Upper bound on distance in the pants complex
  The purpose of this paper is to establish an upper bound on the distance between two pants decompositions in the pants complex for a closed surface of genus g >= 2. This is done by use of graph theory. First distance is found in the pants graph modulo the action of the mapping class group, and then between pants decompositions within an orbit of this action. 
Harriet H. Moser (Independent)
math.GT