Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 November 2011
Whether the -radical of a structural matrix near-ring
(B, R) is the sum of two non-trivial ideals, one of which is nilpotent, is an open problem. However, it is known that
(
(B, R)) contains two ideals
and
, which are respectively precisely the two ideals, the sum of which is the Jacobson radical, in the case where the underlying near-ring is a ring. We strengthen our conjecture that
and
are the sought-after ideals by showing that
(B, R)/
≅
(C, R) in the near-ring case, where C is the largest symmetric Boolean matrix such that C≦B, and by showing that
is nilpotent.