A longstanding open problem in the theory of von Neumann regular rings is the question of whether every directly finite simple regular ring must be unit-regular. Recent work on this problem has been done by P. Menal, K. C. O'Meara, and the authors. To clarify some aspects of these new developments, we introduce and study the notion of almost isomorphism between finitely generated projective modules over a simple regular ring.
In this paper, we study the structure of group rings by means of endomorphism rings of their modules. The main tools used here, are the subrings fixed by automorphisms and the converse of Schur's lemma. Some results are obtained on fixed subrings and on primary decomposition of group rings.
We describe the representation-infinite blocks B of the group algebras KG of finite groups G over algebraically closed fields K for which all simple modules are periodic with respect to the action of the syzygy operators. In particular, we prove that all such blocks B are periodic algebras of period 4. This confirms the periodicity conjecture for blocks of group algebras.