The following changes should be made in the statement of Theorem 3.1 and its proof.

A set function is said to be λ-convex if whenever A and B are in Σ with A ∩ B = φ, then

In (2), Holcombe investigated near-rings of zero-preserving mappings of a group Γ which commute with the elements of a semigroup S of endomorphisms of Γ and examined the question: under what conditions do near-rings of this type have near-rings of right quotients which are 2-primitive with minimum condition on right ideals? In the first part of this paper (§2) we investigate further properties of near-rings of this type. The second part of the paper (§3) deals with those near-rings which have semisimple near-rings of right quotients. Our results here are analogous to those of Goldie (1); in particular, with a suitable definition of finite rank we prove that a near-ring which has a semisimple near-ring of right quotients has finite rank

The purpose of this paper is to provide a vector version of the characterisations of the multipliers for L1(G) (see (9), p. 2). This problem was considered by Akinyele (1). However, the Banach algebras involved in that paper are commutative semi-simple Banach algebras and the proof of the main theorem seems to be incomplete. Indeed we give at the end of this paper an example which shows that statements (i) and (ii) of Theorem 3.2 of Akinyele ((1), p. 490) are not equivalent in general.

At the 29th Meeting of the British Mathematical Colloquium held at Edinburgh in March 1977, D. H. Fremlin announced the following result.

Let Φ denote the proposition that there exists a K-analytic Hausdorff space, having metrizable compacta, which is not Souslin. (We refer the reader to Fremlin's paper (1) for the relevant definitions)

Theorem 1.1. (Fremlin) (i) Assume . (ii) Assume Martin's Axiom together with . Then Φ is false.

Given a ring R we consider the category Ŕ of R-rings (rings A with given ring-homomorphisms R → A), and R-homomorphisms (ring-homomorphisms that form commutative triangles with the given maps from R). All rings are associative and have 1, all homomorphisms send 1 to 1.

We define a c-R-ring as an object A in Ŕ with a family of maps {ρx ∈ homŔ(A,A)|x∈A}. Equivalently, a c-R-ring is an R-ring A with a binary operation a · b(= aρb) on A satisfying

In (3) it is shown that, for a locally compact abelian group G and x∈G, δx has a logarithm in M(G) if and only if x has finite order. Since M(G) can be identified with the multipliers of L1(G), one might expect a similar result for the algebras of multipliers on Lp(G) for 1 < p < ∞. However, in contrast, it is shown in (2) that for a locally compact abelian group G and 1 < p < ∞, every translation operator on Lp(G) has a logarithm in the multiplier algebra. Here we consider whether the same results are true for non-abelian groups.

The Carter subgroups of a finite soluble group may be characterised either as theself-normalising nilpotent subgroups or as the nilpotent projectors. Subgroups with properties analogous to both of these have been considered by Newell (2, 3) in the class of -groups. The results obtained are necessarily less satisfactory than in the finite case, the subgroups either being almost self-normalising (i.e. having finite index in their normaliser) or having an almost-covering property. Also the subgroups are not necessarily conjugate but lie in finitely many conjugacy classes.

Let X be any real or complex Banach space. If T is a bounded linear operator on X then denote by N(T) the null space of T and by R(T) the range space of T.

Now if X is finite dimensional and N(T) = N(T2) then also R(T) = R(T2). Therefore X admits a direct sum decomposition

.

Indeed it is easy to see that N(T) = N(T2) implies that and, using dimension theory of finite dimensional spaces, that N(T) and R(T) span the whole space (see, for example, (2, pp. 271–73))

The problems associated with finding solutions of Laplace's equation subject to mixed boundary conditions have attracted much attention and, as a consequence, a variety of analytical techniques have been developed for the solution of such problems. Sneddon (1) has given a comprehensive account of these techniques. The object of this note is to draw attention to some simple orthogonal polynomial solutions to the most basic mixed boundary-value problems in two and threedimensional potential theory. These solutions have the advantage that most quantities of physical interest are easily evaluated in terms of known functions. Two-dimensional problems are considered in §2 and axially-symmetric three-dimensional problems in §3.

Let G be a permutation group of degree m. Let x be an irreducible complex character of G. If A = (aij) is an m-square matrix, the generalised matrix function of A based on G and x is defined by

For example if G = Sm, the full symmetric group, and x is the alternating character, then d = determinant. If G = Sm and x is identically 1, then d = permanent.

A near-ring N is defined to be left bipotent if Na = Na2 for each a in N. Many properties of such near-rings are proved in Section 1, and results of Chandran (4) are generalised. Most of the results are different from, and contrary to, the ring case. Necessary and sufficient conditions have also been obtained under which such near-rings become regular. Section 2 deals with left bipotent near-rings without zero divisors. Some structure theorems for direct sum decompositions and J(N) = (0) are proved and it is shown that for a left bipotent S-near-ring, the singular ‘set’ S(N) = 0. Necessary examples and counter examples are supplied.

If G is a group, let

m(G)

be the least cardinal such that G may be generated by m(G) elements, and let

m,(G)

In his fundamental paper (3), Thorn proved, among other things, that a mod-2 homology class of an n-dimensional, closed, compact, C∞ manifold, which has dimension n/2, can be realised by a submanifold, (see (3), Théorème II. 1 and Corollaire 11.13).

In this note we examine the question of realisability of mod-2 homology classes of the next higher dimension.

Keller (6) considered a generalisation of a problem of Minkowski (7) concerning the filling of Rn by congruent cubes. Hajós (4) reduced Minkowski's conjecture to a problem concerning the factorization of finite abelian groups and then solved this problem. In a similar manner Hajós (5) reduced Keller's conjecture to a problem in the factorization of finite abelian groups, but this problem remains unsolved, in general. It occurs also as Problem 80 in Fuchs (3). Seitz (10) has obtained a solution for cyclic groups of prime power order. In this paper we present a solution for cyclic groups whose order is the product of two prime powers.

In (2) Hickin and Phillips establish various results connecting the ideas of local systems and serial subgroups in group theory. In (4) Petty shows that if a group has a local factor system of -groups, then it may be embedded in an ultraproduct of -groups and he uses this result to extend some local theorems which were originally due to Mal'cev (3) and at the same time providing an elementary proof. We shall show that Petty's method may be used to prove results about seriality and local systems.

In a recent paper (6) the present author has shown that, for an element a of a Banach algebra A, the condition

for all x∈A and some constant α is equivalent to [x, a]∈Rad a for all x∈A; it turns out that α may be replaced by |α|σ It is the purpose of the present note to investigate a related condition

R will denote a Dedekind domain and Pone of its prime ideals. A P-primary module will be an R-module all of whose non-zero elements have annihilators that are powers of the prime P. In all that follows E is such a module.

The height of 0 ≠ x ∈ E will be max{n : x ∈ PnE}. It is denoted by h(x). If this maximum does not exist we will say h(x)∞.

Clearly the condition is equivalent to E having no non-zero elements of infinite height. Adopting the terminology of (2, Ch. XI) where such modules over the ring of integers are studied, we will call these modules separable and reduced.

A monoid in which every principal right ideal is projective is called a right PP monoid. Special classes of such monoids have been investigated in (2), (3), (4) and (8). There is a well-known internal characterisation of right PP monoids using the relation ℒ* which is defined as follows. On a semigroup S, (a,b) ∈ℒ* if and only if the elements a,b of S are related by Green's relation ℒ* in some oversemigroup of S. Then a monoid S is a right PP monoid if and only if each ℒ*-class of S contains an idempotent. The existence of an identity element is not relevant for the internal characterisation and in this paper we study some classes of semigroups whose idempotents commute and in which each ℒ*-class contains an idempotent. We call such a semigroup a right adequate semigroup since it contains a sufficient supply of suitable idempotents. Dually we may define the relation ℛ* on a semigroup and the notion of a left adequate semigroup. A semigroup which is both left and right adequate will be called an adequate semigroup.

The permanent of an m x n matrix A = (aij), m ≤ n, is defined by

where the summation is over all one-to-one functions σ from {1, … , m} to { 1, …, n}. In other words, the permanent of A is the sum of all the diagonal products of A, that is, all the products of m entries of A no two of which lie in the same row or in the same column. Thus the permanent of A may be evaluated by first multiplying all the row sums of A and then subtracting from the product all terms that contain as factors two or more entries from the same column of A. This is the idea behind the formulas of Binet and of Ryser.

In this paper, we solve the following dual integral equations

where δ is a real positive constant and f(x) is a continuous and integrable function of x in [0, a]. The dual integral equations (1) and (2) arise in a crack problem of elasticity.