A ring R is said to be a Baer (respectively, quasi-Baer) ring if the left annihilator of any nonempty subset (respectively, any ideal) of R is generated by an idempotent. It is first proved that for a ring R and a group G, if a group ring RG is (quasi-) Baer then so is R; if in addition G is finite then |G|–1 € R. Counter examples are then given to answer Hirano's question which asks whether the group ring RG is (quasi-) Baer if R is (quasi-) Baer and G is a finite group with |G|–1 € R. Further, efforts have been made towards answering the question of when the group ring RG of a finite group G is (quasi-) Baer, and various (quasi-) Baer group rings are identified. For the case where G is a group acting on R as automorphisms, some sufficient conditions are given for the fixed ring RG to be Baer.

In this paper we establish the definition of the generalized inverse A(2)T, S which is a {2} inverse of a matrix A with prescribed image T and kernel s over an associative ring, and give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of the generalized inverse and some explicit expressions for of a matrix A over an associative ring, which reduce to the group inverse or {1} inverses. In addition, we show that for an arbitrary matrix A over an associative ring, the Drazin inverse Ad, the group inverse Ag and the Moore-Penrose inverse . if they exist, are all the generalized inverse A(2)T, S.

In a Riemannian manifold M, elastica are solutions of the Euler-Lagrange equation of the following second order constrained variational problem: find a unit-speed curve in M, interpolating two given points with given initial and final (unit) velocities, of minimal average squared geodesic curvature. We study elastica in Lie groups G equipped with bi-invariant Riemannian metrics, focusing, with a view to applications in engineering and computer graphics, on the group SO(3) of rotations of Euclidean 3-space. For compact G, we show that elastica extend to the whole real line. For G = SO(3), we solve the Euler-Lagrange equation by quadratures.

In this paper, we establish an extension of the matrix form of the Brunn-Minkowski inequality. As applications, we give generalizations on the metric addition inequality of Alexander.

2000 Mathematics subject classification: primary 52A40.

A mapping f : G → s from a left topological group G into a semigroup S is a local homomorphism if for every x є G \ {e}, there is a neighborhood Ux of e such that f (xy) = f (x)f (y) for all y є Ux \ {e}. A local homomorphism f : G → S is onto if for every neighborhood U of e, f(U \ {e}) = S. We show that

(1) every countable regular left topological group containing a discrete subset with exactly one accumulation point admits a local homomorphism onto N,

(2) it is consistent that every countable topological group containing a discrete subset with exactly one accumulation point admits a local homomorphism onto any countable semigroup,

(3) it is consistent that every countable nondiscrete maximally almost periodic topological group admits a local homomorphism onto the countably infinite right zero semigroup.