The paper studies modular reduction techniques for abstract regular and chiral polytopes, with two purposes in mind:\ first, to survey the literature about modular reduction in polytopes; and second, to apply modular reduction, with moduli given by primes in $\mathbb{Z}[\tau]$ (with $\tau$ the golden ratio), to construct new regular $4$-polytopes of hyperbolic types $\{3,5,3\}$ and $\{5,3,5\}$ with automorphism groups given by finite orthogonal groups.

If $A$ is a subset of the set of reflections of a finite Coxeter group $W$, we define a sub-$\ZM$-module $\DC_A(W)$ of the group algebra $\ZM W$. We discuss cases where this submodule is a subalgebra. This family of subalgebras includes strictly the Solomon descent algebra, the group algebra and, if $W$ is of type $B$, the Mantaci--Reutenauer algebra.

Erratum to {\it The Lehmer Polynomial and Pretzel Links}, Canad. J. Math. {\bf 44}(2001), 440--451.

In this paper we find a formula for the Alexander polynomial $\Delta_{p_1,\dots,p_k} (x)$ of pretzel knots and links with $(p_1,\dots,p_k, \nega 1)$ twists, where $k$ is odd and $p_1,\dots,p_k$ are positive integers. The polynomial $\Delta_{2,3,7} (x)$ is the well-known Lehmer polynomial, which is conjectured to have the smallest Mahler measure among all monic integer polynomials. We confirm that $\Delta_{2,3,7} (x)$ has the smallest Mahler measure among the polynomials arising as $\Delta_{p_1,\dots,p_k} (x)$.