Distractions of Shakin rings

We study, by means of embeddings of Hilbert functions, a class of rings which we call Shakin rings, i.e. quotients K[X_1,...,X_n]/a of a polynomial ring over a field K by ideals a=L+P which are the sum of a piecewise lex-segment ideal L, as defined by Shakin, and a pure powers ideal P. Our main results extend Abedelfatah's recent work on the Eisenbud-Green-Harris conjecture, Shakin's generalization of Macaulay and Bigatti-Hulett-Pardue theorems on Betti numbers and, when char(K)=0, Mermin-Murai theorem on the Lex-Plus-Power inequality, from monomial regular sequences to a larger class of ideals. We also prove an extremality property of embeddings induced by distractions in terms of Hilbert functions of local cohomology modules.