Magdalena Rudenschöld (born 1766, died 1823) was a woman in Swedish history, who lived a turbulent life. As a young woman she was employed at the Swedish court and got to know the king of that time, Gustaf III, and she became the mistress of one of his closest deputies, Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt. After the killing of Gustaf III, a temporary government was formed. This was a regency that was put there on behalf of Prince Gustaf Adolf, since he was not yet of age to run the country. The commission to conduct this temporary government was given to Duke Carl, who was the dead king’s brother. King Gustavus III’s former employees and Officers were after the king’s death, opposed by the temporary government, and they were moved to other assignations. Among these former employees and Officers a discontent arose and a few of them, among others Rudenschöld and her friend Armfelt, started to discuss and plan for a change in the governance of Sweden. The planning was mostly done through correspondence. Several of those who took part in this correspondence, was later sentenced for trying to overthrow the Swedish government. One of the sentenced people was Magdalena Rudenschöld. The purpose of this treatise, has been to examine the role and actions of Magdalena Rudenschöld in the Armfelt conspiracy and also to compare the court records to the sentence she received. Rudenschöld was convicted of treason against the king and kingdom. The results show that Rudenschöld’s conviction for being part of treason against king and kingdom was correct, and that she had made no attempt to stop the conspiracy plans. On her part she had mediated letters between people and she had offered to help, for instance by travelling to Russia to speak for their cause. Rudenschöld’s penalty was hard. She was imprisoned for about two years, after having been publicly pilloried. As she was released from prison, Duke Carl provided her a property on the Swedish island Gotland, and she was not permitted to leave it for still some time. The fact that two members of the temporary government was part of the court that sentenced her, probably contributed to the harsh punishment. However, it has to be born in mind that this was how the judicature was organised at the time being. The treatment of Rudenschöld upset the public at the time of the trials - a lady-in-waiting who were pilloried and ended up in prison was very unusual. The fact that the affair was given characteristics of romanticism as Rudenschöld’s intimacy with the married man Armfelt was made public, and that the affair is even more complicated since the conductor of the temporary government - Duke Carl - previously had been in love with Rudenschöld, makes this story linger for posterity.

In the last decades a number of countries in the developed world have experienced a drop in voter turnout. The public sector is in the end run by politicians who are elected by the people and for that reason it is interesting to study how a variation in turnout will affect public policy outcome. The purpose of this master’s thesis is to investigate the potential causal link that runs between voting system, turnout and policy by empirically testing the Meltzer & Richard’s theory from 1981. I use Swedish and Finnish municipal panel data and apply IV-regression. The constitutional change in 1970 when Sweden changed from having separate election days for the central and the local governments into having one joint election day, is used as instrument for turnout. I find that an increased turnout rate also leads to higher local tax rate indicating that turnout actually has an impact on policy outcome.

Personer som genomgått en traumatisk händelse befinner sig i riskzonen för att utveckla post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), som innebär en stor livsbegränsning och ett stort lidande. Dagligen möter hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal personer som ännu ej diagnostiserats och det är därför av vikt att kunna identifiera PTSD-symptom. Syftet med litteraturstudien var att undersöka samband mellan olika trauman och PTSD-symptom enligt diagnostiseringssystemet DSM IV. Studien grundades på en deduktiv ansats och resultatet bestod av 15 vetenskapliga artiklar som granskades. Resultatet behandlade DSM IV:s tre symptomkluster: re-experience/intrusion, avoidance och hyperarousal. Studien fann att det kan föreligga en skillnad mellan olika typer av trauma och vilka PTSD-symptom som var det mest frekvent upplevda. Det framkom också i studien att re-experience/intrusion och avoidance var de kluster som var mest frekventa hos dem som uppvisade PTSD-symptom efter ett trauma. Det finns ett behov av en utökad kvalitativ forskning inom området PTSD-symptom, samtidigt som hälso- och sjukvårdpersonal är i behov av att hålla sig uppdaterade när det kommer till de symptom som är ett resultat av sjukdomen. Det är av vikt att synliggöra PTSD och att låta kunskapen kring psykisk ohälsa få mer utrymme under sjuksköterskeutbildningen. För att tidigare kunna identifiera PTSD krävs en utförligare anamnes, där sjuksköterskan kan synliggöra tidigare upplevda trauman hos personen. Personer som hälso- och sjukvården vet har genomgått ett tidigare trauma kan vara i behov att screenas för PTSD.

The domestic dog, Canis familiaris, has over 450 naturally occurring inherited diseases. Over half of these diseases are clinically similar to human diseases making the dog an excellent model in which to study human hereditary diseases. Alport syndrome (AS), a group of heterogeneous, hereditary renal diseases, is one example of such a human disease. The disease is transmitted in three fashions: X-linked, autosomal recessive, and autosomal dominant. AS is caused by mutations in COL4α3, COL4α4 or COL4α5, all members of the type IV collagen family. The proteins products of these genes along with those of the other type IV collagen family members (COL4α1, COL4α2, and COL4α6) are structural components of basement membranes throughout the body. This dissertation describes the measurement of mRNA transcripts in two canine models of AS: a mixed breed model of X-linked AS (XLAS) and the English Cocker Spaniel (ECS) model of autosomal recessive AS (ARAS). The work done revealed a decrease in COL4α4 transcripts. The similarity between the decrease of COL4α5 in the XLAS model and that for COL4α4 in the ARAS model lead to the investigation of COL4α4 as the gene harboring the mutation causative for ARAS in the ECS. Upon sequencing COL4α4, the causative mutation was determined to be an A to T transversion in exon 3. To provide an in vitro model to study type IV collagens, a protocol was designed and experimentally validated to isolate and culture canine Sertoli cells. Canine testes cells were isolated and cultured. Cells were verified as Sertoli cells through positive identification of both SOX9 and Clusterin B proteins, along with sequence verification of SOX9 transcripts. This in vitro model provides a tool to further study the type IV collagens. Overall, the research described herein lead to the identification of the mutation causative for ARAS in the ECS. With this knowledge a genetic test was developed to test for the disease. This research also provided valuable information about the transcript levels of type IV collagens in two models of AS, and provided a novel model in which to study the type IV collagens further.

Financial data, such as daily or monthly maximum log return of stock price usually possess heavy tail and skewness properties. In this thesis, we consider stock price data of computer hardware and money center banks. Heavy-tailed distributions including Pearson type IV, Pearson type VII and stable distribution were fitted to the daily log return of the data sets, and goodness of fit were compared. For the monthly maximum log return, nonlinear threshold time series models were fitted with heavy tailed innovation distributions. In addition, the value at risk and volatility of the data sets are derived from the fitted distributions.

<p>Today it is well known that institutions have a significant impact on growth and development. Less research has been investigating how institutions and in-stitutional quality affect trade. This thesis will specifically examine the effect contract enforcement has on bilateral trade. Secure property rights and con-tract enforcement are important for a country’s productivity and growth.</p><p>The empirical analysis is based on the gravity model of trade to examine what explains the trade flows and more importantly what impact contract enforce-ment has on the bilateral trade. Instead of using one of the many existing sub-jective measurements of contract enforcement, an objective measurement called Contract-Intensive Money (CIM) is used.</p><p>The results show that contract enforcement of the exporting country has a greater impact on exports than that of the importing country. As expected the institutionally dependent sector of machinery and transport equipment requires a higher level of contract enforcement than the standardized food sector. It implies that the exporting country will have a comparative advantage in export-ing complex products and import simple products. The results also indicates that the effect on exports is higher when there is development of a country’s poor contract enforcement rather than improvement in already high-quality contract enforcement in the partner country.</p>

Le noyau atomique peut adopter, à haut moment angulaire, une forme très allongée de rapport d'axes 2 :1 : c'est le phénomène de superdéformation. Si aujourd'hui plus de 300 bandes super déformées ont été identifiées, l'assignation des énergies, spins et parités des états associés n'a pu être effectuée que pour un dixième de ces bandes. Cette assignation ne peut se faire que par la mesure de transitions gamma discrètes reliant les états super déformés (sd) aux états normalement déformés (nd).<br /><br />Dans le cadre de ce travail de thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés au noyau $^{192}$hg, prédit doublement magique dans son état sd et donc noyau de référence de la région de masse a~190. Une expérience a été menée auprès du multidétecteur Euroball IV à Strasbourg dans le but de mesurer les observables e*, i, $\pi$ des états sd de ce noyau.<br /><br /> La recherche des transitions de lien direct s'est avérée à la limite des capacités d'observation des multi détecteurs actuels, utilisant des boucliers anti-Compton. La prochaine génération de multidétecteur gamma abandonnera ces boucliers et utilisera des algorithmes de tracking gamma pour reconstruire les trajectoires des photons.<br /><br /> La seconde partie de cette thèse a été axée sur un travail de R&D pour le projet européen Agata. Nous avons en particulier effectué des simulations au moyen du code Geant4 et essayé d'améliorer les algorithmes de tracking existants par la mise au point de méthodes de reconstruction des événements « création de paire ». Agata devrait voir le jour à l'horizon 2015-2020, et permettra ainsi de repousser les limites d'observation de deux ordres de grandeur environ.

A metal-to-insulating transition has been observed in iron, iron oxide, iron silicide and cobalt silicide thin films when deposited on Si substrate with a native SiOx layer. This transition produced a change in resistance of 5 orders of magnitude at a temperature of 250 K. To the best of the author's knowledge, this effect has not been reported in the literature prior to this study. This work reports a systematic experimental investigation carried out to understand the fundamental mechanism involved in the manifestation of this metal-to-insulator transition. The films were deposited using the pulsed laser deposition technique (PLD) in a base vacuum of the order of 10-6 torr at 400o C and room temperature. Several experiments were systematically conducted to understand the nature of the transition and the current path. Deposition of films on different substrates and the deposition of different transition metal films were made to narrow down the physical origin of the transition in the sample. Temperature-dependent resistance measurements not only exhibited a transition but also suggested more than one conduction mechanism. This is confirmed by the data collected for the IV curves. Current and voltage have a linear relation at temperatures greater than the transition temperature, and a non-linear relation at lower temperatures. Magnetoresistance (MR) measurements revealed a quadratic dependence of the resistance on the applied magnetic field. This is an indication that the MR observed is due to Lorentz forces acting on the charge carriers. Transmission electron microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy have identified different layers that are believed to be responsible for the observed transition.

This project focused on two aspects of magnetite thin films. The first was to find optimum parameters and conditions for deposition of stoichiometeric Magnetite films using pulsed laser deposition (PLD). The second aspect was the characterization of the magnetic and electrical properties in order to broaden the spectrum of understanding of PLD Magnetite films. These properties were also investigated in terms of the substrates on which the films were deposited. Discussed in this thesis are deposition parameters, structural characteristics, magnetic and electrical characteristics of the films in terms of different substrates and film thicknesses. The discussion consists of structural parameters obtained using X- ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and electric properties such as resistance as a function of temperature and voltage dependence on the applied current. The magnetic properties measured were the magneto-resistance, M-H hysteresis loop, and magnetization as a function of temperature. The results obtained are then compared with pre-existing literature data. It will be shown that there is an impurity phase that may be seen when magnetite films are deposited on Sillicon dioxide substrates.

Iron Silicide (FeSi) films deposited on silicon substrates with the native SiO2 layer have shown a Metal-to-Insulator Transition (MIT) of more than four order of magnitude change in resistance. Modification of the SiO2/Si interface due to Fe diffusion has been attributed to the formation of this effect. In this research a systematic experimental investigation has been carried out to study the effect of the growth parameters and substrate doping type in the transition. In addition, transport properties of continuous and discontinuous films have been investigated to understand the mechanism of this metal-to-insulator transition.Four probe measurements of films deposited in p- and n-type doped Si substrates with resistivity in the range of 1-10 Omega cm showed similar temperature dependent resistance behavior with transition onsets at 250 K and 300 K respectively. These results indicate that the current transport takes place via tunneling through the SiO2 layer into the Si substrate up to the transition temperature. Current appears to switch to the film after the transition point due to the development of high interface resistance. Discontinuous FeSi films on silicon substrates showed similar resistance behavior ruling out possibility of current transport through inversion layer at the SiO2/Si interface. To investigate the role of the magnetic ion Fe, transport measurements of FeSi films were compared with those of non-magnetic metals such as Platinum (Pt) and Aluminum (Al). Absence of Metal-to-insulator transition on Pt and Al films show that the presence of magnetic moment is required for this transition.Temperature dependent Hall voltage measurements were carried out to identify the carrier type through the substrate for FeSi films deposited on p- and n-type Si substrates. Results of Hall voltage measurements proved that the type of conductivity flips from majority carriers to minority after the transition.Metal-to-insulating transition behavior of FeSi films depending on different laser fluences has been also investigated. Our results revealed as laser fluence is increased observed transition of the FeSi films reduces rapidly showing a highest magnitude of transition of about 1 M Omega for the films deposited with lowest laser fluence (0.64 J/cm2) and a lowest of about 10 Omega for the films deposited with highest laser fluence (3.83 J/cm2). Ion probe measurements indicated that the average kinetic energy of the ablated ion in the plume is considerably increased with the increase of the laser fluence. Consequently, magnitude drop in the transition can be considered due to the deeper penetration on Fe ion through the SiO2 layer. Thickness dependence study carried out for FeSi films deposited with high and low laser fluencies indicated transition slightly drops as thickness is increased, concluding the current transportation through the film becomes dominant after the transition temperature.