Previous research shows that Sweden has developed into a segregated society, although it has never been completely homogeneous. A greater integration led to vast number of diverse cultures and religions; therefore the Muslim custom came closer to the Swedish society. The purpose of this thesis is to study how Muslims were portrayed during the incident in Landskrona in March 29 2010 and the bomb threat in Gothenburg in October 31 2010. The study also focused on what Muslims themselves think about the news reporting that followed. We based our study on a qualitative textual analysis and a dialogue with selected people. Six news articles from various newspapers were analyzed and a total of eight persons were included in the dialogues. The study shows that news reporting has been simplified and misleading. During the incident in Lanskrona the newspapers headlined it as a murder even though the accused had not yet been sentenced at the time. Regarding the bomb threat in Gothenburg the suspects’ ancestry and family status was revealed, while it later turned out that they all were innocent. The participants in our selected group were critical of the content in the articles and felt that the media wrote about Muslims in a stereotypical and negative form of fashion.

Global climate change has brought about not only rise in global temperature, but also other climate anomalies such as severe storms, droughts and floods. To reduce damages from these disasters, both the government and public need to take preparations. This study aims to explore the factors that may influence the public's flood preparedness. The explored factors were derived from Rogers¡¦s (1983) protection motivation theory and Grothmann and Patt's (2005) model of private proactive adaptation to climate change. A questionnaire was mailed to a random sample of Kaohsiung citizens, 490 of whom lived in flood-prone areas and the rest 210 lived in other areas in Kaohsiung. A total of 264 citizens responded. Results showed that threat appraisal and coping appraisal could affect the intent to prepare, and threat appraisal was affected by reliance on government and disaster experience. These suggest that if the government wants to increase people's flood preparedness, it should both (a) make people alert to the severity and high possibility of future floods, and (b) make people believe that they could take affordable and effective measures to reduce their flood damage.

The issue of South China Sea is one of the hottest international disputes in South East Asia due its location amid the connection between Southeast Asia to Northeast Asia and the rich resources. The undecided maritime delimitation makes the situation more complicated. Because each one of the ASEAN Claims has her own consideration of the interest, their claims and policies confront from each other's, and no consensus has been reached. However, encountering the fact that China proclaimed the entire region of South China Sea, ASEAN Claims attempt to unit themselves to deal with the threat, to negotiate the issue of South China Sea with China as a whole, and attempt to internationalize the issue. Thus, this paper is aimed to realize under what circumstance, ASEAN Claims will tend to unite in the issue of South China Sea, or vise versa, in what circumstance makes ASEAN Claims tend to collapse. According to the "Balance of Threat," China's threat to South China Sea affairs leads the changing of the unity of ASEAN Claims directly, and influences the consistency of South China Sea's policy. Besides the United States, the other side of the balance of the two counter powers, the treat brought by China in South China Sea affairs is the key to influence the South China Sea policy consistency of ASEAN Claims. "South China Sea Core interest" is one of match instance.

After the ending of the Cold War and the break down of the Soviet Union, the old polarized system collapsed and the new international structure of world powers hasn't formed yet in a short time. Researchers of international relations have diversely defined the new framework of world power as ¡§uni-polar¡¨¡B ¡§ multi-polar¡¨ or ¡§multi-powers under uni- polar¡¨. From the perspectives of China, the definition of ¡§ multi-powers under uni- polar¡¨ can most properly describe the new international system and is completely in accordance with the international strategy of China. In the assumption, uni-polar means US and multi-powers means other important powers, including major regional actors or groups like China､Russia､Japan､EU and some newly developing powers like India､Brazil and South Africa. In response to the huge change of international system and in order to develop much more power of influence on international affairs,China introduced the concept of ¡§New Security perspective¡¨ to try to develop common interests with major powers and neighboring states through cooperation and dialogues. Then in 2003, China publicly proposed the concept of ¡§Peaceful Rise¡¨ and soon has been regarded as competitive opponent by U.S.A and countries around China. The way China rose aroused the attention of the international society and ¡§China Threat Theory¡¨ has become more and more well-known. The purpose of this research is to explore the theoretical basis､strategic value and purposes of the theory about China's peaceful rise, and extensively to analyze how China develops new international strategies and comprehensive national power. Additionally, I try to develop findings about the theme and hope that will helpful for our government to scheme corresponding policies to ensure our national security.

ABSTRACT EVOLUTION OF EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENSE DIMENSION AND ITS PROSPECTS Mengi, Sezen MS., Department of European Studies Supervisor: Associate Professor Dr. Sevilay Kahraman March 2007, 146 pages. This study has focused on analyzing the evolution of ESDP and developments that took place to this date concerning the European Security and Defense Dimension. Since the end of World War II and beginning of Cold War, the security and defense issue of Europe will be explored in this thesis. Later the developments that took place after the diminishment of Warsaw Pact and end of Cold War will be traced. Also the changing relationship between the US and EU with the changing global international environment will be explored in this thesis.

Harold Pinter is deeply intrigued by Franz Kafka&rsquo / s fiction. Both writers&rsquo / works are imbued with ambiguity or mystery, and the feelings of disintegration, evasiveness, and domination. The atmosphere of menace and terror permeate their works. Kafka&rsquo / s fiction is characterized by the existence of an invisible guilt, a prevailing sense of ambivalence and the impossibility to obtain knowledge from the omnipotent sources. The mainspring of menace in Pinter is usually the outside forces, which are latent and invisible. In Pinter&rsquo / s violent dramatic world, the individuals are subjected to an unreasonable treatment of torture, imprisonment and dehumanization. His recurrent theme of torture is in fact traceable to Kafka&rsquo / s themes of punishment and execution. The characters can find comfort neither in their physical surroundings nor in an understanding relationship with others, and finally they are driven into a state of disintegration of self-image. Man&rsquo / s predicament is reflected in a layered manner, embarking on his relationship with the outside world, and then moving towards his inner anguish about the self. This study focuses on the common aspects of the two literary figures in terms of the concept of menace. The sense of menace is reflected in certain human feelings like fear, insecurity and hopelessness. Menace may appear in a number of ways including physical, psychological and mental ways. However, the characters, in both Kafka&rsquo / s and Pinter&rsquo / s works, make use of some defense mechanisms to cope with menace. Evasiveness and inaction are efficient in situations where the dominant character exerts his power by means of the information obtained through questioning the victim. Pinter&rsquo / s characters also remain silent to protect themselves from the torture and violence exerted by the mechanism. The characters also question the system to gain insight to its true nature. Lastly, the individuals seek relief in self-delusion and denial of reality as the reality itself is essentially ruthless. All these coping strategies, however, prove fruitless in the end, and both Kafka&rsquo / s and Pinter&rsquo / s characters become a victim of unspecified menace.

Pathfinding algorithms used in today&rsquo / s computer games consider path length or a similar criterion as the only measure of optimality. However, these games usually involve opposing parties, whose agents can inflict damage on those of the others&rsquo / . Therefore, the shortest path in such games may not always be the safest one. Consequently, a new suboptimal offline path search algorithm that takes the threat sources into consideration was developed, based on the A* algorithm. Given an upper bound value as the tolerable amount of damage for an agent, this algorithm searches for the shortest path from a starting location to a destination that would cause the agent suffer no more damage than the specified maximum. Due to its mentioned behavior, the algorithm is called Limited-Damage A* (LDA*). Performance of LDA* was tested in randomly-generated and hand-crafted fully-observable maze-like square environments with 8-way grid-abstractions against Multiobjective A* (MOA*), which is a complete and optimal algorithm. It was found to perform much faster than MOA* with allowable sub-optimality in path length.

<p>The present study set out to test some of the predictions made by the Threat Simulation Theory, which suggests an evolutionary source of dreaming (Revonsuo, 2000a). The qualitative content and frequency of threatening events in dreams were compared between traumatized Swedish subjects with experience of the tsunami-disaster in Southeast Asia in 2004 with Swedish subjects with no traumatic experiences. Only a few of the hypotheses were supported by the results. The results and unsupported hypotheses are discussed with focus on the Threat Simulation Theory, and alternative explanations are considered.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-109). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-109). Also available on the Internet.