The biinterpretability conjecture for the r.e. degrees asks whether, for each sufficiently large k, the # k relations on the r.e. degrees are uniformly definable from parameters. We solve a weaker version: for each k >= 7, the k relations bounded from below by a nonzero degree are uniformly definable. As applications, we show that...

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We describe the important role that the conjectures and questions posed at the end of the two editions of Gerald Sacks's Degrees of Unsolvability have had in the development of recursion theory over the past thirty years. Gerald Sacks has had a major influence on the development of logic, particularly recursion theory, over the past thirty years through his research, writing and teaching. Here, I would like to concentrate on just one instance of that influence that I feel has been of special significance to the study of the degrees of unsolvability in general and on my own work in particular--- the conjectures and questions posed at the end of the two editions of Sacks's first book, the classic monograph Degrees of Unsolvability (Annals

The Major Sub-degree Problem of A. H. Lachlan (first posed in 1967) has become a long-standing open question concerning the structure of the computably enumerable (c.e.) degrees. Its solution has important implications for Turing definability and for the ongoing programme of fully characterising the theory of the c.e. Turing degrees. A c.e. degree a is a major subdegree of a c.e. degree b> a if for any c.e. degree x, 0 ′ = b ∨ x if and only if 0 ′ = a ∨ x. In this paper, we show that every c.e. degree b ̸ = 0 or 0 ′ has a major sub-degree, answering Lachlan’s question affirmatively. 1

The extension of embeddings problem for the recursively enumerable degrees R = (R;!; 0; 0 0) asks for given finite partially ordered sets P ` Q with least and greatest elements, whether every embedding of P into R can be extended to an embedding of Q into R. Many of the landmark theorems giving an algebraic insight into R assert either extension or nonextension of embeddings. We extend, strengthen, and unify these results and their proofs to produce complete and complementary criteria and techniques to analyze instances of extension and nonextension. We conclude that the full extension of embeddings problem is decidable.

We introduce techniques that allow us to embed below an arbitary nonlow 2 recursively enumerable degree any lattice currently known to be embedable into the recursively enumerable degrees. 1 Introduction One of the most basic and important questions concerning the structure of the upper semilattice R of recursively enumerable degrees is the embedding question: what (finite) lattices can be embedded as lattices into R? This question has a long and rich history. After the proof of the density theorem by Sacks [31], Shoenfield [32] made a conjecture, one consequence of which would be that no lattice embeddings into R were possible. Lachlan [21] and Yates [40] independently refuted Shoenfield's conjecture by proving that the 4 element boolean algebra could be embedded into R (even preserving 0). Using a little lattice representation theory, this result was subsequently extended by Lachlan-Lerman-Thomason [38], [36] who proved that all countable distributive lattices could be embedded (pre...