Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2010
§0. Introduction. Low-dimensional topology is dominated by the fundamental group. However, since every finitely presented group is the fundamental group of some closed 4-manifold, it is often stated that the effective influence of π1 ends in dimension three. This is not quite true, however, and there are some interesting border disputes. In this paper, we show that, by imposing the extra condition of parallelizability on the tangent bundle, the dominion of π1 is extended by an extra dimension.