Let $R$ be a commutative ring. The regular digraph of ideals of $R$, denoted by $\Gamma (R)$, is a digraph whose vertex set is the set of all nontrivial ideals of $R$ and, for every two distinct vertices $I$ and $J$, there is an arc from $I$ to $J$ whenever $I$ contains a nonzero divisor on $J$. In this paper, we study the connectedness of $\Gamma (R)$. We also completely characterise the diameter of this graph and determine the number of edges in $\Gamma (R)$, whenever $R$ is a finite direct product of fields. Among other things, we prove that $R$ has a finite number of ideals if and only if $\mathrm {N}_{\Gamma (R)}(I)$ is finite, for all vertices $I$ in $\Gamma (R)$, where $\mathrm {N}_{\Gamma (R)}(I)$ is the set of all adjacent vertices to $I$ in $\Gamma (R)$.

A semigroup $S$ is called idempotent-surjective (respectively, regular-surjective) if whenever $\rho $ is a congruence on $S$ and $a\rho $ is idempotent (respectively, regular) in $S/ \rho $, then there is $e\in {E}_{S} \cap a\rho $ (respectively, $r\in \mathrm{Reg} (S)\cap a\rho $), where ${E}_{S} $ (respectively, $\mathrm{Reg} (S)$) denotes the set of all idempotents (respectively, regular elements) of $S$. Moreover, a semigroup $S$ is said to be idempotent-regular-surjective if it is both idempotent-surjective and regular-surjective. We show that any regular congruence on an idempotent-regular-surjective (respectively, regular-surjective) semigroup is uniquely determined by its kernel and trace (respectively, the set of equivalence classes containing idempotents). Finally, we prove that all structurally regular semigroups are idempotent-regular-surjective.

For $n= 1, 2, 3, \ldots $ let ${S}_{n} $ be the sum of the first $n$ primes. We mainly show that the sequence ${a}_{n} = \sqrt[n]{{S}_{n} / n}~(n= 1, 2, 3, \ldots )$ is strictly decreasing, and moreover the sequence ${a}_{n+ 1} / {a}_{n} ~(n= 10, 11, \ldots )$ is strictly increasing. We also formulate similar conjectures involving twin primes or partitions of integers.

The stable rank of Leavitt path algebras of row-finite graphs was computed by Ara and Pardo. In this paper we extend this to an arbitrary directed graph. In part our computation proceeds as for the row-finite case, but we also use knowledge of the row-finite setting by applying the desingularising method due to Drinen and Tomforde. In particular, we characterise purely infinite simple quotients of a Leavitt path algebra.

Let $(R, \mathfrak{m})$ be a Cohen–Macaulay complete local ring. We will apply an inductive argument to show that for every nonprojective locally projective maximal Cohen–Macaulay object $ \mathcal{X} $ of the morphism category of $R$ with local endomorphism ring, there exists an almost split sequence ending in $ \mathcal{X} $. Regular sequences are exploited to reduce the Krull dimension of $R$ on which the inductive argument is established. Moreover, the Auslander–Reiten translate of certain objects is described.

Suppose that $G$ is a second countable, locally compact Hausdorff groupoid with abelian stabiliser subgroups and a Haar system. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the groupoid ${C}^{\ast } $-algebra to have Hausdorff spectrum. In particular, we show that the spectrum of ${C}^{\ast } (G)$ is Hausdorff if and only if the stabilisers vary continuously with respect to the Fell topology, the orbit space ${G}^{(0)} / G$ is Hausdorff, and, given convergent sequences ${\chi }_{i} \rightarrow \chi $ and ${\gamma }_{i} \cdot {\chi }_{i} \rightarrow \omega $ in the dual stabiliser groupoid $\widehat{S}$ where the ${\gamma }_{i} \in G$ act via conjugation, if $\chi $ and $\omega $ are elements of the same fibre then $\chi = \omega $.

We study the space of irreducible representations of a crossed product ${C}^{\ast } $-algebra ${\mathop{A\rtimes }\nolimits}_{\sigma } G$, where $G$ is a finite group. We construct a space $\widetilde {\Gamma } $ which consists of pairs of irreducible representations of $A$ and irreducible projective representations of subgroups of $G$. We show that there is a natural action of $G$ on $\widetilde {\Gamma } $ and that the orbit space $G\setminus \widetilde {\Gamma } $ corresponds bijectively to the dual of ${\mathop{A\rtimes }\nolimits}_{\sigma } G$.

The notion of BSE algebras was introduced and first studied by Takahasi and Hatori and later studied by Kaniuth and Ülger. This notion depends strongly on the multiplier algebra $M( \mathcal{A} )$ of a commutative Banach algebra $ \mathcal{A} $. In this paper we first present a characterisation of the multiplier algebra of the direct sum of two commutative semisimple Banach algebras. Then as an application we show that $ \mathcal{A} \oplus \mathcal{B} $ is a BSE algebra if and only if $ \mathcal{A} $ and $ \mathcal{B} $ are BSE. We also prove that if the algebra $ \mathcal{A} \hspace{0.167em} {\mathop{\times }\nolimits}_{\theta } \hspace{0.167em} \mathcal{B} $ with $\theta $-Lau product is a BSE algebra and $ \mathcal{B} $ is unital then $ \mathcal{B} $ is a BSE algebra. We present some examples which show that the BSE property of $ \mathcal{A} \hspace{0.167em} {\mathop{\times }\nolimits}_{\theta } \hspace{0.167em} \mathcal{B} $ does not imply the BSE property of $ \mathcal{A} $, even in the case where $ \mathcal{B} $ is unital.

We study the top left derived functors of the generalised $I$-adic completion and obtain equivalent properties concerning the vanishing or nonvanishing of the modules ${L}_{i} {\Lambda }_{I} (M, N)$. We also obtain some results for the sets $\text{Coass} ({L}_{i} {\Lambda }_{I} (M; N))$ and ${\text{Cosupp} }_{R} ({ H}_{i}^{I} (M; N))$.

We investigate the topological and metric properties of attractors of an iterated function system (IFS) whose functions may not be contractive. We focus, in particular, on invertible IFSs of finitely many maps on a compact metric space. We rely on ideas of Kieninger [Iterated Function Systems on Compact Hausdorff Spaces (Shaker, Aachen, 2002)] and McGehee and Wiandt [‘Conley decomposition for closed relations’, Differ. Equ. Appl. 12 (2006), 1–47] restricted to what is, in many ways, a simpler setting, but focused on a special type of attractor, namely point-fibred invariant sets. This allows us to give short proofs of some of the key ideas.

We prove an upper bound on sums of squares of minors of $\{+1, -1\}$-matrices. The bound is sharp for Hadamard matrices, a result due to de Launey and Levin [‘$(1,-1)$-matrices with near-extremal properties’, SIAM J. Discrete Math.23(2009), 1422–1440], but our proof is simpler. We give several corollaries relevant to minors of Hadamard matrices.

We consider a code to be a subset of the vertex set of a Hamming graph. We examine elusive pairs, code-group pairs where the code is not determined by knowledge of its set of neighbours. We construct a new infinite family of elusive pairs, where the group in question acts transitively on the set of neighbours of the code. In these examples, the alphabet size always divides the length of the code. We show that there is no elusive pair for the smallest set of parameters that does not satisfy this condition. We also pose several questions regarding elusive pairs.

Let $G$ be a finite $p$-solvable group and let ${G}^{\ast } $ be the set of elements of primary and biprimary orders of $G$. Suppose that the conjugacy class sizes of ${G}^{\ast } $ are $\{ 1, {p}^{a} , n, {p}^{a} n\} $, where the prime $p$ divides the positive integer $n$ and ${p}^{a} $ does not divide $n$. Then $G$ is, up to central factors, a $\{ p, q\} $-group with $p$ and $q$ two distinct primes. In particular, $G$ is solvable.

It is proved that every remainder of a nonlocally compact semitopological group $G$ is a Baire space if and only if $G$ is not Čech-complete, which improves a dichotomy theorem of topological groups by Arhangel’skiǐ [‘The Baire property in remainders of topological groups and other results’, Comment. Math. Univ. Carolin. 50(2) (2009), 273–279], and also gives a positive answer to a question of Lin and Lin [‘About remainders in compactifications of paratopological groups’, ArXiv: 1106.3836v1 [Math. GN] 20 June 2011]. We also show that for a nonlocally compact rectifiable space $G$ every remainder of $G$ is either Baire, or meagre and Lindelöf.

Necessary and sufficient conditions are presented for a function involving the divided difference of the psi function to be completely monotonic and for a function involving the ratio of two gamma functions to be logarithmically completely monotonic. From these, some double inequalities are derived for bounding polygamma functions, divided differences of polygamma functions, and the ratio of two gamma functions.

In this paper, we establish various inequalities for some differentiable mappings that are linked with the illustrious Hermite–Hadamard integral inequality for mappings whose derivatives are $s$-$(\alpha , m)$-convex. The generalised integral inequalities contribute better estimates than some already presented. The inequalities are then applied to numerical integration and some special means.

Let $\alpha $ be any radical of associative rings. A radical $\gamma $ is called $\alpha $-like if, for every $\alpha $-semisimple ring $A$, the polynomial ring $A[x] $ is $\gamma $-semisimple. In this paper we describe properties of $\alpha $-like radicals and show how they can be used to solve some open problems in radical theory.

It has been conjectured that if $G= \mathop{({ \mathbb{Z} }_{p} )}\nolimits ^{r} $ acts freely on a finite $CW$-complex $X$ which is homotopy equivalent to a product of spheres ${S}^{{n}_{1} } \times {S}^{{n}_{2} } \times \cdots \times {S}^{{n}_{k} } $, then $r\leq k$. We address this question with the relaxation that $X$ is finite-dimensional, and show that, to answer the question, it suffices to consider the case where the dimensions of the spheres are greater than or equal to $2$.

Motivated by some earlier Diophantine works on triangular numbers by Ljunggren and Cassels, we consider similar problems for general polygonal numbers.