It is well known that isotopic metrics of positive scalar curvature are concordant. Whether or not the converse holds is an open question, at least in dimensions greater than four. The author shows that for a particular type of concordance, constructed using the surgery techniques of Gromov and Lawson, this converse holds in the case of closed simply connected manifolds of dimension at least five.

The author expounds the notion of supported blow-up and applies it to study the renowned Nirenberg/Kazdan-Warner problem on $S^n$. When $n \ge 5$ and under some mild conditions, he shows that blow-up at a point with positive definite Hessian has to be a supported isolated blow-up, which, when combined with a uniform volume bound, is a removable singularity. A new asymmetric condition is introduced to exclude single simple blow-up. These enable the author to obtain a general existence theorem for $n \ge 5$ with rather natural condition.

In A von Neumann Algebra Approach to Quantum Metrics, Kuperberg and Weaver propose a new definition of quantum metric spaces, or W*-metric spaces, in the setting of von Neumann algebras. Their definition effectively reduces to the classical notion in the atomic abelian case, has both concrete and intrinsic characterizations, and admits a wide variety of tractable examples. A natural application and motivation of their theory is a mutual generalization of the standard models of classical and quantum error correction. In Quantum Relations Weaver defines a ``quantum relation'' on a von Neumann algebra $\mathcal{M}\subseteq\mathcal{B}(H)$ to be a weak* closed operator bimodule over its commutant $\mathcal{M}'$. Although this definition is framed in terms of a particular representation of $\mathcal{M}$, it is effectively representation independent. Quantum relations on $l^\infty(X)$ exactly correspond to subsets of $X^2$, i.e., relations on $X$. There is also a good definition of a ``measurable relation'' on a measure space, to which quantum relations partially reduce in the general abelian case. By analogy with the classical setting, Weaver can identify structures such as quantum equivalence relations, quantum partial orders, and quantum graphs, and he can generalize Arveson's fundamental work on weak* closed operator algebras containing a masa to these cases. He is also able to intrinsically characterize the quantum relations on $\mathcal{M}$ in terms of families of projections in $\mathcal{M}{\overline{\otimes}} \mathcal{B}(l^2)$.

Positive definiteness is determined for a wide class of functions relevant in the study of operator means and their norm comparisons. Then, this information is used to obtain an abundance of new sharp (unitarily) norm inequalities comparing various operator means and sometimes other related operators.

The authors study the moments of equilibrium measures for iterated function systems (IFSs) and draw connections to operator theory. Their main object of study is the infinite matrix which encodes all the moment data of a Borel measure on $\mathbb{R}^d$ or $\mathbb{C}$. To encode the salient features of a given IFS into precise moment data, they establish an interdependence between IFS equilibrium measures, the encoding of the sequence of moments of these measures into operators, and a new correspondence between the IFS moments and this family of operators in Hilbert space. For a given IFS, the authors' aim is to establish a functorial correspondence in such a way that the geometric transformations of the IFS turn into transformations of moment matrices, or rather transformations of the operators that are associated with them.

The authors prove that the Einstein equations for a spherically symmetric spacetime in Standard Schwarzschild Coordinates (SSC) close to form a system of three ordinary differential equations for a family of self-similar expansion waves, and the critical ($k=0$) Friedmann universe associated with the pure radiation phase of the Standard Model of Cosmology is embedded as a single point in this family. Removing a scaling law and imposing regularity at the center, they prove that the family reduces to an implicitly defined one-parameter family of distinct spacetimes determined by the value of a new acceleration parameter $a$, such that $a=1$ corresponds to the Standard Model. The authors prove that all of the self-similar spacetimes in the family are distinct from the non-critical $k\neq0$ Friedmann spacetimes, thereby characterizing the critical $k=0$ Friedmann universe as the unique spacetime lying at the intersection of these two one-parameter families. They then present a mathematically rigorous analysis of solutions near the singular point at the center, deriving the expansion of solutions up to fourth order in the fractional distance to the Hubble Length. Finally, they use these rigorous estimates to calculate the exact leading order quadratic and cubic corrections to the redshift vs luminosity relation for an observer at the center.