Let $p\equiv 4,7\ \mathrm {mod}\ 9$ be a rational prime number such that $3\ \mathrm {mod}\ p$ is not a cube. In this paper, we prove the $3$-part of $|\textrm {III}(E_p)|\cdot |\textrm {III}(E_{3p^2})|$ is as predicted by the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, where $E_p: x^3+y^3=p$ and $E_{3p^2}: x^3+y^3=3p^2$ are the elliptic curves related to the Sylvester conjecture and cube sum problems.

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We call a finite set ${\mathcal{D}}\subset {\Bbb Z}^s$ a {\it (self-affine) tile digit set} with respect to an expanding integral matrix ${\bf A}$ if the self-affine set $T({\bf A}, \D)$ is a tile in ${\Bbb R}^s$. It has been a widely open problem to characterize the tile digit sets for a given ${\bf A}$. While there are substantial investigations on ${\Bbb R}$, there is no result on ${\Bbb R}^s$ other than the case where $|\det {\bf A}| =p$ with $p$ a prime. In this paper, we make an initiation to study a basic case ${\bf A} = p{\bf I}_2$ in ${\Bbb R}^2$. We characterize the tile digit sets by making use of the zeros of the mask polynomial of ${\mathcal{D}}$ associated with a tile criterion of Kenyon [K], together with a recent result of Iosevich {\it et al} on factorization of sets in ${\Bbb Z}_p \times {\Bbb Z}_p$ [IMP].

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This is the note for a series of lectures that the author gave at the Centre de Recerca Matem´atica (CRM), Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain on October 19–24, 2009. The aim is to give a comprehensive description of some recent work of the author and his students on generalisations of the Gross-Zagier formula, Euler systems on Shimura curves, and rational points on elliptic curves.