Let M be a compact n-dimensional Riemannian manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature and mean convex boundary ∂M. Assume that the mean curvature H of the boundary ∂M satisfies H≥(n−1)k>0 for some positive constant k. In this paper, we prove that the distance function d to the boundary ∂M is bounded from above by 1/𝑘 and the upper bound is achieved if and only if M is isometric to an n-dimensional Euclidean ball of radius 1/𝑘.

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.

For two nearby disjoint coassociative submanifolds C and C′ in a G2-manifold, we construct thin instantons with boundaries lying on C and C′ from regular J-holomorphic curves in C. We explain their relationship with the Seiberg-Witten invariants for C.

In this note, we explain that Ross-Thomas' result on the weighted Bergman kernels on orbifolds can be directly deduced from our previous result. This result plays an important role in the companion paper to prove an orbifold version of Donaldson Theorem.

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