On norm derivatives and the ball-covering property of Banach spaces (Q6614396)

In this interesting paper, the author considers the relationship of ball separation with smoothness of the norm of a Banach space \(X\). It is shown that for \(0\neq x,y\), for some \(\lambda >0\), that there exists a ball centred at \(\lambda x\) containing \(y\) but not \(0\), is equivalent to the directional derivative \(\rho'_{-}(x,y)>0\). Similarly for \(0<r \leq \|x\|\), for a sequence of smooth points \(\{x_n\}\) such that \(x_n \rightarrow x\), there exist \(n_0\), \(\lambda_{n_0} >0\), \(0< r_{n_0} \leq \|x\|\), \(y \in B(\lambda_{n_0} x_{n_0},r_{n_0})\) (Theorem~2.14). An interesting consequence of this is another proof of Proposition~2.7 of [\textit{L.~Cheng} et al., Stud. Math. 192, No.~1, 15--27 (2009; Zbl 1176.46015)]], which says that when \(X\) is separable, if the unit sphere has a ball covering of \(m\) balls then it has a covering of \(m\) balls whose centres are smooth points.