Proceedings of the Gokova Geometry-Topology Conference 2001

This volume features lively and engaging articles from the lecturers and the participants of the 8th Gokova Geometry-Topology Conference, held on the shores of Gokova Bay, Turkey, in May of 2001. As a Gokova tradition, the articles of the proceedings by and large reflect some of the latest developments in Geometry and Topology.

Table of Contents 1. Deformation inequivalent complex conjugated complex structures and applications-V. Kharlamov, V. Kulikov 2. Combinatorial patchworking of real pseudo-holomorphic curves-I. Itenberg, E. Shustin 3. On 1-point Gromov-Witten invariants of the Hilbert schemes of points on surfaces-W.-P. Li, Z. Qin 4. Evidence for a conjecture of Pandharipande-J. Bryan 5. Minimality of certain normal connected sums-T.-J. Li, A.I. Stipsicz 6. Variations on Fintushel-Stern Knot Surgery on 4-manifolds-S. Akbulut 7. Braids and symplectic four-manifolds with abelian fundamental group-P. Seidel 8. Low-dimensional homology groups of mapping class groups: a survey-M. Korkmaz 9. Gauge theory and Stein fillings of certain 3-manifolds-A.I. Stipsicz