|  
                   2007 
                 | 
                 
                   Speaker and Talk Title 
                 | 
              
               
                Friday  
                  June 22 | 
                Max Burke (Prince Edward Island) 
                  Title: TBA 
                 | 
              
               
                Friday  
                  June 15 | 
                 Frank Tall (University of Toronto) 
                  On the metrizability of hereditarily normal manifolds of 
                  dimension > 1, (continued) | 
              
               
                Friday  
                  June 8 | 
                Franklin Tall (University of Toronto) 
                  On the metrizability of hereditarily normal manifolds of 
                  dimension > 1. 
                  We show that a conjunction of four axioms, three of which are 
                  consequences of PFA and one of which is a consequence of V = 
                  L, implies such manifolds are metrizable. The consistency of 
                  such a result is a long-outstanding conjecture of Peter Nyikos. 
                  Two of the axioms are known to follow from PFA(S)[S]; I conjecture 
                  that the other two also follow. | 
              
               
                Friday  
                  June 1 | 
                Paul Szeptycki (York University) 
                  Normality in products with a countable factor. | 
              
               
                |  
                   Friday  
                    May 25 
                 | 
                Cancelled | 
              
               
                Friday  
                  May 18 | 
                Philip Kremer (Department of Philosophy, 
                  University of Toronto) 
                  Dynamic Topological Logic | 
              
               
                |  
                   Friday 
                    May 11 
                     
                 | 
                Arthur Fischer (University of Toronto) 
                  'Balogh's Sigma' in models of the form PFA(S)[S] (continued) | 
              
               
                |  
                   Friday 
                    May 4 
                     
                 | 
                Arthur Fischer (University of Toronto) 
                  'Balogh's Sigma' in models of the form PFA(S)[S] (continued) | 
              
               
                Friday  
                  April 27 | 
                Arthur Fischer (University of Toronto) 
                  Balogh's Sigma' in models of the form PFA(S)[S] 
                  Continuing the study of topological consequences of forcing 
                  with the coherent Souslin tree S in models of PFA(S), we will 
                  demonstrate that the following PFA result also holds: Every 
                  locally countable subspace Z of size aleph-1 in a compact sequential 
                  space X is sigma-closed discrete in some open neighbourhood 
                  of Z in X which "locally witnesses" the local countability 
                  of Z in X. | 
              
               
                Friday  
                  April 20 | 
                Paul Larson (Miami University, Ohio) 
                  The stationary set splitting game. | 
              
               
                Friday  
                  April 13 | 
                Matthias Neufang 
                  (title is to be announced) | 
              
               
                Friday 
                  April 6 | 
                no talk | 
              
               
                |  
                   Friday,  
                    March 30 
                 | 
                Wieslaw Kubis, Kielce, Poland 
                  Fraisse sequences and their limits - a category-theoretic 
                  approach 
                  Given a category, we define the notion of a Fraisse sequence: 
                  an inductive sequence which shares the properties of a typical 
                  chain of model-theoretic structures producing the Fraisse-Jonsson 
                  limit structure. We give a criterion for the existence of a 
                  Fraisse sequence of a given length and we shall present some 
                  sufficient conditions for its homogeneity, universality and 
                  uniqueness. For instance: a fixed category may have, up to isomorphism, 
                  at most one countable Fraisse sequence. We give an example of 
                  a certain category of countable trees with many non-isomorphic 
                  Fraisse sequences of length aleph one. 
                  Finally, we shall present some applications for constructing 
                  universal objects in certain natural categories of compact spaces, 
                  Banach spaces and linearly ordered sets. | 
              
               
                |  
                   Friday,  
                    March 23 
                 | 
                Slawomir Solecki 
                  Polish Groups as Isometry Groups.  | 
              
               
                |  
                   Friday,  
                    16 March  
                    1:30PM 
                 | 
                Stevo Todorcevic, University of Toronto  
                  Chain Conditions in Topology, III.  | 
              
               
                |  
                   Friday,  
                    March 9 
                 | 
                Stevo Todorcevic, University of Toronto 
                   
                   Chain Conditions in Topology, III | 
              
               
                |  
                   Friday,  
                    23 February  
                    3:30PM, 
                 | 
                Andrew Toms, York University 
                  Elliott's program and partially ordered Abelian groups. 
                  We give a (hopefully) not-too-technical introduction to 
                  Elliott's program to classify separable amenable C*-algebras 
                  via K-theoretic invariants. We will stress the role of partially 
                  ordered Abelian groups, and discuss how the decomposition of 
                  such groups into inductive limits of tractable building blocks 
                  gives attractive range results for K-theoretic invariants. Some 
                  time will also be spent on the question of "how many" 
                  such groups may arise as the K-groups of simple C*-algebras. 
                  Finally, if time permits, we will point out some recent results 
                  in C*-algebra theory which have a set theoretic flavour. | 
              
               
                |  
                   February 16 (cancelled) 
                 | 
                  | 
              
               
                |  
                   Friday  
                    February 9,  
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                Victoria Lubitch 
                  Note on quasi-Rosenthal compactum. 
                  Let X be a polish space. A compact subset K of R^X is called 
                  quasi-Rosenthal if the accumulation points of K are Baire-1 
                  functions. S.A Argyros, P. Dodos, V.Kanellopoulos asked whether 
                  every quasi-Rosenthal compactum is Frechet. I will present a 
                  counter-example. | 
              
               
                |  
                   February 2,  
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                Wieslaw Kubis, Kielce, Poland 
                  Compact spaces generated by retractions 
                  I will discuss some results on the class of compact spaces obtained 
                  by closing the class of metric compact by inverse limits of 
                  retractions. | 
              
               
                |  
                     
                  Friday,  
                    January 26 
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                 
                  Luis Pereira 
                  Cardinal estimates using a topological approach 
                  We will prove that Shelah's application of his estimates of 
                  the Galvin-Hajnal norm to cardinal arithmetic can be obtained 
                  via Shelah's PCF topology alone. | 
              
               
                |  
                   January 19 
                 | 
                Vladimir Pestov, University of Ottawa 
                  Subgroups of metric ultraproducts of unitary and of symmetric 
                  groups: hyperlinear and sofic groups 
                  Relatively recently, two new classes of groups have been isolated: 
                  hyperlinear groups and sofic groups. They come from different 
                  corners of mathematics (operator algebras and symbolic dynamics, 
                  respectively), and were introduced independently from each other, 
                  but are closely related nevertheless. Hyperlinear groups are 
                  motivated by Connes' Embedding Conjecture about von Neumann 
                  factors of type II_1 and go back to Connes' work, while sofic 
                  groups, introduced by Gromov, are motivated by Gollschalk surjunctivity 
                  conjecture (can a shift A^G contain a proper isomorphic copy 
                  of itself, where A is a finite discrete space and G is a group?). 
                  Groups from both classes can be characterized as subgroups of 
                  metric ultraproducts of families of certain metric groups (formed 
                  in the same way as ultraproducts of Banach spaces): unitary 
                  groups of finite rank lead to hyperlinear groups, symmetric 
                  groups of finite rank - to sofic groups. We will survey results 
                  by Connes, Gromov, Benjy Weiss, Ozawa, Elek and Szabo, Radulescu, 
                  and Gordon, and also discuss open questions which are for the 
                  time being perhaps more numerous than the results. 
                  The slides from Vladimir Pestov's seminar talk are now available. 
                  You can either download them at 
                  http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~vpest283/textes/07-01b-4.pdf 
                  or you can find them at the seminar web page: 
                  http://www.atkinson.yorku.ca/~szeptycki/seminar/seminar06.html 
                 | 
              
               
                |  
                   January 12 
                 | 
                Bernhard Koenig, University of Toronto 
                  Coherent trees (continued). | 
              
               
                |  
                   January 5 
                 | 
                Bernhard Koenig, University of Toronto 
                  Coherent trees. | 
              
               
                |  
                   2006 
                 | 
                  | 
              
               
                |  
                   December 8 
                 | 
                Frank Tall, University of Toronto  
                  Forcing with coherent Souslin trees (Continued)  
                  We shall continue developing the technology for forcing with 
                  coherent Souslin trees.  | 
              
               
                |  
                   December 1 
                 | 
                Frank Tall, University of Toronto  
                  Forcing with coherent Souslin trees  
                  We shall start developing the technology for forcing with coherent 
                  Souslin trees. This lecture will be independent of previous 
                  ones on PFA(S)[S].  | 
              
               
                |  
                   November 24,  
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                Bernhard Koenig, University of Toronto 
                  Forcing Axioms and their fragments (continued) | 
              
               
                |  
                   November 17, 1:30PM 
                     
                 | 
                Frank Tall, University of Toronto 
                   Applications of PFA(S)[S] (continued) 
                  We continue setting up the machinery we started last time, for 
                  applications proving collectionwise Hausdorffness. | 
              
               
                |  
                   November 10,  
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                Bernhard Koenig, University of Toronto 
                  Forcing Axioms and their fragments 
                  We talk about fragments of the forcing axioms PFA or MM, e.g. 
                  PFA for posets not adding reals or MM for forcings with the 
                  covering property. The theorems we present give a good overview 
                  of the strengths of these fragments. Many results are of the 
                  following form: start with a model of MM and add an object of 
                  size aleph_2 generically; this might destroy the full forcing 
                  axiom but very often the extension is mild enough to preserve 
                  a fragment of the forcing axiom. | 
              
               
                |  
                   November 3,  
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                Asger Tornquist 
                  Non-classification Theorems for conjugacy and orbit equivalence 
                  of measure preserving ergodic actions, Part IV. | 
              
               
                |  
                   October 27,  
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                Asger Tornquist 
                  Non-classification Theorems for conjugacy and orbit equivalence 
                  of measure preserving ergodic actions, Part III. | 
              
               
                |  
                   October 20,  
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                Frank Tall, University of Toronto. 
                  Further Topological Applications of PFA(S)[S] | 
              
               
                |  
                   October 13,  
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                Frank Tall 
                  Locally compact spaces, paracompactness, and large cardinals 
                   
                  By considering localized reflection principles and non-reflecting 
                  stationary sets, we distinguish the consistency strength of 
                  two propositions concerning the paracompactness of locally compact 
                  normal spaces. | 
              
               
                |  
                   October 6,  
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                Asger Tornquist 
                  Non-classification theorems for conjugacy and orbit equivalence 
                  of measure preserving ergodic actions (PART II) 
                  We give a new proof and a strengthening of a Theorem of Foreman 
                  and Weiss, stating that the measure preserving a.e. free ergodic 
                  actions of a countably infinite group cannot be classified up 
                  to conjugacy by countable structures. Using this strengthened 
                  version, we show that the measure preserving ergodic a.e. free 
                  actions of a countable group with the relative property (T) 
                  over an infinite normal subgroup cannot be classified up to 
                  orbit equivalence by countable structures. | 
              
               
                |  
                   Friday,  
                    September 29,  
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                Asger Tornquist 
                  Non-classification theorems for conjugacy and orbit equivalence 
                  of measure preserving ergodic actions. 
                  We give a new proof and a strengthening of a Theorem of 
                  Foreman and Weiss, stating that the measure preserving a.e. 
                  free ergodic actions of a countably infinite group cannot be 
                  classified up to conjugacy by countable structures. Using this 
                  strengthened version, we show that the measure preserving ergodic 
                  a.e. free actions of a countable group with the relative property 
                  (T) over an infinite normal subgroup cannot be classified up 
                  to orbit equivalence by countable structures. | 
              
               
                |  
                   September 22,  
                    1:30 pm 
                 | 
                Frank Tall 
                  PFA(S)[S] and Small Dowker Spaces 
                  There have been only a few consistency results excluding particular 
                  kinds of "small" examples of normal spaces with product 
                  with the unit interval not normal, but a plethora of consistency 
                  results providing such examples. We restore the balance, using 
                  a model of Todorcevic. | 
              
               
                |  
                   September 8 
                 | 
                Discussion of Shelah's paper The combinatorics of reasonable 
                  ultrafilters 
                  (this is Sh:830 2004-07-28 downloadable from the Shelah archive 
                  http://shelah.logic.at/) | 
              
               
                |  
                   July 28  
                 | 
                we will continue to read Shelah's paper The combinatorics 
                  of reasonable ultrafilters. 
                  (this is Sh:830 2004-07-28 downloadable from the Shelah archive 
                  http://shelah.logic.at/) 
                   | 
              
               
                |  
                   July 21 
                 | 
                Peter Komjath 
                  Uncountable chromatic triple systems | 
              
               
                |  
                   July 14 
                 | 
                Discussion of Shelah's paper The combinatorics of reasonable 
                  ultrafilters 
                  (this is Sh:830 2004-07-28 downloadable from the Shelah archive 
                  http://shelah.logic.at/) | 
              
               
                |  
                   July 07 
                 | 
                TBA  |