Seminormal log centers and deformations of pairs

Abstract: We show that some properties of log canonical centers of a log canonical pair (X,D) also hold for certain subvarieties that are close to being a log canonical center. As a consequence, we obtain that if one works with deformations of pairs (X, D) where all the coefficients of D are bigger than 1/2, then one need not worry about embedded points on D. May 20: Results strengthened using recent work of Birkar and Hacon and Xu.