A Grothendieck topos has the property that its Yoneda embedding has a left-exact left adjoint. A category with the latter property is called lex-total. It is proved here that every lex-total category is equivalent to its category of canonical sheaves. An unpublished proof due to Peter Freyd is extended slightly to yield that a lex-total category, which has a set of objects of cardinality at most that of the universe such that each object in the category is a quotient of an object from that set, is necessarily a Grothendieck topos.

This paper presents an extension of Banach's contraction mapping principle to Hausdorff spaces, in fact to the larger class of topological spaces in which convergent sequences have unique limits. This is achieved by considering topologies on X generated by families of quasi-pseudo-metrics on X. An extension of the concept of Cauchy sequence to this non-metric setting is given.

In this paper, we establish some estimates for the distance between adjacent zeros of the solutions of the first order delay differential equation

and the first order advanced differential equation

where P ∈ C([t0, ∞), [0, ∞)) and τ ∈ R+. Our results improve recent results in the literature.

Suppose that A is a finite direct product of commutative rings. We show from first principles that a Gröbner basis for an ideal of A[x1,…,xn] can be easily obtained by ‘joining’ Gröbner bases of the projected ideals with coefficients in the factors of A (which can themselves be obtained in parallel). Similarly for strong Gröbner bases. This gives an elementary method of constructing a (strong) Gröbner basis when the Chinese Remainder Theorem applies to the coefficient ring and we know how to compute (strong) Gröbner bases in each factor.

Consider the following possible properties which a Banach space X may have: (P): If (xi) and (yj) are bounded sequences in X such that for all n ≥ 1 and for every continuous n-homogeneous polynomial P on X, P(xj) − (yj) → 0, then Q(xj − yj) → 0 for all m ≥ 1 and for every continuous m-homogeneous polynomial Q on X.

(RP): If (xj)and (yj) are bounded sequences in X such that for all n ≥ 1 and for every continuous n-homogeneous polynomial P on X, P(xj − yj) → 0, then Q(xj) − Q(yj) → 0 for all m ≥ 1 and for every continuous m-homogeneous polynimial Q on X. We study properties (P) and (RP) and their relation with the Schur proqerty, Dunford-Pettis property, Λ, and others. Several applications of these properties are given.

In this paper we prove that every nonabelian finite 2-group with a cyclic commutator subgroup has a noninner automorphism of order two fixing either Φ(G) or Z(G) elementwise. This, together with a result of Peter Schmid on regular p-groups, extends our result to the class of nonabelian finite p-groups with a cyclic commutator subgroup.

A new minimax inequality on H-spaces is obtained together with six equivalent formulations. As applications, some results on fixed point theorems and system of inequalities are proved. Our results generalise the corresponding results on (1) minimax inequalities due to Fan, Yen, Tan, Shih-Tan and Ding-Tan, (2) fixed point theorems due to Browder, Tarafdar, Shih-Tan and Ding-Tan, (3) convex inequalities due to Fan, (4) systems of inequalities due to Granas-Liu and (5) a minimax theorem due to Kneser.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the commutativity of a Banach algebra $A$ via its derivations. In particular, we prove that if $A$ is a unital prime Banach algebra and $A$ has a nonzero continuous linear derivation $d:A\rightarrow A$ such that either $d((xy)^{m})-x^{m}y^{m}$ or $d((xy)^{m})-y^{m}x^{m}$ is in the centre of $A$ for an integer $m=m(x,y)$ and sufficiently many $x,y$, then $A$ is commutative. We give examples to illustrate the scope of the main results and show that the hypotheses are not superfluous.

We develop a discrete version of the weak quadratic estimates for operators of type w explained by Cowling, Doust, McIntosh and Yagi, and show that analogous theorems hold. The method is direct and can be generalised to the case of finding necessary and sufficient conditions for an operator T to have a bounded functional calculus on a domain which touches σ(T) nontangentially at several points. For operators on Lp, 1 < p < ∞, it follows that T has a bounded functional calculus if and only if T satisfies discrete quadratic estimates. Using this, one easily obtains Albrecht's extension to a joint functional calculus for several commuting operators. In Hilbert space the methods show that an operator with a bounded functional calculus has a uniformly bounded matricial functional calculus.

The basic idea is to take a dyadic decomposition of the boundary of a sector Sv. Then on the kth ingerval consider an orthonormal sequence of polynomials . For h ∈ H∞(Sν), estimates for the uniform norm of h on a smaller sector Sμ are obtained from the coefficients akj = (h, ek, j). These estimates are then used to prove the theorems.

The main result of this paper is a sufficient condition for the minimax relation to hold for the canonical bilinear form on X × Y, where X is a nonempty convex subset of a real locally convex space and Y is a nonempty convex subset of its dual. Using the known “converse minimax theorem”, this result leads easily to a nonlinear generalisation of James's (“sup”) theorem. We give a brief discussion of the connections with the “sup-limsup theorem” and, in the appendix to the paper, we give a simple, direct proof (using Goldstine's theorem) of the converse minimax theorem referred to above, valid for the special case of a normed space.

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.

The four types of invexity for locally Lipschitz vector-valued functions recently introduced by T. W. Reiland are studied in more detail. It is shown that the class of restricted K-invex in the limit functions is too large to obtain desired optimisation theorems and the other three classes are contained in the class of functions which are invex 0 in the sense of our previous joint paper with B. D. Craven and T. D. Phuong. We also prove that the extended image of a locally Lipschitz vector-valued invex function is pseudoconvex in the sense of J. Borwein at each of its points.

Let H be a complex Hilbert space and let B(H) denote the algebra of all bounded linear operators on H. In this paper we give two necessary and sufficient conditions for an additive bijection of B(H) to be a *-automorphism. Both of the results in the paper are related to the so-called preserver problems.

Let G be a finite group, let ${\mathrm{Irr}}(G)$ be the set of all irreducible complex characters of G and let $\chi \in {\mathrm{Irr}}(G)$ . Define the codegrees, ${\mathrm{cod}}(\chi ) = |G: {\mathrm{ker}}\chi |/\chi (1)$ and ${\mathrm{cod}}(G) = \{{\mathrm{cod}}(\chi ) \mid \chi \in {\mathrm{Irr}}(G)\} $ . We show that the simple group ${\mathrm{PSL}}(2,q)$ , for a prime power $q>3$ , is uniquely determined by the set of its codegrees.

With every poset we associate a class of coloured posets called zigzags. By means of zigzags we show that, if we delete a convex set from a finite lattice ordered set then the resulting poset has the strong selection property. We give the complete list of finite bounded irreducible posets admitting an n-ary near unanimity function, provided n ≤ 6. We present some examples and classes of posets with full descriptions of their zigzags.

Using Padé approximations of the q-logarithmic series we obtain new approximation measures for values of q-logarithms and for the series , k = 1, 2, …, where (un) is a recurrence sequence, satisfying

Completely simple semigroups form a variety if we consider them both with the multiplication and the operation of inversion. Denote the lattice of all varieties of completely simple semi-groups by L(CS) and that of varieties of groups by L(G). We prove that the mappings V → V ∩ G and V → V v G are homomorphisms of L(CS) onto L(G) and the interval [G, CS], respectively. The homomorphism V → (V ∩ G, V v G) is an isomorphism of L(CS) onto a subdirect product. We explore different properties of the congruences on L(CS) induced by these homomorphisms.

The quotient set of $A\subseteq \mathbb{N}$ is defined as $R(A):=\{a/b:a,b\in A,b\neq 0\}$. Using algebraic number theory in $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{5})$, Garcia and Luca [‘Quotients of Fibonacci numbers’, Amer. Math. Monthly, to appear] proved that the quotient set of Fibonacci numbers is dense in the $p$-adic numbers $\mathbb{Q}_{p}$ for all prime numbers $p$. For any integer $k\geq 2$, let $(F_{n}^{(k)})_{n\geq -(k-2)}$ be the sequence of $k$-generalised Fibonacci numbers, defined by the initial values $0,0,\ldots ,0,1$ ($k$ terms) and such that each successive term is the sum of the $k$ preceding terms. We use $p$-adic analysis to generalise the result of Garcia and Luca, by proving that the quotient set of $k$-generalised Fibonacci numbers is dense in $\mathbb{Q}_{p}$ for any integer $k\geq 2$ and any prime number $p$.

The results of Szele and Szendrei [‘On Abelian groups with commutative endomorphism rings’, Acta Math. Acad. Sci. Hungar.2 (1951), 309–324] characterizing abelian groups with commutative endomorphism rings are generalized to modules whose endomorphism rings have various restrictions on their idempotents. Such properties include central or commuting idempotents, and one-sided ideals being two-sided. Related properties include direct summands having unique complements, or being fully invariant.

A weak logical structure is defined as a set of boolean propositional logics in which one can define common operations of negation and implication. The set union of the boolean components of a weak logical structure is a logic of propositions which is an orthocomplemented poset, where orthocomplementation is interpreted as negation and the partial order as implication. It is shown that if one can define on this logic an operation of logical conjunction which has certain plausible properties, then the logic has the structure of an orthomodular lattice. Conversely, if the logic is an orthomodular lattice then the conjunction operation may be defined on it.