We define the notion of a morphism of generalized semi-stable type, which is a generalization of the notion of a semistable degeneration over a curve. We partially generalize Steenbrink‘s results on the limit of Hodge structures to the case of such a morphism. As an application we prove the E1-degeneration of the relative Hodge–De Rham spectral sequence for this case.

The classical limit of the scaled elliptic algebra${\mathcal A}$ħ,η ($\widehat{\mathfrak sl}$2) is investigated. The limiting Lie algebra is described in two equivalent ways: as a central extension of the algebra of generalized automorphic sl2 valued functions on a strip and as an extended algebra of decreasing automorphic sl2 valued functions on the real line. A bialgebra structure and an infinite-dimensional representation in the Fock space are studied. The classical limit of elliptic algebra ${\mathcal A}$q,p ($\widehat{\mathfrak sl}$2) is also briefly presented.

Let A=(aij) be an orthogonal matrix (over R or C) with no entries zero. Let B= (bij) be the matrix defined by bij= 1/ai j. M. Kontsevich conjectured that the rank of B is never equal to three. We interpret this conjecture geometrically and prove it. The geometric statement can be understood as variants of the Castelnuovo lemma and Brianchon‘s theorem.

We examine connections between A-hypergeometric differential equations and the theory of integer programming. In the first part, we develop a ’hypergeometric sensitivity analysis‘ for small variations of constraint constants with creation operators and b-functions. In the second part, we study the indicial polynomial (b-function) along the hyperplane xi=0 via a correspondence between the optimal value of an integer programming problem and the roots of the indicial polynomial. Gröbner bases are used to prove theorems and give counter examples.