We prove that for any prime power $q\notin \{3,4,5\}$ , the cubic extension $\mathbb {F}_{q^{3}}$ of the finite field $\mathbb {F}_{q}$ contains a primitive element $\xi $ such that $\xi +\xi ^{-1}$ is also primitive, and $\operatorname {\mathrm {Tr}}_{\mathbb {F}_{q^{3}}/\mathbb {F}_{q}}(\xi )=a$ for any prescribed $a\in \mathbb {F}_{q}$ . This completes the proof of a conjecture of Gupta et al. [‘Primitive element pairs with one prescribed trace over a finite field’, Finite Fields Appl. 54 (2018), 1–14] concerning the analogous problem over an extension of arbitrary degree $n\ge 3$ .

Let $r,n>1$ be integers and $q$ be any prime power $q$ such that $r\mid q^{n}-1$. We say that the extension $\mathbb{F}_{q^{n}}/\mathbb{F}_{q}$ possesses the line property for $r$-primitive elements property if, for every $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC},\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}\in \mathbb{F}_{q^{n}}^{\ast }$ such that $\mathbb{F}_{q^{n}}=\mathbb{F}_{q}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D703})$, there exists some $x\in \mathbb{F}_{q}$ such that $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}+x)$ has multiplicative order $(q^{n}-1)/r$. We prove that, for sufficiently large prime powers $q$, $\mathbb{F}_{q^{n}}/\mathbb{F}_{q}$ possesses the line property for $r$-primitive elements. We also discuss the (weaker) translate property for extensions.

We describe all finite dimensional uniserial representations of a commutative associative (resp. abelian Lie) algebra over a perfect (resp. sufficiently large perfect) field. In the Lie case the size of the field depends on the answer to following question, considered and solved in this paper. Let $K/F$ be a finite separable field extension and let $x,\,y\,\in \,K$. When is $F\left[ x,\,y \right]\,=\,F\left[ \alpha x\,+\,\beta y \right]$ for some nonzero elements $\alpha ,\,\beta \,\in \,F?$

Following Radford's proof of Lagrange's theorem for pointed Hopf algebras, we prove Lagrange‘s theorem for Hopf monoids in the category of connected species. As a corollary, we obtain necessary conditions for a given subspecies $\mathbf{k}$ of a Hopf monoid $\mathbf{h}$ to be a Hopf submonoid: the quotient of any one of the generating series of $\mathbf{h}$ by the corresponding generating series of $\mathbf{k}$ must have nonnegative coefficients. Other corollaries include a necessary condition for a sequence of nonnegative integers to be the dimension sequence of a Hopf monoid in the form of certain polynomial inequalities and of a set-theoretic Hopf monoid in the form of certain linear inequalities. The latter express that the binomial transform of the sequence must be nonnegative.