Progress in Commutative Algebra 2: Closures, Finiteness and Factorization

This is the second of two volumes of a state-of-the-art survey article collection which emanates from three commutative algebra sessions atthe 2009 Fall Southeastern American Mathematical Society Meeting at Florida Atlantic University. The articles reach into diverse areas of commutative algebra and build a bridge between Noetherian and non-Noetherian commutative algebra. The current trends in two of the most active areas of commutative algebra are non-noetherian rings (factorization, ideal theory, integrality), advances from the homological study of noetherian rings (the local theory, graded situation and its interactions with combinatorics and geometry). This second volume discusses closures, decompositions, and factorization.