition, we prove the G¨ottsche-Yau-Zaslow Formula which expresses the generating function of the numbers of nodal curves in terms of quasimodular forms and two unknown series.

Motivated by results on the simplicial volume of locally symmetric spaces of finite volume, in this note, we observe that the simplicial volume of the moduli space Mg,n is equal to 0 if g  2; g = 1, n  3; or g = 0, n  6; and the orbifold simplicial volume of Mg,n is positive if g = 1, n = 0, 1; g = 0, n = 4. We also observe that the simplicial volume of the Deligne-Mumford compactification of Mg,n is equal to 0, and the simplicial volumes of the reductive Borel-Serre compactification of arithmetic locally symmetric spaces ..\X and the Baily-Borel compactification of Hermitian arithmetic locally symmetric spaces ..\X are also equal to 0 if the Q-rank of ..\X is at least 3 or if ..\X is irreducible and of Q-rank 2.

Using the degeneration formula for Donaldson-Thomas invariants [L-W,MNOP2], we proved formulae for blowing up a point, simple flops, and extremal transitions.

The authors proved in [5] that in a complete, connected, and simply connected Riemannian manifold, the volume of the intersection of two small geodesic balls depends only on the distance between the centers and the radii if and only if the space is harmonic. In this paper, we show that this proposition remains true, if the condition is restricted to balls of equal radii.

For all open Riemann surface N and real number  2 (0, /2), we construct a conformal minimal immersion X = (X1,X2,X3) : N ! R3 such that X3+tan()|X1| : N ! R is positive and proper. Furthermore, X can be chosen with an arbitrarily prescribed flux map. Moreover, we produce properly immersed hyperbolic minimal surfaces with non-empty boundary in R3 lying above a negative sublinear graph.