We show that for $n \neq 1,4$, the simplicial volume of an inward tame triangulable open $n$-manifold $M$ with amenable fundamental group at infinity at each end is finite; moreover, we show that if also $\pi _1(M)$ is amenable, then the simplicial volume of $M$ vanishes. We show that the same result holds for finitely-many-ended triangulable manifolds which are simply connected at infinity.

We establish a straightforward estimate for the number of open sets with fundamental group constraints needed to cover the total space of fibrations. This leads to vanishing results for simplicial volume and minimal volume entropy, e.g., for certain mapping tori.

We define and study generalizations of simplicial volume over arbitrary seminormed rings with a focus on p-adic simplicial volumes. We investigate the dependence on the prime and establish homology bounds in terms of p-adic simplicial volumes. As the main examples, we compute the weightless and p-adic simplicial volumes of surfaces. This is based on an alternative way to calculate classical simplicial volume of surfaces without hyperbolic straightening and shows that surfaces satisfy mod p and p-adic approximation of simplicial volume.

Functorial semi-norms on singular homology give refined ‘size’ information on singular homology classes. A fundamental example is the ℓ1-semi-norm. We show that there exist finite functorial semi-norms on singular homology that are exotic in the sense that they are not carried by the ℓ1-semi-norm.

The aim of this note is to present a new, elementary proof of a result of Baas and Madsen on the mod p cohomology of certain quotients of the spectrum BP.

We prove that for a topological operad $P$ the operad of oriented cubical singular chains, $C_{*}^{^{\text{ord}}}(P)$, and the operad of simplicial singular chains, ${{S}_{*}}(P)$, are weakly equivalent. As a consequence, $C_{*}^{^{\text{ord}}}(P;\,\mathbb{Q})$ is formal if and only if ${{S}_{*}}(P;\,\mathbb{Q})$ is formal, thus linking together some formality results which are spread out in the literature. The proof is based on an acyclic models theorem for monoidal functors. We give different variants of the acyclic models theorem and apply the contravariant case to study the cohomology theories for simplicial sets defined by $R$-simplicial differential graded algebras.

The cohomology algebra mod $p$ of the complex projective Stiefel manifolds is determined for all primes $p$. When $p=2$ we also determine the action of the Steenrod algebra and apply this to the problem of existence of trivial subbundles of multiples of the canonical line bundle over a lens space with 2-torsion, obtaining optimal results in many cases.