The United States is one of few Western nations that administers capital punishment to their condemned criminals. Texas has executed the most inmates of any state in the U.S. This prompted questions about the psychological characteristics of death row inmates. The purpose of this essay is to widen the perspective on inmates serving capital sentences by analyzing their final statements. The focus of this essay was centered on acute anxiety of death among inmates, visible in their final statements, as a result of an accelerated process of dying.

SummaryI have a great interest in bouzoukis and since I, during my education in guitar making, mainly have focused on building bouzoukis and other traditional folk instruments, I have chosen the bouzouki as the object of my degree project.In connection to the making of these instruments, I started to consider the construction of the bouzouki and why the bouzouki has such a characteristic sound.One of my theories is based on the fact that most bouzoukis are made with floating bridges instead of glued pinbridges. Do these types of bridges differ from each other tonally and if so, how much and in what way?To receive answers to my questions, I have built two identical bouzoukis with different types of bridges, one with a glued pinbridge and one with a floating bridge. I have been very precise in the making of these instruments, giving them the exact same dimensions and using material from the same piece of wood. This to make sure that the instruments should be as exactly alike as possible.After finishing the making of the bouzoukis, I arranged for a sound test where I let musicians play and listen to the instruments.

This Master's Thesis describes the design of a new system where a digital signal processor has been added to an existing imaging system consisting of field programmable gate arrays. The new system will offer a higher degree of flexibility by considerably shortening the design time and make it possible to implement more complex algorithms than the existing ones. The choice of system architecture and a test implementation are discussed. The test implementation consists of a program for the digital signal processor and VHDL code for one of the field programmable gate arrays. The code for the digital signal processor was designed for testing on an evaluation board from Texas Instruments.

This thesis aims to describe and characterise the foreign policy change the United States has experienced towards Europe. This thesis claims that the United States is presenting a more supportive attitude today towards the development of the European Union. This more positive attitude has developed during successive U.S. administrations and has become visible since the end of the Cold War.Washington is today less ambiguous and less ambivalent towards the integration of Europe. The United States appreciate that a common foreign- and security policy in Europe is in accordance with American interests.

The Swedish government has set up the overall goal that no net emissions of greenhouse gases can occur after 2050. A sub-target has been developed for road transports which states that the use of fossil fuels must be reduced with 80% to 2030 in order to be completely abolished to 2050. A public inquiry mapping how this can be achieved was handed in to the government late in 2013. The use of alternative fuels for road transport, both biofuels and electricity, is expected to give the biggest contribution to the reduction of the use of fossil fuels. The inquiry sets up a number of goals for how much the use of alternative fuels must increase to 2030 in order to reach the overall goal and which instruments that are needed in order to do so.The aim of this thesis is to evaluate how these goals can be reached and what the most likely obstacles that may hinder the reaching of these goals may be.

The agriculture throughout the world is becoming increasingly deregulated and this has affected the prices of raw materials to fluctuate at a higher degree than earlier. This in turn has made it interesting and in some cases even necessary for the trader as well as the producer to gain knowledge about the trade instruments available to ensure a good enough price for their produced goods. This study encompasses a number of ways to trade grain and oil plants in order to clarify what differences there are in the several contracts that exist in the present situation, economical as well as practical. The various trade instruments available to the producers on the Swedish market are described in the theoretical part of this study. The study also contains a simple arithmetic example, based on historical prices collected from grain traders and trading floors, in order to point out the differences in the economical outcomes depending on the business strategy used to sell the produced goods. The study shows the importance, as a producer, of being able to use and take advantage of the different trading instruments at hand to monitor and exploit the shifts in the market. From an economical point of view it is not enough to just excel at farming but knowledge about the market functions and the trade instruments at hand is also required to be able to secure a good enough price for your goods.

AbstractPain among patients in their final stage of life is a commonly occurring problem. Results fromthe Swedish Register of Palliative Care (SRPC) indicate that validated instruments forassessing pain are rarely used. Nurses' insufficient knowledge of pain and pain treatmentmethods may be a cause of maltreatment of patients who suffer from pain.The goal of this study was to determine whether training within the area of pain, painassessment and pain assessment instruments increases the use of validated pain assessmentinstruments utilized by nurses working in care homes for patients in the final stage of life inthe city of Uppsala.Method: A quantitative and quasi-experimental design was selected to perform the study.The intervention study that was used consisted of one training session where onequestionnaire was given before and one after the time of training. Register data were collectedfrom the SRPC given the question of pain assessment before and after the intervention.Results: The study showed that nurses more often used pain assessment instruments after thetraining session. The results also showed that nurses to a greater extent than before alternatedbetween the two validated pain assessment instruments that were introduced at the trainingsession.Conclusion: The results showed that when nurses at care homes are given training in the areaof pain and pain assessment they absorb and use the newly acquired knowledge in theirclinical work..

Voice-over-IP (VoIP) är en samling teknologier för transport av digitaliserat tal över IP-nätverk. Den mest kända applikationen för VoIP-teknik är internettelefoni. Processorer och gränssnittskretsar som kan realisera ett VoIP-system har utvärderats för användning i produkter med låga produktionsvolymer spridda över flera år. Komponentkostnad, utvecklingskostnad och även hur länge komponenterna kommer att tillverkas är viktiga faktorer att ta hänsyn till. Resultatet av studien är att generella signalprocessorer av den nya generationen, med arkitekturförbättringar som ger mer microcontrolleregenskaper, är de bästa kandidaterna.

This thesis examines the emissions costs of Swedish aviation and their degree of internalisation under current economic instruments. The results show that the degree of internalisation spans from practically zero for a long-haul flight to 6 per cent for a typical domestic flight, where the climate cost, including high-altitude impact, makes up the main part of the cost. To inform evaluation of the consequences of this underinternalisation, or attempts to correct for it using price instruments, the price and income elasticities of international leisure air travel from Sweden are estimated using household expenditure data and two different price measures. The resulting elasticities are very high ? 2.03 or 2.04 for the income elasticity and -2.53 or -1.88 for the price elasticity ? and should be interpreted cautiously due to data limitations, especially for the price elasticities.

Concurrently with higher demands on comparability between companies, all Swedish listed parent companies are guilty to apply international accounting standards, IFRS/IAS, no later than January 1, 2005. In this thesis IFRS 7 Financial instruments: Disclosures, that treats information about financial instruments, is investigated. IFRS 7 aims to establish a good international standard for disclosures about financial instruments. The purpose of this thesis is to study differences in the interpretation of IFRS 7 Financial instruments: Disclosures between Swedish life insurance companies, problems ? if any ? that associate with the recommendation, the recommendation?s effect on accounting and the attitudes towards IFRS amongst the Swedish life insurance companies.

Two haematological instruments intended for small animal clinic use were evaluated at the Department of Clinical Chemistry, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala, Sweden. The QBC-V and Vet abc were compared to a reference instrument, the Cell-Dyn 3500. Fresh blood samples were obtained from canine and feline patients from the University Veterinary Hospital, SLU. The QBC-V was used for 111 canine samples and 78 canine blood samples were analysed with Vet abc. From cats, 23 samples were analysed with both instruments.

Barnens bibliotek, a Swedish Childrens Library on the Internet with a nationwide assignment is compared to three Childrens Library in the USA with local assignments. All four Childrens Libraries on the Internet are compared in terms of content, form, purpose and if they stimulate childrens intelligences according to Howard Gardners theory about multiple intelligences. Three different instruments are used to review the websites. The instruments are created on the basis of literature and the website Barnens bibliotek. To complement these instruments, written interviews are performed with librarians responsible for each reviewed website.

Background: Anxiety with children before surgery is well known. From the 1950s there are various assessment instruments. Despite that most day surgery units offer preparation for children and parents, there are many children who exhibit a strong anxiety the day of surgery, which can lead to postoperative behavioral changes. Today the nurse estimates the anxiety of a child on personal experience and knowledge, forming the basis for estimation whether the child is in need of sedation or not. The purpose: of this study was to evaluate instruments that the nurse can use in measuring the degree of anxiety of children before fast clinical settings, such as day surgery.

The purpose of this study is, on one hand, to obtain an understanding of how children in municipal music- and culture schools choose instruments and what forms of recruitment methods they are subjected to, and on the other hand, how you can make them continue to play once they have begun.To acquire this information, I have interviewed five music teachers and two principals at municipal music- and culture schools in Värmland. The questions treated, among other things, what affects children?s instrument preferences, recruitment methods and what you can do to keep interest for the chosen instrument alive.The result of the study shows some apparent tendencies. Even though some of the instruments have trouble recruiting students and other instruments have trouble keeping them, the old methods, which obviously do not work in a satisfactory manner, are still being used. Instead, increased commitment at the occasion of recruitment, more group teaching which strengthens the social bonds through role models and a will to have the courage to change the organization when it does not work, is required..

The aim of the study was to describe how nurses experience to handle the alcohol issues among young people and how they can identify young people?s alcohol problems, abuse and dependence. Empirical articles were searched in the databases Cinahl, Medline(Pubmed) and Discovery and resulted in the inclusion of 14 scientific articles. The results showed that nurses find it difficult to raise the issues of alcohol with young people, this partly because they feel that they have too little knowledge and that it is an emotional issue to raise. There is help instruments available that nursing staff can use to raise this issues and to identify alcohol problems, abuse and dependence.