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An examination of the persistent death motif in Twain's literature reveals a strong fusion of his art, personal experience and philosophical conclusions. Death imagery dramatizes Twain's pessimistic view of an estranged humanity existing without purpose or direction in an incomprehensible universe. Twain shows in his works that religious and social beliefs only obscure the fact that the meaning of death is beyond man's intellectual and perceptual powers. In Twain's view the only certainty about death is that it is a release from the preordained tragedies of existence. Illusions, primordial terrors, and mystifying dreams shape man's disordered reality, Twain concludes, and therefore death is as meaningless as life.

The aim of this thesis is to present some possible concepts of death of individual in the stage of late adolescence. The basis of this work lies on qualitative and ethnographic research, which was made with students of VŠCHT at the age of 20-30 years. This text is devoted to images of death of these students. This thesis is composed of three main chapters: theoretical, methodological, practical. The goal of the theoretical part is to provide basic information on this subject and clarify the terms associated with death. The theoretical part deals with such issues as cultural background of death and fear of death. The methodological part is concerned with the characteristics of the research and the research sample. Among others I present here the used methods and clarify the goals of the research. Finally, in the practical chapter there are described possible concepts of death which came of the analysis of gained data. Description and analysis of these concepts are supplemented by quotations from interviews. In this part I introduce five concepts of death. Two of them I identified as a clean-cut, three of them as a transitional. Death is an area to which none of us has direct experience, therefore I consider interesting to deal with this topic. As the main contribution of this work I see the mapping...

Shrnutí v anglickém jazyce / Resumé in English The purpose of my thesis is to analyse one of the most controversial topic, which people often discuss, the death penalty. To bring an option for a potential reader how to to make his own attitude to the death penalty was the collateral aim. In recent decades the most states abolished death penalty. But there is still over one quarter states in the world, which death penalty aply. Neverthelles public opinion polls show, that public support is relatively significant. The thesis is composed of nine chapters. Chapter one is introductory and defines the purpose of this thesis. Chapter two deals with the punishment and its purpose. This chapter consists of two parts. Part one concentrate on the punishment and defines, what this concept means. Second part concentrate on the purpose of the punishment, on the absolute and relative theory, on the purpose of the death penalty and on the purpose of the punishment in the czech penal code. Chapter three describes the history of the death penalty. The chapter consists of three parts. Part one deals with general history of the death penalty. Part two concentrate on the history of the death penalty in our area. Part three describes the most frequent method of the death pealty. Chapter four concentrates on the arguments of...

Masters Research: Faculty of Health Sciences / Background Smoking is undoubtedly a major risk factor for morbidity, disability and premature death. Its use results in grave health and economic losses not only to the individual but also to the population and the world at large. Many surveys have been done in South Africa to estimate the prevalence of smoking. It is therefore imperative and expedient to have an overall impression of the prevalence rates over time. And also it is important to assess how subgroups affect the prevalence and trends in the national population. This will be of help in determining which subgroups have achieved reduction in smoking prevalence and which have not; evaluating the tobacco control policies in the country; and in designing specific interventions. This research was undertaken to determine the trends and patterns of smoking in the South African adult population Objectives The objectives for this study were: Regarding the South African adult population during 1995 – 1998, to: 1. Compute the prevalence of smoking and assess the trends of smoking prevalence. 2. Assess the patterns and trends of smoking prevalence in subgroups by sex, age, marital status, race, locality (urban or rural), education and province. 3. Identify factors in the population that may account for patterns and trends in smoking prevalence over time 4. Make recommendations regarding the public health implications of the findings 5 Methods This was an analytical study involving secondary analysis of existing datasets from four South African representative national surveys. From 11 surveys, which measured smoking in the South African population, four surveys were selected using some inclusion and exclusion criteria. The population of interest was the South Africa adult population (18 – 49), so variables of interest (outcome variable was current smokers) for this group were extracted. Prevalence (frequency) rates estimation of smoking in the national population and in subgroups were then estimated. Unadjusted odds ratios and adjusted odds ratios were computed by bi-variate cross tabulation and multivariate logistic regression respectively. Time-trend analyses (Maentel Haenszel chi-squared test) were computed by logistic regression for trend in proportions Results From 1995 to 1997 about 1/3 of the adult South African population were smokers, but that dropped significantly to about ¼ in 1998. For the period however, there was no significant trend. The prevalence of smoking varied with, and was largely depended on population subgroup; while it was as high as 63.9% among Coloured males, 62.3% among Coloured females, 53.7 % among all males, 52.7% among rural males, it was as low as 11.4% among all females, 6.8% among rural females, 10.83% among Indian females and 5.06% among Black females. The only significant trends was an increasing smoking prevalence among Blacks, Coloured men, people with tertiary education, Free State and Gauteng provinces, age group 35 – 44; urban men and a decreasing smoking prevalence in all women, urban women and black women, age group 18 – 24 and the Eastern Cape, Kwazulu-Natal, Northen Cape and Mpumalanga provinces. Sex, race, age, and education were the major risk factors for smoking in the