This paper gives non-embeddings and non-immersions for the real flag manifolds R F ( 1 , l,n -2),n > 3 and shows that Lam's immersions for n = 4 and 5 and Stong's result for n = 6 are the best possible.

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Consider the identitywhere aj, …, am are positive real numbers. Then for r = 1, 2, 3, … Tr =Tr(a1, …, am) is called the rth complete symmetric function in a1, …, am (T0=l).