The moduli space of smooth real binary octics has five connected components. They parametrize the real binary octics whose defining equations have $0,\dots,4$ complex-conjugate pairs of roots respectively. We show that each of these five components has a real hyperbolic structure in the sense that each is isomorphic as a real-analytic manifold to the quotient of an open dense subset of $5$-dimensional real hyperbolic space $\mathbb{RH}^5$ by the action of an arithmetic subgroup of $\operatorname{Isom}(\mathbb{RH}^5)$. These subgroups are commensurable to discrete hyperbolic reflection groups, and the Vinberg diagrams of the latter are computed.

It is well known that multiple polylogarithms give rise to good unipotent variations of mixed Hodge-Tate structures. In this paper we shall {\em explicitly} determine these structures related to multiple logarithms and some other multiple polylogarithms of lower weights. The purpose of this explicit construction is to give some important applications: First we study the limit of mixed Hodge-Tate structures and make a conjecture relating the variations of mixed Hodge-Tate structures of multiple logarithms to those of general multiple {\em poly}\/logarithms. Then following Deligne and Beilinson we describe an approach to defining the single-valued real analytic version of the multiple polylogarithms which generalizes the well-known result of Zagier on classical polylogarithms. In the process we find some interesting identities relating single-valued multiple polylogarithms of the same weight $k$ when $k=2$ and 3. At the end of this paper, motivated by Zagier's conjecture we pose a problem which relates the special values of multiple Dedekind zeta functions of a number field to the single-valued version of multiple polylogarithms.

In this article we determine the global geometry of the planar quadratic differential systems with a weak focus of third order. This class plays a significant role in the context of Hilbert's 16-th problem. Indeed, all examples of quadratic differential systems with at least four limit cycles, were obtained by perturbing a system in this family. We use the algebro-geometric concepts of divisor and zero-cycle to encode global properties of the systems and to give structure to this class. We give a theorem of topological classification of such systems in terms of integer-valued affine invariants. According to the possible values taken by them in this family we obtain a total of $18$ topologically distinct phase portraits. We show that inside the class of all quadratic systems with the topology of the coefficients, there exists a neighborhood of the family of quadratic systems with a weak focus of third order and which may have graphics but no polycycle in the sense of \cite{DRR} and no limit cycle, such that any quadratic system in this neighborhood has at most four limit cycles.