Semigroups and formal languages : proceedings of the International Conference, in honor of the 65th birthday of Donald B. McAlister, Centro de Álgebra da Universidade de Lisboa (CAUL), Portugal 12-15 July 2005, organised with special support from Centro

This festschrift volume in honour of Donald B McAlister on the occasion of his 65th birthday presents papers from leading researchers in semigroups and formal languages. The contributors cover a number of areas of current interest: from pseudovarieties and regular languages to ordered groupoids and one-relator groups, and from semigroup algebras to presentations of monoids and transformation semigroups. The papers are accessible to graduate students as well as researchers seeking new directions for future work. 1. A note on finitely generated semigroups of regular languages -- 2. Complete reducibility of pseudovarieties -- 3. Finite generation of P-semigroups with almost G-invariant idempotents -- 4. Open problems on regular languages: a historical perspective -- 5. Solving systems of equations modulo pseudovarieties of Abelian groups and hyperdecidability -- 6. Finite residue class rings of integers modulo n from the viewpoint of global semigroup theory -- 7. A P-theorem for ordered groupoids -- 8. On the finite basis problem for the monoids of extensive transformations -- 9. A Freiheitssatz for subsemigroups of one-relator groups with small cancellation condition -- 10. Wreath product decompositions for triangular matrix semigroups -- 11. In McAlister's footsteps: a random ramble around the P-theorem -- 12. On the structure if the Lattice of combinatorial Rees-Sushkevich varieties -- 13. On trivialixers and subsemigroups -- 14. Semilattice ordered inverse semigroups -- 15. Isomorphism problems for transformation semigroups -- 16. On McAlister's Monoid and its contracted algebra -- 17. Relative monoid presentations and finite derivation type -- 18. Literal varieties and pseudovarieties of homomorphisms onto Abelian groups -- 19. Factorizability in certain classes over inverse semigroups