We construct a scheme $B(r; {\mathbb {A}}^n)$ such that a map $X \to B(r; {\mathbb {A}}^n)$ corresponds to a degree-n étale algebra on X equipped with r generating global sections. We then show that when $n=2$ , i.e., in the quadratic étale case, the singular cohomology of $B(r; {\mathbb {A}}^n)({\mathbb {R}})$ can be used to reconstruct a famous example of S. Chase and to extend its application to showing that there is a smooth affine $r-1$ -dimensional ${\mathbb {R}}$ -variety on which there are étale algebras ${\mathcal {A}}_n$ of arbitrary degrees n that cannot be generated by fewer than r elements. This shows that in the étale algebra case, a bound established by U. First and Z. Reichstein in [6] is sharp.

We prove results concerning the multiplicity as well as the Cohen–Macaulay and Gorenstein properties of the special fiber ring $\mathscr{F}(E)$ of a finitely generated $R$-module $E\subsetneq R^{e}$ over a Noetherian local ring $R$ with infinite residue field. Assuming that $R$ is Cohen–Macaulay of dimension 1 and that $E$ has finite colength in $R^{e}$, our main result establishes an asymptotic length formula for the multiplicity of $\mathscr{F}(E)$, which, in addition to being of independent interest, allows us to derive a Cohen–Macaulayness criterion and to detect a curious relation to the Buchsbaum–Rim multiplicity of $E$ in this setting. Further, we provide a Gorensteinness characterization for $\mathscr{F}(E)$ in the more general situation where $R$ is Cohen–Macaulay of arbitrary dimension and $E$ is not necessarily of finite colength, and we notice a constraint in terms of the second analytic deviation of the module $E$ if its reduction number is at least three.

It is shown that the well-known characterizations of when a commutative ring R has Noetherian spectrum carry over to characterizations of when the set Spec(M) of prime submodules of a finitely generated module M is Noetherian. The symmetric algebra SR(M) of M is used to show that the Noetherian property of Spec(R), and some related properties, pass from the ring R to the finitely generated R-modules.

A counterexample is given to a conjecture of Ikeda by finding a class of Gorenstein rings of embedding dimension 3 with larger Dilworth number than Sperner number. The Dilworth number of $A\left[ {Z}/{pZ}\;\,\oplus \,{Z}/{pZ}\; \right]$ is computed when $A$ is an unramified principal Artin local ring.

A commutative ring R is said to have the n-generator property if each ideal of R can be generated by n elements. Rings with the n-generator property have Krull dimension at most one. In this paper we consider the problem of determining when a one-dimensional monoid ring R[S] has the n-generator property where R is an artinian ring and S is a commutative cancellative monoid. As an application, we explicitly determine when such monoid rings have the three-generator property.