We show that a $(\kappa ^{+},1)$ -simplified morass can be added by a forcing with working parts of size smaller than $\kappa $ . This answers affirmatively the question, asked independently by Shelah and Velleman in the early 1990s, of whether it is possible to do so.

Our argument use a modification of a technique of Mitchell’s for adding objects of size $\omega _2$ in which collections of models – all of equal, countable size – are used as side conditions. In our modification, whilst the individual models are, as in Mitchell’s technique, taken ad hoc from quite general classes, the collections of models are very highly structured, in a way that is somewhat different from, perhaps more stringent than, Mitchell’s original, arguably making the method more wieldy and giving the prospect of further uses with more delicate working parts.

A subset of the Cantor cube is null-additive if its algebraic sum with any null set is null. We construct a set of cardinality continuum such that: all continuous images of the set into the Cantor cube are null-additive, it contains a homeomorphic copy of a set that is not null-additive, and it has the property $\unicode{x3b3} $ , a strong combinatorial covering property. We also construct a nontrivial subset of the Cantor cube with the property $\unicode{x3b3} $ that is not null additive. Set-theoretic assumptions used in our constructions are far milder than used earlier by Galvin–Miller and Bartoszyński–Recław, to obtain sets with analogous properties. We also consider products of Sierpiński sets in the context of combinatorial covering properties.

An oracle A is low-for-speed if it is unable to speed up the computation of a set which is already computable: if a decidable language can be decided in time $t(n)$ using A as an oracle, then it can be decided without an oracle in time $p(t(n))$ for some polynomial p. The existence of a set which is low-for-speed was first shown by Bayer and Slaman who constructed a non-computable computably enumerable set which is low-for-speed. In this paper we answer a question previously raised by Bienvenu and Downey, who asked whether there is a minimal degree which is low-for-speed. The standard method of constructing a set of minimal degree via forcing is incompatible with making the set low-for-speed; but we are able to use an interesting new combination of forcing and full approximation to construct a set which is both of minimal degree and low-for-speed.

We study the Rudin–Keisler pre-order on Fréchet–Urysohn ideals on $\omega $ . We solve three open questions posed by S. García-Ferreira and J. E. Rivera-Gómez in the articles [5] and [6] by establishing the following results:

• • For every AD family $\mathcal {A},$ there is an AD family $\mathcal {B}$ such that $\mathcal {A}^{\perp } <_{{\textsf {RK}}}\mathcal {B}^{\perp }.$

• • If $\mathcal {A}$ is a nowhere MAD family of size $\mathfrak {c}$ then there is a nowhere MAD family $\mathcal {B}$ such that $\mathcal {I}\left (\mathcal {A}\right ) $ and $\mathcal {I}\left ( \mathcal {B}\right ) $ are Rudin–Keisler incomparable.

• • There is a family $\left \{ \mathcal {B}_{\alpha }\mid \alpha \in \mathfrak {c}\right \} $ of nowhere MAD families such that if $\alpha \neq \beta $ , then $\mathcal {I}\left ( \mathcal {B}_{\alpha }\right ) $ and $\mathcal {I}\left ( \mathcal {B}_{\beta }\right ) $ are Rudin–Keisler incomparable.

Here $\mathcal {I}(\mathcal {A})$ denotes the ideal generated by an AD family $\mathcal {A}$ .

In the context of hyperspaces with the Vietoris topology, for a Fréchet–Urysohn-filter $\mathcal {F}$ we let $\mathcal {S}_{c}\left ( \mathcal {\xi }\left ( \mathcal {F}\right ) \right ) $ be the hyperspace of nontrivial convergent sequences of the space consisting of $\omega $ as discrete subset and only one accumulation point $\mathcal {F}$ whose neighborhoods are the elements of $\mathcal {F}$ together with the singleton $\{\mathcal {F}\}$ . For a FU-filter $\mathcal {F}$ we show that the following are equivalent:

• • $\mathcal {F}$ is a FUF-filter.

• • $\mathcal {S}_{c}\left ( \mathcal {\xi }\left ( \mathcal {F} \right ) \right ) $ is Baire.

In this paper we study a notion of HL-extension (HL standing for Herwig–Lascar) for a structure in a finite relational language $\mathcal {L}$ . We give a description of all finite minimal HL-extensions of a given finite $\mathcal {L}$ -structure. In addition, we study a group-theoretic property considered by Herwig–Lascar and show that it is closed under taking free products. We also introduce notions of coherent extensions and ultraextensive $\mathcal {L}$ -structures and show that every countable $\mathcal {L}$ -structure can be extended to a countable ultraextensive structure. Finally, it follows from our results that the automorphism group of any countable ultraextensive $\mathcal {L}$ -structure has a dense locally finite subgroup.

We study from the proof complexity perspective the (informal) proof search problem (cf. [17, Sections 1.5 and 21.5]):

• • Is there an optimal way to search for propositional proofs?

We note that, as a consequence of Levin’s universal search, for any fixed proof system there exists a time-optimal proof search algorithm. Using classical proof complexity results about reflection principles we prove that a time-optimal proof search algorithm exists without restricting proof systems iff a p-optimal proof system exists.

To characterize precisely the time proof search algorithms need for individual formulas we introduce a new proof complexity measure based on algorithmic information concepts. In particular, to a proof system P we attach information-efficiency function $i_P(\tau )$ assigning to a tautology a natural number, and we show that:

• • $i_P(\tau )$ characterizes time any P-proof search algorithm has to use on $\tau $ ,

• • for a fixed P there is such an information-optimal algorithm (informally: it finds proofs of minimal information content),

• • a proof system is information-efficiency optimal (its information-efficiency function is minimal up to a multiplicative constant) iff it is p-optimal,

• • for non-automatizable systems P there are formulas $\tau $ with short proofs but having large information measure $i_P(\tau )$ .

We isolate and motivate the problem to establish unconditional super-logarithmic lower bounds for $i_P(\tau )$ where no super-polynomial size lower bounds are known. We also point out connections of the new measure with some topics in proof complexity other than proof search.

We initiate an investigation of structures on the set of real numbers having the property that path components of definable sets are definable. All o-minimal structures on $(\mathbb {R},<)$ have the property, as do all expansions of $(\mathbb {R},+,\cdot ,\mathbb {N})$ . Our main analytic-geometric result is that any such expansion of $(\mathbb {R},<,+)$ by Boolean combinations of open sets (of any arities) either is o-minimal or defines an isomorph of $(\mathbb N,+,\cdot )$ . We also show that any given expansion of $(\mathbb {R}, <, +,\mathbb {N})$ by subsets of $\mathbb {N}^n$ (n allowed to vary) has the property if and only if it defines all arithmetic sets. Variations arise by considering connected components or quasicomponents instead of path components.

It is known that every non-universal self-full degree in the structure of the degrees of computably enumerable equivalence relations (ceers) under computable reducibility has exactly one strong minimal cover. This leaves little room for embedding wide partial orders as initial segments using self-full degrees. We show that considerably more can be done by staying entirely inside the collection of non-self-full degrees. We show that the poset can be embedded as an initial segment of the degrees of ceers with infinitely many classes. A further refinement of the proof shows that one can also embed the free distributive lattice generated by the lower semilattice as an initial segment of the degrees of ceers with infinitely many classes.

Using a variation of the rainbow construction and various pebble and colouring games, we prove that RRA, the class of all representable relation algebras, cannot be axiomatised by any first-order relation algebra theory of bounded quantifier depth. We also prove that the class At(RRA) of atom structures of representable, atomic relation algebras cannot be defined by any set of sentences in the language of RA atom structures that uses only a finite number of variables.