A set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the Brascamp--Lieb inequality to hold has recently been found by Bennett, Carbery, Christ, and Tao. We present an analysis of these conditions. This analysis allows us to give a concise description of the set where the inequality holds in the case where each of the linear maps involved has co-rank $1$. This complements the result of Barthe concerning the case where the linear maps all have rank $1$. Pushing our analysis further, we describe the case where the maps have either rank $1$ or rank $2$. A separate but related problem is to give a list of the finite number of conditions necessary and sufficient for the Brascamp--Lieb inequality to hold. We present an algorithm which generates such a list.

We use Krivine's form of the Grothendieck inequality to renorm the space of bounded linear maps acting between Banach lattices. We construct preduals and describe the nuclear operators associated with these preduals for this renormed space of bounded operators as well as for the spaces of $p$-convex, $p$-concave and positive $p$-summing operators acting between Banach lattices and Banach spaces. The nuclear operators obtained are described in terms of factorizations through classical Banach spaces via positive operators.

In general, the tensor product, $A \otimes B$, of the lattices $A$ and $B$ with zero is not a lattice (it is only a join-semilattice with zero). If $A\otimes B$ is a {\it capped\/} tensor product, then $A\otimes B$ is a lattice (the converse is not known). In this paper, we investigate lattices $A$ with zero enjoying the property that $A\otimes B$ is a capped tensor product, for {\it every\/} lattice $B$ with zero; we shall call such lattices {\it amenable}. The first author introduced in 1966 the concept of a {\it sharply transferable lattice}. In 1972, H.~Gaskill defined, similarly, sharply transferable semilattices, and characterized them by a very effective condition (T). We prove that {\it a finite lattice $A$ is\/} amenable {\it if{}f it is\/} sharply transferable {\it as a join-semilattice}. For a general lattice $A$ with zero, we obtain the result: {\it $A$ is amenable if{}f $A$ is locally finite and every finite sublattice of $A$ is transferable as a join-semilattice}. This yields, for example, that a finite lattice $A$ is amenable if{}f $A\otimes\FL(3)$ is a lattice if{}f $A$ satisfies (T), with respect to join. In particular, $M_3\otimes\FL(3)$ is not a lattice. This solves a problem raised by R.~W.~Quackenbush in 1985 whether the tensor product of lattices with zero is always a lattice.