Necessary and sufficient conditions are given in order for a Borel measure on the Euclidean sphere to have an affine image that is isotropic. A sharp reverse affine isoperimetric inequality for Borel measures on the sphere is presented. This leads to sharp reverse affine isoperimetric inequalities for convex bodies.

We study groups of automorphisms and birational transformations of quasi-projective varieties. Two methods are combined; the first one is based on p-adic analysis, the second makes use of isoperimetric inequalities and Lang–Weil estimates. For instance, we show that, if SLn(Z) acts faithfully on a complex quasi-projective variety X by birational transformations, then dim(X)⩾n−1 and X is rational if dim(X)=n−1.

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We compute the one-loop effective action of two D0-branes in the matrix model for a cosmological background, and find vanishing static potential. However, there is a non-vanishing v2 term not predicted in a supergravity calculation. This term is complex and signals an instability of the two D0-brane system, it may also indicate that the matrix model is incorrect.