In this short survey paper, we shall discuss certain recent results in classical gravity. Our main attention will be restricted to two topics in which we have been involved; the positive mass conjecture and its extensions to the case with horizons, including the Penrose conjecture (Part I), and the interaction of gravity with other force fields and quantum-mechanical particles (Part II).

The SOC-monotone function (respectively, SOC-convex function) is a scalar valued function that induces a map to preserve the monotone order (respectively, the convex order), when imposed on the spectral factorization of vectors associated with second-order cones (SOCs) in general Hilbert spaces. In this paper, we provide the sufficient and necessary characterizations for the two classes of functions, and particularly establish that the set of continuous SOC-monotone (respectively, SOC-convex) functions coincides with that of continuous matrix monotone (respectively, matrix convex) functions of order 2.

We present the extended Kuranishi space for a Kodaira surface as a nontrivial example to Kontsevich and Barannikov's extended deformation theory. We provide a non-trivial example of Hertling-Manin's weak Frobenius manifold. In addition, we find that Kodaira surface is its own mirror image in the sense of Merkulov. The calculations of extended deformation and the weak Frobenius structure are based on Merkulov's perturbation method. Our computation of cohomology is done in the context of compact nilmanifolds.

This article provides a complete description of the differential Gerstenhaber algebras of all nilpotent complex structures on any real six-dimensional nilpotent algebra. As an application, we classify all pseudo-Khlerian complex structures on six-dimensional nilpotent algebras whose differential Gerstenhaber algebra is quasi-isomorphic to that of the symplectic structure. In a weak sense of mirror symmetry, this gives a classication of pseudo-Khler structures on six-dimensional nilpotent algebras whose mirror images are themselves.

We establish the second part of Milnor's conjecture on the volume of simplexes in hyperbolic and spherical spaces. A characterization of the closure of the space of the angle Gram matrices of simplexes is also obtained.