In this Note we prove that, under a weaker condition than the-lemma, the existence of balanced metrics is preserved under small deformations. This weaker condition is satisfied on the twistor space over a compact self-dual four manifold.

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.

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 several vanishing theorems for a class of generalized elliptic genera on foliated manifolds, by using classical equivariant index theory. The main techniques are the use of the Jacobi theta-functions and the construction of a new class of elliptic operators associated to foliations.