Let $M$ be a smooth compact manifold. It is known that a lower bound on the Ricci curvature is equivalent to the convexity of the entropy on $\mathcal{P}^2(M)$ (Von Rennesse and Sturm '05), but I don't known whether there is any paper that using this result, and maybe another condition on $M$, that obtain a topological result about $M$.
On the other hand, is there any similar result for the scalar curvature?, sometime I've heard that a lower bound on the scalar curvature is easier to treat than a lower bound on the Ricci curvature but I don't know why, if anybody could help me to understand this it would be very helpful.