We establish a differential d 2 (D 1)= h 0 2 h 3 g 2 in the 51-stem of the Adams spectral sequence at the prime 2, which gives the first correct calculation of the stable 51 and 52 stems. This differential is remarkable since we know of no way to prove it without recourse to the motivic Adams spectral sequence. It is the last undetermined differential in the range of the first author's detailed calculations of the n-stems for n< 60 [6]. This note advertises the use of the motivic Adams spectral sequence to obtain information about classical stable homotopy groups.

Given a 3-holed sphere decomposition of an orientable closed surface, it is shown that each orientation preserving homeomorphism of the surface is isotopic to a composition AB where A is a product of positive Dehn twists and B is a product of negative Dehn twists on the decomposition curves.

The goal of smooth function reconstruction on a 2D or 3D manifold is to obtain a smooth function on surfaces or higher dimensional manifolds. It is a common problem in computer graphics and computational mathematics, especially in civil engineering including structural analysis of solid objects. In this chapter, we introduce a new method using harmonic functions for solving this problem. This method contains the following steps: (1) Partition the boundary surfaces of the 3D manifold based on sample points so that each sample point is on the edge of the partition. (2) Use gradually varied interpolation on the edges so that each point on the edge will be assigned a value. In addition, all values on the edge are gradually varied. (3) Use discrete harmonic functions to fit the unknown points, i.e. the points inside each partition patch. This solution of the fitting becomes the piecewise harmonic function.

Let Y be the zero loci of a regular section of a convex vector bundle Y over Y . We provide a proof of a conjecture of Cox, Katz and Lee for the virtual class of the genus zero moduli of stable maps to Y . This in turn yields the expected relationship between Gromov-Witten theories of Y and Y which together with Mirror Theorems allows for the calculation of enumerative invariants of Y inside of Y .

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.