The class of rings studied in this paper properly contains the class of right distributive rings which have at least one completely prime ideal in the Jacobson radical. Amongst other results we study prime and semiprime ideals, right noetherian rings with comparability and prove a structure theorem for rings with comparability. Several examples are also given.

Let $R$ be a ring with $1$ and $P(R)$ the periodic radical of $R$. We obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for $P(\RG) = 0$ when $\RG$ is the group ring of an $\FC$ group $G$ and $R$ is commutative. We also obtain a complete description of $P\bigl(I (X, R)\bigr)$ when $I(X,R)$ is the incidence algebra of a locally finite partially ordered set $X$ and $R$ is commutative.

For each $n\geq 4$ we construct a class of examples of a minimal $C$-dependent set of $n$ automorphisms of a prime ring $R$, where $C$ is the extended centroid of $R$. For $n=4$ and $n=5$ it is shown that the preceding examples are completely general, whereas for $n=6$ an example is given which fails to enjoy any of the nice properties of the above example.

Let $H$ be a faithfully projective Hopf algebra over a commutative ring $k$. In \cite{CVZ1, CVZ2} we defined the Brauer group $\BQ(k,H)$ of $H$ and an homomorphism $\pi$ from Hopf automorphism group $\Aut_{\Hopf}(H)$ to $\BQ(k,H)$. In this paper, we show that the morphism $\pi$ can be embedded into an exact sequence.

It is shown that simple rings over which proper cyclic right modules are continuous coincide with simple right $\PCI$-rings, introduced by Faith.

The main result shows that if $R$ is a semiprime ring satisfying a polynomial identity, and if $Z(R)$ is the center of $R$, then $\card R \leq 2^{\card Z(R)}$. Examples show that this bound can be achieved, and that the inequality fails to hold for rings which are not semiprime.

Let $M_n(F)$ be the algebra of $n \times n$ matrices over a field $F$ of characteristic $p>2$ and let $\ast$ be an involution on $M_n(F)$. If $s_1, \ldots, s_r$ are symmetric variables we determine the smallest $r$ such that the polynomial $$ P_{r}(s_1, \ldots, s_{r}) = \sum_{\sigma \in {\cal S}_r}s_{\sigma(1)}\cdots s_{\sigma(r)} $$ is a $\ast$-polynomial identity of $M_n(F)$ under either the symplectic or the transpose involution. We also prove an analogous result for the polynomial $$ C_r(k_1, \ldots, k_r, k'_1, \ldots, k'_r) = \sum_ {\sigma, \tau \in {\cal S}_r}k_{\sigma(1)}k'_{\tau(1)}\cdots k_{\sigma(r)}k'_{\tau(r)} $$ where $k_1, \ldots, k_r, k'_1, \ldots, k'_r$ are skew variables under the transpose involution.

Let $G$ be any group, and $H$ be a normal subgroup of $G$. Then M.~Hartl identified the subgroup $G \cap(1+\triangle^3(G)+\triangle(G)\triangle(H))$ of $G$. In this note we give an independent proof of the result of Hartl, and we identify two subgroups $G\cap(1+\triangle(H)\triangle(G)\triangle(H)+\triangle([H,G])\triangle(H))$, $G\cap(1+\triangle^2(G)\triangle(H)+\triangle(K)\triangle(H))$ of $G$ for some subgroup $K$ of $G$ containing $[H,G]$.

We construct a ring $R$ which is a sum of two subrings $A$ and $B$ such that the Levitzki radical of $R$ does not contain any of the hyperannihilators of $A$ and $B$. This answers an open question asked by Kegel in 1964.

We consider rings as in the title and find the precise obstacle for them not to be Quasi-Frobenius, thus shedding new light on an old open question in Ring Theory. We also find several partial affirmative answers for that question.

An example is constructed to show that the ${\cal J}_0$-radical of a matrix nearring can be an intermediate ideal. This solves a conjecture put forward in [1].

For every field $F$ of characteristic $p\geq 0$, we construct an example of a finite dimensional nilpotent $F$-algebra $R$ whose adjoint group $A(R)$ is not centre-by-metabelian, in spite of the fact that $R$ is Lie centre-by-metabelian and satisfies the identities $x^{2p}=0$ when $p>2$ and $x^8=0$ when $p=2$. The existence of such algebras answers a question raised by A.~E.~Zalesskii, and is in contrast to positive results obtained by Krasilnikov, Sharma and Srivastava for Lie metabelian rings and by Smirnov for the class Lie centre-by-metabelian nil-algebras of exponent 4 over a field of characteristic 2 of cardinality at least 4.

Dimension subgroups and Lie dimension subgroups are known to satisfy a `universal coefficient decomposition', {\it i.e.} their value with respect to an arbitrary coefficient ring can be described in terms of their values with respect to the `universal' coefficient rings given by the cyclic groups of infinite and prime power order. Here this fact is generalized to much more general types of induced subgroups, notably covering Fox subgroups and relative dimension subgroups with respect to group algebra filtrations induced by arbitrary $N$-series, as well as certain common generalisations of these which occur in the study of the former. This result relies on an extension of the principal universal coefficient decomposition theorem on polynomial ideals (due to Passi, Parmenter and Seghal), to all additive subgroups of group rings. This is possible by using homological instead of ring theoretical methods.