We discuss the boundary behavior of functions in star-invariant subspaces ($BH$^{2})^{⊥}, where$B$is a Blaschke product. Extending some results of Ahern and Clark, we are particularly interested in the growth rates of functions at points of the spectrum of$B$where$B$does not admit a derivative in the sense of Carathéodory.

We present a reduction-of-codimension theorem for surfaces with parallel mean curvature in symmetric spaces.

We study inhomogeneous random graphs in the subcritical case. Among other results, we derive an exact formula for the size of the largest connected component scaled by log$n$, with$n$being the size of the graph. This generalizes a result for the “rank-1 case”. We also investigate branching processes associated with these graphs. In particular, we discover that the same well-known equation for the survival probability, whose positive solution determines the asymptotics of the size of the largest component in the supercritical case, also plays a crucial role in the subcritical case. However, now it is the$negative$solutions that come into play. We disclose their relationship to the distribution of the progeny of the branching process.

We construct an invariant of parametrized generic real algebraic surfaces in ℝ$P$^{3}which generalizes the Brown invariant of immersed surfaces from smooth topology. The invariant is constructed using self-intersections, which are real algebraic curves with points of three local characters: the intersection of two real sheets, the intersection of two complex conjugate sheets or a Whitney umbrella. In Kirby and Melvin (Local surgery formulas for quantum invariants and the Arf invariant, in$Proceedings of the Casson Fest$, Geom. Topol. Monogr.$7$, pp. 213–233, Geom. Topol. Publ., Coventry, 2004) the Brown invariant was expressed through a self-linking number of the self-intersection. We extend the definition of this self-linking number to the case of parametrized generic real algebraic surfaces.

For the classical space of functions with bounded mean oscillation, it is well known that $\operatorname{VMO}^{**} = \operatorname{BMO}$ and there are many characterizations of the distance from a function$f$in $\operatorname{BMO}$ to $\operatorname{VMO}$ . When considering the Bloch space, results in the same vein are available with respect to the little Bloch space. In this paper such duality results and distance formulas are obtained by pure functional analysis. Applications include general Möbius invariant spaces such as$Q$_{$K$}-spaces, weighted spaces, Lipschitz–Hölder spaces and rectangular $\operatorname{BMO}$ of several variables.