To advance conservation in the increasingly fragmented landscape of Madagascar, we must examine the persistence and interactions of species in human-disturbed habitats. I investigated lemur-predator interactions in southeastern Madagascar through a comparison of predator communities and anti-predator behaviors of Milne-Edwards' sifakas (Propithecus edwardsi) in the continuous rainforest of Ranomafana National Park, and the forest fragments of Ialatsara Forest Station. I confirmed the presence of potential aerial predators at each site, but the sifakas' confirmed native mammalian predator, fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox), was absent from the fragmented site. Playbacks of predator vocalizations did not suggest that fragment-living sifakas have weakened anti-predator responses, but that their responses may be less specific than those of conspecifics in the continuous forest. I found that fragment-living sifakas displayed less downward vigilance and more frequently used low canopy heights; these behaviors may increase their vulnerability to recolonizing ground predators. I investigated local ecological knowledge (LEK) of carnivore ecology in communities 0–20 km from continuous forest to explore the potential for such recolonization. My findings from 182 interviews in 17 communities suggest that the fossa is especially sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance; it was only observed in communities ≤ 2.5 km from the continuous forest within the last five years. In contrast, the introduced small Indian civet (Viverricula indica) and wild cat (Felis silvestris) were distributed ubiquitously and displayed an affinity to human-dominated habitats. LEK surveys can provide information on the poorly understood responses of the Malagasy carnivores to the threats they face in a changing landscape. / Master of Science

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This diploma thesis deals with an analysis and comparison of dramatizations of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, a book which ranks among the British children's classics. The paper examines to what extent the dramatizations correspond to the book, whether and why they deviate from the original text, and what consequences these changes have. The thesis focuses on four dramatizations – a play by Alan Alexander Milne called Toad of Toad Hall, Alfa Theatre production of The Wind in the Willows, a Walt Disney short animated film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and Terry Jones´s adaptation of The Wind in the Willows to a feature film. In the thesis, firstly the book and then the dramatizations are analyzed in terms of the theme and genre, characters, setting, composition and language use. Subsequently, the dramatizations are examined and compared with regards to the transformation processes – selection, condensation, substitution, amplification, and changes in composition and language. In the final chapter, I summarize my findings and draw the conclusion.

We show that Einstein’s gravitational field equations for the Friedmann- Robertson-Lemaître-Walker (FRLW) and for two conformal versions of the Bianchi I and Bianchi V perfect fluid scalar field cosmological models, can be equivalently reformulated in terms of a single equation of either generalized Ermakov-Milne- Pinney (EMP) or (non)linear Schrödinger (NLS) type. This work generalizes or presents an alternative to similar reformulations published by the authors who inspired this thesis: R. Hawkins, J. Lidsey, T. Christodoulakis, T. Grammenos, C. Helias, P. Kevrekidis, G. Papadopoulos and F.Williams. In particular we cast much of these authors’ works into a single framework via straightforward derivations of the EMP and NLS equations from a simple linear combination of the relevant Einstein equations. By rewriting the resulting expression in terms of the volume expansion factor and performing a change of variables, we obtain an uncoupled EMP or NLS equation that is independent of the imposition of additional conservation equations. Since the correspondences shown here present an alternative route for obtaining exact solutions to Einstein’s equations, we reconstruct many known exact solutions via their EMP or NLS counterparts and show by numerical analysis the stability properties of many solutions.

Alan Alexander Milne’s authorship was never limited to being the author of the very beloved teddy-bear, far from it. In addition to being a successful playwrite and editing Punch, Milne also wrote several poetry collections which all have been out of print since the 1940s in the entire English-speaking world. His war poetry and social engagement reached far beyond the Bloomsbury group of influential authors and thinkers in the early 20th Century. Milne was a liberal, in terms of what the term denoted in the early 20th century, notably, that is, not in the way we perceive the term today, in the 21st Century. As a perhaps eery echo of the occurrences from a Century ago Milne’s political poetry will be set in motion again; his poetry reflects times of distress and global political unrest. And, in Milne’s own phrasing, 'it’s a silly thing to say', Milne’s poetry pinpoints the ever-present core issues of the inner and external struggles of humanity and individuals. Milne believed in Freedom and liberalism as he knew it in his days, but he also saw what happened when these values were under threat of being sacrificed and lost. Despite all darkness and despair in the early 20th Century, Milne’s focus as a poet was to bring joy and laughter to people, and he chose to do so with poetry, in popular verse, -a bold move in a world where not even courageous people always had someone to voice their situation and their daily struggles. Milne’s poetry is in many aspects the story of the every-day hero, and the ordinary person, yet his depictions of the human struggles is unique and heartfelt. The main focus of this essay is the ways in which Milne’s idea of liberalism effect his poems in portraying serious political topics through the medium of popular verse with its direct relationship to defining and exploring multitude within every word. For the multi-talented Milne his idea of liberalism revolves around Four Freedoms; freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression. Without further delay it is time to bring back into the sphere of well-known (war-)poets from the early 20th Century, the liberal humourist and pacifist war-poet Milne.

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The thesis deals with recent Czech translations of children's poetry in English and their addressees. In the first part, we describe the terminological issues related to the terms dětská literatura and dětská poezie (and their English equivalents), focus on the specific features of children's poetry and the process of translating children's literature, and finally outline the history of children's poetry in the Czech lands, the United Kingdom and the USA. In the second part, we compare target texts with their source texts in terms of content (proper nouns, puns etc.) and form (rhythm, rhyme etc.), thereby showing the strategies the translators used. Finally, we also comment on the issues pertaining to the publishing of children's literature and describe the origination of the Czech translation of Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic. Keywords: children's literature, children's poetry, translation, translation analysis, Shel Silverstein, Robert Browning, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexander Milne, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Norman Lindsay

This thesis examines the Australia Army???s campaign on Papua from July 1942 to January 1943 with the focus on logistic support of the fighting arms and the relation of logistics to the tactics of tropical jungle warfare. It begins by examining the traditional approach to logistics in the military profession - the experience of Australian officers and forces in particular - from the First World War until May 1942, when the Australian territory of Papua was invaded. It establishes that the Army was poorly prepared because, as well as having never anticipated a prolonged land campaign in Papua-New Guinea, it lacked the logistic resources and knowledge of logistics as applicable to tropical jungle warfare. It then proceeds to examine the retreat over the Kokoda Track and the turning-point battles for Milne Bay and Imita Ridge. It demonstrates that the principal factor in the Australian retreat was logistic failure, as geography and lack of logistic resources prevented adequate supply of the fighting arms at least until lines of communication had been shortened; even then, difficulties remained. The thesis is rounded off by assessing the counter-attack across the territory of Papua for the capture of the enemy???s beachheads at Buna, Gona and Sanananda. It concludes that, as the island???s geography and tropical environment so dominated operations and since shortages of logistic equipment and units persisted, the Army could not perfect its logistic organisation by the end of this first phase of the New Guinea campaign. It fell back on improvisation and the fortitude of troops to triumph over the Japanese.

This thesis examines the Australia Army???s campaign on Papua from July 1942 to January 1943 with the focus on logistic support of the fighting arms and the relation of logistics to the tactics of tropical jungle warfare. It begins by examining the traditional approach to logistics in the military profession - the experience of Australian officers and forces in particular - from the First World War until May 1942, when the Australian territory of Papua was invaded. It establishes that the Army was poorly prepared because, as well as having never anticipated a prolonged land campaign in Papua-New Guinea, it lacked the logistic resources and knowledge of logistics as applicable to tropical jungle warfare. It then proceeds to examine the retreat over the Kokoda Track and the turning-point battles for Milne Bay and Imita Ridge. It demonstrates that the principal factor in the Australian retreat was logistic failure, as geography and lack of logistic resources prevented adequate supply of the fighting arms at least until lines of communication had been shortened; even then, difficulties remained. The thesis is rounded off by assessing the counter-attack across the territory of Papua for the capture of the enemy???s beachheads at Buna, Gona and Sanananda. It concludes that, as the island???s geography and tropical environment so dominated operations and since shortages of logistic equipment and units persisted, the Army could not perfect its logistic organisation by the end of this first phase of the New Guinea campaign. It fell back on improvisation and the fortitude of troops to triumph over the Japanese.

The aim of this study is to draw new perspectives to the theoretic approach towards the complex nature of the modern fairy tale genre and its transformation. The study is exemplified by two books by Alan A. Milne about Winnie-the-Pooh (1926-1928), Tove Jansson’s eight books about the Moomintrolls (1945-1970) and Eno Raud’s four books about three funny creatures called “Nakstitrallid” in Estonian (1972-1982). In this thesis, I examine the disputable problem of defining the fairy tale genre in modern literature and refer to the history of the genre and storytelling tradition that have indirectly inspired all three authors in their decision to turn for fairy tale as a genre. Applying the poetical analysis, I argue that these authors contributed to the continuity of fairy tales by creating the link between folkloric heritage, novelistic literary expression and children’s imagination. This study can therefore be considered as topological, however it does not pretend to introduce the complete systematic definition of the genre as the thesis’ format does not allow such in-depth investigation. In the first chapter, ‘Archaic world stimulation in modern fairy tale’, I examine the dominating literary categories that refer to the folk fairy tale intertext: Bakhtin’s concept of ‘chronotope’ – category of time and space, system of fictional allegoric characters and category of fantastic.  In the second chapter, ‘Modern fairy tales from perspective of children’s literature’, I analyze the books of Milne, Jansson and Raud in the scope of narratological and aesthetic categories of children’s literature. The folkloric laughter intertextually reproduced by naïvism of the Moomins, the Naksitralls, and Winnie-the-Pooh’s friends, while folkloric collective hero is presented by universal harmony of a happy family and child-like protagonists. I came to the conclusion that poetics of folklore fairy tale still exists in these books through the intertextual dialogue. Modernism as literary method re-evaluates folkloric aspects such as nonlinear time, the blurred boarders between individual and cosmos, material and spirit, text and reality. Every new artistically unique fairy tale world resembles the new stage of the genre development. The more innovative is the story, the more sophisticated can be its poetics.