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We introduce and analyze lower ($Ricci$) curvature bounds $ \underline{{Curv}} {\left( {M,d,m} \right)} $ ⩾$K$for metric measure spaces $ {\left( {M,d,m} \right)} $ . Our definition is based on convexity properties of the relative entropy $ Ent{\left( { \cdot \left| m \right.} \right)} $ regarded as a function on the$L$_{2}-Wasserstein space of probability measures on the metric space $ {\left( {M,d} \right)} $ . Among others, we show that $ \underline{{Curv}} {\left( {M,d,m} \right)} $ ⩾$K$implies estimates for the volume growth of concentric balls. For Riemannian manifolds, $ \underline{{Curv}} {\left( {M,d,m} \right)} $ ⩾$K$if and only if $ Ric_{M} {\left( {\xi ,\xi } \right)} $ ⩾$K$ $ {\left| \xi \right|}^{2} $ for all $ \xi \in TM $ .

Let $D$ be a Dedekind scheme with the characteristic of all residue fields not equal to 2. To every tame cover $C\to D$ with only odd ramification we associate a second Stiefel-Whitney class in the second cohomology with mod 2 coefficients of a certain tame orbicurve $[D]$ associated to $D$ . This class is then related to the pull-back of the second Stiefel-Whitney class of the push-forward of the line bundle of half of the ramification divisor. This shows (indirectly) that our Stiefel-Whitney class is the pull-back of a sum of cohomology classes considered by Esnault, Kahn and Viehweg in ‘Coverings with odd ramification and Stiefel-Whitney classes’. Perhaps more importantly, in the case of a proper and smooth curve over an algebraically closed field, our Stiefel-Whitney class is shown to be the pull-back of an invariant considered by Serre in ‘Revêtements à ramification impaire et thêta-caractéristiques’, and in this case our arguments give a new proof of the main result of that article.

In this paper, we study the question of which compact manifolds admit a metric with positive scalar curvature. Scalar curvature is perhaps the weakest invariant among all the well-known invariants constructed from the curvature tensor. It measures the deviation of the Riemannian volume of the geodesic ball from the euclidean volume of the geodesic ball. As a result, it does not tell us much of the behavior of the geodesics in the manifold. Therefore it was remarkable that in 1963, Lichnerowicz [i] was able to prove the theorem that on a compact spin manifold with positive scalar curvature, there is no harmonic spinor. Applying

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