In the government's bill on infrastructure for 2010-2021, the government presents that road investments should be prioritized before investments in the railway. The grants for operation and maintenance of the railways are much higher then in the last government's bill. Furthermore the current founding of investment in railways is higher then for road investment which is in opposite of the bill on infrastructure's directives. Therefore the purpose with my thesis is to find which factors that can explain how come the government has chosen to take these actions. As a model to help me achieve my purpose I have been using a modified version of the DBO-theory, where the basic factors to explain an action is Desire, Belief and Opportunities.

Officially, the EU gender policy since 2000 has been guided by the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming. This strategy aims to promote gender equality and is informed by a feminist ontology which stipulates that women are structurally subordinated.In this essay, I examine whether the European Commission has adequately adhered to this gender policy in its free trade negotiations with the ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement. As a result of my text analysis of documents related to the negotiations, opinion pieces by interested actors and policy papers of the EU, I find that the Commission does not act in accordance to its stated gender policy.To explain this discrepancy between policy intent and actions, I employ postliberal feminist theory and Robert Putnam's Two-Level Game Theory Model. By analyzing statistics and published research, I explore how gender issues are being represented politically on a domestic and international level.My findings show that a key cause of this discrepancy lies in the low levels of female participation in the political institutions of the EU and ACP; a lack of participation that is especially pronounced in the area of international economics. In explaining the constraints on female participation and the prospects of full implementation of the EU's gender policy in the international political economy, I emphasize the role of culturally and historically gendered institutions..

This masters thesis investigates the relation between China and the Information Society as it is manifested in the UN conference the World Summit on the Information Society WSIS. The first phase of this two-phase conference took place in Geneva 10-12 December 2003, with two documents, Declaration of principles DP and Plan of action PA, as main results. The information policy is central to an authoritarian rule in its efforts to keep control over the national identity. The thesis investigates the impact that the information revolution and Internet might have on the Chinese national identity through the acceptance of DP and PA in various aspects. With the use of the information science theories by Manuel Castells and Frank Webster, the vision of WSIS was compared with the Chinese information policy.

Our curiosity was awakened when we became aware that many social workers use "mindfulness" methods in their profession. In this study, we used qualitative methodology in our desire to examine and understand why the mindfulness approach, with its roots in eastern philosophy, is becoming established in society at large and, simultaneously, being used in the social work field. We were interested in when and why social workers choose to use mindfulness with their clients. Our prior research has revolved around development and use of methods in social work, and on the human reaction to stress.We conducted seven semi-structured interviews, which incorporated four comprehensive questions:1. Why has the mindfulness method become established in the social work field and in the culture in general?2.

In the essay the author examines how pilgrimage can be used as a tool to radicalise democracy in a late modern society marked by neoliberalism. Applying a dialectic perspective on social movements the essay puts forward how the pilgrimage movement Pilgrim?s Walk for Future, administrated by Church of Sweden, is working in line with the historical pilgrimage theology - a modern critical ecclesiology- to mobilise political action to prevent climate change. The result of the study shows how PWFF meet the neoliberal hegemony with a mobilisation of alternative values beyond the order of capitalism, in line with Christian theology and tradition. The mobilisation is made possible by new forms of identifications with oneself and the social world that meet a modern power/knowledge- regime based on rational thought, and which questions norms and practises by paying attention to their negative effects on nature and on human life in general.

Today's urban centers become denser, which contributes to higher demands on sound and noise. It is therefore highly relevant to build homes with good sound environment while maintaining living space. This thesis aimed to reduce the current concrete walls and see how the mass law affects the reduction index value and flanking transmissions. Handmade calculations were calculated according to the Swedish standard SS-EN 21354-1, where only air sound was calculated.Calculations we­­­re performed on wall elements with different weights and thicknesses, and compared with results from Bastian.In Bastian calculations of flanking transmissions were also made, this was made to see the impact of the flanking transmission when changing the mass per unit area. Mass law's impact was examined by flanking transmission and the result shows that they are not affected as long as the ratio between the thickness and the density remains the same.A questionnaire survey was conducted to determine the actual sound experience; this questionnaire was conducted on three concrete buildings in Växjö.

This essay examines the olfactory reading as a possible way to make sense of a fragmented novel, in this case Sara Stridsberg?s debut Happy Sally (2004). Through close reading, the essay identifies the source of the smells, who perceives it, and how this is portrayed in the text. The smell?s position in the text is understood in relation to Maurice Merleau-Ponty?s phenomenology, where the body, as created in the literary text, is considered as a source of knowledge.

This report describes the development of an application in collaboration with Designingenjörerna AB. The company has worked for a long time with a community platform and they required an application where users can create their own unique profile representations, called Avatar Creator. An Avatar Creator is computer based application, which makes it possible to create a virtual character. The problem area behind this is that, large websites require a lot of administrative work when people upload profile pictures on different community pages. They can contain abusive material or pictures of other people rather than those who created the profile.The questions in this report are, how can an Avatar Creator help user to get a unique profile of himself? What are the advantages and disadvantages of an Avatar Creator? How to create a user-friendly application?To understand how an Avatar Creator works and get ideas to create an application, exiting Avatar Creators were reviewed on the Web.Collaborative work with Designingenjörerna AB was done to pin down the requirements for the Avatar creator application.

This thesis within the field of Integrated Product development at the Royal Insitute ofTechnology, performed at Primary Development Dishcare at AB Electrolux, is supposed to finda solution to enhance the hygiene inside an Electrolux dishwasher. The outcomes of this thesisare functional prototypes to evaluate the efficiency of disinfection by the use of Ultra VioletLight and Ozone.The thesis has followed Electrolux Primary Development process, with delivarables andcheckpoints.Ultra violett light with a wavelength of around 264 nm penetrates through the cell wall ofbacteria and micro organisms and causes a molecular rearrangement of the cells DNA. Thisprevent the bacteria from reproducing and it is considered dead. Commonly used UV-C lampstransmits the wavelength 254 nm which is very close to the optimum for germicidal action.A competitive brand have reacently launched a dishwasher claiming to achieve greaterdisinfection with an UV feature. This dishwasher was tested during the thesis and proven tohave a very low effect on the hygienic result.Two prototypes were devolped and tested for UV disinfection of dishware.

This thesis presents and evaluates a project, undertaken in 2001 by a librarian the writer of this thesis and a teacher. We met with a number of adults with reading and writing disabilities, and presented and discussed books and experiences of reading, with the aim to increase their joy of reading, as well as finding out more about our own ways of co-operating with each other across our professional borders. The documentation and evaluation emphasizes on the process and the results of the project, and on our own participation, by asking the following questions: How did we carry out the project? What obstacles did we meet? What went well/wrong? What did we achieve related to our goals? In order to illuminate the project from different angles, consequences of reading and writing disabilities for adults are discussed, as well as the specific nature of adult education and projects more or less related to ours. Action research is chosen as a method, because it allows the process of the project, and our own learning process, to be exposed.

The aim of this study was to try to identify what young women see as typically female and how this affects them as individuals, focusing on the female body. How free or limited do they consider themselves to respond to prevailing ideals of beauty, to men and other women. Our questions are how young women construct femininity through the body and why? We do this by using a holistic gender perspective and with the help of key theoretical concepts; gender, normative femininity, heteronormativity, performance, freedom/power and the female body,. We have had a qualitative approach and we have done interviews with six girls in secondary school age.

This thesis aims to respond to the need of adjust GMO politics for meeting the demands of the late-modern society and the changed condition that follows from an accelerating complexity. The central objective for this study is to contribute with a narrative understanding of Sweden?s GMO politics with the purpose of examine an alternative possibility for formulating and assessing the politics of biotechnology. This is done by investigate Sweden?s politics of GMO through a narrative approach.

A valid arbitration agreement constitutes a bar to court proceedings as well as a prerequisite for arbitral proceedings. In NJA 2008 p. 406 and NJA 2012 p. 183, the Swedish Supreme Court applied the so-called doctrine of assertion with respect to the issue of whether a dispute should be settled by arbitration or litigation. Prior to these judgments, it was uncertain if the doctrine of assertion was applicable regarding this issue.

This report is about how HDR (HighDynamicRange) can be created and used in combination with Tone mapping. This work has been carried out together with Kapsch TrafficCom AB in Jönköping.The objective of this project is to:Evaluate and investigate the effects given to pictures by HDR and tone mapping.Evaluate if the technology may lead to improvements in Kapsch?s systems.To construct a program which is able to handle some form of tone mapping or HDR-algorithm.These questions will be answered in this report:What kind of effects has HDR and tone mapping-algorithms on pictures?Can the HDR-technology give better data in Kapsch?s systems?The research method used in this report is called action research. This means the authors has investigated the technology by reading different documentations and by testing different algorithms to see what kind of result they give. The report describes some of the tests made to see if the technology is appropriate in Kapsch?s system.There is two smaller reports made by the authors which documenting some of the work.The first report describes the work with different settings for a camera to create pictures with HDR-quality.

Even though terrorism has been on the political agenda for several years there is no general accepted definition of the phenomena of terrorism. Several scientist do also apply that terrorism have changed after the 9/11-attacks. The purpose with this thesis was to analyze and compare the image of terrorism represented by the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway, in an attempt to draw conclusions about similarities and differentials. The material that was used was these four nations individual counter terrorism strategy. This was made by using idea analysis and self constructed dimensions based on earlier science about security, terrorism and international law.