For the classical Hardy-Littlewood maximal function Mf, a well known and im
portant estimate due to Herz and Stein gives the equivalence (Mf)*(t) simil
ar to f**(t). In the present note, we study the validity of analogous estim
ates for maximal operators of the form
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where parallel to . parallel to(p,q) denotes the Lorentz space L(p, q)-norm
.