On the structure of finite level and \omega-decomposable Borel functions

We give a full description of the structure under inclusion of all finite level Borel classes of functions, and provide an elementary proof of the well-known fact that not every Borel function can be written as a countable union of \Sigma^0_\alpha-measurable functions (for every fixed 1 \leq \alpha < \omega_1). Moreover, we present some results concerning those Borel functions which are \omega-decomposable into continuous functions (also called countably continuous functions in the literature): such results should be viewed as a contribution towards the goal of generalizing a remarkable theorem of Jayne and Rogers to all finite levels, and in fact they allow us to prove some restricted forms of such generalizations. We also analyze finite level Borel functions in terms of composition of simpler functions, and we finally present an application to Banach space theory.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures, revised version, accepted for publication on the Journal of Symbolic Logi

On disjoint Borel uniformizations

Larman showed that any closed subset of the plane with uncountable vertical cross-sections has aleph_1 disjoint Borel uniformizing sets. Here we show that Larman's result is best possible: there exist closed sets with uncountable cross-sections which do not have more than aleph_1 disjoint Borel uniformizations, even if the continuum is much larger than aleph_1. This negatively answers some questions of Mauldin. The proof is based on a result of Stern, stating that certain Borel sets cannot be written as a small union of low-level Borel sets. The proof of the latter result uses Steel's method of forcing with tagged trees; a full presentation of this method, written in terms of Baire category rather than forcing, is given here