The pasting theorem showed that pasting schemes are useful in studying free !-categories. It was thought that their inflexibility with respect to composition and identities prohibited wider use. This is not the case: there is a way of dealing with identities which makes it possible to describe !-categories in terms of generating pasting schemes and relations between generated pastings, i.e., with pasting presentations. In this chapter I develop the necessary machinery for this. The main result, that the !-category generated by a pasting presentation is universal with respect to respectable families of realizations, is a generalization of the pasting theorem. Contents 1 Introduction 3 2 Pasting schemes according to Johnson 4 2.1 Graded sets : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 4 2.2 !-categories : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 5 2.3 Pasting schemes : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 6 2.4 The pasting theorem : : ...

The main result is that two possible structures which may be imposed on an edge symmetric double category, namely a connection pair and a thin structure, are equivalent. A full proof is also given of the theorem of Spencer, that the category of small 2-categories is equivalent to the category of edge symmetric double categories with thin structure.

Novel approaches to extended quantum symmetry, paracrystals, quasicrystals, noncrystalline solids, topological order, supersymmetry and spontaneous, global symmetry breaking are outlined in terms of quantum groupoid, quantum double groupoids and dual, quantum algebroid structures. Physical applications of such quantum groupoid and quantum algebroid representations to quasicrystalline structures and paracrystals, quantum gravity, as well as the applications of the Goldstone and Noether's theorems to: phase transitions in superconductors/superfluids, ferromagnets, antiferromagnets, mictomagnets, quasi-particle (nucleon) ultra-hot plasmas, nuclear fusion, and the integrability of quantum systems are also considered. Both conceptual developments and novel approaches to Quantum theories are here proposed starting from existing Quantum Group Algebra (QGA), Algebraic Quantum Field Theories (AQFT), standard and effective Quantum Field Theories (QFT), as well as the refined `machinery ' of