We give some sufficient and necessary conditions for an element in a ring to be an EP element, partial isometry, normal EP element and strongly EP element by using solutions of certain equations.

We consider rings equipped with a closure operation defined in terms of a collection of commuting idempotents, generalising the idea of a topological closure operation defined on a ring of sets. We establish the basic properties of such rings, consider examples and construction methods, and then concentrate on rings which have a closure operation defined in terms of their lattice of central idempotents.

Suppose that $R$ is an associative ring with identity $1$, $J\left(R\right)$ the Jacobson radical of $R$, and $N\left(R\right)$ the set of nilpotent elements of $R$. Let $m\ge 1$ be a fixed positive integer and $R$ an $m$-torsion-free ring with identity $1$. The main result of the present paper asserts that $R$ is commutative if $R$ satisfies both the conditions (i) $[x^m,y^m]=0$ for all $x,y\in R\setminus J\left(R\right)$ and (ii) $[{\left(xy\right)}^m+y^m{x}^m,x]=0=[{\left(yx\right)}^m+x^m{y}^m,x]$, for all $x,y\in R\setminus J\left(R\right)$. This result is also valid if (i) and (ii) are replaced by (i)${}^{\text{'}}$$...$

Let $p$, $q$ and $r$ be fixed non-negative integers. In this note, it is shown that if $R$ is left (right) $s$-unital ring satisfying $[f\left(x^p{y}^q\right)-x^{r}y,x]=0$ ($[f\left(x^p{y}^q\right)-y{x}^r,x]=0$, respectively) where $f\left(\lambda \right)\in {\lambda }^2\mathbb{Z}\left[\lambda \right]$, then $R$ is commutative. Moreover, commutativity of $R$ is also obtained under different sets of constraints on integral exponents. Also, we provide some counterexamples which show that the hypotheses are not altogether superfluous. Thus, many well-known commutativity theorems become corollaries of our results.