A combination of Bestvina–Brady Morse theory and an acyclic reflection group trick produces a torsion-free finitely presented Q-Poincaré duality group which is not the fundamental group of an aspherical closed ANR Q-homology manifold. The acyclic construction suggests asking which Q-Poincaré duality groups act freely on Q-acyclic spaces (i.e., which groups are FH(Q)). For example, the orbifold ...

Given an א1-free abelian group G we characterize the class CG of all torsion abelian groups T satisfying Ext(G, T ) = 0 assuming the special continuum hypothesis CH. Moreover, in Gödel’s constructable universe we prove that this characterizes CG for arbitrary torsion-free abelian G. It follows that there exist some ugly א1-free abelian groups.

Given an א1-free abelian group G we characterize the class CG of all torsion abelian groups T satisfying Ext(G, T ) = 0 assuming the special continuum hypothesis CH. Moreover, in Gödel’s constructable universe we prove that this characterizes CG for arbitrary torsion-free abelian G. It follows that there exist some ugly א1-free abelian groups.