The associativity of the regular semidirect product of existence varieties introduced by Jones and Trotter was proved under certain condition by Reilly and Zhang. Here we estabilsh associativity in many new cases. Moreover, we prove that the regular semidirect product is right distributive with respect to the join operation. In particular, both associativity and right distriutivity yiel within the varieties of completely simple semigroups. Analogous results are obtainedj for e-pseudovarieties of finite regular semigroups.

In this paper we complete two tasks. First we extend the nonsmooth critical point theory of Chang to the case where the energy functional satisfies only the weaker nonsmooth Cerami condition and we also relax the boundary conditions. Then we study semilinear and quasilinear equations (involving the p-Laplacian). Using a variational approach we establish the existence of one and of multiple solutions. In simple existence theorems, we allow the right hand side to be discontinuous. In that case in order to have an existence theory, we pass to a multivalued approximation of the original problem by, roughly speaking, filling in the gaps at the discontinuity points.

We show that diagrammatically reducible two-complexes are characterized by the property: every finity subconmplex of the universal cover collapses to a one-complex. We use this to show that a compact orientable three-manifold with nonempty boundary is Haken if and only if it has a diagrammatically reducible spine. We also formulate an nanlogue of diagrammatic reducibility for higher dimensional complexes. Like Haken three-manifolds, we observe that if n ≥ 4 and M is compact connected n-dimensional manifold with a traingulation, or a spine, satisfying this property, then the interior of the universal cover of M is homeomorphic to Euclidean n-space.

A group G is locally graded if every finitely generated nontrivial subgroup of G has a nontrivial finite image. Let N (2, k)* denote the class of groups in which every infinite subset contains a pair of elements that generate a nilpotent subgroup of class at most k. We show that if G is a finitely generated locally graded N (2, k)*-group, then there is a positive integer c depending only on k such that G/Zc (G) is finite.

We prove that there is no algorithm to determine when an amalgam of finite rings (or semigroups) can be embedded in the class of rings or in the class of finite rings (respectively, in the class of semigroups or in the class of finite semigroups). These results are in marked contrast with the corresponding problems for groups where every amalgam of finite groups can be embedded in a finite group.

We study a correspondence between automorphic forms on an orthogonal group and automorpbic forms on a semi-simple Lie group associated to an equivariant holomorphic map of a symmetric domain into a Siegel upper half space. We construct an automorphic form on the symmetric domain thatg corresponds to an automorphic form on an orthogonal group using theta series, and prove that such a correspondence is compatible with the appropriate Hecks operator actions on the corresponding automorphic forms. As an example, we describe the case of spin groups.