This issue is the proceedings of a conference “New Developments in Noncommutative Algebra and its Applications” held to celebrate the 60th birthdays of Kenny Brown and Toby Stafford, at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on the Isle of Skye in June 2011. The papers in this issue, by some of the leading noncommutative algebraists in the world, represent several of the topics in which Kenny and Toby work.

Classification of AS-regular algebras is one of the major projects in non-commutative algebraic geometry. In this paper, we will study when given AS-regular algebras are graded Morita equivalent. In particular, for every geometric AS-regular algebra A, we define another graded algebra A, and show that if two geometric AS-regular algebras A and A' are graded Morita equivalent, then A and A' are isomorphic as graded algebras. We also show that the converse holds in many three-dimensional cases. As applications, we apply our results to Frobenius Koszul algebras and Beilinson algebras.

We present several conjectures which would describe the Nielsen equivalence classes of generating pairs for the groups SL(2,q) and PSL(2,q). The Higman invariant, which is the union of the conjugacy classes of the commutator of a generating pair and its inverse, and the trace of the commutator play key roles. Combining known results with additional work, we clarify the relationships between the conjectures, and obtain various partial results concerning them. Motivated by the work of Macbeath (A. M. Macbeath, Generators of the linear fractional groups, in Number theory (Proc. Sympos. Pure Math., vol. XII, Houston, TX, 1967) (American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 1969), 14–32), we use another invariant defined using traces to develop algorithms that enable us to verify the conjectures computationally for all q up to 101, and to prove the conjectures for a highly restricted but possibly infinite set of q.

Let {Gr,i} be a sequence of r-generator subgroups of U(1,n; ℂ) and Gr be its algebraic limit group. In this paper, two algebraic convergence theorems concerning {Gr,i} and Gr are obtained. Our results are generalisations of their counterparts in the n-dimensional sense-preserving Möbius group.

We prove that the Hatcher–Quinn and Wall invariants of a self-transverse immersion f: Nn ↬ M2n coincide. That is, we construct an isomorphism between their target groups, which carries one onto the other. We also employ methods of normal bordism theory to investigate the Hatcher–Quinn invariant of an immersion f: Nn ↬ M2n−1.

We investigate the spectral theory of integrable actions of a locally compact abelian group on a locally convex vector space. We start with an analysis of various spectral subspaces induced by the action of the group. This is applied to analyse the spectral theory of operators on the space, generated by measures on the group. We apply these results to derive general Tauberian theorems that apply to arbitrary locally compact abelian groups acting on a large class of locally convex vector spaces, which includes Fréchet spaces. We show how these theorems simplify the derivation of Mean Ergodic theorems.

Let G be a finite group. The symmetric genus σ(G) is the minimum genus of any Riemann surface on which G acts faithfully. We show that if G is a group of order 2m that has symmetric genus congruent to 3 (mod 4), then either G has exponent 2m−3 and a dihedral subgroup of index 4 or else the exponent of G is 2m−2. We then prove that there are at most 52 isomorphism types of these 2-groups; this bound is independent of the size of the 2-group G. A consequence of this bound is that almost all positive integers that are the symmetric genus of a 2-group are congruent to 1 (mod 4).

Given a finite subgroup G⊂GL(2,ℂ), it is known that the minimal resolution of singularity ℂ2/G is the moduli space Y=G-Hilb(ℂ2) of G-clusters ⊂ℂ2. The explicit description of Y can be obtained by calculating every possible distinguished basis for as vector spaces. These basis are the so-called G-graphs. In this paper we classify G-graphs for any small binary dihedral subgroup G in GL(2,ℂ), and in the context of the special McKay correspondence we use this classification to give a combinatorial description of special representations of G appearing in Y in terms of its maximal normal cyclic subgroup H ⊴ G.

In this paper we compute the weak Gorenstein global dimension of a coherent power series ring. It is shown that the weak Gorenstein global dimension of R[[x]] is equal to the weak Gorenstein global dimension of R plus one, provided R[[x]] is coherent.

Some recent results of Khukhro and Makarenko on the existence of characteristic -subgroups of finite index in a group G, for certain varieties , are used to obtain generalisations of some well-known results in the literature pertaining to groups G, in which all proper subgroups satisfy some condition or other related to the property ‘soluble-by-finite’. In addition, a partial generalisation is obtained for the aforementioned results on the existence of characteristic subgroups.

Using Beilinson–Bernstein localisation, we give another proof of Levasseur's theorem on the Krull dimension of the enveloping algebra of a complex semisimple Lie algebra. The proof also extends to the case of affinoid enveloping algebras.

Finitely accessible categories naturally arise in the context of the classical theory of purity. In this paper we generalise the notion of purity for a more general class and introduce techniques to study such classes in terms of indecomposable pure injectives related to a new notion of purity. We apply our results in the study of the class of flat quasi-coherent sheaves on an arbitrary scheme.

Let Ω be a bounded domain with smooth boundary in ℝ2, q∈[1,2) and x1, x2,. . .,xm ∈ Ω. In this paper we are concerned with the following type of problem:

\[ -\Delta u-\lambda|\nabla u|^q = \rho^{2}e^{u}, \]

It is shown that for the Laplacian masa in the free group factors, the orthocomplement of the associated Jones' projection is an infinite direct sum of coarse bimodules.

In this paper we study rational Cherednik algebras at t = 1 in positive characteristic. We study a finite-dimensional quotient of the rational Cherednik algebra called the restricted rational Cherednik algebra. When the corresponding pseudo-reflection group belongs to the infinite series G(m, d, n), we describe explicitly the block decomposition of the restricted algebra. We also classify all pseudo-reflection groups for which the centre of the corresponding rational Cherednik algebra is regular for generic values of the deformation parameter.

We present a unifying framework for the key concepts and results of higher Koszul duality theory for N-homogeneous algebras: the Koszul complex, the candidate for the space of syzygies and the higher operations on the Yoneda algebra. We give a universal description of the Koszul dual algebra under a new algebraic structure. For that we introduce a general notion: Gröbner bases for algebras over non-symmetric operads.

In this paper, we study the K-envelopes of the real interpolation methods with function space parameters in the sense of Brudnyi and Kruglyak [Y. A. Brudnyi and N. Ja. Kruglyak, Interpolation functors and interpolation spaces (North-Holland, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1991)]. We estimate the upper bounds of the K-envelopes and the interpolation norms of bounded operators for the KΦ-methods in terms of the fundamental function of the rearrangement invariant space related to the function space parameter Φ. The results concerning the quasi-power parameters and the growth/continuity envelopes in function spaces are obtained.

We give a complete description of bounded composition operators on model subspaces KB, where B is a finite Blaschke product. In particular, if B has at least one finite pole, we show that the collection of all bounded composition operators on KB has a group structure. Moreover, if B has at least two distinct finite poles, this group is finite and cyclic.

To give a relatively elementary proof of the Brumer–Stark conjecture in a function field context involving no algebraic geometry beyond the Riemann–Roch theorem for curves, Hayes Compos. Math., vol. 55, 1985, pp. 209–239) defined a normalizing field $H_\mathfrak{e}^*$ associated with a fixed sgn-normalized Drinfeld module and its extension field $K_\mathfrak{m}$, which is an analogue of cyclotomic function fields over a rational function field. We present explicitly in this note the formulae for the genus of the two fields and the maximal real subfield $H_\mathfrak{m}$ of $K_\mathfrak{m}$. In some sense, our results can be regarded as generalizations of formulae for the genus of classical cyclotomic function fields obtained by Hayes Trans. Amer. Math. Soc., vol. 189, 1974, pp. 77–91) and Kida and Murabayashi (Tokyo J. Math., vol. 14(1), 1991, pp. 45–56).