We prove that, given a finitely generated subgroup H of a free group F, the following questions are decidable: is H closed (dense) in F for the pro-(met)abelian topology? Is the closure of H in F for the pro-(met)abelian topology finitely generated? We show also that if the latter question has a positive answer, then we can effectively construct a basis for the closure, and the closure has decidable membership problem in any case. Moreover, it is decidable whether H is closed for the pro-$\mathbf {V}$ topology when $\mathbf {V}$ is an equational pseudovariety of finite groups, such as the pseudovariety $\mathbf {S}_k$ of all finite solvable groups with derived length $\leq k$. We also connect the pro-abelian topology with the topologies defined by abelian groups of bounded exponent.

If G is a group with subgroup H and m, k are two fixed nonnegative integers, H is called an $(m,k)$ -subnormal subgroup of G if it has index at most m in a subnormal subgroup of G of defect less than or equal to k. We study the behaviour of uncountable groups of cardinality $\aleph $ where all subgroups of cardinality $\aleph $ are $(m,k)$ -subnormal.

We show that two metacyclic groups of the following types are isomorphic if they have the same character tables: (i) split metacyclic groups, (ii) the metacyclic p-groups and (iii) the metacyclic {p, q}-groups, where p, q are odd primes.

The c-dimension of a group is the maximum length of a chain of nested centralizers. It is proved that a periodic locally soluble group of finite c-dimension k is soluble of derived length bounded in terms of k, and the rank of its quotient by the Hirsch–Plotkin radical is bounded in terms of k. Corollary: a pseudo-(finite soluble) group of finite c-dimension k is soluble of derived length bounded in terms of k.

A complete structural characterization of submonoids $S$ of a polycyclic-by-finite group such that the semigroup algebra $K[S]$ over a field $K$ is right noetherian is obtained. It follows that such algebras are also left noetherian.

Let S be a subset of a group G such that S−1 = S. Denote by gr (S) the subgroup of G generated by S, and by ls(g) the length of an element g ∈ gr(S) relative to the set S. Suppose that V is a finite subset of a free group F of countable rank such that the verbal subgroup V (F) is a proper subgroup of F. For an arbitrary group G, denote by (G) the set of values in G of all the words from the set V. In the present paper, for amalgamated products G = A *HB such that A ≠ H and the number of double cosets of B by H is at least three, the infiniteness of the set {ls(g) | g ∈ gr(S)}, where S = (G) ∪ (G)−1, is estabilished.

The intersection IW(G) of the normalizers of the infinite subnormal subgroups of a group G is a characteristic subgroup containing the Wielandt subgroup W(G) which we call the generalized Wielandt subgroup. In this paper we show that if G is infinite, then the structure of IW(G)/ W(G) is quite restricted, being controlled by a certain characteristic subgroup S(G). If S(G) is finite, then so is IW(G)/ W(G), whereas if S(G) is an infinite Prüfer-by-finite group, then IW(G)/W(G) is metabelian. In all other cases, IW(G) = W(G).