In a paper from 1976, Berg, Christensen and Ressel prove that the closure of the cone of sums of squares $\sum \mathbb{R}[\underline{X}]^2$ in the polynomial ring $\mathbb{R}[\underline{X}] := \mathbb{R}[X_1,\dots,X_n]$ in the topology induced by the $\ell_1$-norm is equal to $\operatorname{Pos}([-1,1]^n)$, the cone consisting of all polynomials which are non-negative on the hypercube $[-1,1]^n$. The result is deduced as a corollary of a general result, established in the same paper, which is valid for any commutative semigroup. In later work, Berg and Maserick and Berg, Christensen and Ressel establish an even more general result, for a commutative semigroup with involution, for the closure of the cone of sums of squares of symmetric elements in the weighted $\ell_1$-seminorm topology associated to an absolute value. In the present paper we give a new proof of these results which is based on Jacobi's representation theorem from 2001. At the same time, we use Jacobi's representation theorem to extend these results from sums of squares to sums of $2d$-powers, proving, in particular, that for any integer $d\ge 1$, the closure of the cone of sums of $2d$-powers $\sum \mathbb{R}[\underline{X}]^{2d}$ in $\mathbb{R}[\underline{X}]$ in the topology induced by the $\ell_1$-norm is equal to $\operatorname{Pos}([-1,1]^n)$.

Let $S$ be a subset of an amenable group $G$ such that $e\in S$ and $S^{-1}=S$. The main result of this paper states that if the Cayley graph of $G$ with respect to $S$ has a certain combinatorial property, then every positive definite operator-valued function on $S$ can be extended to a positive definite function on $G$. Several known extension results are obtained as corollaries. New applications are also presented.