In this paper the structure of rings with dual continuous right ideals is discussed. The main result is the following: If R is a ring with (Jacobson) radical nil, and all of its finitely generated right ideals are dual continuous, then where S is a finite direct sum of local rings each of which has its radical square zero, or is a right valuation ring, T is semiprimary right semihereditary ring, and M is an (S, T)-bimodule such that all of its finitely generated T-submodules are projective. A partial converse of this result is obtained: any matrix ring of the above type with M = 0 has all of its finitely generated right ideals dual continuous.

We give an explicit one step description of the free (Barr) exact category on a left exact one. As an application we give a new two step construction of the free abelian category on an additive one.

Special numerical formulae for the dilogarithm of powers of a base quantity have been shown to exist by Watson, Coxeter and others. Abel's equation for the dilogarithm was put in this “exponent” form, as a result of which a four-variable, symmetrical equation, also in exponent form, was deduced. From these equations a large number of special numerical results were produced, from which certain properties of a general structural nature emerged, and enabled two new results to be predicted.

The algebraic bases for these results can be grouped in trigonometric or non-trigonometric form, and for the former it seems to be necessary to examine the properties of the dilogarithm in the complex plane. Even so, there are some identities that seem to be outside the scope of the present methods.

It is speculated that certain factorization relations, which can be identified from the equations, may play a substantial role in the results; but so far no analytic derivation of this property has appeared possible.

If G is the unitary group U(V) or the symplectic group Sp(V) of a vector space V over a finite field of characteristic p, and r is a positive integer, we determine the abelian p-subgroups of largest order in G whose fixed subspaces in V have dimension at least r, with the restriction that we assume p ≠ 2 in the symplectic case. In particular, we determine the abelian subgroups of largest order in a Sylow p-subgroup of G. Our results complement earlier work on general linear and orthogonal groups.

If Sp(V) is the symplectic group of a vector space V over a finite field of characteristic p, and r is a positive integer, the abelian p-subgroups of largest order in Sp(V) whose fixed subspaces in V have dimension at least r were determined in the preceding paper, in the case p ≠ 2. Here we deal with the case p = 2. Our results also complete earlier work on the orthogonal groups.

Let G be a cyclic group of prime order p and K a field of characteristic p. The set of classes of isomorphic indecomposable (K, G)-modules forms a basis over the complex field for an algebra p (Green, 1962) with addition and multiplication being derived from direct sum and tensor product operations.

Algebras n with similar properties can be defined for all n ≥ 2. Each such algebra is isomorphic to a matrix algebra Mn of n × n matrices with complex entries and standard operations. The characters of elements of n are the eigenvalues of the corresponding matrices in Mn.

Olson and Jenkins defined E(M) to be the class of all rings each nonzero homomorphic image of which contains either a nonzero M-ideal or an essential ideal where M, is any class of rings. E(M) was proven to be a radical class and various classes M were considered. Here the class E(M) is partitioned into two classes: H the class of all rings each nonzero homomorphic image of which has a proper essential ideal and the class H(M) of all rings each nonzero homomorphic image of which contains an M-ideal. It is shown that H is a radical class and under certain conditions H(M) is also a radical class. Various properties placed on M yield several well-known radical classes and an infinite number of supernilpotent nonspecial radical classes is constructed.

In 1953 P. P. Korovkin proved that if (Tn) is a sequence of positive linear operators defined on the space C of continuous real 2 π-periodic functions and lim Tnf = f uniformly for f = 1, cos and sin, then lim Tnf = f uniformly for all f ∈ C. Quantitative versions of this result have been given, where the rate of convergence is given in terms of that of the test functions 1, cos and sin, and the modulus of continuity of f. We extend this result by giving a quantitative version of Korovkin's theorem for compact connected abelian groups.

It is shown that hte algebra of regular sets for a finitely additive Borel measure μ on a compact Hausdroff space is a σ-algebra only if it includes the Baire algebra and μ is countably additive onthe σ-algebra of regular sets. Any infinite compact Hausdroff space admits a finitely additive Borel measure whose algebra of regular sets is not a σ-algebra. Although a finitely additive measure with a σ-algebra of regular sets is countably additive on the Baire σ-algebra there are examples of finitely additive extensions of countably additive Baire measures whose regular algebra is not a σ-algebra. We examine the particular case of extensions of Dirac measures. In this context it is shown that all extensions of a {0, 1}-valued countably additive measure from a σ-algebra to a larger σ-algebra are countably additive if and only if the convex set of these extensions is a finite dimensional simplex.

A transcendence theorem is proved for functions satisfying functional equations of the shape P(z, f(z), f(zp)) = 0, where P is a polynomial and p ≥ 2 is an integer.

Let X be a weakly complete proper cone, contained in an Hausdorff locally convex space E, with continuous dual E′. A positive linear form on the Risz space of functions on X generated by E′ is called a conical measure on X. Let M+ (X) be the set of all conical measures on X. G. Choquet asked the question: when is every conical measure on X given by a Radon measure on (X\0)? Let L be the class of such X. In this paper we show that the fact that X ∈ L only depends, in some sense, on the cofinal subsets of the space E′|x ordered by the order of functions on X. We derive that X ∈ L is equivalent to M+ (M) ∈ L. We show that is closed under denumerable products.

Recently, we have introduced the notion of stable permutations in a Latin rectangle L(r×c) of r rows and c columns. In this note, we prove that the set of all stable permutations in L (r×c) forms a distributive lattice which is Boolean if and only if c ≤ 2.

A simple technique for obtaining bounds in terms of means and variances for the expectations of certain functions of random variables in a given class is examined. The bounds given are sharp in the sense that they are attainable by at least one random variable in the class. This technique is applied to obtain bounds for moment generating functions, the coefficient of skewness and parameters associated with branching processes. In particular an improved lower bound for the Malthusian parameter in an age-dependent branching process is derived.