The Hurewicz covering property and slaloms in the Baire space

According to a result of Kocinac and Scheepers, the Hurewicz covering property is equivalent to a somewhat simpler selection property: For each sequence of large open covers of the space one can choose finitely many elements from each cover to obtain a groupable cover of the space. We simplify the characterization further by omitting the need to consider sequences of covers: A set of reals $X$ satisfies the Hurewicz property if, and only if, each large open cover of $X$ contains a groupable subcover. This solves in the affirmative a problem of Scheepers. The proof uses a rigorously justified abuse of notation and a "structure" counterpart of a combinatorial characterization, in terms of slaloms, of the minimal cardinality b of an unbounded family of functions in the Baire space. In particular, we obtain a new characterization of \b.Comment: Small update

Hurewicz sets of reals without perfect subsets

We show that even for subsets X of the real line which do not contain perfect sets, the Hurewicz property does not imply the property S1(Gamma,Gamma), asserting that for each countable family of open gamma-covers of X, there is a choice function whose image is a gamma-cover of X. This settles a problem of Just, Miller, Scheepers, and Szeptycki. Our main result also answers a question of Bartoszynski and Tsaban, and implies that for C_p(X), the conjunction of Sakai's strong countable fan tightness and the Reznichenko property does not imply Arhangelskii's property alpha_2

Hereditary topological diagonalizations and the Menger-Hurewicz Conjectures

We consider the question, which of the major classes defined by topological diagonalizations of open or Borel covers is hereditary. Many of the classes in the open case are not hereditary already in ZFC, and none of them is provably hereditary. This is contrasted with the Borel case, where some of the classes are provably hereditary. Two of the examples are counter-examples of sizes d$ and b, respectively, to the Menger and Hurewicz Conjectures, and one of them answers a question of Steprans on perfectly meager sets