A structure theorem is proved for finite groups with the property that, for some integer m with m ≥ 2, every proper quotient group can be generated by m elements but the group itself cannot.

This paper is concerned with the question of whether n-Engel groups are locally nilpotent. Although this seems unlikely in general, it is shown here that it is the case for the groups in a large class C including all residually soluble and residually finite groups (in fact all groups considered in traditional textbooks on group theory). This follows from the main result that there exist integers c(n), e(n) depending only on n, such that every finitely generated n-Engel group in the class C is both finite-of-exponent-e(n)–by–nilpotent-of-class≤c(n) and nilpotent-of-class≤c(n)–by–finite-of-exponent-e(n). Crucial in the proof is the fact that a finitely generated Engel group has finitely generated commutator subgroup.

Chen and Gu [1] have given some results relating to normal families, and, in this paper, we give versions of these results valid for normal functions. In the process, we improve some of our previous results involving products of certain spherical derivatives as they relate to normal functions. Some examples are given to show the sharpness of our results.

We prove a new representation of the generator of a subordinate semigroup as limit of bounded operators. Our construction yields, in particular, a characterization of the domain of the generator. The generator of a subordinate semigroup can be viewed as a function of the generator of the original semigroup. For a large class these functions we show that operations at the level of functions has its counterpart at the level of operators.

We characterize those analytic self-maps ϕ of the unit disc which generate bounded or compact composition operators Cϕ between given weighted Banach spaces H∞v or H0v of analytic functions with the weighted sup-norms. We characterize also those composition operators which are bounded or compact with respect to all reasonable weights v.

We provide a simple and direct proof of the completeness of the L1-space of any vector measure taking its values in the class of Fréchet spaces which do not contain a copy of the sequence space ω.

In this paper we study groups in which every subgroup is subnormal of defect at most 3. Let G be a group which is either torsion-free or of prime exponent different from 7. We show that every subgroup in G is subnormal of defect at most 3 if and only if G is nilpotent of class at most 3. When G is of exponent 7 the situation is different. While every group of exponent 7, in which every subgroup is subnormal of defect at most 3, is nilpotent of class at most 4, there are examples of such groups with class exactly 4. We also investigate the structure of these groups.

We present the definition of crossed products of Hilbert C*-bimodules by Hilbert bundles with commuting finite group actions and finite dimensional fibers. This is a general construction containing the bundle construction and crossed products of Hilbert C*-bimodule by finite groups. We also study the structure of endomorphism algebras of the tensor products of bimodules. We also define the multiple crossed products using three bimodules containing more than 2 bundles and show the associativity law. Moreover, we present some examples of crossed product bimodules easily computed by our method.

Iseki [11] defined a general notion of ergodicity suitable for functions ϕ: J → X where J is an arbitrary abelian semigroup and X is a Banach space. In this paper we develop the theory of such functions, showing in particular that it fits the general framework established by Eberlein [9] for ergodicity of semigroups of operators acting on X. Moreover, let A be a translation invariant closed subspace of the space of all bounded functions from J to X. We prove that if A contains the constant functions and ϕ is an ergodic function whose differences lie in A then ϕ ∈ A. This result has applications to spaces of sequences facilitating new proofs of theorems of Gelfand and Katznelson-Tzafriri [12]. We also obtain a decomposition for the space of ergodic vectors of a representation T: J → L(X) generalizing results known for the case J = Z+. Finally, when J is a subsemigroup of a locally compact abelian group G, we compare the Iseki integrals with the better known Cesàro integrals.

We investigate conditions which ensure that systems of binomial polynomials with integer coefficients are simultaneously free of large prime factors. In particular, for each positive number ε, we show that there are infinitely many strings of consecutive integers of size about n, free of prime factors exceeding nε, with the length of the strings tending to infinity with speed log log log log n.

We consider the Bergman spaces consisting of harmonic functions on the unit ball in Rn that are squareintegrable with respect to radial weights. We will describe compactness for certain classes of Toeplitz operators on these harmonic Bergman spaces.

Existence results are presented for second order discrete boundary value problems in abstract spaces. Our analysis uses only Sadovskii's fixed point theorem.