We consider combinatorial principles based on playing several two person games simultaneously. We call strategies for playing two or more games simultaneously parallel. The principles are easy consequences of the determinacy of games, in particular they are true for all finite games. We shall show that the principles fail for infinite games. The statements of these principles are of lower logical complexity than the sentence expressing the determinacy of games, therefore, they can be studied in weak axiomatic systems for arithmetic (Bounded Arithmetic). We pose several open problems about the provability of these statements in Bounded Arithmetic and related computational problems.

This paper points out an error of Parigot's proof of strong normalization of second order classical natural deduction by the CPS-translation, discusses erasing-continuation of the CPS-translation, and corrects that proof by using the notion of augmentations.

We show that for any infinite cardinal κ, every strongly (κ + 1 )-strategically closed poset is strongly κ+-strategically closed if and only if APκ (the approachability property) holds, answering the question asked in [5]. We also give a complete classification of strengths of strategic closure properties and that of strong strategic closure properties respectively.

We study the degree of (weak) (Q-pointness, and that of (weak) P-pointness, of ideals on a regular infinite cardinal.

It is shown in ZF (without choice) that if there is a finite-to-one map (X) → X, then X is finite.

We show that a solution to Hilbert's Tenth Problem in the rings of algebraic integers and bigger subrings of number fields where it is currently not known, is equivalent to a problem of bounding archimedean valuations over non-real number fields.

Although Church and Turing presented their path-breaking undecidability results immediately after their explication of effective decidability in 1936, it has been generally felt that these results do not have any direct bearing on ordinary mathematics but only contribute to logic, metamathematics and the theory of computability. Therefore it was such a celebrated achievement when Yuri Matiyasevich in 1970 demonstrated that the problem of the solvability of Diophantine equations is undecidable. His work was building essentially on the earlier work by Julia Robinson, Martin Davis and Hilary Putnam (1961), who had showed that the problem of solvability of exponential Diophantine equations is undecidable. One should note, however, that although it was only Matiyasevich's result which finally solved Hilbert's tenth problem, already the earlier result had provided a perfectly natural problem of ordinary number theory which is undecidable.

Nevertheless, both the set of Diophantine equations with solutions and the set of exponential Diophantine equations with solutions are still semi-decidable, that is, recursively enumerable (i.e., Σ10); if an equation in fact has a solution, this can be eventually verified. More generally, they are — as are their complements, the sets of equations with no solutions, which are Π10, — also Trial and Error decidable (Putnam [1965]), or decidable in the limit (Shoenfield [1959]), for every Δ20 set is (and conversely). This last-mentioned natural “liberalized” notion of decidability has begun more recently to play an essential role e.g., in so-called Formal Learning Theory (see e.g., Osherson, Stob, and Weinstein [1986], Kelly [1996]).

We define a nontrivial variety of boolean algebras with operators such that every member of the variety is atomless. This shows that not every variety of boolean algebras with operators is generated by its atomic members, and thus establishes a strong incompleteness result in (multi-)modal logic.

It is shown that the automorphism group of a relation algebra constructed from a projective geometry P is isomorphic to the collineation group of P. Also, the base automorphism group of a representation of over an affine geometry D is isomorphic to the quotient of the collineation group of D by the dilatation subgroup. Consequently, the total number of inequivalent representations of , for finite geometries P, is the sum of the numbers

where D ranges over a list of the non-isomorphic affine geometries having P as their geometry at infinity. This formula is used to compute the number of inequivalent representations of relation algebras constructed over projective lines of order at most 10. For instance, the relation algebra constructed over the projective line of order 9 has 56,700 mutually inequivalent representations.

We answer a question of Just, Miller, Scheepers and Szeptycki whether certain diagonalization properties for sequences of open covers are provably closed under taking finite or countable unions.

Tarski [5] showed that for any set X, its set ω(X) of well-orderable subsets has cardinality strictly greater than that of X, even in the absence of the axiom of choice. We construct a Fraenkel-Mostowski model in which there is an infinite strictly descending sequence under the relation ∣ω(X)∣ = ∣Y∣. This contrasts with the corresponding situation for power sets, where use of Hartogs' ℵ-function easily establishes that there can be no infinite descending sequence under the relation .

We show that Blackwell determinacy in L(ℝ) implies determinacy in L(ℝ).

A new approach for a uniform classification of the computably approximable real numbers is introduced. This is an important class of reals, consisting of the limits of computable sequences of rationals, and it coincides with the 0′-computable reals. Unlike some of the existing approaches, this applies uniformly to all reals in this class: to each computably approximable real x we assign a degree structure, the structure of all possible ways available to approximate x. So the main criterion for such classification is the variety of the effective ways we have to approximate a real number. We exhibit extreme cases of such approximation structures and prove a number of related results.

This note proves two theorems. The first is that it is consistent to have for every n, but not have . This is done by carefully collapsing a supercompact cardinal and adding square sequences to each ωn. The crux of the proof is that in the resulting model every stationary subset of ℵω+1 ⋂ cof(ω) reflects to an ordinal of cofinality ω1, that is to say it has stationary intersection with such an ordinal.

This result contrasts with compactness properties of square shown in [3]. In that paper it is shown that if one has square at every ωn, then there is a square type sequence on the points of cofinality ωk, k > 1 in ℵω+1. In particular at points of cofinality greater than ω1 there is a strongly non-reflecting stationary set of points of countable cofinality.

The second result answers a question of Džamonja, by showing that there can be no squarelike sequence above a supercompact cardinal, where “squarelike” means that one replaces the requirement that the cofinal sets be closed and unbounded by the requirement that they be stationary at all points of uncountable cofinality.

Supplementing the well known results of Kunen we show that Martin's Axiom is not sufficient to decide the existence of (ω1, ϲ)-gaps when (ϲ, ϲ)-gaps exist, that is, it is consistent with ZFC that Martin's Axiom holds and there are (ϲ, ϲ)-gaps but no (ω1, ϲ)-gaps.

In [6] Messmer and Wood proved quantifier elimination for separably closed fields of finite Ershov invariant e equipped with a (certain) Hasse derivation. We propose a variant of their theory, using a sequence of e commuting Hasse derivations. In contrast to [6] our Hasse derivations are iterative.

We study automorphism groups of trivial strongly minimal structures. First we give a characterization of structures of bounded valency through their groups of automorphisms. Then we characterize the triplets of groups which can be realized as the automorphism group of a non algebraic component, the subgroup stabilizer of a point and the subgroup of strong automorphisms in a trivial strongly minimal structure, and also we give a reconstruction result. Finally, using HNN extensions we show that any profinite group can be realized as the stabilizer of a point in a strongly minimal structure of bounded valency.

Fields of characteristic zero with several commuting derivations can be treated as fields equipped with a space of derivations that is closed under the Lie bracket. The existentially closed instances of such structures can then be given a coordinate-free characterization in terms of differential forms. The main tool for doing this is a generalization of the Frobenius Theorem of differential geometry.

We give a direct, purely arithmetical and elementary proof of the strong normalization of the cut-elimination procedure for full (i.e., in presence of all the usual connectives) classical natural deduction.

We settle a number of questions concerning definability in first order logic with an extra predicate symbol ranging over semi-linear sets. We give new results both on the positive and negative side: we show that in first-order logic one cannot query a semi-linear set as to whether or not it contains a line, or whether or not it contains the line segment between two given points. However, we show that some of these queries become definable if one makes small restrictions on the semi-linear sets considered.