This diploma thesis focuses on the role of the American Civil War memory in the American society today. It examines this phenomenon through the perception of American Civil War reenactors. The thesis analyses their opinions on the current issues that are linked to the history of this conflict - the omnipresence of the Confederate monuments and the Confederate battle flag in the American public space. It also explores the subject of the Southern identity, the role of the Confederacy in its formation and whether the ideas of the Confederacy are still present in the South today. It is necessary to understand the Southern mentality and how it is perceived by the rest of the United States, because the individual characteristics of the Southern identity are reflected in the current debates on the Confederate heritage. An idea that interconnects the individual chapters of the thesis is that the American Civil War memory is strongly influenced by the Lost Cause ideology and the overall mythologization of the conflict. While the Civil War reenactors' main motivation is to educate society about the conflict, their opinions are also mostly supportive of the romantic perception of the Confederacy.

Das Ziel der Arbeit besteht darin, einen Beitrag zur Entwicklung der kombinatorischen Integralgeometrie zu leisten. In der Arbeit werden Bewertungen (Valuation) in den Räumen der Geraden und Ebenen im $\R^3$ betrachtet, die von Flagfunktionen abhängen. Unter geeigneten Glattheitsvoraussetzungen an die Flagfunktionen werden notwendige und hinreichende Bedingungen gegeben, die die Fortsetzung der entsprechender Bewertung zu einem signierten Maß sichern. Diese integralgeometrischen Untersuchungen führten zu einer Anzahl von interessanten Ergebnissen, speziell bei der Beschreibung von Metriken im Sinne von Hilberts viertem Problem.

This study focuses on the life experiences of a rural, Deaf Appalachian woman, Jane Ann Shelton, a second generation Deaf child born to Deaf parents from the communities of Devil’s Fork (Flag Pond, Tennessee) and Shelton Laurel (Madison County, North Carolina). Over two hours of videotaped interviews were interpreted and transcribed, followed by various other communications to describe the life of a rural, Deaf Appalachian woman without a formal high school degree. As an advocate and a political lobbyist in Tennessee during the 1980s and 90s, she was unparalleled by her peers (deaf or hearing) in her efforts to “enhance the lives of ALL Deaf Tennesseans.” From these interactions and my firsthand knowledge, I crafted stories of her life experiences for the purpose of performing them for both Deaf and hearing audiences. Further studies should be done on rural Deaf Appalachia as precious little oral history has been collected.

The study of algebraic varieties originates from the study of smooth manifolds. One of the focal points is the theory of differential forms and de Rham cohomology. It’s algebraic counterparts are given by algebraic cycles and Chow groups. Linearizing and taking the pseudo-abelian envelope of the category of smooth projective varieties, one obtains the category of pure motives. In this thesis, we concentrate on studying the pure Chow motives of Severi-Brauer varieties. This has been a subject of intensive investigation for the past twenty years, with major contributions done by Karpenko, [Kar1], [Kar2], [Kar3], [Kar4]; Panin, [Pan1], [Pan2]; Brosnan, [Bro1], [Bro2]; Chernousov, Merkurjev, [Che1], [Che2]; Petrov, Semenov, Zainoulline, [Pet]; Calmès, [Cal]; Nikolenko, [Nik]; Nenashev, [Nen]; Smirnov, [Smi]; Auel, [Aue]; Krashen, [Kra]; and others. The main theorem of the thesis, presented in sections 4.3 and 4.4, extends the result of Zainoulline et al. in the paper [Cal] by providing new examples of motivic decompositions of generalized Severi-Brauer varieties.

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Multi-Agent coordination and control has been studied for a long time, but has recently gained more interest because of technology improvements allowing smaller, more versatile robots and other types of agents. To facilitate multi-agent experiments between heterogeneous agents, including robots and UAVs, we have created a test-bed with both simulation and hardware capabilities. This thesis discusses the creation of this unique, versatile test-bed for multi-agent experiments, also a unique graph creation algorithm, and some experimental results obtained using the test-bed.

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Arbetet har syftat till att undersöka och problematisera flaggstatens och klassificeringssällskapens roller såsom kontrollfunktion avseende sjösäkerhet. Frågor har ställts angående vilka skyldigheter flaggstater å ena sidan, och klassificeringssällskap å andra sidan, har vad gäller fartygskonstruktion och fartygssäkerhet. Vidare har arbetet även behandlat frågan vilka sjösäkerhetsrelaterade effekter som kan uppkomma av att flaggstaten delegerar skyldigheter avseende konstruktion till klassificeringssällskap. För att besvara frågorna har en kvalitativ dokumentstudie gjorts, med vissa inslag av rättsdogmatik i de delar som avsett finna gällande rätt på området. Materialet för dokumentstudiens del har till stor del valts ut genom en bred sökning i litteratur och avhandlingar på området. På så vis har det använda materialet redan genomgått en urvalsprocess och därmed ansetts vara relevant för arbetet. Resultatet visar att det finns en viss överlappning i kontrollfunktionsrollen för både flaggstaten och klassificeringssällskapen. Att delegering av skyldigheter sker från flaggstaten till klassificeringssällskapen är inte nödvändigtvis problematiskt. Dock kan en delegering få negativa effekter på sjösäkerheten i de fall klassificeringssällskapen inte är i paritet med flaggstaten eller båda parter saknar en effektiv kontrollfunktion med högt ställda krav. Skulle delegering ske till ett klassificeringssällskap som har en god kontrollfunktion med höga krav kan brister som finns inom flaggstaten, såsom bristande resurser och kompetens, avhjälpas. Trots att systemet till stor del verkar fungera tillfredsställande finns anledning att fortsätta forska inom området för att undersöka hur de problem som belysts i detta arbete kan åtgärdas eller förhindras i framtiden. / The aim of this paper has been to investigate and problematize the roles of the flag state and the classification societies in regard to their maritime safety control function. Questions have been raised regarding what obligations flag states on one hand, and classification societies on the other hand, have regarding ship construction and ship safety. Furthermore, the paper has also addressed the question of what maritime safety-related effects may arise from the flag state delegating their duties to classification societies. To answer the questions, a qualitative document study has been conducted, with some elements of legal dogmatics in certain parts in order to find the current legal situation. The material for the document study has been selected by thorough research into literature and dissertations in the area. Therefore, the chosen material has been previously reviewed and gone through a selection process and was thus considered relevant for this paper. The result has shown that there is some overlap in the control function for both the flag state and the classification societies. Delegating obligations from the flag state to the classification societies is not necessarily problematic. However, delegation of the said duties can have negative effects on maritime safety in cases where the classification societies are not on par with the flag state or both parties lack an effective control apparatus to enforce high standards. Should delegation occur to a classification society that has a good control apparatus with high requirements, possible shortcomings that exist within the flag state, such as lack of resources and skills, can be remedied by the high standard performance of the classification society. Even though the system might seem satisfactorily at first glance, there is room for further research in the area in order to investigate how the existing problems can be managed and prevented in the future.