In this paper, we examine a natural question concerning the divisors of the polynomial $x^n-1$: “How often does $x^n-1$ have a divisor of every degree between $1$ and $n$?” In a previous paper, we considered the situation when $x^n-1$ is factored in $\mathbb{Z}\left[x\right]$. In this paper, we replace $\mathbb{Z}\left[x\right]$ with ${𝔽}_p\left[x\right]$, where $p$ is an arbitrary-but-fixed prime. We also consider those $n$ where this condition holds for all $p$.

We consider the equation $$-y^{\text{'}}\left(x\right)+q\left(x\right)y(x-\varphi \left(x\right))=f\left(x\right),x\in ℝ,$$ where $\varphi$ and $q$ ($q\ge 1$) are positive continuous functions for all $x\in ℝ$ and $f\in C\left(ℝ\right)$. By a solution of the equation we mean any function $y$, continuously differentiable everywhere in $ℝ$, which satisfies the equation for all $x\in ℝ$. We show that under certain additional conditions on the functions $\varphi$ and $q$, the above equation has a unique solution $y$, satisfying the inequality $$\parallel y^{\text{'}}{\parallel }_{C\left(ℝ\right)}+{\parallel qy\parallel }_{C\left(ℝ\right)}\le c{\parallel f\parallel }_{C\left(ℝ\right)},$$ where the constant $c\in (0,\infty )$ does not depend on the choice of $f$.

Let $G$ be a group and $\omega \left(G\right)$ be the set of element orders of $G$. Let $k\in \omega \left(G\right)$ and $m_k\left(G\right)$ be the number of elements of order $k$ in $G$. Let nse$\left(G\right)=\{m_k\left(G\right):k\in \omega \left(G\right)\}$. Assume $r$ is a prime number and let $G$ be a group such that nse$\left(G\right)=$ nse$\left(S_r\right)$, where $S_r$ is the symmetric group of degree $r$. In this paper we prove that $G\cong S_r$, if $r$ divides the order of $G$ and $r^2$ does not divide it. To get the conclusion we make use of some well-known results on the prime graphs of finite simple groups and their components.

We give the characterization of the unit group of ${𝔽}_{q}SL(2,{\mathbb{Z}}_5)$, where ${𝔽}_q$ is a finite field with $q=p^k$ elements for prime $p>5,$ and $SL(2,{\mathbb{Z}}_5)$ denotes the special linear group of $2\times 2$ matrices having determinant $1$ over the cyclic group ${\mathbb{Z}}_5$.

A natural number $n$ is said to be a $(k,r)$-integer if $n=a^{k}b$, where $k>r>1$ and $b$ is not divisible by the $r$th power of any prime. We study the distribution of such $(k,r)$-integers in the Piatetski-Shapiro sequence $\left\{\lfloor n^c\rfloor \right\}$ with $c>1$. As a corollary, we also obtain similar results for semi-$r$-free integers.

Given an integer $n\ge 3$, let $u_1,...,u_n$ be pairwise coprime integers $\ge 2$, $𝒟$ a family of nonempty proper subsets of $\{1,...,n\}$ with “enough” elements, and $\epsilon$ a function $𝒟\to \{\pm 1\}$. Does there exist at least one prime $q$ such that $q$ divides ${\prod }_{i\in I}{u}_i-\epsilon \left(I\right)$ for some $I\in 𝒟$, but it does not divide $u_1\cdots u_n$? We answer this question in the positive when the $u_i$ are prime powers and $\epsilon$ and $𝒟$ are subjected to certain restrictions. We use the result to prove that, if ${\epsilon }_0\in \{\pm 1\}$ and $A$ is a set of three or more primes that contains all prime divisors of any...

In a Tychonoff space $X$, the point $p\in X$ is called a $C^{*}$-point if every real-valued continuous function on $C\setminus \left\{p\right\}$ can be extended continuously to $p$. Every point in an extremally disconnected space is a $C^{*}$-point. A classic example is the space ${𝐖}^{*}={\omega }_1+1$ consisting of the countable ordinals together with ${\omega }_1$. The point ${\omega }_1$ is known to be a $C^{*}$-point as well as a $P$-point. We supply a characterization of $C^{*}$-points in totally ordered spaces. The remainder of our time is aimed at studying when a point in a product space...

Let $G$ be a finite group and $p$ a prime number. We prove that if $G$ is a finite group of order $\left|\mathrm{PSL}\right(2,p^2\left)\right|$ such that $G$ has an irreducible character of degree $p^2$ and we know that $G$ has no irreducible character $\theta$ such that $2p\mid \theta \left(1\right)$, then $G$ is isomorphic to $\mathrm{PSL}(2,p^2)$. As a consequence of our result we prove that $\mathrm{PSL}(2,p^2)$ is uniquely determined by the structure of its complex group algebra.

We study sums and products in a field. Let $F$ be a field with $\mathrm{ch}\left(F\right)\ne 2$, where $\mathrm{ch}\left(F\right)$ is the characteristic of $F$. For any integer $k\ge 4$, we show that any $x\in F$ can be written as $a_1+\cdots +a_k$ with $a_1,\cdots ,a_k\in F$ and $a_1\cdots a_k=1$, and that for any $\alpha \in F\setminus \left\{0\right\}$ we can write every $x\in F$ as $a_1\cdots a_k$ with $a_1,\cdots ,a_k\in F$ and $a_1+\cdots +a_k=\alpha$. We also prove that for any $x\in F$ and $k\in \{2,3,\cdots \}$ there are $a_1,\cdots ,a_{2k}\in F$ such that $a_1+\cdots +a_{2k}=x=a_1\cdots a_{2k}$.