We extend the Kechris–Pestov–Todorčević correspondence to weak Fraïssé categories and automorphism groups of generic objects. The new ingredient is the weak Ramsey property. We demonstrate the theory on several examples including monoid categories, the category of almost linear orders and categories of strong embeddings of trees.

The paper gives a simple proof of Graev’s theorem (asserting that the free product of Hausdorff topological groups is Hausdorff) for a particular case which includes the countable case of $k_\omega $ -groups and the countable case of Lindelöf P-groups. For this it is shown that in these particular cases the topology of the free product of Hausdorff topological groups coincides with the $X_0$ -topology in the Mal’cev sense, where X is the disjoint union of the topological groups identifying their units.

There are well-known identities involving the Ext bifunctor, coproducts, and products in AB4 abelian categories with enough projectives. Namely, for every such category \[\mathcal{A}\], given an object X and a set of objects \[{\{ {{\text{A}}_{\text{i}}}\} _{{\text{i}} \in {\text{I}}}}\], an isomorphism \[Ext_\mathcal{A}^{\text{n}}({ \oplus _{{\text{i}} \in {\text{I}}}}{{\text{A}}_{\text{i}}},{\text{X}}) \cong \prod\nolimits_{{\text{i}} \in {\text{I}}} {Ext_\mathcal{A}^{\text{n}}({{\text{A}}_{\text{i}}},{\text{X}})} \] can be built, where \[Ex{t^{\text{n}}}\] is the nth derived functor of the Hom functor. The goal of this paper is to show a similar isomorphism for the nth Yoneda Ext, which is a functor equivalent to \[Ex{t^{\text{n}}}\] that can be defined in more general contexts. The desired isomorphism is constructed explicitly by using colimits in AB4 abelian categories with not necessarily enough projectives nor injectives, extending a result by Colpi and Fuller in [8]. Furthermore, the isomorphisms constructed are used to characterize AB4 categories. A dual result is also stated.

The purpose of this paper is, as part of the stratification of Cohen–Macaulay rings, to investigate the question of when the fiber products are almost Gorenstein rings. We show that the fiber product $R \times _T S$ of Cohen–Macaulay local rings R, S of the same dimension $d>0$ over a regular local ring T with $\dim T=d-1$ is an almost Gorenstein ring if and only if so are R and S. In addition, the other generalizations of Gorenstein properties are also explored.

We characterize those partially ordered sets I for which the canonical maps Mi → colim Mj into colimits of abstract sets are always injective, provided that the transition maps are injective. We also obtain some consequences for colimits of vector spaces.

We devise a fairly general sufficient condition ensuring that the endomorphism monoid of a countably infinite ultrahomogeneous structure (i.e. a Fraïssé limit) embeds all countable semigroups. This approach not only provides us with a framework unifying the previous scattered results in this vein, but actually yields new applications for endomorphism monoids of the (rational) Urysohn space and the countable universal ultrahomogeneous semilattice.

We consider the pushout of embedding functors in Cat, the category of small categories. We show that if the embedding functors satisfy a 3-for-2 property, then the induced functors to the pushout category are also embeddings. The result follows from the connectedness of certain associated slice categories. The condition is motivated by a similar result for maps of semigroups. We show that our theorem can be applied to groupoids and to inclusions of full subcategories. We also give an example to show that the theorem does not hold when the property only holds for one of the inclusion functors, or when it is weakened to a one-sided condition.

We prove, correct and extend several results of an earlier paper of ours (using and recalling several of our later papers) about the derived functors of projective limit in abelian categories. In particular we prove that if C is an abelian category satisfying the Grothendieck axioms AB3 and AB4* and having a set of generators then the first derived functor of projective limit vanishes on so-called Mittag-Leffler sequences in C. The recent examples given by Deligne and Neeman show that the condition that the category has a set of generators is necessary. The condition AB4* is also necessary, and indeed we give for each integer $m \geq 1$ an example of a Grothendieck category Cm and a Mittag-Leffler sequence in Cm for which the derived functors of its projective limit vanish in all positive degrees except m. This leads to a systematic study of derived functors of infinite products in Grothendieck categories. Several explicit examples of the applications of these functors are also studied.

The importance of finite limits in completeness conditions has been long recognized. One has only to consider elementary toposes, pretoposes, exact categories, etc., to realize their ubiquity. However, often pullbacks suffice and in a sense are more natural. For example it is pullbacks that are the essential ingredient in composition of spans, partial morphisms and relations. In fact the original definition of elementary topos was based on the notion of partial morphism classifier which involved only pullbacks (see [6]). Many constructions in topos theory, involving left exact functors, such as coalgebras on a cotriple and the gluing construction, also work for pullback preserving functors. And pullback preserving functors occur naturally in the subject, e.g. constant functors and the Σα. These observations led Rosebrugh and Wood to introduce partial geometric morphisms; functors with a pullback preserving left adjoint [9]. Other reasons led Kennison independently to introduce the same concept under the name semi-geometric functors [5].