A free associative algebra as a free module over a Specht subalgebra.
We connect the theorems of Rentschler [rR68] and Dixmier [jD68] on locally nilpotent derivations and automorphisms of the polynomial ring and of the Weyl algebra , both over a field of characteristic zero, by establishing the same type of results for the family of algebras where is an arbitrary polynomial in . In the second part of the paper we consider a field of prime characteristic and study comodule algebra structures on . We also compute the Makar-Limanov invariant of absolute constants...