I will discuss the new ?subtle? version of Stiefel-Whitney classes introduced by Alexander Smirnov and me. In contrast to the classical classes of Delzant and Milnor, our classes see the powers of the fundamental ideal, as well as the Arason invariant and its higher analogues, and permit to describe the motives of the torsor and the highest Grassmannian associated to a quadratic form. I will consider in more details the relation of these classes to the J-invariant of quadrics. This invariant defined in terms of rationality of the Chow group elements of the highest Grassmannian contains the most basic qualitative information on a quadric.[-]

After inverting 2, the motivic sphere spectrum splits into a plus part and a minus part with respect to a certain natural involution. Cisinsky and Déglise have shown that, with rational coefficients, the plus part is given by rational motivic cohomlogy. With Ananyevskiy and Panin, we have computed the minus part with rational coefficients as being given by rational Witt-theory. In particular, this shows that the rational bi-graded homotopy sheaves of the minus sphere are concentrated in bi-degree (n,n). This may be rephrased as saying that the graded homotopy sheaves of the minus sphere in strictly positive topological degree are torsion. Combined with the result of Cisinski-Déglise mentioned above, this shows that the graded homotopy sheaves of the sphere spectrum in strictly positive topological degree and non-negative Tate degree are torsion, an analog of the classical theorem of Serre, that the stable homotopy groups of spheres in strictly positive degree are finite.[-]

Following Grothendieck's vision that a motive of an algebraic variety should capture many of its cohomological invariants, Voevodsky introduced a triangulated category of motives which partially realises this idea. After describing some of the properties of this category, I explain how to define the motive of certain algebraic stacks. I will then focus on defining and studying the motive of the moduli stack of vector bundles on a smooth projective curve and show that this motive can be described in terms of the motive of this curve and its symmetric powers. If there is time, I will give a conjectural formula for this motive, and explain how this follows from a conjecture on the intersection theory of certain Quot schemes. This is joint work with Simon Pepin Lehalleur.[-]

(joint work with G. Wüstholz) Roughly, $1$-dimensional periods are the complex numbers obtained by integrating a differential form on an algebraic curve over $\bar{\mathbf{Q}}$ over a suitable domain of integration. One of the alternative characterisations is as periods of Deligne $1$-motives.
We clear up the linear relations between these numbers, proving Kontsevich's version of the period conjecture for $1$-dimensional periods. In particular, a $1$-dimensional period is shown to be algebraic if and only if it is of the form $\int_\gamma (\phi+df)$ with $\int_\gamma\phi=0$. We also get formulas for the spaces of periods of a given $1$-motive, generalising Baker's theorem on logarithms of algebraic numbers.
The proof is based on a version of Wüstholz's analytic subgroup theorem for $1$-motives.[-]