Working horses in developing countries are mostly used for transportation. They are often owned by people with limited economical resources and lack of knowledge about how to take care of the horses and due to this the horses often suffer from problems such as dehydration, poor body condition, lesions and parasitic infections. The aim of this master thesis was to investigate if free veterinary care improved the health and hydration status of working horses in Nicaragua and it was performed as a part of a project called ?Free veterinary assistance for working horses and training of their owners as veterinary promoters in the Pacific coast of Nicaragua?. Five parameters were used to investigate whether free care improved the health of working horses in six towns along the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua.

As changes occur more frequently in IT- and software development, it is important for the companies to meet the demands and needs of its customer. The companies have to be able to adapt themselves continuously in order till fulfill its customers changing needs in an effective way, which results in big changes of the companies? structures. The more traditional way of working is often replaced with more alternative approaches as a response to the reputable deficiencies of its predecessors. As an effect of the rapid change and development some companies now see big potential in switching to more Agile and flexible methods and some companies have no choice but to change their way of working.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how activities in elderly care matters to well-being among elderly people, from both user perspective and staff perspective. The study is made out of a qualitative method, this to create a deep-going understanding of how the people participating in the investigation are experiencing the impact of activities on well-being from their unique situation. Personal interviews have been used as method. Six persons were participating, three elderly persons and three persons working as staff. All interviews were made in a ?short-time? ward in the county of Västernorrland.The result of the investigation shows that the elderly people that were interviewed not directly related the participation in activities to feelings of well-being.

Fewer and fewer people from the age of 60 and upward are still in the working life according to a working survey from Central Bureau of Statistics. Only one of twenty can consider retiring after an age of 65. According to another survey that National Insurance Administration put through year 2000, just about 40 % of the working population desires to finish working before an age of 65. This trend towards lower seceding age seems to continue. There are number of factors that seem for lower retirement age and others for a higher retirement age that we prove in our study.

This essay aims to investigate the perceptions of responsible personnel in a primary school about the use and importance of EQ, emotional intelligence, in the school's early years. With a hermeneutic approach and by qualitative interviews, we have taken note of the respondents perceptions about EQ. The result shows that EQ can be understood in different ways. Instead of having a common understanding of what EQ is the respondents mention that there are different areas associated with EQ.  Two major results are 1.

The case method is a relatively new pedagogical method in Sweden that is based on students exercising their skills in the analysis of complex situations and problems that are based in reality and that help students to see a broader perspective and context.The purpose of this study has been to investigate, through interviews with students and teachers, the advantages and disadvantages of the case method in teaching geography.The results of the study show that both teachers and students share almost the same opinion. The conclusion is that the case method is a didactic method that is well suited for teaching geography, as it is based on reality and develops the students? ability to analyze, argue and find solutions in several areas within the subject of geography. If a student is strong in these skill areas they can really benefit from the application of the case method in the teaching of geography, but for students who are weaker in these skills, the case method can be a disadvantage.

The purpose with the study is to see how middle managers in communal elderly care looks at the implementation of the salutogenic way of working in their operations. And how it affects the middle managers working situation. We studied which scope of actions middle managers has in the salutogenic way of working. We had previous knowledge that the salutogenic working way is an ongoing work of development in several communes, and therefore we chose to study in a profound way how this work of development affects the middle managers working situation. To reach a deeper knowledge about how the salutogenic way of working affects the middle managers working situation we conducted a qualitative study with been seven semi-structured interviews with middle managers in different geographical communes.

The aim with this project was to describe how nursing staff working in the home care environment perceive their level of knowledge regarding mental ill health and if this level of knowledge is sufficient / insufficient in their dealings with mentally ill patients. The study is empirical and a qualitative method has been used. Questionaires have been used and interviews have been carried out with nurses working in the home care system and data has also been collected from previous research in this area. Result The result show that home care nurses consider that they have inadequate knowledge of treating patients with mental ill health and they seek more training, guidance and collaboration with psychiatric nurses. Conclusion Increased knowledge of mental health care and continuous guidance would make home care nurses more confident in their dealings with patients suffering from mental ill health.

The interest of mindfulness has grown steadily during the last two decades. Mindfulness presence in the area of social work is mostly as an intervention offered to clients. However, the purpose of this study is to examine what implications the social worker?s mindfulness may have for the relationship with the clients. There is a lack of scientific studies focusing on mindfulness and the relationship between the client and the social worker.

During the latter half of the 18th century, when concrete started seeing general use in modern cities, the use of different methods to give the concrete a finished surface texture saw use. One of these was using different methods of mechanically altering the surface using a slew of cutting and crushing techniques with mallet and chisel. This was done in order to hide the often dull and gray look of concrete, and allude to other more expensive and luxurious stones. The work would possibly have been done by experienced stonemasons, using much of the same techniques and tools they would have used while working natural stones. Or did they? This essay explores, through the use of traditional handcrafts and tools, the claim that the working of concrete surfaces can be done with the same tools and skillset as the working of natural stone.

This paper conducts a qualitative examination based on interviews with four high school librarians. The purpose is to illustrate their professional role in proportion to that of the teachers from working with students? reading comprehension and from their role, if any, in the school?s educational activity. The work is based on the following questions:- How does the high school librarian describe his or her work to increase the students' reading comprehension and contribute to their reading development?- How does the high school librarian describe his or her involvement in the schools? educational activity?- How can one understand the high school librarians' relation to the teachers with reference to the librarians? jurisdiction and the formal and actual legitimacy of the school library profession?The theoretical framework constitutes of the concept of jurisdiction and of formal and actual legitimacy.

AbstractThe research project Liberation, supported by the European Commission under the Environment and Sustainable Development Programme (Fifth RTD Framework Programme) aimed at developing a decision support system for ecological risk assessment of contaminated sites has proposed a tiered system including the triad method. This method integrates contaminant chemistry and bioavailability analyses with observed ecotoxicological effects in soil and groundwater. In this study the triad method was used to perform a risk characterization of a former surface treatment and metal industry, now used for the student union buildings of the Mälardalen University in Eskilstuna, Sweden. On the site, high concentrations of copper, zinc and nickel have been detected in the soil in a preliminary investigation of contaminant levels with XRF. For performing the risk assessment of the site according to the triad method, contaminant bioavailability, soil metal concentrations and soil toxicity were determined and an ecological assessment was carried out on four selected soil samples (one reference soil and three samples with low (B), medium (C) and high (D) contaminant levels). Contaminant bioavailability was measured through leaching (ISO TC 190/S7) and biouptake tests (DGT).

This thesis focuses on the testing activities at the stages of development and change regardingintegration brokers. The study aimed to examine the overall challenges that exist regarding thetesting activities within this context, and the thoughts towards the development method testdrivendevelopment (TDD). TDD emphasizes high level of test coverage and where the testprocess is well integrated with the development process. To seek answers to our question weapplied qualitative interviews with companies and respondents to try to understand the globalchallenges that are related to this work and processes. The main conclusions presented in thisstudy is that the overall challenges are involving and educating project participants in the testingprocess activities and the contributory effect test have on the end product.

The purpose of this thesis was to develop and optimize a method of analysis for combustion of organic chemical products, followed by an ion chromatographic quantitative analysis. This was to be achieved with the decomposition equipment IKA AOD 1. The aim was to receive a precise and repeatable method that would be able to be applied to the process of qualification and technical marking of chemical products at the company, OKG AB in Oskarshamn. A complete instruction for the decomposition equipment and the method of analysis was written. A number of parameters were chosen from the general method of the combustion equipment, which then was tested parallel with a simultaneous development of an appropriate ion chromatographic method.

SUMMARY The purpose of this study was to explore how nurses in the emergency department experience and cope with stress in their workplace. The study had a qualitative, descriptive approach and was based on nine individual, semi-structured interviews. They were then processed using content analysis. The content analysis of interviews resulted in two categories, "the nurse's experience of stress," "the nurses coping with stress." Together, the categories highlighted how nurses experienced stress during and after their shifts. The study showed clearly that all nurses experienced and coped with stress in their daily work activities..The authors noticed that stressful time for the nurses were repeated at each session and were similar in character.