The multiplicity conjecture of Herzog, Huneke, and Srinivasan is verified for the face rings of the following classes of simplicial complexes: matroid complexes, complexes of dimension one and two, and Gorenstein complexes of dimension at most four. The lower bound part of this conjecture is also established for the face rings of all doubly Cohen--Macaulay complexes whose 1-skeleton's connectivity does not exceed the codimension plus one as well as for all $(d-1)$-dimensional $d$-Cohen--Macaulay complexes. The main ingredient of the proofs is a new interpretation of the minimal shifts in the resolution of the face ring $\field[\Delta]$ via the Cohen--Macaulay connectivity of the skeletons of $\Delta$.

Cubical sets and their homology have been used in dynamical systems as well as in digital imaging. We take a fresh look at this topic, following Zariski ideas from algebraic geometry. The cubical topology is defined to be a topology in $\R^d$ in which a set is closed if and only if it is cubical. This concept is a convenient frame for describing a variety of important features of cubical sets. Separation axioms which, in general, are not satisfied here, characterize exactly those pairs of points which we want to distinguish. The noetherian property guarantees the correctness of the algorithms. Moreover, maps between cubical sets which are continuous and closed with respect to the cubical topology are precisely those for whom the homology map can be defined and computed without grid subdivisions. A combinatorial version of the Vietoris-Begle theorem is derived. This theorem plays the central role in an algorithm computing homology of maps which are continuous with respect to the Euclidean topology.

Petrie polygons, especially as they arise in the study of regular polytopes and Coxeter groups, have been studied by geometers and group theorists since the early part of the twentieth century. An open question is the determination of which polyhedra possess Petrie polygons that are simple closed curves. The current work explores combinatorial structures in abstract polytopes, called Petrie schemes, that generalize the notion of a Petrie polygon. It is established that all of the regular convex polytopes and honeycombs in Euclidean spaces, as well as all of the Gr\"unbaum--Dress polyhedra, possess Petrie schemes that are not self-intersecting and thus have Petrie polygons that are simple closed curves. Partial results are obtained for several other classes of less symmetric polytopes.