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Using the combinatorics of $\alpha$-unimodal sets, we establish two new results in the theory of quasisymmetric functions. First, we obtain the expansion of the fundamental basis into quasisymmetric power sums. Secondly, we prove that generating functions of reverse $P$-partitions expand positively into quasisymmetric power sums. Consequently, any nonnegative linear combination of such functions is $p$-positive whenever it is symmetric. As an application, we derive positivity results for chromatic quasisymmetric functions, unicellular and vertical strip LLT polynomials, multivariate Tutte polynomials, and the more general $B$-polynomials, matroid quasisymmetric functions, and certain Eulerian quasisymmetric functions, thus reproving and improving on numerous results in the literature.

We study shifted standard Young tableaux (SYT). The limiting surface of uniformly random shifted SYT of staircase shape is determined, with the integers in the SYT as heights. This implies via properties of the Edelman-Greene bijection results about random 132-avoiding sorting networks, including limit shapes for trajectories and intermediate permutations. Moreover, the expected number of adjacencies in SYT is considered. It is shown that on average each row and each column of a shifted SYT of staircase shape contains precisely one adjacency.

The generating function of reverse plane partitions of a fixed shape factors into a product featuring the hook-lengths of this shape. This result, which was first obtained by Stanley, can be explained bijectively using the Hillman-Grassl correspondence between reverse plane partitions and tableaux weighted by hook-lengths. In this extended abstract an alternative bijection between the same families of objects is presented. This construction is best perceived as a set of rules for building reverse plane partitions, viewed as arrangements of stacks of cubes, using bricks in the shape of rim-hooks.

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