we introduce center-like subsets z*(r,f), z**(r,f) and z1(r,f), where r is a ring and f is a map from r to r. for f a derivation or a non-identity epimorphism and r a suitably-chosen prime or semiprime ring, we prove that these sets coincide with the center of r.

for an arbitrary ring $r$, the zero-divisor graph of $r$, denoted by $gamma (r)$, is an undirected simple graph that its vertices are all nonzero zero-divisors of $r$ in which any two vertices $x$ and $y$ are adjacent if and only if either $xy=0$ or $yx=0$. it is well-known that for any commutative ring $r$, $gamma (r) cong gamma (t(r))$ where $t(r)$ is the (total) quotient ring of $r$. in this...

let r be a prime ring with extended centroid c, h a generalized derivation of r and n ⩾ 1 a xed integer. in this paper we study the situations: (1) if (h(xy))n = (h(x))n(h(y))n for all x; y 2 r; (2) obtain some related result in case r is a noncommutative banach algebra and h is continuous or spectrally bounded.

a ring $r$ is a strongly clean ring if every element in $r$ is the sum of an idempotent and a unit that commutate. we construct some classes of strongly clean rings which have stable range one. it is shown that such cleanness of $2 imes 2$ matrices over commutative local rings is completely determined in terms of solvability of quadratic equations.