A pairwise balanced design, $B(K;v)$, is a block design on $v$ points, with block sizes taken from $K$, and with every pair of points occurring in a unique block; for a fixed $K$, $B(K)$ is the set of all $v$ for which a $B(K;v)$ exists. A set, $S$, is a PBD-basis for the set, $T$, if $T=B(S)$. Let $N_{a(m)}=\{n:n\equiv a\bmod m\}$, and $N_{\geq m}=\{n:n\geq m\}$; with $Q$ the corresponding restriction of $N$ to prime powers. This paper addresses the existence of three PBD-basis sets. 1. It is shown that $Q_{1(8)}$ is a basis for $N_{1(8)}\setminus E$, where $E$ is a set of 5 definite and 117 possible exceptions. 2. We construct a 78 element basis for $N_{1(8)}$ with, at most, 64 inessential elements. 3. Bennett and Zhu have shown that $Q_{\geq8}$ is a basis for $N_{\geq8}\setminus E'$, where $E'$ is a set of 43 definite and 606 possible exceptions. Their result is improved to 48 definite and 470 possible exceptions. (Constructions for 35 of these possible exceptions are known.) Finally, we provide brief details of some improvements and corrections to the generating/exception sets published in The CRC Handbook of Combinatorial Designs.
On the number of distinct block sizes in partitions of a set
