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Zika virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus. It was first isolated from Uganda in 1947 and has become an emergent event since 2007. However, because of the inconsistency of alignment methods, the evolution of ZIKV remains poorly understood. In this study, we first use the complete protein and an alignment-free method to build a phylogenetic tree of 87 Zika strains in which Asian, East African, and West African lineages are characterized. We also use the NS5 protein to construct the genetic relationship among 44 Zika strains. For the first time, these strains are divided into two clades: African 1 and African 2. This result suggests that ZIKV originates from Africa, then spread to Asia, Pacific islands, and throughout the Americas. We also perform the phylogeny analysis for 53 viruses in genus Flavivirus to which ZIKV belongs using complete proteins. Our conclusion is consistent with the classification by the hosts and transmission vectors.

For projective conifold transitions between Calabi-Yau threefolds X and Y, with X close to Y in the moduli, we show that the combined information provided by the A model (Gromov–Witten theory in all genera) and B model (variation of Hodge structures) on X, linked along the vanishing cycles, determines the corresponding combined information on Y. Similar result holds in the reverse direction when linked with the exceptional curves.

Let $A$ be a complex, commutative unital Banach algebra. We introduce two notions of exponential reducibility of Banach algebra tuples and present an analogue to the Corach-Suárez result on the connection between reducibility in $A$ and in $C(M(A))$ . Our methods are of an analytical nature. Necessary and sufficient geometric/topological conditions are given for reducibility (respectively reducibility to the principal component of $U_{n}(A)$ ) whenever the spectrum of $A$ is homeomorphic to a subset of $\mathbb{C}^{n}$ .

We construct noncompact solutions to the affine normal flow of hypersurfaces, and show that all ancient solutions must be either ellipsoids (shrinking solitons) or paraboloids (translating solitons). We also provide a new proof of the existence of a hyperbolic affine sphere asymptotic to the boundary of a convex cone containing no lines, which is originally due to Cheng-Yau. The main techniques are local second-derivative estimates for a parabolic Monge-Amp`ere equation modeled on those of Ben Andrews and Guti´errez-Huang, a decay estimate for the cubic form under the affine normal flow due to Ben Andrews, and a hypersurface barrier due to Calabi.