We introduce a technique based on Gaussian maps to study whether a surface can lie on a threefold as a very ample divisor with given normal bundle. We give applications, among which one to surfaces of general type and another to Enriques surfaces. In particular, we prove the genus bound g  17 for Enriques Fano threefolds. Moreover we find a new Enriques-Fano threefold of genus 9 whose normalization has canonical but not terminal singularities and does not admit Q-smoothings.

We describe the potential functions for N= 4B supersymmetric quantum mechanics with D (2, 1; ) symmetry.

Using deformations of singular twistor spaces, a generalisation of the connected sum construction appropriate for quaternionic manifolds is introduced. This is used to construct examples of quaternionic manifolds which have no quaternionic symmetries and leads to examples of quaternionic manifolds whose twistor spaces have arbitrary algebraic dimension.

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We prove that the first Chern form of the moduli space of polarized Calabi-Yau manifolds, with the Hodge metric or the Weil-Petersson metric, represent the first Chern class of the canonical extensions of the tangent bundle to the compactification of the moduli space with normal crossing divisors.