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We verify a conjecture of Rognes by establishing a localization cofiber sequence of spectra $K(\mathbb{Z})\to K(ku)\to K(KU) \to\Sigma K(\mathbb{Z})$ for the algebraic$K$-theory of topological$K$-theory. We deduce the existence of this sequence as a consequence of a dévissage theorem identifying the$K$-theory of the Waldhausen category of finitely generated finite stage Postnikov towers of modules over a connective $A_\infty$ ring spectrum$R$with the Quillen$K$-theory of the abelian category of finitely generated $\pi_{0}R$ -modules.

Delaunay meshes (DM) are a special type of manifold triangle meshes --- where the local Delaunay condition holds everywhere --- and find important applications in digital geometry processing. This paper addresses the \yongjin{general} DM simplification problem: given an arbitrary manifold triangle mesh M with n vertices and the user-specified resolution m(< n), compute a Delaunay mesh M* with m vertices that has the least Hausdorff distance to M. To solve the problem, we abstract the simplification process using a 2D Cartesian grid model, in which each grid point corresponds to triangle meshes with a certain number of vertices and a simplification process is a monotonic path on the grid. We develop a novel differential-evolution-based method to compute a low-cost path, which leads to a high quality Delaunay mesh. Extensive evaluation shows that our method consistently outperforms the existing methods in terms of approximation error. In particular, our method is highly effective for small-scale CAD models and man-made objects with sharp features but less details. Moreover, our method is fully automatic and can preserve sharp features well and deal with models with multiple components, whereas the existing methods often fail.

Period mappings were introduced in the sixties [G] to study variation of complex structures of families of algebraic varieties. The theory of tautological systems was introduced recently [LSY,LY] to understand period integrals of algebraic manifolds. In this paper, we give an explicit construction of a tautological system for each component of a period mapping.

The weak mean curvature is lower semicontinuous under weak convergence of varifolds, that is, if ¹k ! ¹ weakly as varifolds then k ~H¹ kLp(¹)· lim infk!1 k ~H¹k kLp(¹k). In contrast, if Tk ! T weakly as integral currents, then ¹T may not have a locally bounded ¯rst variation even if k ~H¹Tk kL1(¹k) is bounded. In 1999, Luigi Ambrosio asked the question whether lower semi- continuity of the weak mean curvature is true when T is assumed to be smooth. This was proved in [AmMa03] for p > n = dim T in Rn+1 using results from [Sch04]. Here we prove this in any dimension and codimension down to the desired exponent p = 2. For p = n = 2, this corresponds to the Willmore functional. In a forthcoming joint work [RoSch06], main steps of the pre- sent article are used to prove a modi¯ed conjecture of De Giorgi that the sum of the area and the Willmore functional is the ¡-limit of a di®use Landau-Ginzburg approximation.