We study the algebra of semigroups of sets (i.e. families of sets closed under finite unions) and its applications. For each n greater than 1 we produce two finite nested families of pairwise different semigroups of sets consisting of subsets of R" without the Baire property.

We suggest a method of constructing decompositions of a topological space X having an open subset homeomorphic to the space (R-n , tau), where n is an integer greater than= 1 and tau is any admissible extension of the Euclidean topology of R-n (in particular, X can be a finite-dimensional separable metrizable manifold), into a countable family F of sets (dense in X and zero-dimensional in the case of manifolds) such that the union of each non-empty proper subfamily of F does not have the Baire property in X.

The existence of the Ginzburg-Landau vortex number is established for any configuration with finite action. As a consequence, Bogomol'nyi's formula for the critical action is valid for any finite action configuration.