On the question of embedding a semigroup into an idempotent generated   one
  In this paper we present a new embedding of a semigroup into a semiband (idempotent-generated semigroup) of depth 4 (every element is the product of 4 idempotents) using a semidirect product construction. Our embedding does not assume that S is a monoid (although it assumes a weaker condition), and works also for (non-monoid) regular semigroups. In fact, this semidirect product is particularly useful for regular semigroups since we can defined another embedding for these semigroups into a smaller semiband of depth 2. We shall then compare our construction with other known embeddings, and we shall see that some properties of S are preserved by our embedding. 
Luis Oliveira (Faculdade de Ci\^encias da Universidade do Porto)
math.GR