In [10], R. Hamilton established a differential Harnack inequality for solutions to the Ricci flow with nonnegative curvature operator. We show that this inequality holds under the weaker condition that M × R2 has nonnegative isotropic curvature.

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Blocking is commonly used in randomized experiments to increase efficiency of estimation. A generalization of blocking removes allocations with imbalance in covariate distributions between treated and control units, and then randomizes within the remaining set of allocations with balance. This idea of rerandomization was formalized by Morgan and Rubin (Annals of Statistics, 2012, 40, 1263–1282), who suggested using Mahalanobis distance between treated and control covariate means as the criterion for removing unbalanced allocations. Kallus (Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B: Statistical Methodology, 2018, 80, 85–112) proposed reducing the set of balanced allocations to the minimum. Here we discuss the implication of such an ‘optimal’ rerandomization design for inferences to the units in the sample and to the population from which the units in the sample were randomly drawn. We argue that, in general, it is a bad idea to seek the optimal design for an inference because that inference typically only reflects uncertainty from the random sampling of units, which is usually hypothetical, and not the randomization of units to treatment versus control.

We study BPS spectra of D-branes on local Calabi-Yau threefolds O(−p)⊕O(p−2)→P^1 with p=0,1, corresponding to C^3/Z_2 and the resolved conifold. Nonabelianization for exponential networks is applied to compute directly unframed BPS indices counting states with D2 and D0 brane charges. Known results on these BPS spectra are correctly reproduced by computing new types of BPS invariants of 3d-5d BPS states, encoded by nonabelianization, through their wall-crossing. We also develop the notion of exponential BPS graphs for the simplest toric examples, and show that they encode both the quiver and the potential associated to the Calabi-Yau via geometric engineering.

We study the non-klt locus of singularities of pairs. We show that given a pair (X, B) and a projective morphism X → Z with connected fibres such that −(KX +B) is nef over Z, the non-klt locus of (X, B) has at most two connected components near each fibre of X → Z. This was conjectured by Hacon and Han. In a different direction we answer a question of Mark Gross on connectedness of the non-klt loci of certain pairs. This is motivated by constructions in Mirror Symmetry.