|  
                   2008 
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                   Speaker and Talk 
                    Title 
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                Friday, June 27  
                  1:30-3:00pm  
                  U of T Bahen Centre,  
                  Room 6183 | 
                 
                   Ilijas Farah (York University) 
                    The commutant of B(H) in its ultrapower and flat ultrafilters 
                    A question of Eberhard Kirchberg has lead to an isolation 
                    of a new type of ultrafilter on N and a consistency result. 
                    This is a joint work with N. Christopher Phillips and Juris 
                    Steprans. 
                  PLEASE NOTE THE UNUSUAL LOCATION FOR THIS SEMINAR. THE BAHEN 
                    CENTRE IS THE BUILDING HOUSING THE DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS 
                    BEHIND THE FIELDS INSTITUTE 
                 | 
              
               
                | May 9 | 
                no seminar | 
              
               
                | May 2 | 
                no seminar | 
              
               
                Friday April 25 
                  1:30-3:00 | 
                Jan Pachl 
                  Ambitable topological groups 
                  A topological group G is called ambitable if every uniformly 
                  bounded uniformly equicontinuous set of functions on G with 
                  its right uniformity is contained in an ambit, within the G-flow 
                  defined by right translations on uniformly continuous functions. 
                  This notion is motivated by investigations of topological centres 
                  in the semigroups that are of interest in abstract harmonic 
                  analysis --- for ambitable groups, topological centres have 
                  an effective characterization. Simple sufficient conditions 
                  for ambitability, expressed in terms of two cardinal functions, 
                  yield a generalization of previously known characterizations 
                  of topological centres. 
                  The talk will follow the content of the paper with the same 
                    name, available as arXiv:0803.3405. 
                 | 
              
               
                Friday April 18 
                  1:30-3:00 | 
                Stevo Todorcevic (University 
                  of Toronto and CNRS Paris) 
                  Unconditional Basic Sequences in Spaces of High Density | 
              
               
                Friday April 11 
                  1:30-3:00 | 
                No Seminar | 
              
               
                Friday April 4 
                  1:30-3:00 | 
                Bohuslav Balcar (Czech Academy 
                  of Sciences) 
                  Refinement properties of countable sets 
                  I will present a notion of almost disjoint refinement and its 
                  application and relationships to ultrafilters on $\omega$, semiselective 
                  co-ideals, Boolean algebras, and generic extensions of models 
                  of set theory. | 
              
               
                Friday Mar. 28 
                  1:30-3:00 | 
                Pandelis Dodos (University 
                  of Paris 6 and National Technical University of Athens) 
                  Universality Problems and \Script L_\infty -spaces | 
              
               
                Friday Mar. 14 
                  1:30-3:00 | 
                CANCELLED | 
              
               
                Friday Mar. 7 
                  1:30-3:00 | 
                Ernest Schimmerling (Carnegie 
                  Mellon University) 
                  Some open questions about L 
                  There are indeed open questions about L. I'll state a few and 
                  describe related results on two two topics: forcing axioms and 
                  mutual stationarity. The talk will include an overview of Jensen's 
                  fine structure theory and, as such, will be self-contained. | 
              
               
                Friday Feb. 29 
                  1:30-3:00 | 
                Frank Tall (University of Toronto) 
                  On a core concept of Arhangel'skii (Con't) | 
              
               
                Friday Feb. 22 
                  1:30-3:00  | 
                 
                    Frank Tall (University of Toronto) 
                    On a core concept of Arhangel'skii 
                    Arhangel'skii defines a locally compact space to have 
                    a countable core if it is the union of countably many open 
                    subspaces, each having the property that infinite subsets 
                    have limit points in the whole space. Investigating the question 
                    of when such spaces are sigma-compact as usual leads to the 
                    consideration of additional set-theoretic axioms. 
                 | 
              
               
                Friday, Feb. 15,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Natasha Dobrinen (University of Denver) 
                  The consistency strength of the tree property at the double 
                  successor of a measurable cardinal 
                  This is joint work with Sy-David Friedman. 
                  Koenig's Lemma is the well-known theorem that any inifinite 
                  finitely branching tree of height $\omega$ has an infinite path 
                  through it. This theorem, however, fails for trees of height 
                  $\omega_1$. More precisely, Aronszajn constructed a tree of 
                  height $\omega_1$, all of whose levels are countable, with no 
                  cofinal branch. Such a tree is naturally called an Aronszajn 
                  tree. 
                  For a regular uncountable cardinal $\kappa$, a "$\kappa$-tree" 
                  is a tree of height $\kappa$ all of whose levels have size less 
                  than $\kappa$. A "$\kappa$-Aronszajn" tree is a $\kappa$-tree 
                  with no cofinal branches. We say that the "tree property 
                  at $\kappa$ holds" if there are no $\kappa$-Aronszajn trees. 
                  As soon as $\kappa$ is greater than $\aleph_1$, large cardinals 
                  become necessary. Silver showed that if the tree property holds 
                  at $\aleph_2$, then $\aleph_2$ must be weakly compact in $L$. 
                  Mitchell showed that from a weakly compact cardinal one can 
                  force the tree property at $\aleph_2$. Thus began the study 
                  of the consistency strengths of the tree property at various 
                  cardinals. 
                  We show that the tree property at the double successor of a 
                  measurable cardinal is equiconsistent with what we call a weakly 
                  compact hypermeasurable cardinal.  
                  Our methods us a reverse Easton iteration of iterated Sacks 
                  forcings. The difficulty lies in showing that the weakly compact 
                  hypermeasurable cardinal remains measurable after this forcing. 
                   | 
              
               
                Friday, Feb. 8,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Bernhard Koenig (University 
                  of Toronto) 
                  Two ways to construct an omega_2-Suslin-tree from GCH plus 
                  additional assumptions  | 
              
               
                Friday, Feb. 1,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 
                  (**talk cancelled due to weather) | 
                **Natasha 
                  Dobrinen (University of Denver) 
                  The consistency strength of the tree property at the double 
                  successor of a measurable cardinal | 
              
               
                Friday, Jan. 25,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                 
                   Students will present problems, including: 
                  L. Hoehn: The chainable vs. span-zero problem for 
                    non-metrizable continua; 
                    B. Zamora: About Hadwin's conjecture;  
                    V. Fischer: Consistency results with large continuum; 
                     
                    A. Fischer: PFA(S)[S] vs. PFA;  
                    C. Martinez: Some problems on Aronszajn lines;  
                    A. Brodsky: The sigma-finite chain condition and 
                    its use in absoluteness proofs. 
                  
                 | 
              
               
                Friday, Jan. 18,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Udayan B. Darji (University 
                  of Louisville) 
                   Generating dense subgroups of some transformations groups | 
              
               
                Friday, Dec. 21,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Vera Fischer (York University) 
                  Towards the consistency of arbitrarily large spread between 
                  the bounding and the splitting numbers 
                  We will suggest a countably closed forcing notion which 
                  satisfies the $\aleph_2$ chain condition and adds a centered 
                  family $C$ of Cohen names for pure conditions, which has the 
                  property that forcing with $Q(C)$ preserves a chosen subfamily 
                  of the Cohen reals unbounded and diagonalizes all of them. | 
              
               
                Friday, Dec. 14,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                 
                   Vera Fischer (York University) 
                    The consistency of $b=\kappa + s=\kappa^+$, continued 
                 | 
              
               
                Friday, Dec. 7,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Vera Fischer (York University) 
                  The consistency of $b=\kappa + s=\kappa^+$ 
                  Using finite support iteration of c.c.c. partial orders we provide 
                  a model of b=\kappa < s=\kappa^+ for \kappa arbitrary regular, 
                  uncountable cardinal. | 
              
               
                Friday, Nov. 30,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Greg Hjorth (UCLA) 
                  Ends and percolation 
                  This is part of joint with Inessa Epstein, where we analyze 
                  countable Borel equivalence relations with many ends and the 
                  actions of groups with many ends. As a consequence of this work 
                  we obtain a result regarding the percolation on non-amenable 
                  groups that have infinite normal amenable subgroups. | 
              
               
                Friday, Nov. 23,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Marton Elekes, Renyi Institute, 
                  Budapest 
                  Partitioning multiple covers into many subcovers 
                  Motivated by a question of A. Hajnal originating from geometry 
                  we investi-gate the following set of problems. Let X be a set, 
                   a cardinal number, and H a family that covers each x 2 X at 
                  least  times. Under what assumptions canwe decompose H into 
                   many subcovers? Equivalently, under what assumptions can we 
                  colour H by  many colours so that for each x 2 X and each colour 
                  c there exists H 2 H of colour c containing x? 
                  The assumptions we make can be e.g. that H consists of open, 
                  closed, compact, convex sets, or polytopes in Rn, or intervals 
                  in a linearly ordered set, or we can make various restrictions 
                  on the cardinality of X, H or elements of H. 
                  Besides numerous positive and negative results many questions 
                  turn out tobe independent of the axioms of set theory. This 
                  is a joint work with T. M´atrai and L. Soukup. | 
              
               
                Friday, Nov. 16,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Magdalena Grzech, Cracow University 
                  of Technology 
                  Complemented subspaces of the Banach space $l_\infty / c_0$ | 
              
               
                Friday, Nov. 2,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Bernhard Koenig (University 
                  of Toronto), part 2 
                  Forcing axioms and two cardinal diamonds 
                  I will present some known facts and new results concerning the 
                  consistency of forcing axioms with two cardinal diamond principles. | 
              
               
                Friday, October 26,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Bernhard Koenig (University 
                  of Toronto) 
                  Forcing axioms and two cardinal diamonds 
                  I will present some known facts and new results concerning the 
                  consistency of forcing axioms with two cardinal diamond principles. 
                 | 
              
               
                Friday, October 19,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Arthur Fischer (University 
                  of Toronto) 
                  PID in PFA(S)[S] 
                  We will demonstrate that the P-ideal dichotomy (PID) holds in 
                  models of the form PFA(S)[S]. Time permitting, we will also 
                  discuss how certain extensions of PID can be shown to hold in 
                  such models. | 
              
               
                Friday, October 12,  
                  1:30 - 3:00 | 
                Istvan Juhasz (Hungarian Academy 
                  of Sciences) 
                  Discrete subspaces of compacta 
                  The following are the main results presented in this talk. 
                  Theorem 1. If X is a countably tight compactum such that every 
                  limit cardinal strictly below |X| is strong limit then |X| = 
                  |D| for some discrete subspace D of X. 
                  Theorem 2. If each point of a compactum X has character at leat 
                   then X cannot be covered by fewer than 2-many discrete subspaces. 
                  Theorem 3. The !th power of any compactum has a -discrete dense 
                  subset. 
                  Theorem 4. If the character of a compactum is greater than  
                  then there is a discrete subspace Y of X with |Y |  + and 
                  a point p whosecharacter in Y [ {p} is greater than . 
                  Theorems 1-3 are joint results with Z. Szentmikl´ossy. 
                  Several open problems will also be formulated.  | 
              
               
                Friday, September 28,  
                  1:30-3:00pm | 
                 
                   Asger Tornquist (University of Toronto) 
                    Definable Davies' Theorem, PART II 
                    A result due to Davies states that CH is equivalent to every 
                    real function on the plane being representable as a sum of 
                    square functions, i.e. functions of the form g(x)h(y). We 
                    give a definable version of this theorem: Every real is constructible 
                    precisely when every \Sigma^1_2 function allows a representation 
                    as a sum of \Sigma^1_2 squares. We also discuss the possibility 
                    of a stronger converse in this Theorem. 
                 | 
              
               
                Friday, Sept. 21,  
                  1:30-3:00  
                  Fields room 210 | 
                Asger Tornquist (University 
                  of Toronto) 
                  Definable Davies' Theorem, Part 1 
                  A result due to Davies states that CH is equivalent to every 
                  real function on the plane being representable as a sum of square 
                  functions, i.e. functions of the form g(x)h(y). We give a definable 
                  version of this theorem: Every real is constructible precisely 
                  when every \Sigma^1_2 function allows a representation as a 
                  sum of \Sigma^1_2 squares. We also discuss the possibility of 
                  a stronger converse in this Theorem. | 
              
               
                Friday, Sept. 14,  
                  1:30-3:00  
                  Fields Room 210  | 
                 
                   Frank Tall (University of Toronto) 
                    More Topological Applications of PFA(S)[S] 
                    We continue our study of the paracompactness of locally 
                    compact normal spaces in models of PFA(S)[S]. Using P-ideal 
                    dichotomy, we are able to improve our previous results. The 
                    presentation should be understandable to regular seminar participants, 
                    even if they missed my lectures last year on paracompactness. 
                 | 
              
               
                Friday, Sept. 7,  
                  1:30-3:00  
                  Fields Room 210. 
                   
                   
                 | 
                 
                   Logan Hoehn (University of Toronto) 
                    A model theoretic approach in topology 
                    The Wallman representation theorem enables one to describe 
                    certain properties of compact Hausdorff spaces with sentences 
                    in a first order language, which makes them compatible with 
                    some model theoretic constructions.  
                    We state this theorem and discuss some of its potential applications 
                    and limitations. As a sample application, we show how a certain 
                    result about colorings of self-maps of compact finite-dimensional 
                    metric spaces can be extended to a broader class of spaces 
                    using this approach. 
                 | 
              
               
                Friday, Aug. 3,  
                  1:30-3:00pm 
                  Fields, room 210 | 
                Bart Kastermans, University 
                  of Wisconsin, Madison 
                  Cofinitary groups 
                   
                   
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