Tachikawa's second conjecture for symmetric algebras is shown to be equivalent to indecomposable symmetric algebras not having any nontrivial stratifying ideals. The conjecture is also shown to be equivalent to the supremum of stratified ratios being less than $1$, when taken over all indecomposable symmetric algebras. An explicit construction provides a series of counterexamples to Tachikawa's second conjecture from each (potentially existing) gendo-symmetric algebra that is a counterexample to Nakayama's conjecture. The results are based on establishing recollements of derived categories and on constructing new series of algebras.

Let $R$ be a unit-regular ring and let $\sigma $ be an endomorphism of $R$ such that $\sigma \left( e \right)\,=\,e$ for all ${{e}^{2}}\,=\,e\,\in \,R$ and let $n\,\ge \,0$. It is proved that every element of $R[x;\,\sigma ]/\left( {{x}^{n+1}} \right)$ is equivalent to an element of the form ${{e}_{0}}\,+\,{{e}_{1}}x\,+\,\cdots \,+\,{{e}_{n}}{{x}^{n}}$, where the ${{e}_{i}}$ are orthogonal idempotents of $R$. As an application, it is proved that $R[x;\,\sigma ]/\left( {{x}^{n+1}} \right)$ is left morphic for each $n\,\ge \,0$.

A ring $R$ is called left morphic if, for every $a\in R$, $R/Ra\cong {\bf l}(a)$ where ${\bf l}(a)$ denotes the left annihilator of $a$ in $R$. Right morphic rings are defined analogously. In this paper, we investigate when the trivial extension $R\propto M$ of a ring $R$ and a bimodule $M$ over $R$ is (left) morphic. Several new families of (left) morphic rings are identified through the construction of trivial extensions. For example, it is shown here that if $R$ is strongly regular or semisimple, then $R\propto R$ is morphic; for an integer $n>1$, ${\mathbb Z}_n\propto {\mathbb Z}_n$ is morphic if and only if $n$ is a product of distinct prime numbers; if $R$ is a principal ideal domain with classical quotient ring $Q$, then the trivial extension $R\propto {Q}/{R}$ is morphic; for a bimodule $M$ over $\mathbb Z$, ${\mathbb Z}\propto M$ is morphic if and only if $M\cong{\mathbb Q}/{\mathbb Z}$. Thus, ${\mathbb Z}\propto {\mathbb Q}/{\mathbb Z}$ is a morphic ring which is not clean. This example settled two questions both in the negative raised by Nicholson and Sánchez Campos, and by Nicholson, respectively.

An associative ring with unity is called clean if every element is the sum of an idempotent and a unit; if this representation is unique for every element, we call the ring uniquely clean. These rings represent a natural generalization of the Boolean rings in that a ring is uniquely clean if and only if it is Boolean modulo the Jacobson radical and idempotents lift uniquely modulo the radical. We also show that every image of a uniquely clean ring is uniquely clean, and construct several noncommutative examples.

A ring $R$ satisfies the dual of the isomorphism theorem if $R/Ra\cong \mathtt{l}(a)$ for every element $a\in R.$ We call these rings left morphic, and say that $R$ is left P-morphic if, in addition, every left ideal is principal. In this paper we characterize the left and right P-morphic rings and show that they form a Morita invariant class. We also characterize the semiperfect left P-morphic rings as the finite direct products of matrix rings over left uniserial rings of finite composition length. J. Clark has an example of a commutative, uniserial ring with exactly one non-principal ideal. We show that Clark's example is (left) morphic and obtain a non-commutative analogue.