Includes title page, table of contents, list of contributors, preface and all indexes of each book.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Exploratory Workshop on Combinatorial Commutative Algebra and Computer Algebra, which took place in Mangalia, Romania on May 29-31, 2008. It includes research papers and surveys reflecting some of the current trends in the development of combinatorial commutative algebra and related fields. This volume focuses on the presentation of the newest research results in minimal resolutions of polynomial ideals (combinatorial techniques and applications), Stanley-Reisner theory and Alexander duality, and applications of commutative algebra and of combinatorial and computational techniques in algebraic geometry and topology. Both the algebraic and combinatorial perspectives are well represented and some open problems in the above directions have been included.

This book is an excellent illustration of the versatility of Algebraic Topology interacting with other areas in Mathematics and Physics. Topics discussed in this volume range from classical Differential Topology and Homotopy Theory (Kervaire invariant one problem) to more recent lines of research such as Topological Quantum Field Theory (string theory). Likewise, alternative viewpoints on classical problems in Global Analysis and Dynamical Systems are developed (a spectral sequence approach to normal form theory). This collection of papers is based on talks at the conference on the occasion of Sam Gitler's 70th birthday (December, 2003). The variety of topics covered in this book reflects the many areas where Sam Gitler's contributions have had an impact.

The aim of the present monograph is a thorough study of the adic-completion, its left derived functors and their relations to the local cohomology functors, as well as several completeness criteria, related questions and various dualities formulas. A basic construction is the Čech complex with respect to a system of elements and its free resolution. The study of its homology and cohomology will play a crucial role in order to understand left derived functors of completion and right derived functors of torsion. This is useful for the extension and refinement of results known for modules to unbounded complexes in the more general setting of not necessarily Noetherian rings. The book is divided into three parts. The first one is devoted to modules, where the adic-completion functor is presented in full details with generalizations of some previous completeness criteria for modules. Part II is devoted to the study of complexes. Part III is mainly concerned with duality, starting with those between completion and torsion and leading to new aspects of various dualizing complexes. The Appendix covers various additional and complementary aspects of the previous investigations and also provides examples showing the necessity of the assumptions. The book is directed to readers interested in recent progress in Homological and Commutative Algebra. Necessary prerequisites include some knowledge of Commutative Algebra and a familiarity with basic Homological Algebra. The book could be used as base for seminars with graduate students interested in Homological Algebra with a view towards recent research.

The aim of this book is to present some applications of functional analysis and the theory of differential operators to the investigation of topological invariants of manifolds. The main topological application discussed in the book concerns the problem of the description of homotopy-invariant rational Pontryagin numbers of non-simply connected manifolds and the Novikov conjecture of homotopy invariance of higher signatures. The definition of higher signatures and the formulation of the Novikov conjecture are given in Chapter 3. In this chapter, the authors also give an overview of different approaches to the proof of the Novikov conjecture. First, there is the Mishchenko symmetric signature and the generalized Hirzebruch formulae and the Mishchenko theorem of homotopy invariance of higher signatures for manifolds whose fundamental groups have a classifying space, being a complete Riemannian non-positive curvature manifold. Then the authors present Solovyov's proof of the Novikov conjecture for manifolds with fundamental group isomorphic to a discrete subgroup of a linear algebraic group over a local field, based on the notion of the Bruhat-Tits building. Finally, the authors discuss the approach due to Kasparov based on the operator $KK$-theory and another proof of the Mishchenko theorem. In Chapter 4, they outline the approach to the Novikov conjecture due to Connes and Moscovici involving cyclic homology. That allows one to prove the conjecture in the case when the fundamental group is a (Gromov) hyperbolic group. The text provides a concise exposition of some topics from functional analysis (for instance, $C^*$-Hilbert modules, $K$-theory or $C^*$-bundles, Hermitian $K$-theory, Fredholm representations, $KK$-theory, and functional integration) from the theory of differential operators (pseudodifferential calculus and Sobolev chains over $C^*$-algebras), and from differential topology (characteristic classes). The book explains basic ideas of the subject and can serve as a course text for an introduction to the study of original works and special monographs.

The conference to celebrate the resolution of the Poincare conjecture, which is one of the Clay Mathematics Institute's seven Millennium Prize Problems, was held at the Institut Henri Poincare in Paris. Several leading mathematicians gave lectures providing an overview of the conjecture--its history, its influence on the development of mathematics, and, finally, its proof. This volume contains papers based on the lectures at that conference. Taken together, they form an extraordinary record of the work that went into the solution of one of the great problems of mathematics.