A dual point of view on the ribbon graph decomposition of moduli space
  In this note, I discuss in some detail the dual version of the ribbon graph decomposition of the moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces with boundary and marked points, which I introduced in math.AG/0402015, and used in math.QA/0412149 to construct open-closed topological conformal field theories. This dual version of the ribbon graph decomposition is a compact orbi-cell complex with a natural weak homotopy equivalence to the moduli space. 
Kevin J. Costello