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Abstract: Several methods have been developed to construct -free automata that represent a regular expression. Among the most widely known are the position automaton (Glushkov), the partial derivatives automaton (Antimirov) and the follow automaton (Ilie and Yu). All these automata can be obtained with quadratic time complexity, thus, the comparison criterion is usually the size of the resulting automaton. The methods that obtain the smallest automata (although, for general expressions, they are not comparable), are the follow and the partial derivatives methods. In this paper, we propose another method to obtain a -free automaton from a regular expression. The number of states of the automata we obtain is bounded above by the size of both the partial derivatives automaton and of the follow automaton. Our algorithm also runs with the same time complexity of these methods. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The concept of an automaton group generalizes easily to semigroups, and the systematic study of this area is beginning. This paper aims to contribute to that study. The basic theory of automaton semigroups is briefly reviewed. Various natural semigroups are shown to arise as automaton semigroups. The interaction of certain semigroup constructions with the class of automaton semigroups is studied. Semigroups arising from Cayley automata are investigated. Various open problems and areas for further research are suggested. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Splicing systems are generative devices of formal languages, introduced by Head in 1987 to model biological phenomena on linear and circular DNA molecules. A splicing system is defined by giving an initial set and a set of rules. Some unanswered questions are related to the computational power of circular splicing systems. In particular, a still open question is to find a characterization of circular languages generated by finite circular splicing systems (i.e., circular splicing systems with both and finite sets). In this paper we introduce a special class of the latter systems named marked systems. We prove that a marked system generates a regular circular language if and only if satisfies a special (decidable) property. As a consequence, we are able to characterize the structure of these regular circular languages. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]