Connections between behaviour of real analytic functions (with no negative Maclaurin series coefficients and radius of convergence one) on the open unit interval, and to a lesser extent on arcs of the unit circle, are explored, beginning with Karamata's approach. We develop conditions under which the asymptotics of the coefficients are related to the values of the function near $1$; specifically, $a(n)\sim f(1-1/n)/ \alpha n$ (for some positive constant $\alpha$), where $f(t)=\sum a(n)t^n$. In particular, if $F=\sum c(n) t^n$ where $c(n) \geq 0$ and $\sum c(n)=1$, then $f$ defined as $(1-F)^{-1}$ (the renewal or Green's function for $F$) satisfies this condition if $F'$ does (and a minor additional condition is satisfied). In come cases, we can show that the absolute sum of the differences of consecutive Maclaurin coefficients converges. We also investigate situations in which less precise asymptotics are available.

Contractivity and hypercontractivity properties of semigroups are now well understood when the generator, $A$, is a Dirichlet form operator. It has been shown that in some holomorphic function spaces the semigroup operators, $e^{-tA}$, can be bounded {\it below} from $L^p$ to $L^q$ when $p,q$ and $t$ are suitably related. We will show that such lower boundedness occurs also in spaces of subharmonic functions.

We consider a class of fractal subsets of $\R^d$ formed in a manner analogous to the construction of the Sierpinski carpet. We prove a uniform Harnack inequality for positive harmonic functions; study the heat equation, and obtain upper and lower bounds on the heat kernel which are, up to constants, the best possible; construct a locally isotropic diffusion $X$ and determine its basic properties; and extend some classical Sobolev and Poincar\'e inequalities to this setting.