The rise of the virus called Covid-19 was not expected to have such an impact on theworld in its early stages. However, Covid-19 became an international problem and madehumans and states vulnerable in many aspects. Among others, Sweden, and its publicadministration. The purpose of the study is to analyse whether the authority,Försäkringskassan, and if its nearbureaucrats' independence was affected by thepandemic. The question formulations of this study are: which effects did the pandemichave on Försäkringkassans independence and did the workers there get moreindependent in relation to Försäkringskassans management? The methods implementedare qualitative methods with a deductive approach and semi-structured interviews. Theresults of this study conclude that Försäkringskassan did not receive increasedindependence because of the pandemic, it did in fact get more administered by theGovernment. The study also shows that when discussing their relations toFörsäkringskassans management, most of the respondents expressed that it hadn’t beenaffected by the pandemic because their relationship wasn’t convenient orwell-established to begin with.

The relation between the Catalan nationalist forces as well as the other sub-nationalisms and the Spanish Government has been a matter discussed throughout all the Spanish democracy. In recent years the challenge to the Spanish state set by the Catalan government when taking a unilateral approach on Independence has resulted in the imprisonment and exile of political leaders. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the events that occurred in Catalonia after the Catalan elections of 2015 and the unilateral approach on self-determination taken by the Catalan Autonomous Government with the promise of a binding referendum. The laws passed by the Catalan government which were rejected by the Constitutional Court, as the law itself denied the authority of the Constitutional Court and declared independence. This resulted in the application of the 155th article of the Spanish Constitution, suspending autonomous government, to enforce the Constitutional Court’s resolutions by the Spanish government. The essay will focus on the discourses given by politicians to criticize or justify these actions, analysed through theoretical and political normative perspectives.

In this study, the relationship of autobiographical memory, implicit motivation, sociocultural orientation, and childhood variables was investigated cross-culturally. A German sample reflecting a prototypical independent context (n=100), and a Chinese (n = 77) and Cameroonian sample (n = 68) from a prototypical interdependent context were selected. Participants were asked to report their earliest childhood memories, to answer socio-demographic questions, to complete the Operant Multimotive Test as a measure of their implicit motivation, and two self-report scales to indicate their sociocultural orientation. Special attention was given to considerations of methodological equivalence across cultures.It was expected that (1) Chinese and Cameroonian participants recall more oriented towards others than German participants, and that (2) individuals from a social-oriented childhood context make more use of the social function of autobiographical recall, and finally that (3) implicit motivation and sociocultural orientation predict autobiographical memory across cultures.Results indicate that Cameroonian and Chinese participants generally make more use of the social function of autobiographical memory than do German participants. Furthermore, the more siblings an individual has, the more she/he makes use of the social function. Missing effects of implicit motivation and sociocultural orientation on interindividual differences in autobiographical memory are accounted for by methodological constraints.

The functional linear model, $Y_n = Psi X_n + varepsilon_n$, with functional response and explanatory variables is considered. A simple test of the nullity of $Psi$ based on the principal component decomposition is proposed. The test statistic has asymptotic chi-squared distribution, which is also an excellent approximation in finite samples. The methodology is applied to data from terrestrial magnetic observatories. In recent years, the interaction of the auroral substorms with the equatorial and mid-latitude currents has been the subject of extensive research. We introduce a new statistical technique that allows us to test at a specified significance level whether such a dependence exists, and how long it persists. This quantitative statistical technique, relying on the concepts and tools of functional data analysis, uses directly magnetometer records in one minute resolution, and it can be applied to similar geophysical data which can be represented as daily curves. It is conceptually similar to testing the nullity of the slope in the straight line regression, but both the regressors and the responses are curves rather than points. When the regressors are daily high latitude $H$--component curves during substorm days and the responses are daily mid-- or low latitude $H$--component curves, our test shows significant dependence (the nullity hypothesis is rejected), which exists not only on the same UT day, but also extends into the next day for strong substorms. We propose a novel approach based on wavelet and functional principal component analysis to produce a cleaner index of the intensity of the symmetric ring current. We use functional canonical correlations to show that the new approach more effectively extracts symmetric global features. The main result of our work is the construction of a new index, which is an improved version of the existing wavelet-based index (WISA) and the old Dst index, in which a constant daily variation is removed. Here, we address the fact that the daily component varies from day to day and construct a ``cleaner'' index by removing non-constant daily variations. A wavelet-based method of deconvoluting the solar quiet variation from the low and mid-latitude H-component records is proposed. The resulting daily variation is non--constant, and its day--to--day variability is quantified by functional principal component scores. The procedure removes the signature of an enhanced ring current by comparing the scores at different stations. The method is fully algorithmic and is implemented in the statistical software R. R package for space physics applications is developed. It consists of several functions that compute indices of the storm activity and estimate the daily variation. Storm indices are computed automatically without any human intervention using the most recent magnetometer data available. Functional principal component analysis techniques are used to extract day-to-day variations. This package will be publicly available at Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN).

CHARLES UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Institute of Political Studies Department of Political Science Master's Thesis No Safe Harbour: Is Economic Reliance on the People's Republic of China Sinking Regional Foreign Policy Independence in the East-Asia Pacific? ABSTRACT This paper has been commissioned to explore the relationship between political and economic dependency of East-Asia Pacific nations, with a GDP (nominal) of over US$100 billion, on China. Ten case nations were selected for analysis; Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. Two separate metrics were created; the "Economic Entanglement Index (EEI)" and "Political Dependency Index (PDI)", containing a total of six and five individual indicators each, respectively. Analysing this data, I was able to quantify the levels of political and economic dependency each of these ten case nations shared with China. Singapore was ranked as the most dependent nation in both categories while Japan ranked the least dependent for the EEI and tied with Australia for least dependent in the PDI. Both indexes were also combined to create an overall "Sino-dependency score". My analysis indicated a moderate correlation between the levels of economic and political dependency on China. In...

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第20557号 / 理博第4315号 / 新制||理||1620(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院理学研究科生物科学専攻 / (主査)教授 友永 雅己, 准教授 後藤 幸織, 教授 平井 啓久 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

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Separatism movements are widespread across the world; however, the European continentcontains several regions who wish to become independent sovereign states. The autonomousregion of Catalonia is one of Europe's many separatist regions, where a separatism movementis present. This study analyses the active separatism of Catalonia, with an emphasis onregional Catalan as well as national Spanish political organization’s attitude towards aCatalan independent state, and also which argument they have regarding an independentCatalonia. The purpose is to describe the regional Catalan as well as the national Spanishpolitical organization’s position within the debate regarding a Catalan separation from Spain.The utilized method for this study is a describing analysis of ideas, in order to analyze andunderstand the empirical material.This essay implements, based on the essay's theoretical framework, two analytical tools inorder to analyze the empirical material of the political organization’s which are two idealtypes of the phenomena nationalism and separatism.The study concludes that the regional Catalan political organizations, CiU and ERC, havemore tendencies of separatism in their pro-independence rhetoric’s, and they have movedaway from their former nationalistic political platforms because of failed dialogs with theSpanish national government. Regarding the national Spanish political organizations, on theother hand, the study concludes that both PSOE and PP have strong tendencies of nationalismin their rhetoric against Catalan independence, much in due to their alignment to the Spanishconstitution and their political goal of a more united Spain.

The focus of this research is foster children. The goal of the research is to evaluate the utilisation value of gestalt play techniques in the assessment of the foster child in his middle childhood. An extensive literature study was undertaken. Middle childhood, the foster child, the gestalt approach, gestalt play therapy techniques and the assessment of selfworth from the frame of reference of the Department of Social Affairs and Population Development’s “Project Go” was taken as the theoretical foundation. The researcher made use of evaluative research within the framework of applied research in order to achieve the objective. Information was obtained by means of semi-structured interviews in the form of play therapy sessions. The research question was: “ How effectively can gestalt play therapy techniques be utilised to assess the selfworth of the foster child in his middle childhood?” Qualitative research was used as the case study served as research design. The research focussed on the following four components of selfworth, namely belonging, independence, mastery and generosity. In this research existing and adapted play therapy techniques were used in order to put together a number of assessment interviews for the assessment of the selfworth of the foster child in his middle childhood. Six foster children were involved in six assessment interviews.The results confirmed that the specific play therapy techniques can be utilised effectively to assess the selfworth of the foster child in his middle childhood. / Dissertation (MA(Social Work))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

The principle of non-regression is an novel concept in the EU rule of law area. The Court of Justice of the European Union ("Court" or "CJEU") has recently discussed it e.g., in Repubblika (Maltese Judges), Commission versus Poland (Disciplinary régime applicable to judges), Advocate General  Tanchev in his Opinion in A.K. v. KRS (Independence of the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court). This paper examines the non-regression principle with a focus on the rule of law and judicial independence in the EU not least because it is understudied. Its potential is underestimated for expanding the reasoning of the CJEU, and the Commission as regards their approach to addressing the sustained attacks on judicial independence in the two Central and Eastern European countris of Poland and Hungary, but also increasingly, judging from the rising number of judicial independence and rule of law cases, in Romania. Maltese Judges is the first ruling of the Court in which the principle of non-regression appeared. In this landmark judgement, acording to Leloup, Kochenov, and Dimitrovs, the Court asserted "an entirely new "non-regression" principle in EU law based on the connection between Arts. 49 and 2 TEU, (...) and addressed a well-known lacuna undermining the EU legal order". In light of that ruling, it is useful to set subsequent research questions: What is the substance and scope of the principle of non-regression in the rule of law and in relation to judicial independence in the EU, and what are the recent trends in the Court´s case law whereby this principle has been invoked to address the rule of law backsliding in the Member States? Can we discern the benchmarks, in the form of substantive standards and in terms of time, against which regression is measured? Considering that, until now, the principle of non-regression has been employed principally with regard to judicial independence, could we apply the concept with respect to other EU values such as democracy, or fundamental rights?