Motivated by results on the simplicial volume of locally symmetric spaces of finite volume, in this note, we observe that the simplicial volume of the moduli space Mg,n is equal to 0 if g  2; g = 1, n  3; or g = 0, n  6; and the orbifold simplicial volume of Mg,n is positive if g = 1, n = 0, 1; g = 0, n = 4. We also observe that the simplicial volume of the Deligne-Mumford compactification of Mg,n is equal to 0, and the simplicial volumes of the reductive Borel-Serre compactification of arithmetic locally symmetric spaces ..\X and the Baily-Borel compactification of Hermitian arithmetic locally symmetric spaces ..\X are also equal to 0 if the Q-rank of ..\X is at least 3 or if ..\X is irreducible and of Q-rank 2.

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This note surveys and compares results on the separation of variables construction for soliton solutions of curvature equations including the K\"ahler-Ricci flow and the Lagrangian mean curvature flow. In the last section, we propose some new generalizations in the Lagrangian mean curvature flow case.

We extend recent existence results for compact constant mean curvature normal geodesic graphs with boundary in space forms in a unified way to a large class of ambient spaces. That extension is achieved by solving a constant mean curvature existence problem in a general setting presented in two isometrically equivalent versions.

On a compact K¨ahler manifold we introduce a cohomological obstruction to the solvability of the constant scalar curvature (cscK) equation twisted by a semipositive form, appearing in works of Fine and Song-Tian. As a special case we find an obstruction for a manifold to be the base of a holomorphic submersion carrying a cscK metric in certain “adiabatic” classes. We apply this to find new examples of general type threefolds with classes which do not admit a cscK representative. When the twist vanishes our obstruction extends the slope stability of Ross-Thomas to effective divisors on a K¨ahler manifold. Thus we find examples of non-projective slope unstable manifolds.