This note is based on a series of four lectures the author gave at University of Montpellier, September 28-30, 2015. He started with the notion of mass in general relativity, gave a brief review of some known constructions of quasi-local mass, and then discussed the new quasi-local energy and quasi-local mass which Shing-Tung Yau and the author introduced in 2009. At the end, the proof of the positivity of quasi-local energy was sketched and a stability theorem of critical points of quasi-local energy by Po-Ning Chen, Shing-Tung Yau, and the author was discussed

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In this paper, we investigate the topology of a class of non-Kähler compact complex manifolds generalizing that of Hopf and Calabi-Eckmann manifolds. These manifolds are diffeomorphic to special systems of real quadrics$C$^{$n$}which are invariant with respect to the natural action of the real torus ($S$^{1})^{$n$}onto$C$^{$n$}. The quotient space is a simple convex polytope. The problem reduces thus to the study of the topology of certain real algebraic sets and can be handled using combinatorial results on convex polytopes. We prove that the homology groups of these compact complex manifolds can have arbitrary amount of torsion so that their topology is extremely rich. We also resolve an associated wall-crossing problem by introducing holomorphic equivariant elementary surgeries related to some transformations of the simple convex polytope. Finally, as a nice consequence, we obtain that affine non-Kähler compact complex manifolds can have arbitrary amount of torsion in their homology groups, contrasting with the Kähler situation.

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In this paper, we first establish an $L^2$-type Dolbeault isomorphism for logarithmic differential forms by H\"{o}rmander's $L^2$-estimates. By using this isomorphism and the construction of smooth Hermitian metrics, we obtain a number of new %Akizuki-Kodaira-Nakano type vanishing theorems for sheaves of logarithmic differential forms on compact K\"ahler manifolds with simple normal crossing divisors, which generalize several classical vanishing theorems, including Norimatsu's vanishing theorem, Gibrau's vanishing theorem, Le Potier's vanishing theorem and a version of the Kawamata-Viehweg vanishing theorem.