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We show that the notion of hyperconvex representation due to F. Labourie gives a geometric characterization of the representations of a surface group in PSLn(R) that belong to the Hitchin component.

We review some recent results on the mean curvature flows of Lagrangian submanifolds from the perspective of geometric partial differential equations. These include global existence and convergence results, characterizations of first-time singularities, and constructions of self-similar solutions.

From any 4-dimensional oriented handlebody X without 3- and 4-handles and with b2  1, we construct arbitrary many compact Stein 4-manifolds that are mutually homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to each other, so that their topological invariants (their fundamental groups, homology groups, boundary homology groups, and intersection forms) coincide with those of X. We also discuss the induced contact structures on their boundaries. Furthermore, for any smooth 4-manifold pair (Z, Y ) such that the complement Z − int Y is a handlebody without 3- and 4-handles and with b2  1, we construct arbitrary many exotic embeddings of a compact 4-manifold Y 0 into Z, such that Y 0 has the same topological invariants as Y .

We obtain an estimate for the volumes of neighborhoods of sets of large curvature in three-dimensional K¨ahler-Einstein manifolds. The key technical step is to prove that a version of monotonicity for L2 energy holds as long as the underlying region does not “carry homology” (in the sense that the normalized energy in a ball controls the normalized energy in an interior ball).