In this article we first show that any finite cover of the moduli space of closed Riemann surfaces of genus $g$ with $g\geq 2$ does not admit any Riemannian metric $ds^2$ of nonnegative scalar curvature such that $ds^2 \succ ||\cdot||_{T}$ where $||\cdot||_T$ is the Teichm\"uller metric. Our second result is the proof that any cover $M$ of the moduli space $\mathbb{M}_{g}$ of a closed Riemann surface $S_{g}$ does not admit any complete Riemannian metric of uniformly positive scalar curvature in the quasi-isometry class of the Teichm\"uller metric, which implies a conjecture of Farb-Weinberger in \cite{Farb-prob}.

Let Y be a closed and oriented 3-manifold. We define different versions of unfolded Seiberg-Witten Floer spectra for Y. These invariants generalize Manolescu's Seiberg-Witten Floer spectrum for rational homology 3-spheres. We also compute some examples when Y is a Seifert space.

Let S be a compact, orientable surface of hyperbolic type and let ψ be a mapping class of S. The present article shows that there exists a finite cover X of S and a lift ψ_X of ψ to X such that the spectral radius of ψ_X, viewed as an automorphism of H_1(X,C), is greater than one if and only if ψ has infinite order and is not a Dehn multitwist. Among the corollaries of this result is the fact that a compact, irreducible 3-manifold with toroidal or empty boundary and positive simplicial volume admits a finite cover for which the multivariable Alexander polynomial is not identically zero and has Mahler measure strictly greater than one; such a manifold also admits a finite cover whose integral first homology has nontrivial torsion. An independent proof of the main result of this paper was given by A. Hadari [Geom. Topol. 24 (2020), no. 4, 1717–1750; MR4173920]. In that paper, the surface was assumed to have at least one boundary component, but stronger control over the required finite covers was obtained.

Based on the proof of Labastida-Mari {} o-Ooguri-Vafa conjecture\cite {lmov}, we derive an infinite product formula for Chern-Simons partition functions, the generating function of quantum $\fsl_N $ invariants. Some symmetry properties of the infinite product will also be discussed.

We show that the order of the cardinality of maximal complete $1$-systems of loops on non-orientable surfaces is $\sim |\chi|^{2}$. In particular, we determine the exact cardinality of maximal complete $1$-systems of loops on punctured projective planes. To prove these results, we show that the cardinality of maximal systems of arcs pairwise-intersecting at most once on a non-orientable surface is $2|\chi|(|\chi|+1)$.