We continue investigating variants of the splitting and reaping numbers introduced in [4]. In particular, answering a question raised there, we prove the consistency of and of . Moreover, we discuss their natural generalisations $\mathfrak {s}_{\rho }$ and $\mathfrak {r}_{\rho }$ for $\rho \in (0,1)$, and show that $\mathfrak {r}_{\rho }$ does not depend on $\rho $.

A classical theorem of Balcar, Pelant, and Simon says that there is a base matrix of height ${\mathfrak h}$, where ${\mathfrak h}$ is the distributivity number of ${\cal P} (\omega ) / {\mathrm {fin}}$. We show that if the continuum ${\mathfrak c}$ is regular, then there is a base matrix of height ${\mathfrak c}$, and that there are base matrices of any regular uncountable height $\leq {\mathfrak c}$ in the Cohen and random models. This answers questions of Fischer, Koelbing, and Wohofsky.

We study the consistency and consistency strength of various configurations concerning the cardinal characteristics $\mathfrak {s}_\theta , \mathfrak {p}_\theta , \mathfrak {t}_\theta , \mathfrak {g}_\theta , \mathfrak {r}_\theta $ at uncountable regular cardinals $\theta $ . Motivated by a theorem of Raghavan–Shelah who proved that $\mathfrak {s}_\theta \leq \mathfrak {b}_\theta $ , we explore in the first part of the paper the consistency of inequalities comparing $\mathfrak {s}_\theta $ with $\mathfrak {p}_\theta $ and $\mathfrak {g}_\theta $ . In the second part of the paper we study variations of the extender-based Radin forcing to establish several consistency results concerning $\mathfrak {r}_\theta ,\mathfrak {s}_\theta $ from hyper-measurability assumptions, results which were previously known to be consistent only from supercompactness assumptions. In doing so, we answer questions from [1], [15] and [7], and improve the large cardinal strength assumptions for results from [10] and [3].

In this paper we extend the definition of slice-torus invariant to links. We prove a few properties of the newly-defined slice-torus link invariants: the behaviour under crossing change, a slice genus bound, an obstruction to strong sliceness, and a combinatorial bound. Furthermore, we provide an application to the computation of the splitting number. Finally, we use the slice-torus link invariants and the Whitehead doubling to define new strong concordance invariants for links, which are proven to be independent of the corresponding slice-torus link invariant.

The splitting number of a plane irreducible curve for a Galois cover is effective in distinguishing the embedded topology of plane curves. In this paper, we define the connected number of a plane curve (possibly reducible) for a Galois cover, which is similar to the splitting number. By using the connected number, we distinguish the embedded topology of Artal arrangements of degree $b\,\ge \,4$, where an Artal arrangement of degree $b$ is a plane curve consisting of one smooth curve of degree $b$ and three of its total inflectional tangents.

Let κ, λ be regular uncountable cardinals such that λ > κ+ is not a successor of a singular cardinal of low cofinality. We construct a generic extension with s(κ) = λ starting from a ground model in which o(κ) = λ and prove that assuming ¬0¶, s(κ) = λ implies that o(κ) ≥ λ in the core model.