Let T be a tournament with edges colored with any number of colors. A rainbow triangle is a 3-colored 3-cycle. A monochromatic sink of T is a vertex which can be reached along a monochromatic path by every other vertex of T. In 1982, Sands, Sauer, and Woodrow asked if T has no rainbow triangles, then does T have a monochromatic sink? I answer yes in the following five scenarios: when all 4-cycles are monochromatic, all 4-semi-cycles are near-monochromatic, all 5-semi-cycles are near-monochromatic, all back-paths of an ordering of the vertices are vertex disjoint, and for any vertex in an ordering of the vertices, its back edges are all colored the same. I provide conjectures related to these results that ask if the result is also true for larger cycles and semi-cycles. A ruling class is a set of vertices in T so that every other vertex of T can reach a vertex of the ruling class along a monochromatic path. Every tournament contains a ruling class, although the ruling class may have a trivial size of the order of T. Sands, Sauer, and Woodrow asked (again in 1982) about the minimum size of ruling classes in T. In particular, in a 3-colored tournament, must there be a ruling class of size 3? I answer yes when it is required that all 2-colored cycles have an edge xy so that y has a monochromatic path to x. I conjecture that there is a ruling class of size 3 if there are no rainbow triangles in T. Finally, I present the new topic of alpha-step-chromatic sinks along with related results. I show that for certain values of alpha, a tournament is not guaranteed to have an alpha-step-chromatic sink. In fact, similar to the previous results in this thesis, alpha-step-chromatic sinks can only be demonstrated when additional restrictions are put on the coloring of the tournament's edges, such as excluding rainbow triangles. However, when proving the existence of alpha-step-chromatic sinks, it is only necessary to exclude special types of rainbow triangles.

In Iwasawa theory, one studies how an arithmetic or geometric object grows as its field of definition varies over certain sequences of number fields. For example, let $F/\mathbb{Q}$ be a finite extension of fields, and let $E:y^2 = x^3 + Ax + B$ with $A,B \in F$ be an elliptic curve. If $F = F_0 \subseteq F_1 \subseteq F_2 \subseteq \cdots F_\infty = \bigcup_{i=0}^\infty F_i$, one may be interested in properties like the ranks and torsion subgroups of the increasing family of curves $E(F_0) \subseteq E(F_1) \subseteq \cdots \subseteq E(F_\infty)$. The main technique for studying this sequence of curves when $\Gal(F_\infty/F)$ has a $p$-adic analytic structure is to use the action of $\Gal(F_n/F)$ on $E(F_n)$ and the Galois cohomology groups attached to $E$, i.e. the Selmer and Tate-Shafarevich groups. As $n$ varies, these Galois actions fit into a coherent family, and taking a direct limit one obtains a short exact sequence of modules $$0 \longrightarrow E(F_\infty) \otimes(\mathbb{Q}_p/\mathbb{Z}_p) \longrightarrow \Sel_E(F_\infty)_p \longrightarrow \Sha_E(F_\infty)_p \longrightarrow 0 $$ over the profinite group algebra $\mathbb{Z}_p[[\Gal(F_\infty/F)]]$. When $\Gal(F_\infty/F) \cong \mathbb{Z}_p$, this ring is isomorphic to $\Lambda = \mathbb{Z}_p[[T]]$, and the $\Lambda$-module structure of $\Sel_E(F_\infty)_p$ and $\Sha_E(F_\infty)_p$ encode all the information about the curves $E(F_n)$ as $n$ varies. In this dissertation, it will be shown how one can classify certain finitely generated $\Lambda$-modules with fixed characteristic polynomial $f(T) \in \mathbb{Z}_p[T]$ up to isomorphism. The results yield explicit generators for each module up to isomorphism. As an application, it is shown how to identify the isomorphism class of $\Sel_E(\mathbb{Q_\infty})_p$ in this explicit form, where $\mathbb{Q}_\infty$ is the cyclotomic $\mathbb{Z}_p$-extension of $\mathbb{Q}$, and $E$ is an elliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}$ with good ordinary reduction at $p$, and possessing the property that $E(\mathbb{Q})$ has no $p$-torsion.

Borda's social choice method and Condorcet's social choice method are shown to satisfy different monotonicities and it is shown that it is impossible for any social choice method to satisfy them both. Results of a Monte Carlo simulation are presented which estimate the probability of each of the following social choice methods being manipulable: plurality (first past the post), Borda count, instant runoff, Kemeny-Young, Schulze, and majority Borda. The Kemeny-Young and Schulze methods exhibit the strongest resistance to random manipulability. Two variations of the majority judgment method, with different tie-breaking rules, are compared for continuity. A new variation is proposed which minimizes discontinuity. A framework for social choice methods based on grades is presented. It is based on the Balinski-Laraki framework, but doesn't require aggregation functions to be strictly monotone. By relaxing this restriction, strategy-proof aggregation functions can better handle a polarized electorate, can give a societal grade closer to the input grades, and can partially avoid certain voting paradoxes. A new cardinal voting method, called the linear median is presented, and is shown to have several very valuable properties. Range voting, the majority judgment, and the linear median are also simulated to compare their manipulability against that of the ordinal methods.