Let $f(n)$ be the maximum number of edges in a graph on $n$ vertices in which no two cycles have the same length. In 1975, Erdős raised the question of determining $f(n)$ [see J. A. Bondy and U. S. R. Murty, Graph theory with applications, Elsevier, New York, 1976; MR0411988 (54 #117)]. We prove that for $n\geq 36\cdot 5t^2-4\cdot 5t+1$ one has $f(n)\geq n+9t-1$ . We conjecture that $\liminf (f(n)-n)/\sqrt n\leq\sqrt 3$ .

We show that the product in the quantum K-ring of a generalized flag manifold G/P involves only finitely many powers of the Novikov variables. In contrast to previous approaches to this finiteness question, we exploit the finite difference module structure of quantum K-theory. At the core of the proof is a bound on the asymptotic growth of the J-function, which in turn comes from an analysis of the singularities of the zastava spaces studied in geometric representation theory. An appendix by H. Iritani establishes the equivalence between finiteness and a quadratic growth condition on certain shift operators.

Geometric genus is an important invariant in the classification theory for isolated singularities. In this paper we give a complete classification of three-dimensional isolated weighted homogeneous singularities with geometric genus one. This is one of important classes of minimally elliptic singularities.

For any r-order {0,1}-tensor A with e ones, we prove that the spectral radius of A is at most exp((r-1)/r) with the equality holds if and only if e=k^r for some integer k and all ones forms a principal sub-tensor 1_{k x k x ... x k}. We also prove a stability result for general tensor A with e ones where e = k^r+l with relatively small l. Using the stability result, we completely characterized the tensors achieving the maximum spectral radius among all r-order {0,1}-tensor A with k^r+l ones, for -r-1 ≤ l ≤ r, and k sufficiently large.

We prove a homology vanishing theorem for graphs with positive Bakry-\'Emery curvature, analogous to a classic result of Bochner on manifolds\cite {Bochner}. Specifically, we prove that if a graph has positive curvature at every vertex, then its first homology group is trivial, where the notion of homology that we use for graphs is the path homology developed by Grigor'yan, Lin, Muranov, and Yau\cite {Grigoryan2}.%\Hm {added the fundamental group curvature relation} We moreover prove that the fundamental group is finite for graphs with positive Bakry-\'Emery curvature, analogous to a classic result of Myers on manifolds\cite {Myers1941}. The proofs draw on several separate areas of graph theory. We study graph coverings, gain graphs, and cycle spaces of graphs, in addition to the Bakry-\'Emery curvature and the path homology. The main results follow as a consequence of several different relationships developed among these different areas. Specifically, we show that a graph with positive curvature can have no non-trivial infinite cover preserving 3-cycles and 4-cycles, and give a combinatorial interpretation of the first path homology in terms of the cycle space of a graph. We relate cycle spaces of graphs to gain graphs with abelian gain group, and relate these to coverings of graphs. Along the way, we prove other new facts about gain graphs, coverings, and cycles spaces that are of related interest. Furthermore, we relate gain graphs to graph homotopy and the fundamental group developed by Grigor'yan, Lin, Muranov, and Yau\cite {Grigoryan_homotopy}, and obtain an alternative proof to their result that the abelianization of the fundamental