EP elements and *-strongly regular rings

Let R be a ring with involution *. An element a 2 R is called *-strongly regular if there exists a projection p of R such that p ? comm2(a), ap = 0 and a + p is invertible, and R is said to be *-strongly regular if every element of R is *-strongly regular. We discuss the relations among strongly regular rings, *-strongly regular rings, regular rings and *-regular rings. Also, we show that an element a of a *-ring R is *-strongly regular if and only if a is EP. We finally give some characterizations of EP elements.