In this note we show that if a projective manifold admits a Khler metric with negative holomorphic sectional curvature then the canonical bundle of the manifold is ample. This confirms a conjecture of the second author.

We use the Atiyah-Bott-Segal-Singer Lefschetz fixed point formula to calculate the Hirzebruch ?_y genus X_y(S^[n]), where S^[n] is the Hilbert scheme of points of length n of a surface S. Combinatorial interpretation of the weights of the fixed points of the natural torus action on (²)^[n] is used. This is the first step to prove a conjectural formula about the elliptic genus of the Hilbert schemes.

By a case-free approach we give a precise description of the closure of a Steinberg fiber within a twisted wonderful compactification of a simple linear algebraic group. In the nontwisted case this description was earlier obtained by the first author.

In this paper, we study the <i></i>-ordinary locus of a Shimura variety with parahoric level structure. Under the axioms in [12], we show that <i></i>-ordinary locus is a union of certain maximal EkedahlKottwitzOortRapoport strata introduced in [12] and we give criteria on the density of the <i></i>-ordinary locus.

Motivated by mirror symmetry, we study certain integral representations of solutions to the Gelfand-Kapranov-Zelevinsky (GKZ) hypergeometric system. Some of these solutions arise as period integrals for Calabi-Yau manifolds in mirror symmetry. We prove that for a suitable compactification of the parameter space, there exist certain special boundary points, which we called maximal degeneracy points, at which all solutions but one become singular.