Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2009
We assume the reader to be familiar with the basic definitions of near-rings, N-subgroups etc. as presented, for example, in (4). Throughout, N will denote a left near-ring (i.e. a, b, c ∈ N imply a(b + c) = ab + ac) in which 0n = 0 for each n ∈ N. We say that N is strictly semiprime if A2 implies A = (0) where A is an N-subgroup of N. An N-subgroup A is nilpotent if An for some positive integer n and an element a ∈ N is nil if an = 0 for some n. An element a ∈ N is regular if ax = 0 or xa = 0 implies x = 0.