This paper presents a semi-automated feedback system designed to support programming education by generating personalised feedback using rule-based analysis and Natural Language Generation (NLG). The centralised system, accessible across platforms via a web browser within institutions, evaluates Python code using Abstract Syntax Trees (AST), checking for syntax, indentation, comments, and required constructs. It also performs plagiarism checks and tracks student performance with data visualisation tools. Built with Django, the system ensures accuracy, consistency, and instructor oversight. Unlike existing tools, the system combines AST-based analysis, instructor-defined rules, and rule-based NLG in a modular and open-source platform designed for flexibility and scalability. Results show improved feedback efficiency and instructional value.

We present a construction to simulate Turing machines with 3×3 matrices over rationals. The correctness of simulation is guaranteed by testing that the matrices have integral elements during the simulation. This construction implies an undecidability result for a special identity problem for semigroups of 3×3-matrices.

Monadic decomposibility - the ability to determine whether a formula in a given logical theory can be decomposed into a boolean combination of monadic formulas - is a powerful tool for devising a decision procedure for a given logical theory. In this paper, we revisit a classical decision problem in automata theory: given a regular (a.k.a. synchronized rational) relation, determine whether it is recognizable, i.e., it has a monadic decomposition (that is, a representation as a boolean combination of cartesian products of regular languages). Regular relations are expressive formalisms which, using an appropriate string encoding, can capture relations definable in Presburger Arithmetic. In fact, their expressive power coincide with relations definable in a universal automatic structure; equivalently, those definable by finite set interpretations in WS1S (Weak Second Order Theory of One Successor). Determining whether a regular relation admits a recognizable relation was known to be decidable (and in exponential time for binary relations), but its precise complexity still hitherto remains open. Our main contribution is to fully settle the complexity of this decision problem by developing new techniques employing infinite Ramsey theory. The complexity for DFA (resp. NFA) representations of regular relations is shown to be NLOGSPACE-complete (resp. PSPACE-complete).

We study the identity problem for matrices, i.e., whether the identity matrix is in a semigroup generated by a given set of generators. In particular we consider the identity problem for the special linear group following recent NP-completeness result for SL(2,Z) and the undecidability for SL(4,Z) generated by 48 matrices. First we show that there is no embedding from pairs of words into 3 x3 integer matrices with determinant one, i.e., into SL{(3,Z)} extending previously known result that there is no embedding into C^{2 x 2}. Apart from theoretical importance of the result it can be seen as a strong evidence that the computational problems in SL{(3,Z)} are decidable. The result excludes the most natural possibility of encoding the Post correspondence problem into SL{(3,Z)}, where the matrix products extended by the right multiplication correspond to the Turing machine simulation. Then we show that the identity problem is decidable in polynomial time for an important subgroup of SL(3,Z), the Heisenberg group H(3,Z). Furthermore, we extend the decidability result for H(n,Q) in any dimension n. Finally we are tightening the gap on decidability question for this long standing open problem by improving the undecidability result for the identity problem in SL{(4,Z)} substantially reducing the bound on the size of the generator set from 48 to 8 by developing a novel reduction technique.

The termination problem for semi-Thue systems asks whether all derivations for a given word in a given semi-Thue system are finite, i.e., all derivations terminate after finite number of steps. This problem is known to be undecidable, there is a standard reduction of the halting problem of the Turi ng machines into termination problem; moreover, one can fix a semi-Thue system and still have the undecidability. In 1996 Sénizergues and the second author gave a construction for a 3-rule semi-Thue system with undecidable termination problem. However, in their construction the words of one of the rules are very long. Using some ideas of Tseijtin we give a construction for a semi-Thue system with low number of short rules having undecidable termination problem. Namely, we construct a semi-Thue system with 24 rules over 8 letter alphabet with rule words of length at most 5, and the termination problem for this semi-Thue system is undecidable. Moreover, this system is universal, that is, it can simulate any semi-Thue system.

Robot game is a two-player vector addition game played on the integer lattice $\mathbb{Z}^n$. Both players have sets of vectors and in each turn the vector chosen by a player is added to the current configuration vector of the game. One of the players, called Eve, tries to play the game from the initial configuration to the origin while the other player, Adam, tries to avoid the origin. The problem is to decide whether or not Eve has a winning strategy. In this paper we prove undecidability of the robot game in dimension two answering the question formulated by Doyen and Rabinovich in 2011 and closing the gap between undecidable and decidable cases.