For a monoid M, this paper introduces the weak M- Armendariz rings which are a common generalization of the M- Armendariz rings and the weak Armendariz rings, and investigates their properties. Moreover, this paper proves that： a ring R is weak M-Armendariz if and only if for any n, the n-by-n upper triangular matrix ring Tn （R） over R is weak M- Armendariz; if I is a semicommutative ideal of ring R such that R/I is weak M-Armendariz, then R is weak M-Armendariz, where M is a strictly totally ordered monoid; if a ring R is semicommutative and M-Armendariz, then R is weak M × N- Armendariz, where N is a strictly totally ordered monoid; a finitely generated Abelian group G is torsion-free if and only if there exists a ring R such that R is weak G-Armendariz.
The question of how the category of entwined modules can be made into a braided monoidal category is studied. First, the sufficient and necessary conditions making the category into a monoidal category are obtained by using the fact that if （A, C, ψ） is an entwining structure, then A × C can be made into an entwined module. The conditions are that the algebra and coalgebra in question are both bialgebras with some extra compatibility relations. Then given a monodial category of entwined modules, the braiding is constructed by means of a twisted convolution invertible map Q, and the conditions making the category form into a braided monoidal category are obtained similarly. Finally, the construction is applied to the category of Doi-Hopf modules and （α, β ）-Yetter-Drinfeld modules as examples.
A ring R is called right zip provided that if the annihilator τR（X） of a subset X of R is zero, then τR（Y） = 0 for some finite subset Y C X. Such rings have been studied in literature. For a right R-module M, we introduce the notion of a zip module, which is a generalization of the right zip ring. A number of properties of this sort of modules are established, and the equivalent conditions of the right zip ring R are given. Moreover, the zip properties of matrices and polynomials over a module M are studied.
