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The goal of this paper is to introduce and study noncommutative Catalan numbers $C_n$ which belong to the free Laurent polynomial algebra in $n$ generators. Our noncommutative numbers admit interesting (commutative and noncommutative) specializations, one of them related to Garsia-Haiman $(q,t)$-versions, another -- to solving noncommutative quadratic equations. We also establish total positivity of the corresponding (noncommutative) Hankel matrices $H_m$ and introduce accompanying noncommutative binomial coefficients., 12 pages AM LaTex, a picture and proof of Lemma 3.6 are added, misprints corrected

The goal of this work is to provide an elementary construction of the canonical basis $\mathbf B(w)$ in each quantum Schubert cell~$U_q(w)$ and to establish its invariance under modified Lusztig's symmetries. To that effect, we obtain a direct characterization of the upper global basis $\mathbf B^{up}$ in terms of a suitable bilinear form and show that $\mathbf B(w)$ is contained in $\mathbf B^{up}$ and its large part is preserved by modified Lusztig's symmetries., AMSLaTeX, 32 pages,typos corrected