  We consider a class of singular Liouville equations on compact surfaces
motivated by the study of Electroweak and Self-Dual Chern-Simons theories, the
Gaussian curvature prescription with conical singularities and Onsager's
description of turbulence. We analyse the problem of existence variationally,
and show how the angular distribution of the conformal volume near the
singularities may lead to improvements in the Moser-Trudinger inequality, and
in turn to lower bounds on the Euler-Lagrange functional. We then discuss
existence and non-existence results.
