The algebraic dichotomy conjecture for Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs) of reducts of (infinite) finitely bounded homogeneous structures states that such CSPs are polynomial-time tractable when the model-complete core of the template has a pseudo-Siggers polymorphism, and NP-complete otherwise. One of the important questions related to this conjecture is whether, similarly to the case of finite structures, the condition of having a pseudo-Siggers polymorphism can be replaced by the condition of having polymorphisms satisfying a fixed set of identities of height 1, i.e., identities which do not contain any nesting of functional symbols. We provide a negative answer to this question by constructing for each non-trivial set of height 1 identities a structure whose polymorphisms do not satisfy these identities, but whose CSP is tractable nevertheless. An equivalent formulation of the dichotomy conjecture characterizes tractability of the CSP via the local satisfaction of nontrivial height 1 identities by polymorphisms of the structure. We show that local satisfaction and global satisfaction of nontrivial height 1 identities differ for ω -categorical structures with less than double exponential orbit growth, thereby resolving one of the main open problems in the algebraic theory of such structures.

We show that if a finite relational structure has a near unanimity polymorphism, then the constraint satisfaction problem with that structure as its fixed template has bounded pathwidth duality, putting the problem in nondeterministic logspace. This generalizes the analogous result of Dalmau and Krokhin for majority polymorphisms and lends further support to a conjecture suggested by Larose and Tesson.

A constraint language $\Gamma$ on a finite set A has been called polynomially expressive if the number of n-ary relations expressible by $\exists\wedge$-atomic formulas over $\Gamma$ is bounded by $\exp(O(n^k))$ for some constant k. It has recently been discovered that this property is characterized by the existence of a $(k+1)$-ary polymorphism satisfying certain identities; such polymorphisms are called k-edge operations and include Mal'cev and near-unanimity operations as special cases. We prove that if $\Gamma$ is any constraint language which, for some $k>1$, has a k-edge operation as a polymorphism, then the constraint satisfaction problem for $\langle\Gamma\rangle$ (the closure of $\Gamma$ under $\exists\wedge$-atomic expressibility) is globally tractable. We also show that the set of relations definable over $\Gamma$ using quantified generalized formulas is polynomially exactly learnable using improper equivalence queries.

A k-edge operation \varphi on a finite set A is a k + 1-ary operation that satisfies the identities \begin{gathered} \varphi (x,x,y,...,y) \approx \varphi (x,y,x,y,...,y) \approx y, \hfill \\ \varphi (y,y,y,x,y,...,y) \approx \varphi (y,y,y,y,x,y,...,y) \approx ... \hfill \\ ... \approx \varphi (y,y,y,...,y,x) \approx y. \hfill \\ \end{gathered} We prove that any constraint language .. that, for some k \ge 1, has a k-edge operation as a polymorphism is globally tractable. We also show that the set of relations definable over .. using quantified generalized formulas is polynomially exactly learnable using improper equivalence queries. Special instances of k-edge operations are Mal'cev and near-unanimity operations and so this class of constraint languages includes many well known examples.

Abstract We derive a Mal'cev condition for congruence meet-semidistributivity and then use it to prove two theorems. Theorem A: if a variety in a finite language is congruence meet-semidistributive and residually less than some finite cardinal, then it is finitely based. Theorem B: there is an algorithm which, given m < ω and a finite algebra in a finite language, determines whether the variety generated by the algebra is congruence meet-semidistributive and residually less than m.

Abstract Using a result of Gurevich and Lewis on the word problem for finite semigroups, we give short proofs that the following theories are hereditarily undecidable: (1) finite graphs of vertex-degree at most 3; (2) finite nonvoid sets with two distinguished permutations; (3) finite-dimensional vector spaces over a finite field with two distinguished endomorphisms.

Abstract Let K be a finite set of finite structures. We give a syntactic characterization of the property: every element of K is injective in ISP(K). We use this result to establish that is injective in ISP( ) for every two-element algebra .