The ambient calculus is a process calculus for describing mobile computation. We develop a theory of Morris-style contextual equivalence for proving properties of mobile ambients. We prove a context lemma that allows derivation of contextual equivalences by considering contexts of a particular limited form, rather than all arbitrary contexts. We give an activity lemma that characterises the possible interactions between a process and a context. We prove several examples of contextual equivalence. The proofs depend on characterising reductions in the ambient calculus in terms of a labelled transition system.

We refine the simulation technique introduced in Di Cosmo and Kesner (1997) to show strong normalisation of $\l$-calculi with explicit substitutions via termination of cut elimination in proof nets (Girard 1987). We first propose a notion of equivalence relation for proof nets that extends the one in Di Cosmo and Guerrini (1999), and show that cut elimination modulo this equivalence relation is terminating. We then show strong normalisation of the typed version of the $\ll$-calculus with de Bruijn indices (a calculus with full composition defined in David and Guillaume (1999)) using a translation from typed $\ll$ to proof nets. Finally, we propose a version of typed $\ll$ with named variables, which helps to give a better understanding of the complex mechanism of the explicit weakening notation introduced in the $\ll$-calculus with de Bruijn indices (David and Guillaume 1999).

We provide a consistent way of looking at a range of finite state machines and their algebraic models. Our claim is that the natural representation of transitions of finite state machines is in terms of monoid homomorphisms, and distinct generalisation processes that can be applied to finite state machines correspond to distinct categorical generalisation processes at the level of the algebraic models.

The generalisations we consider are those from deterministic to non-deterministic machines, from one-way to two-way machines, and from read-only machines to read/write machines. Hence the finite state machines we consider, and provide algebraic models for, are (deterministic and non-deterministic) finite state automata, two-way automata, Mealy machines, and bounded Turing machines.

The categorical constructions corresponding to these generalisation processes are, respectively: altering the base category from functions to relations, applying the Geometry of Interaction, or Int construction, and a categorical process, which we refer to as the Comp construction, that uses the tensor on monoidal categories to construct graded categories.