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We present a series of results we obtained recently about the intersection numbers of tautological classes on moduli spaces of curves, including a simple formula of the <i>n</i>-point functions for Witten9s classes, an effective recursion formula to compute higher WeilPetersson volumes, several new recursion formulae of intersection numbers and our proof of a conjecture of Itzykson and Zuber concerning denominators of intersection numbers. We also present Virasoro and KdV properties of generating functions of general mixed and intersections.

This is an expanded version of the third author's lecture in String-Math 2015 at Sanya. It summarizes some of our works in quantum cohomology. After reviewing the quantum Lefschetz and quantum Leray--Hirsch, we discuss their applications to the functoriality properties under special smooth flops, flips and blow-ups. Finally, for conifold transitions of Calabi--Yau 3-folds, formulations for small resolutions (blow-ups along Weil divisors) are sketched.

Let R be a non-discrete rank one valuation ring of characteristic p and let E be any discrete valuation ring, we prove the ring of E-Witt vectors over R has uncountable Krull dimension without assuming the axiom of existence of prime ideals for general commutative unitary rings.

We study the intermediate extension of the character sheaves on an adjoint group to the semi-stable locus of its wonderful compactification. We show that the intermediate extension can be described by a direct image construction. As a consequence, we show that the ordinary restriction of a character sheaf on the compactification to a semi-stable stratum is a shift of semisimple perverse sheaf and is closely related to Lusztig's restriction functor (from a character sheaf on a reductive group to a direct sum of character sheaves on a Levi subgroup). We also provide a (conjectural) formula for the boundary values inside the semi-stable locus of an irreducible character of a finite group of Lie type, which gives a partial answer to a question of Springer (2006) [21]. This formula holds for Steinberg character and characters coming from generic character sheaves. In the end, we verify Lusztig's conjecture Lusztig (2004) [16