We study cluster categories arising from marked surfaces (with punctures and nonempty boundaries). By constructing skewed-gentle algebras, we show that there is a bijection between tagged curves and string objects. Applications include interpreting dimensions of Ext1 as intersection numbers of tagged curves and Auslander-Reiten translation as tagged rotation. An important consequence is that the cluster(-tilting) exchange graphs of such cluster categories are connected.

Let k be a commutative Noetherian ring and C−− be a locally finite k-linear category equipped with a self-embedding functor of degree 1. We show under a moderate condition that finitely generated torsion representations of C−− are super finitely presented (that is, they have projective resolutions each term of which is finitely generated). In the situation that these self-embedding functors are genetic functors, we give upper bounds for homological degrees of finitely generated torsion modules. These results apply to quite a few categories recently appearing in representation stability theory. In particular, when k is a field of characteristic 0, we obtain another upper bound for homological degrees of finitely generated FI-modules.

Starting with a commutative ring $R$ and an ideal $I$ , it is possible to define a family of rings $R(I)_{a,b}$ , with $a,b \in R$ , as quotients of the Rees algebra $\oplus_{n \geq0} I^{n}t^{n}$ ; among the rings appearing in this family we find Nagata’s idealization and amalgamated duplication. Many properties of these rings depend only on $R$ and $I$ and not on $a$ , $b$ ; in this paper we show that the Gorenstein and the almost Gorenstein properties are independent of $a$ , $b$ . More precisely, we characterize when the rings in the family are Gorenstein, complete intersection, or almost Gorenstein and we find a formula for the type.

In this paper we describe an inductive machinery to investigate asymptotic behaviors of homology groups and related invariants of representations of certain graded combinatorial categories over a commutative Noetherian ring k, via introducing inductive functors which generalize important properties of shift functors of FI-modules. In particular, a sufficient criterion for finiteness of Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of finitely generated representations of these categories is obtained. As applications, we show that a few important infinite combinatorial categories appearing in representation stability theory are equipped with inductive functors, and hence the finiteness of Castelnuovo-Mumford regularity of their finitely generated representations is guaranteed. We also prove that truncated representations of these categories have linear minimal resolutions by relative projective modules, which are precisely linear minimal projective resolutions when k is a field of characteristic 0.

The notion of central stability was first formulated for sequences of representations of the symmetric groups by Putman. A categorical reformulation was subsequently given by Church, Ellenberg, Farb, and Nagpal using the notion of FI-modules, where FI is the category of finite sets and injective maps. We extend the notion of central stability from FI to a wide class of categories, and prove that a module is presented in finite degrees if and only if it is centrally stable. We also introduce the notion of d-step central stability, and prove that if the ideal of relations of a category is generated in degrees at most d, then every module presented in finite degrees is d-step centrally stable.