Endomorphism nearrings of odd generalized dihedral groups (Q1824676)

In [Proc. Edinb. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 17, 71-78 (1971; Zbl 0203.336)], \textit{J. Malone} and \textit{C. Lyons} began a series of papers studying the distributively generated near-rings I(G), A(G) and E(G) defined on a group G and now called endomorphism near-rings. These are the near-rings of mappings from G to itself generated, respectively, by the inner automorphisms, all automorphisms and all endomorphisms of G. The original work in this area is due to \textit{A. Fröhlich} [J. Lond. Math. Soc. 33, 95-107 (1958; Zbl 0084.262)], and it has been developed by several workers since, including the reviewer. One of the families of groups studied by Malone and Lyons in this context is that of the dihedral groups. This study is extended considerably in this paper. The groups of the title studied here are of the form \(BZ_ 2\), where B is an abelian group of odd exponent, and where the non- trivial element of \(Z_ 2\) inverts the elements of B. By extending considerably the methods of Malone and Lyons, the authors obtain a lot of detailed information about the d.g. near-ring generated by a suitable semigroup of endomorphisms of such a group. They then define a class of near-rings which abstract the structure of such d.g. near-rings, and which have very interesting properties. They are able to determine a number of ideals of such d.g. near-rings and thus pin down five radicals of these near-rings and the corresponding semi-simple structure. These radicals are the prime and nil radicals and the three standard generalizations of the Jacobson radicals. Finally they obtain a link with Neumann near-rings. There is a great deal of interest in this paper.