Maximal supports and Schur-positivity among connected skew shapes
  The Schur-positivity order on skew shapes is defined by B \leq A if the difference s_A - s_B is Schur-positive. It is an open problem to determine those connected skew shapes that are maximal with respect to this ordering. A strong necessary condition for the Schur-positivity of s_A - s_B is that the support of B is contained in that of A, where the support of B is defined to be the set of partitions lambda for which s_lambda appears in the Schur expansion of s_B. We show that to determine the maximal connected skew shapes in the Schur-positivity order and this support containment order, it suffices to consider a special class of ribbon shapes. We explicitly determine the support for these ribbon shapes, thereby determining the maximal connected skew shapes in the support containment order. 
Peter R. W. McNamara and Stephanie van Willigenburg
math.CO