An extensive literature exists describing various techniques for the evaluation of Hankel determinants. The prevailing methods such as Dodgson condensation, continued fraction expansion, LU decomposition, all produce product formulas when they are applicable. We mention the classic case of the Hankel determinants with binomial entries 3k+2 k and those with entries 3k k ; both of these classes o...

We prove that certain volume preserving actions of Lie groups and their lattices do not preserve rigid geometric structures in the sense of Gromov. The actions considered are the ”exotic” examples obtained by Katok and Lewis and the first author, by blowing up closed orbits in the well known actions on homogeneous spaces. The actions on homogeneous spaces all preserve affine connections, wherea...