Restrictions of smooth functions to a closed subset

We first provide an approach to the recent conjecture of Bierstone-Milman-Pawlucki on Whitney's old problem on smooth extendability of functions defined on a closed subset of a Euclidean space, using higher order paratangent bundle they introduced. For example, the conjecture is affirmative for classical fractal sets. Next, we give a sharpened form of Spallek's theorem on controllability of flatness by the values on a closed set. The multi-dimensional Vandermonde matrix plays an important role in both cases.