Concerning problem 18 from Goodearl's book ``Von Neumann regular rings'' (Q809165)

The problem in question concerns the dimension function \(\mu_ M\) defined on nonsingular injective right modules A over a regular, right self-injective ring R, where M is a maximal ideal in the boolean algebra B(R) of central idempotents of R (see Chapter 12 of the reviewer's book Von Neumann Regular Rings [London (1979; Zbl 0411.16007) Pitman; Second Edition: Malabar (Florida) (1991) Krieger]). Problem 18 asks: given an infinite cardinal \(\alpha\), is \(\mu_ M(E(\alpha A))\) equal to the maximum of \(\mu_ M(A)\) and the successor of \(\alpha\) ? This was known to hold in case R is a prime ring [ibid, Theorem 12.16]. A counterexample to this problem was constructed by \textit{K. Eda}, but was published only in Japanese [Maximal quotient rings and Boolean extensions, in Proc. Symp. Logic and Foundations of Math. (Kyoto 1983), 141-179 (1984; Zbl 0597.03003)]. In the paper under review, the author - independently - constructs a similar counterexample, and also obtains a general formula for \(\mu_ M(E(\alpha A))\). Namely, \(\mu_ M(E(\alpha A))=\max \{\mu_ M(A),\alpha^+_ M\}\) where \(\alpha^+_ M\) is a certain cardinal (in general larger than the successor of \(\alpha\)) depending only on \(\alpha\) and M. A corollary is that if B(R) contains no independent subsets of cardinality \(\alpha\), then the assertion of Problem 18 is valid.