A description of regular group rings is well known (see [12]). Various authors have considered regular semigroup rings (see [17], [8], [10], [11], [4]). These rings have been characterized for many important classes of semigroups, although the general problem turns out to be rather difficult and still has not got a complete solution. It seems natural to describe the regular radical in semigroup rings for semigroups of the classes mentioned. In [10], the regular semigroup rings of commutative semigroups were described. The aim of the present paper is to characterize the regular radical ρ(R[S]) for each associative ring R and commutative semigroup S.

Within the context of orthogonal geometry, isometries of a real inner product space induce Bogoliubov automorphisms of its associated Clifford algebras. The question whether or not such automorphisms are inner is of considerable interest and importance. Inner Bogoliubov automorphisms were fully characterized for the C* Clifford algebra by Shale and Stinespring [14] and for the W* Clifford algebra by Blattner [2]: each case engenders a corresponding notion of spin group, constructed as a group of units inside the Clifford algebra [4].

Let Σ be a σ-algebra of subsets of some set Ω and let μ:Σ→[0,∞] be a σ-additive measure. If Σ(μ) denotes the set of all elements of Σ with finite μ-measure (where sets equal μ-a.e. are identified in the usual way), then a metric d can be defined in Σ(μ) by the formula

here E ΔF = (E\F) ∪ (F\E) denotes the symmetric difference of E and F. The measure μ is called separable whenever the metric space (Σ(μ), d) is separable. It is a classical result that μ is separable if and only if the Banach space L1(μ), is separable [8, p.137]. To exhibit non-separable measures is not a problem; see [8, p. 70], for example. If Σ happens to be the σ-algebra of μ-measurable sets constructed (via outer-measure μ*) by extending μ defined originally on merely a semi-ring of sets Γ ⊆ Σ, then it is also classical that the countability of Γ guarantees the separability of μ and hence, also of L1(μ), [8, p. 69].

Throughout the paper n denotes a fixed positive integer unless otherwise specified. Let B = Bn denote the open unit ball of ℂn and let S = Sn denote its boundary, the unit sphere. The unique rotation-invariant probability measure on 5 will be denoted by σ = σn. For n = l, we use more customary notations D = B1, T = S1 and dσ1= dθ/2π. The Hardy space on B, denoted by H2(B), is then the space of functions f holomorphic on B for which

All polynomials considered in this paper belong to ℚ[x] and reducibility means reducibility over ℚ. It has been established by one of us [5] that every binomial in ℚ[x] has an irreducible factor which is either a binomial or a trinomial. He has further raised the question “Does there exist an absolute constant K such that every trinomial in ℚ[x] has a factor irreducible over ℚ which has at most K terms (i.e. K non-zero coefficients)?”

The question “Does a Banach space with a symmetric basis and weak cotype 2 (or Orlicz) property have cotype 2?” is being seriously considered but is still open though the similar question for the r.i. function space on [0, 1] has an affirmative answer. (If X is a r.i. function space on [0, 1] and has weak cotype 2 (or Orlicz) property then it must have cotype 2.) In this note we prove that for Lorentz sequence spaces d(a, 1) they both hold.

In [4], Ramanujan stated the following beautiful identity which was later proved by Bailey [2] and [3];

We denote by S(n) the coefficient of qn on the right hand side of (1). The object of this paper is to prove the following two theorems.

In [6], Blyth and Varlet characterize those algebras having only principal congruences in some well known classes of algebras having distributive lattice reducts. In particular, they characterize those Stone algebras having only principal congruences. In this paper we characterize those quasi-modular p-algebras having only principal congruences and show on specializing that distributive p-algebras having only principal congruences can be described in exactly the same way as Blyth and Varlet described Stone algebras having the same property. The same problem is addressed for some distributive double p-algebras.

Let A be a noetherian ring. When A is commutative (of finite Krull dimension), A is said to be Gorenstein if its injective dimension is finite. If A has finite global dimension, one says that A is regular. If A is arbitrary, these hypotheses are not sufficient to obtain similar results to those of the commutative case. To remedy this problem, M. Auslander has introduced a supplementary condition. Before stating it, we recall that the grade of a finitely generated (left or right) module is defined by

MV-algebras were introduced by C. C. Chang [3] in 1958 in order to provide an algebraic proof for the completeness theorem of the Lukasiewicz infinite valued propositional logic. In recent years the scope of applications of MV-algebras has been extended to lattice-ordered abelian groups, AF C*-algebras [10] and fuzzy set theory [1].

We identify the extreme points of the unit sphere of the Lorentz space Lw,1 This yields a characterization of the surjective isometries of Lw,1(0,1). Our main result is that every element in the unit sphere of Lw,1 is the barycenter of a unique Borel probability measure supported on the extreme points of the unit sphere of Lw,1.

Quantum stochastic integrals have been constructed in various contexts [2, 3, 4, 5, 9] by adapting the construction of the classical L2-Itô-integral with respect to Brownian motion. Thus, the integral is first defined for simple integrands as a finite sum, then one establishes certain isometry relations or suitable bounds to allow the extension, by continuity, to more general integrands. The integrator is typically operator-valued, the integrand is vector-valued or operator-valued and the quantum stochastic integral is then given as a vector in a Hilbert space, or as an operator on the Hilbert space determined by its action on suitable vectors.

Let M be a compact hypersurface in a Euclidena space ℝn+1. The support function p of M is the component of the position vector field of Min ℝn+1 along the unit normal vector field to M, which is a smooth function defined on M. Let S be the scalar curvature of M. The object of the present paper is to prove the following theorems.

Let I denote the interval [0,1] in its usual topology and let S = S(I) be the semigroup of continuous mappings of I into itself with function composition as the semigroup operation. In a survey talk given at Oberwolfach in 1989 (see [5]), K. D. Magill Jr. pointed out that some elementary algebraic properties of S are still unknown. We shall answer one of the questions he raised (which appears as Problem 4.6 in [5] and which he had asked earlier, as long ago as 1975 [3]) by showing that S has infinitely many distinct two-sided ideals. In fact, we shall produce an infinite descending sequence of distinct ideals. As Magill points out, this also solves his Problem 4.5: S has infinitely many distinct congruences. We believe that S must have c distinct ideals, but we have been unable to prove this.

By the term “locally convex space”, we mean a locally convex Hausdorff topological vector space (see [17]). We shall denote the algebraic dual of a locally convex space E by E*, and its topological dual by E′. It is convenient to think of the elements of E as being linear functionals on E′, so that E can be identified with a subspace of E′*. The adjoint of a continuous linear map T:E→F will be denoted by T′:F′→E′. If 〈E, F〈 is a dual pair of vector spaces, then we shall denote the corresponding weak, strong and Mackey topologies on E by α(E, F), β(E, F) and μ(E, F) respectively.

We prove that sufficiently separated sequences are interpolating sequences for f′(z)(1−|z|2) where f is a Bloch function. If the sequence {zn} is an η net then the boundedness f′(z)(1−|z|2) on {zn} is a sufficient condition for f to be a Bloch function. The essential norm of a Hankel operator with a conjugate analytic symbol acting on the Bergman space is shown to be equivalent to .

Let F = F(g, n) be an oriented surface of genus g≥1 with n<2 boundary components and let M(F) be its mapping class group. Then M(F) is generated by Dehn twists about a finite number of non-bounding simple closed curves in F([6, 5]). See [1] for the definition of a Dehn twist. Let e be a non-bounding simple closed curve in F and let E denote the isotopy class of the Dehn twist about e. Let Nbe the normal closure of E2in M(F). In this paper we answer a question of Birman [1, Qu 28 page 219]:

Theorem 1. The subgroup N is of finite index in M(F).

The object of this paper is to consider two easy propositions concerning bounded approximate identities and show that they do not extend to unbounded approximate identities. The propositions are as follows.

Proposition 1.1. Every bounded left approximate identity in a normed algebra is a left approximate identity for the completion.

Proposition 1.2. Every bounded left approximate identity in a separable normed algebra has a subsequence which is a left approximate identity.

Let the group G = AB be the product of two subgroups A and B. A normal subgroup K of G is said to be factorized if K = (A ∩ K)(B ∩ K) and A ∩ B ≤ K, and this is well-known to be equivalent to the fact that K = AK ∩ BK (see [1]). Easy examples show that normal subgroups of a product of two groups need not, in general, be factorized. Therefore the determination of certain special factorized subgroups is of relevant interest in the investigation concerning the structure of a factorized group. In this direction E. Pennington [5] proved that the Fitting subgroup of a finite product of two nilpotent groups is factorized. This result was extended to infinite groups by B. Amberg and theauthors, who provedin [2] that if the soluble group G = AB with finite abelian section rank isthe product of two locally nilpotent subgroups A and B, then the Hirsch-Plotkin radical (i.e. the maximum locally nilpotent normal subgroup) of G is factorized. If G is a soluble ℒI group and the factors A and B are nilpotent, it was shown in [3] that also the Fitting subgroup of G is factorized. However, Pennington's theorem becomes false for finite soluble groups which are the productof two arbitrary subgroups. For instance, the symmetric group of degree 4 is the product of a subgroup isomorphic with the symmetric group of degree 3 and a cyclic subgroup of order 4, but its Fitting subgroup is not factorized.

Let K be a field of characteristic different from 2, and a, b quadratically independent elements of K. Put J= K(√a, √b). In [4], Jensen and Yui discuss the question of quaternionic (Q8) extensions of J, and give a survey of known results. In [8], Ware discusses (among other things) some general conditions for, and relations between, the existence of Q8 and D4 (dihedral) extensions of K. A general theorem of Witt [9] says that J will have a quaternionic extension J(√u) if and only if there exists a 3 × 3 matrix P over K such that PPt = diag(a, b, 1/ab), and an appropriate value for u is given in terms of the entries of P. The problem of actually finding P in a particular case is not trivial.