In this paper, we introduce a motivic version of To¨en’s derived Hall algebra. Then we point out that the two kinds of Hall algebras in the sense of To¨en and Kontsevich–Soibelman, respectively, are Drinfeld dual pairs, not only in the classical case (by counting over finite fields) but also in the motivic version. Consequently they are canonically isomorphic. All proofs, including that for the most important associative property, are deduced in a self-contained way by analyzing the symmetry properties around the octahedral axiom, a method we used previously

Some uniform theorems on the artinianness of certain local cohomology modules are proven in a general situation. They generalize and imply previous results about the artinianness of some special local cohomology modules in the graded case.

We study cluster categories arising from marked surfaces (with punctures and nonempty boundaries). By constructing skewed-gentle algebras, we show that there is a bijection between tagged curves and string objects. Applications include interpreting dimensions of Ext1 as intersection numbers of tagged curves and Auslander-Reiten translation as tagged rotation. An important consequence is that the cluster(-tilting) exchange graphs of such cluster categories are connected.

We show that the standard graded cover of the well-known category $\mathcal{O}$ of Bernstein–Gelfand–Gelfand can be characterized by its compatibility with the action of the center of the enveloping algebra.

We propose the notion of partial resolution of a ring, which is by definition the endomorphism ring of a certain generator of the given ring. We prove that the singularity category of the partial resolution is a quotient of the singularity category of the given ring. Consequences and examples are given.