Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Homeland Security and Defense))--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2009. / Thesis Advisor(s): Supinski, Stanley. Second Reader: Bach, Robert. "December 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 29, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: Joint regional border commands, collaboration, border control, border security, regionalization, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-81). Also available in print.

One of the most prolific and recognized young Mexican writers is Cristina Rivera-Garza. Carlos Fuentes described her novel Nadie me verá llorar, as one of the most notable literary works in this century. Born in Matamoros, Tamps., México, 1964, she completed her B.A. in Sociology at the UNAM in Mexico City (1987), an M.A. (1993) and Ph.D. in Latin-American History at the University of Houston (1995). She worked as an Associate Professor at San Diego State University where she taught Mexican History (1997-2000). She has won several Literary Awards and received the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 2000. The purpose of this research is to study the genre and gender borders evident in her works. a) In the literary genre aspect, the author’s works show an interrelation between the documented Historical narrative and the stories at the margin of that narrative. b) In the generic-sex aspect, the identities borders between the different sexualities (hetero and homo sexual), are blurred in the characters of this author. We study the author’s handling of concepts like gender, literary and sexual, and the ways she crosses boundaries to give shape to a body: a physical body that inhabits an unstable identity, and shows a performance that adapts itself in certain contexts; a historic body that dialogues with the official History and reclaims those stories that stayed at the margin of it. In the Introduction we will focus on the author’s bio-bibliography and elaborate, using existing theoretical concepts, on the literary genre and the theory of sexual orientation that will help explain her work. Chapter one is a general review of Rivera-Garza’s work and the context in which it takes place. Chapter two studies two of her short stories books, La guerra no importa (1991), and Ningún reloj cuenta esto (2001); Chapter three studies the sexual orientation and its relationship with gender identity in two novels, La cresta de Ilión (2002), and Lo anterior (2004). The final chapter is the conclusion. / text

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Mexican neoliberalism has systematically undermined Mexico's rural and indigenous populations and created multiple forms of displacement in communities and individual lives. This thesis traces the impacts of displacement in the lives of Mixtec families living and working on the U.S.-Mexico border. As families encounter new circumstances of risk, violation and vulnerability, they develop material, spatial and social strategies to provide safe and meaningful lives, often through contradictory and uneven processes. Central to these processes are power relations and negotiations of class, ethnicity and gender, which both maintain community and continuity as well as further perpetuate systems of inequality and differentiation between groups, families and individuals. The focus on indigenous peoples in Nogales fills important gaps in the literature of indigenous transnational migrants and the U.S-Mexico border, particularly in light of recent border policies, which are pushing more people to the Arizona-Sonora desert region.

En los anos recientes se ha visto un incremento de documentales dentro de la produccion cultural hispana, reflejando vi­as alternativas de representar el entorno. Pero en contraste a la entusiasta produccion filmica, no se han hecho estudios concentrados sobre documentales, y menos de aquellos que tratan cuestiones de movilizaciones poblacionales a modo de estudio de espacios fi­sicos e imaginarios, producidos por mujeres. Esta tesis pretende otorgar la merecida atencion academica a los documentales relacionados al mundo hispano y con tematica de la frontera, producidos por mujeres, observando la sinergi­a que genera el enlace de elementos convencionalmente considerados perifericos como el genero documental, el genero femenino, y el espacio liminar de la frontera, tanto geopolítica como sociocultural. Para ello se exploran los rasgos formales y tematicos de seis documentales de mujeres sobre la frontera -tanto en su sentido simbolico como concreto. Tres de ellos surgen de la frontera geopoli­tica de EEUU y Mexico, y la otra mitad se enfoca en la representacion de las fronteras virtuales o socioculturales que plasman la Espana en la era de la globalizacion: Que suene la calle (2005) de Itzel Marti­nez, Cowboy del amor (2005) de Michele Ohayon y Maquilapolis (2006) de Vicky Funary y Sergio de la Torre, Extranjeras (2003) de Helena Taberna, El tren de la memoria (2005) de Marta Arribas y Ana Perez y Aguaviva (2006) de Adriadna Pujol. El analisis parte de la idea de conjugar la interseccion de tres li­neas divisorias o fronteras: la li­nea que divide el genero documental de otros generos cinematograficos, la li­nea que divide el genero femenino del genero masculino (u otros), y la linea que divide una cultura de otra -o un pai­s- de otro. El encuentro de estos tres elementos constituye un centro fructi­fero de ideas alternativas de lo marginal, y se establece como espacio legi­timo de rearticulacion de poli­ticas de representacion. Las diferentes perspectivas sobre las dinamicas socioculturales que surgen de la (re)consideracion de los procesos de produccion y circulacion de estos textos culturales aportara a generar nuevos abordamientos de elaboracion y usos de poli­ticas identitarias.

Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States with the states that border Mexico having a greater percentage of persons of Mexican origin residing in them. Herbs are widely used by persons of Mexican origin, however, little is known about specifics surrounding these cultural practices. An ethnographic study in the border region of Nogales, Arizona - Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, discovered the cultural components of values, beliefs, practices, and experiences of 9 women of Mexican origin who resided in the Arizona/Sonora, Mexico border region related to using manzanilla tea during the childbearing period. Data from semi-structured in-depth interviews were analyzed using a thematic, content analysis process. Intergenerational transmission of cultural health care knowledge emerged from abstraction of the findings. Details from the women's voices provide enlightenment surrounding the values, beliefs, and practices related to the use of manzanilla tea for childbearing. Nursing should be able to integrate this knowledge into care practices and education thereby promoting more culturally relevant care during the childbearing period for women of Mexican origin.

This paper identifies, analyzes and interprets key challenges that e-retailers face when they decide to expand their e-business into a new market. The main topics are the cross-border factors and e-commerce strategies based on theories from previous studies to drive profitable growth. The paper illustrates the case study of an e-retail company, Dateks, in expansion in the Baltic countries. The findings show that the localization strategy in e-retail companies is more highly used when expanding to a new market. The challenge for an e-retailer in expansion is to be cost-effective.

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The dissertation examines one of the most remarkable and controversial developments in the recent history of European integration, namely the institutionalization of a regional policy regime to manage the continent’s frontiers. By adopting this regime (known in policy circles as ‘Schengen’), European governments have in fact relinquished part of their sovereign authority over the politically sensitive issue of border control, thereby challenging what for a long time was the dominant national approach to policy-making in this domain. In order to account for the regime’s emergence and success, a constructivist analytical framework centred on the notion of ‘cultures of border control’ is advanced. From this perspective, the adoption of a regional approach to govern Europe’s frontiers is the result of the evolution of a nationalist (‘Westphalian’) culture—or set of background assumptions and related practices about borders shared by a given policy community—into a post-nationalist one (‘Schengen’). The cultural evolutionary argument elaborated in the dissertation captures the unique political dynamics that have characterized border control in Europe in the last two decades and offers a more nuanced account of recent developments than those available in the existing European Studies literature. It can also shed light on current trends defining European politics beyond border control (e.g., Europe’s policy towards its neighbours) and on other attempts to regionalize border control outside Europe (e.g., the proposal for a North American security perimeter).

[Abstract]: Furrow and border irrigation practices in Australia and around the world are typically inefficient. Recent advances in computer-based surface irrigationdecision support technology have the potential to improve performance, but have had little uptake. Despite considerable academic achievements with individualcomponents of the technology, the implementation of this knowledge into usable tools has been immature, hindering adoption. In particular, there has been littleprogress in encapsulating the different decision support components into a standalone system for surface irrigation. Therefore, the research problem addressed in this dissertation aims to develop a new decision support system for furrow and border irrigation aimed at increasing the usability of the technology, and improving decision making capabilities. Specifically the research hypothesis is:“That calibration, optimisation, and parameter analysis capabilities can be developed and integrated with an accurate and robust simulation model into a decision support system to improve furrow and border irrigation performance.”Six research objectives have been identified to support the hypothesis including: (RO1) investigate existing surface irrigation modelling technology to determine amodel and solution technique structure suitable for incorporating into a decision support system; (RO2) develop a robust reliable simulation engine for furrow andborder irrigation for automation within a decision support system under optimisation and systematic response evaluation; (RO3) investigate and develop parameter estimation (calibration) capabilities for the decision support system; (RO4) investigate and develop optimisation capabilities for the decision support system; (RO5) investigate and develop parameter response (design charts)capabilities for the decision support system; and (RO6) develop an objectoriented framework to combine the components developed in Research Objectives 2 to 5 with data management facilities and a graphical user interface.Successful completion of these objectives has resulted in the development of a decision support system for furrow and border irrigation featuring an automationcapablehydrodynamic simulation engine, automated full-hydrodynamic inverse solution, automated optimisation of design and management variables, and automated user-definable real-time generation of system response. This wascombined with a highly flexible object-oriented program structure and webbrowser-like graphical user interface. Each of these components represents a unique implementation of the required functionalities, differing from the established software packages (such as SIRMOD and WinSRFR) that use alternate technologies with no automation or optimisation capabilities.Development of the hydrodynamic simulation engine has involved the refinement of the commonly used implicit double-sweep methodology with the objectives ofachieving robustness and reliability under automation. It was subsequently found that only subtle changes and manipulations were required in much of thenumerical methodology, including derivation of simplified solution equations. The main focus of this research has targeted the computational algorithms that drivethe numerical solution process. Key factors effecting robustness and reliability were identified in a study of simulation operation, and treated through thesealgorithms. Validation was undertaken against output from the SIRMOD simulation engine, with robustness and reliability tested through tens of thousands of simulations under optimisation and automated system response evaluation.The calibration facilities demonstrated that the inverse-solution using the fullhydrodynamic model is a viable and robust methodology for the unique identification of up to three infiltration/roughness parameters. Two optimisationmethods were investigated during this research with objective-functions based upon either a volume-balance time-of-advance equation, or complete simulationsof the hydrodynamic model. A simple but robust optimisation algorithm was designed for this purpose. While the volume-balance method proved fast andreliable, its accuracy is reduced due to the underlying assumptions and simplistic model structure. The hydrodynamic method was shown to be accurate, althoughit suffered slow execution times. It was therefore decided to use the two methods in tandem during the solution process where the faster volume-balance method is used to provide starting estimates for the more accuratehydrodynamic method. Response-surface investigation for the advance-based objective function identified a unique solution when solving for three parameters.It was found that the automated unconstrained optimisation of design and management practices is limited to the selection of one solution variable (time to cut-off) due to non-unique multi-variable solutions. Nevertheless, the developed facilities provide a unique benchmarking of irrigation performance potential. This research has used the earlier-developed optimisation algorithm to automatesimulations using a prototype objective-function based upon user-defined weightings of key performance measures. A study of the response-surfaces ofdifferent configurations of the objective-function identified parabolic ridges of alternate solutions, so, in practice, the optimisation process simplifies down tooptimising only one parameter: time-to-cutoff. It was also recognized that the performance-based objective functions are highly sensitive to numerical discretisation inconsistencies that occur between simulations, which impede solution convergence.The highly customisable, automated, system response evaluation facilities developed in this research offer potential as both a research and practitionertool, capable of multidimensional analysis of irrigation systems subject to temporal and spatial infiltration variations. A preliminary study demonstrated theimportance of infiltration variation on irrigation decision-making, and provided initial guideline layout designs that combined the effects of variable infiltrationand three decision variables using a fixed management strategy of minimising runoff. A limited range of response outputs for a fixed management objectivenegated the potential benefit of visualising a large number of dimensions. Nevertheless, this study provided direction for the subsequent software development with recommendations including: representing system outputs ascontours and iso-curves, rather than by the chart axes; representing different infiltration conditions in separate design charts; allowing the user to assignvariables to each chart axis; and representing only two decision variables in each chart.Finally, the simulation, calibration, optimisation and parameter analysis components were combined with a database and graphical user interface todevelop the FIDO (Furrow Irrigation Decision Optimiser) decision support system. There were three focus areas during this marriage of components; firstly, anobject-oriented structure was developed to accommodate program elements concentrating on separating the graphical user interface components from other task related objects for flexible future development; secondly, a database wasdeveloped using XML-based technologies to store property, paddock, event and model information; and thirdly, a user-friendly graphical user interface was created with web-browser-like functionality. The software design evolved through many different prototypes with its current design being heavily influenced from the successes and mistakes of the previous attempts.This work represents the first coordinated attempt to develop a decision support system for furrow irrigation linking a database, simulation engine, calibrationfacilities, optimisation facilities, and parameter analysis capabilities. A major feature of this work is that all components of the system have been developedfrom first principles using an object-oriented structure, with the primary goal of implementation into a decision support system. This research has contributed tothe development of a professional-quality software package to improve the decision-making capabilities of researchers, irrigation consultants, and irrigators.