A Ricci soliton is a generalisation of an Einstein metric which evolves in a very simple way under the Ricci flow. We discuss ways of producing examples of Ricci solitons by looking for solutions with a high degree of symmetry

We investigate quaternionic (especially hyperkahler) analogues of the symplectic cut construction. In low dimensions this can be interpreted as a adding a brane to a hyperkahler manifold.