The present volume is the Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Nearrings and Nearfields held at the Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg, from July 27 – August 3, 2003. It contains the written versions of the lectures by the five invited speakers. These concern recent developments of planar nearrings, nearrings of mappings, group nearrings and loop-nearrings. One of them is a long and very substantial research paper "The Z-Constrained Conjecture". They are followed by 13 contributions reflecting the diversity of the subject of nearrings and related structures. Besides the purely algebraic structure theory these papers show many connections of nearring theory with group theory, combinatorics, geometries, and topology. They all contain original research.

This present volume is the Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Near rings and Nearfields held in Hamburg at the Universitiit der Bundeswehr Hamburg, from July 30 to August 06, 1995. This Conference was attended by 70 mathematicians and many accompanying persons who represented 22 different countries from all five continents. Thus it was the largest conference devoted entirely to nearrings and nearfields. The first of these conferences took place in 1968 at the Mathematische For schungsinstitut Oberwolfach, Germany. This was also the site of the conferences in 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1989. The other eight conferences held before the Hamburg Conference took place in eight different countries. For details about this and, more over, for a general historical overview of the development of the subject, we refer to the article "On the beginnings and development of near-ring theory" by G. Betsch [3]. During the last forty years the theory of nearrings and related algebraic struc tures like nearfields, nearmodules, nearalgebras and seminearrings has developed into an extensive branch of algebra with its own features. In its position between group theory and ring theory, this relatively young branch of algebra has not only a close relationship to these two more well-known areas of algebra, but it also has, just as these two theories, very intensive connections to many further branches of mathematics.

Recent developments in various algebraic structures and the applications of those in different areas play an important role in Science and Technology. One of the best tools to study the non-linear algebraic systems is the theory of Near-rings.The forward note by G

Proceedings of the Conference on Near-Rings and Near-Fields, Stellenbosch, South Africa, July 9-16, 1997

This book offers an original account of the theory of near-rings, with a considerable amount of material which has not previously been available in book form, some of it completely new. The book begins with an introduction to the subject and goes on to consider the theory of near-fields, transformation near-rings and near-rings hosted by a group. The bulk of the chapter on near-fields has not previously been available in English. The transformation near-rings chapters considerably augment existing knowledge and the chapters on product hosting are essentially new. Other chapters contain original material on new classes of near-rings and non-abelian group cohomology. The Theory of Near-Rings will be of interest to researchers in the subject and, more broadly, ring and representation theorists. The presentation is elementary and self-contained, with the necessary background in group and ring theory available in standard references.

Most topics in near-ring and near-field theory are treated here, along with an extensive introduction to the theory.There are two invited lectures: ``Non-Commutative Geometry, Near-Rings and Near-Fields'' which indicates the relevance of near-rings and near-fields for geometry, while ``Pseudo-Finite Near-Fields'' shows the impressive power of model theoretic methods. The remaining papers cover such topics as D.G. near-rings, radical theory, KT-near-fields, matrix near-rings, and applications to systems theory.

"Recent developments in various algebraic structures and the applications of those in different areas play an important role in Science and Technology. One of the best tools to study the non-linear algebraic systems is the theory of Near-rings. The forward note by Günter Pilz (Johannes Kepler University, Austria) explains about past developments and future prospects in the theory of nearrings and nearfields. Certain applications of nearrings are found in a few chapters. Some of the chapters are independent; however flow is maintained in all the chapters. It also include few chapters of exploratory approach."--Publisher's website.