The continuity of weak solutions of elliptic partial differential equations $$div \mathcal{A}(x,\nabla u) = 0$$ is considered under minimal structure assumptions. The main result guarantees the continuity at the point$x$_{0}for weakly monotone weak solutions if the structure of$A$is controlled in a sequence of annuli $$B(x_0 ,R_j )\backslash \bar B(x_0 ,r_j )$$ with uniformly bounded ratio$R$_{$j$}$/r$_{$j$}such that lim_{$j→∞$}$R$_{$j$}=0. As a consequence, we obtain a sufficient condition for the continuity of mappings of finite distortion.

We present a homogeneous real analytic hypersurface in C^{3}, two-nondegenerate, uniformly Levi degenerate of rank one, with a seven-dimensional CR automorphism group such that the isotropy group of each point is two-dimensional and commutative. The classical tube Γ_{C}over the two-dimensional real cone in R^{3}is also homogeneous and has a seven-dimensional CR automorphism group. However, our example is$not$biholomorphic to the tube over the real cone, because the two-dimensional isotropy groups of Γ_{C}are, in contrast, noncommutative.

This paper gives a partial answer to a problem raised by Griffiths in [4], which is a kind of converse of Abel’s theorem.

It is shown that if a function$u$satisfies a backward parabolic inequality in an open set Ω∉$R$^{$n$+1}and vanishes to infinite order at a point ($x$_{0}·$t$_{0}) in Ω, then$u(x, t$_{0})=0 for all$x$in the connected component of$x$_{0}in Ω⌢($R$^{$n$}×{$t$_{0}}).

We prove several new results on the absolutely continuous spectra of perturbed one-dimensional Stark operators. First, we find new classes of perturbations, characterized mainly by smoothness conditions, which preserve purely absolutely continuous spectrum. Then we establish stability of the absolutely continuous spectrum in more general situations, where imbedded singular spectrum may occur. We present two kinds of optimal conditions for the stability of absolutely continuous spectrum: decay and smoothness. In the decay direction, we show that a sufficient (in the power scale) condition is |$q$($x$)|≤$C$(1+|$x$|)^{−1/4−ε}; in the smoothness direction, a sufficient condition in Hölder classes is$q$∈$C$^{1/2+ε}($R$). On the other hand, we show that there exist potentials which both satisfy |$q$($x$)|≤$C$(1+|$x$|)^{−1/4}and belong to$C$^{1/2}($R$) for which the spectrum becomes purely singular on the whole real axis, so that the above results are optimal within the scales considered.