Abelian and non-abelian second cohomologies of quantized enveloping algebras

For a class of pointed Hopf algebras including the quantized enveloping algebras, we discuss cleft extensions, cocycle deformations and the second cohomology. We present such a non-standard method of computing the abelian second cohomology that derives information from the non-abelian second cohomology classifying cleft extensions. As a sample computation, a quantum analogue of Whitehead's second lemma for Lie-algebra cohomology is proved. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.