In this paper, we generalize the Cao-Yau'’s gradient estimate for the sum of squares of vector …elds up to higher step under ssumption of the generalized curvature-dimension inequality. With its applications, by deriving a curvature-dimension inequality, we are able to obtain the Li-Yau gradient estimate for the CR heat equation in a closed pseudohermitian manifold of nonvanishing torsion tensors. As consequences, we obtain the Harnack inequality and upper bound estimate for the CR heat kernel. 1.

We show that every complete nontrivial gradient Yamabe soliton admits a special global warped product structure with a one-dimensional base. Based on this, we obtain a general classification theorem for complete nontrivial locally conformally flat gradient Yamabe solitons.

The notion of a generalized CRF-structure on a smooth manifold was recently introduced and studied by Vaisman (2008)[6]. An important class of generalized CRF-structures on an odd dimensional manifold M consists of CRF-structures having complementary frames of the form , where is a vector field and is a 1-form on M with ()= 1. It turns out that these kinds of CRF-structures give rise to a special class of what we called strong generalized contact structures in Poon and Wade [5]. More precisely, we show that to any CRF-structures with complementary frames of the form , there corresponds a canonical Lie bialgebroid. Finally, we explain the relationship between generalized contact structures and another generalization of the notion of a CauchyRiemann structure on a manifold.

We prove some structure results for transversely reducible Sasaki manifolds. In particular, we show a Sasaki manifold with positive Ricci curvature is transversely irreducible, and so join (product) construction cannot be generalized to irregular SasakiEinstein manifolds, as opposed to the quasi-regular case done by WangZiller and BoyerGalicki. As an application, we classify compact Sasaki manifolds with nonnegative transverse bisectional curvature, which can be viewed as the generalized Frankel conjecture in Sasaki geometry.

We study the rigidity of polyhedral surfaces using variational principles. The action functionals are derived from the cosine laws. The main focus of this paper is on the cosine law for a nontriangular region bounded by three possibly disjoint geodesics. Several of these cosine laws were first discovered and used by Fenchel and Nielsen. By studying the derivative of the cosine laws, we discover a uniform approach to several variational principles on polyhedral surfaces with or without boundary. As a consequence, the work of Penner, Bobenko and Springborn and Thurston on rigidity of polyhedral surfaces and circle patterns are extended to a very general context.