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.

This paper is a contribution to the general problem of giving an explicit description of the basic locus in the reduction modulo p of Shimura varieties. Motivated by\cite {Vollaard-Wedhorn} and\cite {Rapoport-Terstiege-Wilson}, we classify the cases where the basic locus is (in a natural way) the union of classical Deligne-Lusztig sets associated to Coxeter elements. We show that if this is satisfied, then the Newton strata and Ekedahl-Oort strata have many nice properties.

Mirror principle is a general method developed in [LLY1]-[LLY4] to compute characteristic classes and characteristic numbers on moduli spaces of stable maps in terms of hypergeometric type series. The counting of the numbers of curves in Calabi-Yau manifolds from mirror symmetry corresponds to the computation of Euler numbers. This principle computes quite general Hirzebruch multiplicative classes such as the total Chern classes.

We prove that the image of period map is algebraic, as conjectured by Griffiths.

Let X be a compact K\" ahler manifold and X be a simple normal crossing divisor. If X is the support of some effective X -ample divisor, we show <div class="gsh_dspfr"> X