In this paper, we review recent developments on the derivation and properties of macroscopic models of collective motion and self-organization. The starting point is a model of self-propelled particles interacting with its neighbors through alignment. We successively derive a mean-field model and its hydrodynamic limit. The resulting macroscopic model is the Self-Organized Hydrodynamics (SOH). We review the available existence results and known properties of the SOH model and discuss it in view of its possible extensions to other kinds of collective motion.

We describe local mirror symmetry from a mathematical point of view and make several A-model calculations using the mirror principle (localization). Our results agree with B-model computations from solutions of Picard-Fuchs differential equations constructed form the local geometry near a Fano surface within a Calabi-Yau manifold. We interpret the Gromov-Witten-type numbers from an enumerative point of view. We also describe the geometry of singular surfaces and show how the local invariants of singular surfaces agree with the smooth cases when they occur as complete intersections.

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We describe two simple obstructions to the existence of Ricci-flat Khler cone metrics on isolated Gorenstein singularities or, equivalently, to the existence of Sasaki-Einstein metrics on the links of these singularities. In particular, this also leads to new obstructions for KhlerEinstein metrics on Fano orbifolds. We present several families of hypersurface singularities that are obstructed, including 3-fold and 4-fold singularities of ADE type that have been studied previously in the physics literature. We show that the AdS/CFT dual of one obstruction is that the Rcharge of a gauge invariant chiral primary operator violates the unitarity bound.

We explore how introducing a non-trivial Mordell-Weil group changes the structure of the Coulomb phases of a five-dimensional gauge theory from an M-theory compactified on an elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau threefolds with a I _2 + I _2 collision of singularities. The resulting gauge theory has a semi-simple Lie algebra _2 or _2 . We compute topological invariants relevant for the physics, such as the Euler characteristic, Hodge numbers, and triple intersection numbers. We determine the matter representation geometrically by computing weights via intersection of curves and fibral divisors. We fix the number of charged hypermultiplets transforming in each representations by comparing the triple intersection numbers and the one-loop prepotential. This condition is enough to fix the number of representation when the Mordell-Weil group is _2 but not when it is trivial. The vanishing of the fourth power of the curvature forms in the anomaly polynomial is enough to fix the number of representations. We discuss anomaly cancellations of the six-dimensional uplifted. In particular, the gravitational anomaly is also considered as the Hodge numbers are computed explicitly without counting the degrees of freedom of the Weierstrass equation.