Earth?s resources have been exploited unsustainably. If an entire conception of exploitationof natural resources does not change now, this will entail enormous costs in the future.This insight has lead to a recently increased interest in clean technologies among privateequity capitalists. In the fourth quarter of 2006 about 10 percent of all private equityinvestments made in the US market were placed in the cleantech industry. Despite a goodinvesting climate in Sweden, Swedish capitalists have shown little interest in cleantechinvestments.

Our purpose with this study was to look at the pawnbrokers role in the Swedish welfare state from the customers perspective. Our purpose was also to see how the customers used the loan. We wondered why people used the pawnbroker's and how the pawnbroker's could be understood as a providing alternative related to the three spheres state, market and family? Above looking at previous science we also did three interviews with people who worked at a pawnshop, a budgetadvisor and a smaller investigation with customers of a pawnshop.We came to the conclusion that the customer needed the money from the loan to buy food in many cases, according to the investigation we did with the customers. According to the employees the customers needed the money for different things, such as paying the bills or unexpected expenses.

It has in a broader extent become important for companies and other organizations with large organizations to have a properly functioning web platform where content management is an essential part. Polopoly is a web content management system developed in Sweden, used by several European corporations but foremost Scandinavian such working in different media related business areas.Our aim has been to analyze this tool and render a report which hopefully will assist the initiator of our thesis; a consulting enterprise called Qurius, in their negotiations with future customers, when to suggest Polopoly as a suitable content management solution.By using case studies at companies currently using Polopoly, our goal is to define which characteristic makes the product a competitive publishing tool. To put our analysis in perspective, we will compare the most important aspects of Polopoly with a similar product.According to the results of our investigation we consider Polopoly being a beneficial choice with regard to a number of important parameters. Finally we have summarized these properties in a list of examples explaining in which cases Polopoly is a preferable alternative as a web based content management platform..

Overweight and obesity among children and adolescents is increasing. Diseases which earlier occurred exclusively among adults are now also observed among children. There is an urgent need for new treatments that can change this negative trend. The aim of this study was to describe existing treatments for obesity among children in the age of 6-12 and the effect of those treatments. This descriptive literature study is based on 17 research articles published between 2000 and 2007 from different parts in the world.

Vacuum box leak testing is, because of geometrical problems, not always possible andtherefore an alternate test method with dye penetrant is used. DEKRA Industrial has identifieda need for quality assurance of the method and development of a written procedure withguidelines that lead to more uniform ways of testing.A literature study was done to get a general overview of nondestructive testing (NDT) and tosee how the method is used in different applications. European and American standards werestudied. Analytical and numerical solutions, involving flow simulation, were deemed to berather difficult and beyond the scoop of this project. Thus the problems had to be solved byusing experimental methods.

The aim of this study was to evaluate parents and course leaders'perceptions of ComHome, a course in communication for parents. Thecourse aims to change the interaction between the parent and the child in aselected play activity based on a defined goal and agreed methodology. Thedata consisted of four group interviews and an individual interview with atotal of 12 parents and course leaders. The interviews were transcribed andcontent analyzed. The study showed that parents and course leadersconsidered goal attainment scaling as a rewarding approach.

The aim of my study was to investigate a few young peoples experience of their treatment. The study was qualitative based on interviews with three young persons at the end of their treatment there. The subject was chosen because this kind of youth housing is an interesting alternative to institutional care for young people, despite there is not much known about the results of the treatment. The results were analyzed from earlier research and central concepts from the theory of empowerment and Anton Antonovskys theory about Sense of coherence. The results of this study show that these young peoples are satisfied with their treatment at the youth housing.

Today electronics becomes more and more complex and to keep low costs and power consumption, both digital and analog parts are implemented on the same chip. The degree of automization for the digital parts have increased fast and is high, but for the analog parts this has not come through. This have created a big gap between the degrees of automization for the two parts and makes the analog parts the bottleneck in electronics develop. Research is ongoing at Electronics systems group at Linköping University target the increase of design automization for analog circuits. An optimizationbased approach for device sizing is developed and for this a good optimization method is needed which can find good solutions and meet the specification parameters.

The study aimed to evaluate picture communication during clinical as-sessment and intervention procedures in paediatric care. As part of the project KomHIT (Augmentative communication in paediatric health care settings) care professionals at different care units were provided with education and designed pictorial supports. These consisted of appointment letters with pictorial support, visual schedules and communication boards with both general and specific vocabulary. Care professionals and parents to children with and without communication disabilities participated. Survey data from care professionals and parents at five care units was supplemented with qualitative data from an interview with a multiprofessional group at one of the care units.

Swedish Armed Forces are according to their development planning process taking actions to establish a new joint unit (SWEWOSE), with electronic warfare capability. SWEWOSÉ S main task will be designated to produce electronic warfare libraries for electronic warfare systems within the armed forces. The unit shall have capability to support with libraries in any state of conflict situation even if the supported unit with library needs conducting operations abroad.This essay examines the requirements that justify the establishment of a new unit in times when the armed forces conducting reorganizations and cutbacks in both economy and personnel.The possibilities to buy complete system solutions from an external supplier are examined. But also what kind of library support model that is to prefer according to the demands that the Swedish Armed Forces desired, in terms of capability in platform protection and battle space awareness.The results show that the demands that the Swedish Armed Forces has decided, best will be ful-filled and justified by a national electronic warfare unit, with library production as a main task..

In this essay I analyze the concepts security and security policy from a critical, feministic point of view. The traditional way of thinking security is state-centred and narrow with its military oriented threatening pictures and solutions.I advocate that the two concepts need a more feministic and holistic approach to be able to cope with the threats of our time and include the security for women explicitly.To suggest how this can be done I introduce a model; security-sphere, which should be seen as a way to constructively connect my objections to the existing research with a new approach to security problems. The security-sphere is based on two analytical parts; the private security sub-sphere and the public security sub-sphere, in order to make new images of security problems visible.It is a fact that most of the threats against women specifically, take place in the private sphere where no traditional analytical tools reach in - these threats have not been seen as 'real' security problems. My aim is therefore to integrate these issues into the agenda of security policy..

The portrayals of women in lifestyle magazines has been a continuous subject in genderresearch, but have mainly been focused on research about heterosexual women. However, how women are being portrayed through editorial content in an LGBT magazines have shown to be a gap in gender research.The purpose of this study was to find out how female identities were portrayed in theeditorial content in the LGBT magazine QX ? Sweden?s largest magazine aimed atmembers of the LGBT community in Sweden.The analysis of the material was conducted through a semiotic and a narrative analysis. Patterns and reoccurring themes were selected, and furthermore were analysed againstfeminist theories and views such as queer theory, radical feminism and post-modernfeminism.Four different gender archetypes derived from the result of the study: The strongfemale, The passive female, The stereotypical female, and The intimate female. Thestudy did show that women featured in QX magazine were portrayed throughheteronormative patterns, although the magazine represents a larger alternative group..

The thesis aims to investigate the farmer?s perception of currency hedging and interest rate bonds and to investigate the farm size of companies categorized by number of acres, has no effect on this. The work also aims to gain an insight into what active farmers consider to be important what to consider when they choosing a bank and a personal banker. The work is based on the survey and has been supplemented by a literature review on the subject. For the survey were selected out randomly 50 farmers with Agriculture and Rural Management education. The requirement of the farmers was that they should be farmers by profession, and also made sure that the farmers of various sizes came with. We got a total of 32 responses within the set response time we said, which was better response than we expected. When the final result came we ranged the farms in a size range. We found out that all farmers in the study diligently follow the market and are easy to assimilate new ideas, providing opportunities to profitability of their business with the different instruments that are available on both the financial level and farm level. The investigation revealed that the major in favor of having a personal banker. They think it´s good to have a special plug to turn to who has knowledge and experience of how the agriculture sector operates.

The aim of this study was to describe how nurses cope with their daily stress at work. A literature review was made to answer the research question, data was gathered from two databases; Academic Search Elite and Medline (via Pubmed). The result which was based on 20 scientific articles showed that nurses used problem-focused and emotional-focused coping strategies to deal with the stress at work. Most of the nurses used emotional-focused coping strategies by practise some kind of physical activities, avoid and take distance from the problem. Using these strategies was negative correlated with burnout and psychological health.

Our Bachelor´s Thesis has been performed in co-operation with Bors Automation & Tool AB.Our task was to develop a servomotor powered tube cutting-machine with initial point fromtoday's hydraulic driven tube cutting machine Bors HYD 23. The purpose with the newconstruction was to achieve a more power-efficient tube cutting machine which could lowerthe power consumption, and also meet the market continued growing demand forenvironmental-conscious production.Bors Automation & Tool gave us relatively free hands in order to enable new thinking ideaswithout following their traditional constructional solutions.Our solution resulted in a construction based on a power source existing of a servomotordrivenrollerscrew, witch provides a more rational use of energy compared with the currentmethod.Bors Automation & Tool AB has decided to fabricate a prototype of Bors E 23 during theautumn of 2007, which they are planning to revile at the Tube 2008 exhibition in Düsseldorf,Germany.NOTE:Due to an agreement signed by the authors in the beginning of this project, no appendix is published at this time.If you want to wiew these documents, please contact the authors..