In this paper we generalize a result in [J. An, Z. Wang, On the realization of Riemannian symmetric spaces in Lie groups, Topology Appl. 153 (7) (2005) 10081015, showing that an arbitrary Riemannian symmetric space can be realized as a closed submanifold of a covering group of the Lie group defining the symmetric space. Some properties of the subgroups of fixed points of involutions are also proved.

Let (W, I) be a finite Coxeter group. In the case where W is a Weyl group, Berenstein and Kazhdan in [A. Berenstein, D. Kazhdan, Geometric and unipotent crystals. II. From unipotent bicrystals to crystal bases, in: Quantum Groups, in: Contemp. Math., vol. 433, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 2007, pp. 1388] constructed a monoid structure on the set of all subsets of I using unipotent -linear bicrystals. In this paper, we will generalize this result to all types of finite Coxeter groups (including non-crystallographic types). Our approach is more elementary, based on some combinatorics of Coxeter groups. Moreover, we will calculate this monoid structure explicitly for each type.