Let $M_{\beta }$ be the fractional maximal function. The commutator generated by $M_{\beta }$ and a suitable function $b$ is defined by $[M_{\beta },b]f=M_{\beta }\left(bf\right)-b{M}_{\beta }\left(f\right)$. Denote by $𝒫\left({ℝ}^n\right)$ the set of all measurable functions $p(·):{ℝ}^n\to [1,\infty )$ such that $$1<p_{-}:=\underset{x\in {ℝ}^n}{\mathrm{ess}\inf }p\left(x\right)\text{and}{p}_{+}:=\underset{x\in {ℝ}^n}{\mathrm{ess}\sup }p\left(x\right)<\infty ,$$ and by $ℬ\left({ℝ}^n\right)$ the set of all $p(·)\in 𝒫\left({ℝ}^n\right)$ such that the Hardy-Littlewood maximal function $M$ is bounded on $L^{p(·)}\left({ℝ}^n\right)$. In this paper, the authors give some characterizations of $b$ for which $[M_{\beta },b]$ is bounded from $L^{p(·)}\left({ℝ}^n\right)$ into $L^{q(·)}\left({ℝ}^n\right)$, when $p(·)\in 𝒫\left({ℝ}^n\right)$, $0<\beta <n/p_{+}$ and $1/q(·)=1/p(·)-\beta /n$ with $q(·)(n-\beta )/n\in ℬ\left({ℝ}^n\right)$.

Let T be a bounded linear operator on $X={\left(\sum {\ell }_q\right)}_p$ with 1 ≤ q < ∞ and 1 < p < ∞. Then T is a commutator if and only if for all non-zero λ ∈ ℂ, the operator T - λI is not X-strictly singular.

We establish compact and continuous embeddings for Bessel potential spaces modelled upon generalized Lorentz-Zygmund spaces. The target spaces are either of Lorentz-Zygmund or Hölder type.

Many authors have recently studied compact and weakly compact homomorphisms between function algebras. Among them, Lindström and Llavona [2] treat weakly compact continuous homomorphisms between algebras of type C(T) when T is a completely regular Hausdorff space.Llavona asked wether the results in [2] are valid in the case of algebras of differentiable functions on Banach spaces. The purpose of this note is to give an affirmative answer to this question, by proving that weakly compact homomorphisms...