The paper studies the $K$-theoretic invariants of the crossed product $C^{*}$-algebras associated with an important family of homeomorphisms of the tori $\mathbb{T}^{n}$ called Furstenberg transformations. Using the Pimsner-Voiculescu theorem, we prove that given $n$, the $K$-groups of those crossed products, whose corresponding $n\times n$ integer matrices are unipotent of maximal degree, always have the same rank $a_{n}$. We show using the theory developed here that a claim made in the literature about the torsion subgroups of these $K$-groups is false. Using the representation theory of the simple Lie algebra $\frak{sl}(2,\mathbb{C})$, we show that, remarkably, $a_{n}$ has a combinatorial significance. For example, every $a_{2n+1}$ is just the number of ways that $0$ can be represented as a sum of integers between $-n$ and $n$ (with no repetitions). By adapting an argument of van Lint (in which he answered a question of Erd\H{o}s), a simple, explicit formula for the asymptotic behavior of the sequence $\{a_{n}\}$ is given. Finally, we describe the order structure of the $K_{0}$-groups of an important class of Furstenberg crossed products, obtaining their complete Elliott invariant using classification results of H. Lin and N. C. Phillips.

The squared distance curvature is a kind of two-point curvature the sign of which turned out crucial for the smoothness of optimal transportation maps on Riemannian manifolds. Positivity properties of that new curvature have been established recently for all the simply connected compact rank one symmetric spaces, except the Cayley plane. Direct proofs were given for the sphere, an indirect one via the Hopf fibrations) for the complex and quaternionic projective spaces. Here, we present a direct proof of a property implying all the preceding ones, valid on every positively curved Riemannian locally symmetric space.

Let $K$ be a totally real number field of degree $n$. We show that the number of totally positive integers (or more generally the number of totally positive elements of a given fractional ideal) of given trace is evenly distributed around its expected value, which is obtained from geometric considerations. This result depends on unfolding an integral over a compact torus.

Positive solutions are obtained for the boundary value problem \[\begin{cases} -( | u'| ^{p-2}u')' =\lambda f( t,u),\;t\in ( 0,1) ,p>1\\ u( 0) =u(1) =0. \end{cases} \] Here $f(t,u) \geq -M,$ ($M$ is a positive constant) for $(t,u) \in [0\mathinner{,}1] \times (0,\infty )$. We will show the existence of two positive solutions by using degree theory together with the upper-lower solution method.

The following problem has been suggested by Paul Tur\' an. Let $\Omega$ be a symmetric convex body in the Euclidean space $\mathbb R^d$ or in the torus $\TT^d$. Then, what is the largest possible value of the integral of positive definite functions that are supported in $\Omega$ and normalized with the value $1$ at the origin? From this, Arestov, Berdysheva and Berens arrived at the analogous pointwise extremal problem for intervals in $\RR$. That is, under the same conditions and normalizations, the supremum of possible function values at $z$ is to be found for any given point $z\in\Omega$. However, it turns out that the problem for the real line has already been solved by Boas and Kac, who gave several proofs and also mentioned possible extensions to $\RR^d$ and to non-convex domains as well. Here we present another approach to the problem, giving the solution in $\RR^d$ and for several cases in~$\TT^d$. Actually, we elaborate on the fact that the problem is essentially one-dimensional and investigate non-convex open domains as well. We show that the extremal problems are equivalent to some more familiar ones concerning trigonometric polynomials, and thus find the extremal values for a few cases. An analysis of the relationship between the problem for $\RR^d$ and that for $\TT^d$ is given, showing that the former case is just the limiting case of the latter. Thus the hierarchy of difficulty is established, so that extremal problems for trigonometric polynomials gain renewed recognition.

Representation theorems are proved for Banach ideal spaces with the Fatou property which are built by the Calder{\'o}n--Lozanovski\u\i\ construction. Factorization theorems for operators in spaces more general than the Lebesgue $L^{p}$ spaces are investigated. It is natural to extend the Gagliardo theorem on the Schur test and the Rubio de~Francia theorem on factorization of the Muckenhoupt $A_{p}$ weights to reflexive Orlicz spaces. However, it turns out that for the scales far from $L^{p}$-spaces this is impossible. For the concrete integral operators it is shown that factorization theorems and the Schur test in some reflexive Orlicz spaces are not valid. Representation theorems for the Calder{\'o}n--Lozanovski\u\i\ construction are involved in the proofs.

We introduce and investigate using Hilbert modules the properties of the {\em Fourier algebra} $A(G)$ for a locally compact groupoid $G$. We establish a duality theorem for such groupoids in terms of multiplicative module maps. This includes as a special case the classical duality theorem for locally compact groups proved by P. Eymard.

We explicitly describe the best approximation in geodesic submanifolds of positive definite matrices obtained from involutive congruence transformations on the Cartan-Hadamard manifold ${\mathrm{Sym}}(n,{\Bbb R})^{++}$ of positive definite matrices. An explicit calculation for the minimal distance function from the geodesic submanifold ${\mathrm{Sym}}(p,{\mathbb R})^{++}\times {\mathrm{Sym}}(q,{\mathbb R})^{++}$ block diagonally embedded in ${\mathrm{Sym}}(n,{\mathbb R})^{++}$ is given in terms of metric and spectral geometric means, Cayley transform, and Schur complements of positive definite matrices when $p\leq 2$ or $q\leq 2.$