Porosity in convexity (Q920401)

The author gives a survey on results in Baire spaces, e.g. in the spaces of all starshaped or even compact convex in \({\mathbb{R}}^ d\) with the Hausdorff distance. Most elements of such a space enjoy a special property if those not having this property from a set of first category. (Note that a set in topological space is called nowhere dense if its closure has an empty interior, and a countable union of nowhere dense sets is said to be of first category.) Moreover, nearly all elements of a metric Baire space have a certain property if those not having it from a so-called \(\sigma\)-porous set, i.e., a countable union of sets that are porous at each point. (In metric space (X,\(\rho\)), a set M is called porous at \(x\in X\) if there is a positive number \(\alpha\) such that for any positive \(\epsilon\) there is a point y in the open ball B(x,\(\epsilon\)) with center x, radius \(\epsilon\) and \(B(y,\alpha \rho (x,y))\cap M=\emptyset.)\) Special topics are: smoothness, strict convexity, conjugate points and affine diameters of convex surfaces; starshaped and compact sets. Finally, the author suggests analogous investigations in tomography, approximation theory and other directions.