K theory of smooth complete toric varieties and related spaces

The K-rings of non-singular complex pro jective varieties as well as quasi- toric manifolds were described in terms of generators and relations in an earlier work of the author with V. Uma. In this paper we obtain a similar description for complete non-singular toric varieties. Indeed, our approach enables us to obtain such a description for the more general class of torus manifolds with locally standard torus action and orbit space a homology polytope.Comment: 11 pages, no figure

On homeomorphisms and quasi-isometries of the real line

We show that the group of all pl-homeomorphisms of the reals having bounded slopes surjects on the group $QI({\Bbb R})$ of all quasi-isometries of ${\Bbb R}$. We prove that the following groups can be imbedded in $QI({\Bbb R})$: The group of compactly supported pl-homeomorphisms of the reals, the Richard Thompson group F, and the free group of rank the continuum.Comment: 9 page

On generalized Dold manifolds

Let $X$ be a smooth manifold with a (smooth) involution $\sigma:X\to X$ such that $Fix(\sigma)\ne \emptyset$. We call the space $P(m,X):=\mathbb{S}^m\times X/\!\sim$ where $(v,x)\sim (-v,\sigma(x))$ a generalized Dold manifold. When $X$ is an almost complex manifold and the differential $T\sigma: TX\to TX$ is conjugate complex linear on each fibre, we obtain a formula for the Stiefel-Whitney polynomial of $P(m,X)$ when $H^1(X;\mathbb{Z}_2)=0$. We obtain results on stable parallelizability of $P(m,X)$ and a very general criterion for the (non) vanishing of the unoriented cobordism class $[P(m,X)]$ in terms of the corresponding properties for $X$. These results are applied to the case when $X$ is a complex flag manifold.Comment: 19 pages. A minor error in Prop. 2.5(iii) had been corrected. There was a gap in the proof of Theorem 1.2 which has been corrected. Other minor typos were correcte

Open String Diagrams I: Topological Type

An arbitrary Feynman graph for string field theory interactions is analysed and the homeomorphism type of the corresponding world sheet surface is completely determined even in the non-orientable cases. Algorithms are found to mechanically compute the topological characteristics of the resulting surface from the structure of the signed oriented graph. Whitney's permutation-theoretic coding of graphs is utilized

Bounded automorphisms and quasi-isometries of finitely generated groups

Let G be any finitely generated infinite group. Denote by K(G) the FC-centre of G, i.e., the subgroup of all elements of G whose centralizers are of finite index in G. Let QI(G) denote the group of quasi-isometries of G with respect to word metric. We observe that the natural homomorphism from the group of automorphisms of G to QI(G) is a monomorphism only if K(G) equals the centre Z(G) of G. The converse holds if K(G)=Z(G) is torsion free. We apply this criterion to many interesting classes of groups.Comment: This is the corrected version. Published in J. Group Theory, 8 (2005), 515--52