This thesis deals with legislative obstruction in the United States Senate. It presents the filibuster as one of the key procedural tools in the hands of a legislative minority during the consideration of legislative proposals, presidential nominations and international treaties. At first it presents the main theoretical approaches to the topic and the historical development of Senate procedures. A key theme of the work is the necessity to distinguish between formal and informal provisions that determine how Senate business is conducted, since the formal text of the Standing Rules of the Senate is rutinely bypassed by alternative strategies. The last part of the thesis confronts the existing theoretical approaches with the important procedural changes of the last several years and assesses whether these models are still valid in light of the new Senate procedures.

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / Peri da Silva / Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) are known to facilitate liberalization with respect to only a few trading partners and thus they have been a topic of debate for the past two decades especially because their effect on most favored nation (MFN) tariffs is known to be ambiguous. We provide insights for analyzing whether the PTAs indeed hamper or support multilateral liberalization. Using product level official and actual tariffs we provide evidence from the United States (US) import data that the stumbling block effect on the US MFN bound tariffs is present only for goods that receive full preference in books or in actual. However, my dataset does not statistically support the stumbling block hypothesis in the case of Applied tariffs.

This thesis studies attempts by Arab Gulf states to effectively lobby the US government. It explores aspects of their lobbying behaviour in order to identify the factors that lead to success and those that lead to failure from their lobbying endeavours. In this respect, the research utilizes two case studies: one in which Arab Gulf state lobbying was successful, and another in which lobbying failed. For each case study, the different elements involved in lobbying are analyzed and factors that lead to success as well as to failure are inferred. In tandem with an analysis of the strategies—or lack of them—behind Arab Gulf states’ lobbying, the research examines additional relevant factors such as the organization and activism of the US Arab American community, the strategic value of the Arab Gulf to the US, and the negative image of Arabs in America. The research then considers the hurdles and obstacles facing the establishment of an effective Arab Gulf lobby in the US. As a conclusion, the research evaluates the prospects of an effective Arab Gulf lobby, and highlights the research areas that should be tackled in the future.

Democracy promotion is a key objective in both US and EU foreign development policy. The study attempts to provide a better understanding of both actors democracy promotion in Afghanistan. The US and the EU are perceived to have different approaches regarding democracy promotion. Therefor the study examines if US used top-down and EU bottom-up approaches respective coercive and persuasive methods. Approaches used by actors are examined in the study regarding democracy promotion in the case of Afghanistan. It is a case study with qualitative text analysis and the theories used are top-down and bottom up channels of democracy, and persuasive and stick methods. The survey has looked at the both actors’ commitment in Afghanistan during period of 2001-2014. The result shows that the US and EU have more similarities than differences in the case of Afghanistan and actors have combined both top-down and bottom-approaches in promotion of democracy and focused on cooperation and partnership.

Historically, archaeologists working on non-state societies have tended to interpret religion and large-scale religious architecture as necessarily integrative, that is, as naturalizing the social order or producing an abiding sense of community. I argue here that this focus on integration has limited our ability to understand how and why religion changed through time and how religion may have been a driver of social change. We will benefit from considering the political dimensions of religious practice in non-state societies as much as in more "complex" settings. This study explores the articulation of religious practice and religious architecture with social and spatial boundaries in the prehispanic U.S. Southwest. In particular, I examine variability and change in rectangular great kivas—large, semi-subterranean religious structures—in west-central New Mexico and east-central Arizona between 1000 and 1400 CE in relationship to socially diverse contexts that might be viewed as borderlands or frontiers. The study pulls together two broads strands of research. The first is an examination of the unusual great kiva at the thirteenth-century CE Fornholt site (LA 164471) near Mule Creek, New Mexico, in relation to the broader history of the surrounding Upper Gila area. This portion of the research is based on two seasons of excavation at Fornholt and on an examination of records and ceramic collections from the Upper Gila. I suggest that the Upper Gila may be considered a borderland or frontier through time and that viewing Fornholt as a borderland site sheds light on the site's material culture, including its great kiva. The second strand of research is a comparison of great kiva architecture and assemblages across the larger study area based on the examination of museum collections and the aggregation of published and unpublished architectural data. The broader study demonstrates that, while these great kivas make up a coherent tradition and fit within the larger world of southwestern religion, great kivas in borderland contexts show experimentation and change in ways that more centrally located great kivas do not. I argue that this diversity can be viewed in light of the negotiation of social boundaries in borderland contexts, including the role of great kivas as political venues or contested spaces.

Background Parastomal hernia is a common stoma complication causing the patient considerable inconvenience. The patient becomes aware of a bulge around the stoma, but a bulge is not always a parastomal hernia and diagnostics must be performed to enable differential treatment. It is difficult to distinguish between a bulge and a hernia. Results based on clinical examination and computerised tomography (CT) in the supine position, have not been convincing. Three-dimensional intrastomal ultrasonography (3D US) is a novel technique shown to be promising in the assessment of stoma complaints. Two studies were performed to determine inter- and intra-observer reliability as well as the validity of 3D US as an alternative to CT when assessing stoma complaints. There are numerous options for the treatment of parastomal hernia, but none has been shown superior. In the recent decades the use of mesh in the repair of incisional and inguinal hernia has become routine. New materials must be evaluated as there are potential morbidity and even mortality risks with mesh repair. As recurrence of a parastomal hernia is an even greater challenge, the method of choice should have a low risk for recurrence. A prospective multicenter study was performed to evaluate safety and recurrence rate when using Parastomal Hernia Patch BARDTM (PHP), a mesh specially designed for parastomal hernia repair. A stoma has a profound impact on the patient´s daily life, both physical and psychological. A parastomal hernia with its associated risk for leakage and incarceration worsens the situation. Patient driven assessment of healthcare outcome is important if we are to improve medical care. A quality of life (QoL) survey was performed to assess the impact of parastomal bulging and hernia on the patient´s daily life. Methods Forty patients were investigated and the 3D US images were twice evaluated by two or three physicians to assess inter- and intra-observer reliability. Totally 20 patients with stoma complaints requiring surgery were examined with CT and 3D US prior to surgery. The findings were compared with the intraoperative findings – regarded as the true outcome. Fifty patients with parastomal hernia requiring surgery were enrolled from three hospitals. Patients were followed up one month and one year after repair using PHP. Patients still alive in 2008 who had been operated between1996 and 2004 for rectal cancer in Uppsala/Örebro-, Stockholm/Gotland-, and Northern Regions (986 patients) and registered in the Swedish Rectal Cancer Registry (SRCR) were invited to fill in four QoL questionnaires. Results Inter-observer agreement using 3D US reached 80% for the last 10 patients examined, with a kappa value of 0.70. Intra-observer agreement for two examiners was 80% and 95%. The learning curve levelled out at 30 patients. Both CT and 3D US showed high sensitivity and specificity when compared with intraoperative findings. After surgery for parastomal hernia with a PHP, the complication rate at one month was 30% and recurrence rate at one year was 22%. Twelve patients were reoperated within one year. In the QoL study, 31.5% of the patients with a stoma reported a bulging or a hernia. 11.7% had been operated for parastomal hernia. A hernia or a bulge gave rise to significantly more pain and impaired stoma function. Overall QoL was inferior in patients with a permanent stoma compared to a group without a stoma.

The central objective of this thesis is to explore how sophisticated information and communication technologies (ICTs) impact Mexico-US migration. In particular, it attends to those ICTs that enable Mexican immigrants in the United States to stay “in touch” with their loved ones in Mexico. Rather than pursue the impacts of these technologies through a singular methodology or theoretical framework, this study employs an array of approaches in order to examine the geography transnational communication across multiple scales. At the level of the individual, I examine how Mexican immigrants living in Austin, TX, incorporate communication technologies into their daily lives. Informed by a series of semi-structured and in-depth interviews, I argue that cellular phone calls, text messaging, and social media platforms enable a passive, routinized transnationalism that allows migrants to maintain a degree of presence both “here” and “there.” I subsequently scale up my analysis in order to trace the emergence of digital social media—Facebook, in particular—as a communication tool for dispersed Mexican immigrant communities, and I interrogate the ways in which digital social media engender transnational social networks. Using place as a guiding conceptual theme, I demonstrate how senses of and attachments to place form the basis of communal social interactions online, and I identify the many different places, both in the US and Mexico, that are involved in particular transnational social networks and migration flows. This study concludes by drawing on recent critical GIS scholarship and volunteered geographic information (VGI) in order to visualize the digital, place-to-place connections between Mexican migrants living in United States and their friends and family members living in Mexico and elsewhere. / text

Through open-ended interviews and oral history, this ethnographic project captures unique histories of cultivating critical race consciousness as a White subject in social contexts of continuing overt and covert racisms. The project studies the legacy of racist and prejudiced discourses in how White research participants embody, theorize, and perform White consciousness. I explore a spectrum of White consciousness that corresponds to shifting conceptualizations of racism (Jim Crow, Colorblind, and Critical Race Consciousness), unstable ideologies of activism and antiracism (reflecting whether or not and how subjects act against prejudice), and the changing politics of rhetorical practice in backstage settings (that is, how subjects represent and construct racialized realities in these discourse situations). The project concludes that storytelling can be strategically and effectively used in activist research and everyday conversation as a vehicle for positive social change to cultivate critical dialogue about and rearticulate lived histories of race, racialized identities, racial privileges, and racisms.

The Lund-Spathelf House is located at 1526 Pontiac Trail in Ann Arbor, Michigan. During a recent renovation, the owner sought information regarding the construction of the house by searching through numerous written records. Despite an extensive history of the land on which the house currently sits, neither a construction year nor general period of construction could be obtained. Therefore, four samples of oak (Quercus spp.) were extracted from floor boards throughout the house for dendrochronological dating. The four samples crossdated conclusively with each other both visually and statistically and were used to build a floating 126-year tree-ring chronology. We used COFECHA to statistically evaluate the absolute temporal placement of this chronology against a nearby regional chronology (MI005.CRN) from the Cranbrook Institute, Michigan. The Lund-Spathelf House chronology was anchored in time with the regional chronology from A.D. 1720 to 1845 with a correlation coefficient of 0.62 (p < 0.0001, t < 8.76, n = 126). All four oak samples provided conclusive cutting dates of A.D. 1845, indicating the year the Lund-Spathelf House was constructed.

Groundwater is a major source of water in the western US. However, there are limited recharge estimates in this region due to the complexity of recharge processes and the challenge of direct observations. Land surface Models (LSMs) could be a valuable tool for estimating current recharge and projecting changes due to future climate change. In this study, simulations of three LSMs (Noah, Mosaic and VIC) obtained from the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS-2) are used to estimate potential recharge in the western US. Modeled recharge was compared with published recharge estimates for several aquifers in the region. Annual recharge to precipitation ratios across the study basins varied from 0.01% to 15% for Mosaic, 3.2% to 42% for Noah, and 6.7% to 31.8% for VIC simulations. Mosaic consistently underestimates recharge across all basins. Noah captures recharge reasonably well in wetter basins, but overestimates it in drier basins. VIC slightly overestimates recharge in drier basins and slightly underestimates it for wetter basins. While the average annual recharge values vary among the models, the models were consistent in identifying high and low recharge areas in the region. Models agree in seasonality of recharge occurring dominantly during the spring across the region. Overall, our results highlight that LSMs have the potential to capture the spatial and temporal patterns as well as seasonality of recharge at large scales. Therefore, LSMs (specifically VIC and Noah) can be used as a tool for estimating future recharge in data limited regions.