A substantial number of extra images are acquired during chest CT that do not add clinically important information in patients with nonmalignant indications. The use of z-axis modulation increased radiation dose for the extra images.

We give a new geometric construction of the big projective module in the principal block of the BGG category O, or rather the corresponding D-module on the flag variety. Namely, given a one-parameter family of nondegenerate additive characters of the unipotent radical of a Borel subgroup which degenerate to the trivial character, there is a corresponding one-parameter family of Whittaker sheaves. We show that the unipotent nearby cycles functor applied to this family yields the big projective D-module.

In quantum geometric Langlands, the Satake equivalence plays a less prominent role than in the classical theory. Gaitsgory and Lurie proposed a conjectural substitute, later termed the fundamental local equivalence. With a few exceptions, we prove this conjecture and its extension to the affine flag variety by using what amount to Soergel module techniques.

Drinfeld's relative compactification plays a basic role in the theory of automorphic sheaves, and its singularities encode representation-theoretic information in the form of intersection cohomology. We introduce a resolution of singularities consisting of stable maps from nodal deformations of the curve into twisted flag varieties. As an application, we prove that the twisted intersection cohomology sheaf on Drinfeld's compactification is universally locally acyclic over the moduli stack of G-bundles at points sufficiently antidominant relative to their defect.