In this paper we use a homological approach to obtain upper bounds for a few homological invariants of FI_G-modules V. These upper bounds are expressed in terms of the generating degree and torsion degree, which measure the top and socle of V under actions of non-invertible morphisms in the category respectively.

Given an Artinian algebra $A$ over a field $k$, there are several combinatorial objects associated to $A$. They are the diagram $D_A$ as defined by Drozd and Kirichenko, the natural quiver $\Delta_A$ defined by Li (cf. Section 2), and a generalized version of $k$-species $(A/r, r/r^2)$ with $r$ being the Jacobson radical of $A$. When $A$ is splitting over the field $k$, the diagram $D_A$ and the well-known ext-quiver $\Gamma_A$ are the same. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the relations among these combinatorial objects and in turn to use these relations to give a characterization of the algebra $A$.

The Faith-Menal conjecture is one of the three main open conjectures on QF rings. It says that every right noetherian and left FP-injective ring is QF. In this paper, it is proved that the conjecture is true if every nonzero complement left ideal of the ring R is not small (or not singular). Several known results are then obtained as corollaries.