Let<i>M</i> be a space-time whose local mass density is non-negative everywhere. Then we prove that the total mass of<i>M</i> as viewed from spatial infinity (the ADM mass) must be positive unless<i>M</i> is the flat Minkowski space-time. (So far we are making the reasonable assumption of the existence of a maximal spacelike hypersurface. We will treat this topic separately.) We can generalize our result to admit wormholes in the initial-data set. In fact, we show that the total mass associated with each asymptotic regime is non-negative with equality only if the space-time is flat.

It is argued that every Calabi-Yau manifold <i>X</i> with a mirror <i>Y</i> admits a family of supersymmetric toroidal 3-cycles. Moreover the moduli space of such cycles together with their flat connections is precisely the space <i>Y</i>. The mirror transformation is equivalent to <i>T</i>-duality on the 3-cycles. The geometry of moduli space is addressed in a general framework. Several examples are discussed.

We describe the applications of localization methods, in particular the functorial localization formula, in the proofs of several conjectures from string theory. Functorial localization formula pushes the computations on complicated moduli spaces to simple moduli spaces. It is a key technique in the proof of the general mirror formulas, the proof of the Hori-Vafa formulas for explicit expressions of basic hypergeometric series of homogeneous manifolds, the proof of the Mario-Vafa formula, its generalizations to two partition analogue. We will also discuss our development of the mathematical theory of topological vertex and simple localization proofs of the ELSV formula and Witten conjecture.

In this paper, by combining modular forms and characteristic forms, we obtain general anomaly cancellation formulas of any dimension. For 4 k+ 2 dimensional manifolds, our results include the gravitational anomaly cancellation formulas of Alvarez-Gaum and Witten in dimensions 2, 6 and 10 (\cite {AW}) as special cases. In dimension 4 k+ 2, we derive anomaly cancellation formulas for index gerbes. In dimension 4 k+ 2, we obtain certain results about eta invariants, which are interesting in spectral geometry.

In this note we discuss a recent proof of the formula for the worldsheet instanton prepotential predicted by Mirror Symmetry for the quintics in <b>P</b>⁴. One of the key ingredients in the proof is the equivariant cohomology groups on the so-called linear sigma model moduli spaces. We introduce the notion of admissible data on the equivariant cohomology groups of the linear sigma model. An admissible data may be thought of as a sequence of equivariant classes satisfying certain algebraic conditions. It arises naturally from Kontsevich's stable map compactification of moduli spaces of maps from curves into projective manifolds. The structures of admissible data help reduce many counting problems to checking certain combinatorial structure of a compactification. The mirror transformation of Candelas et al turns out to be a transformation between two admissible data associated respectively to the linear and the non-linear