The characteristic of services as an effort carried out in a "moment of truth" implies a risk for failures. This study sheds new light on how alternative offerings that customers are initially exposed to can affect satisfaction and loyalty in the service failure and recovery context. More specifically, two aspects of the initial offering are studied: promised general service quality and the presence of a promise about a specific product attribute. Based on a presentation of the main theoretical perspectives, hypotheses are formulated and a scenario-based experiment in a hotel setting is designed to explore these. The results indicate that a higher level of promised service quality can result in more positive evaluations of satisfaction and stronger word-of-mouth intentions than for a lower level of promised service quality.

The aim of this thesis is to expand the understanding of 16th century Flemish art by approaching paintings by artists Pieter Aertsen (1508-1575), Joachim Beuckelaer (1533-1574) and Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525-1569) from a different perspective. This is done by extending the discourse of art history, into a discourse of literary history and primarily 16th century novels by authors such as François Rabelais and Miguel de Cervantes. The paintings are studied in relation to these 16th century novels, by comparison and as a testament of this specific time period. A widening contextualization is also constructed in which a connection to the expression of the carnivals ambivalent form, as well as the notion of lower classes is explored.

This essay aims to explore the possibilities for elderly in nursing homes in Örebro municipality toreceive other treatments besides medication in case of depression or anxiety. Issues associated withthe object in this paper and which are discussed are prevalence of drug usage, opportunities forelderlies to receive other treatments, prevalence of other treatments and the elderlies own power orinfluence over the choice of treatment. The survey has been conducted with questionnaires sent outby post to nurses at every nursing home for elderly in Örebro municipality. The results showed thatdrugs are used extensively when treating depression or anxiety among the nursing home residents,and other treatments are never or only occasionally being discussed at more than half of the nursinghomes in this study. The results also show that reminiscence therapy and problem-solving therapyhas been used occasionally, while alternative therapies are used more frequently.

The aim of this thesis is to expand the understanding of 16th century Flemish art by approaching paintings by artists Pieter Aertsen (1508-1575), Joachim Beuckelaer (1533-1574) and Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525-1569) from a different perspective. This is done by extending the discourse of art history, into a discourse of literary history and primarily 16th century novels by authors such as François Rabelais and Miguel de Cervantes. The paintings are studied in relation to these 16th century novels, by comparison and as a testament of this specific time period. A widening contextualization is also constructed in which a connection to the expression of the carnivals ambivalent form, as well as the notion of lower classes is explored.

Det ?alternativa livet? kan ses som en motrörelse till urbanisering, ökad konsumtion och ett allt snabbare tempo i samhället. Detta är en kvalitativ studie med syftet att undersöka det alternativa livet. Sex informanter intervjuades om deras upplevelser och uppfattningar av det alternativa livet. Intervjuerna transkriberades och analyserades utifrån en induktiv tematisk metod.

This study is based on the public eldercare assistances administrators and unit managers perspective. The purpose of this study is to describe and understand how the assistance administrator and unit manager approach elderly needs, who can be harder to accommodate as well as alternative providers that also can meet the needs of the elderly. It is important to gain more knowledge about how assistance administrators and unit managers look at these aspects, what their attitude and approach is towards them. This is important to learn more about because the assistance administrators and unit managers have discretion in their work and the power to change and affect the elderlys situation in a significant way. They decide on actions and design implementation to meet the needs of the elderly and enable them a reasonable standard of living.The choice of method used in this study was qualitative through semi-structured interviews, conducted with assistance officers and unit managers.

The purpose of our essay is to investigate the social services work for youth with hazardous behavior. To aquire relevant information we decided to us the qualitative method. We made five interviews with social workers from different sections to get a full view of the situation. The main conclutions we came up with is the importance of the family structure, and a safe home environment with good values. Another important part is a daily meaningful occupation, for the main part in this age it is school attendance.

This paper aims at assessing the relationship between female and male part-time employment and the business cycle in Sweden during the years 1987?2005 using quarterly time-series data and two alternative indicators of the business cycle. It further aims at determining whether the share of women working part-time has changed over time. Key results include that the relationship between the business cycle and female part-time employment is found to be significant and countercyclical. No significant effect is however found for men.

During the late 1990s a movement with the intention of forming independent libraries emerged on Cuba. They were seen as an alternative to the public libraries which were supposed to be suffering from censorship by the Cuban government. The purpose of this thesis is to compile and bring structure in a debate regarding public libraries on Cuba and what have become known as independent libraries. In this thesis a textual analysis has been approached for examining articles, websites and reports concerning what attitudes and position the library support organizations Friends of Cuban Libraries FCL, Cuban Libraries Solidarity Group CLSG and IFLA/FAIFE have regarding the two different library types. These positions is throughout the survey connected with the concept of intellectual freedom.

The task in this thesis is the steering of one of Saab Bofors Dynamics robots using Sliding Mode Control, a method they never used before. The robot constitutes a system which in addition to perturbations and uncertainties due to modeling imprecision, hold the difficulty of being highly time variant. In order to be able to keep required performance with uncertainties and modeling imprecision present, the use of robust control methods like Sliding Mode Control is necessary. SMC is based on the states of the system being forced to stay on or in the direct vicinity of a hyper plane in the state space which is chosen in a way that gives the system dynamics desired properties. Other advantages with sliding mode are reduced order dynamics on the switching surface and total insensitivity to some uncertainties and perturbations.

What drove me to write this paper is the will to  examine if there is a philosophically and scientifically viable  alternative foundation for an objective morality other than what we like to refer to as "God". The  American philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris presents in his book The Moral Landscape a thesis for an objective morality based on science in which he states that  science can determine human values. The purpose of this paper is to perform a theoretical trial of The Moral Landscape, examining Harris' thesis and it's relations to the philosophical obstacles that stands in its way, these being mainly the famous philosophical principle "Hume's Law" and G.E. Moore's "Naturalistic Fallacy and Open Question Argument" and thus will serve as my main theoretical foundation. The results of my study was not conclusive since Harris in fact doesn't succeed in bridging the gap between facts and values on a scientific ground.

The purpose of this paper is to find out how visually impaired people get information on Internet. Visually impaired people has got the right to be able to use the Internet like everyone else. We are also going to revise which aids visually impaired people use today, and how they work in practise. What problems can you run into when you use these aids? We are also going to revise how the webpages design affect the use of the Internet for the visually impaired people.

AbstractIn my work on language development in preschool the purpose was to examine how and to what extent the pre-school supports children with special needs in their language development. Trough qualitative interviews with four preschool teachers, I wanted to see how they work with language development in preschool. In the study, Main questions asked in the inquiry :How do teachers and support children?s language development?What techniques, resources and tools available to facilitate language development? The conclusion that I made from my inquiry is that the primary language stimulation methods teachers use to encourage children?s language development are rhymes telling, books reading and song singing based on active selection of pieces that match the children?s maturity level.And how they are using different language stimulation techniques Karlstad model, TAKK (Signs of augmentative and alternative communication) and TRAS (Early registration of language development) to promote children?s language development. Keyword: Language development, language stimulation, treatment, communication, methods..

The development of applications for mobile devices has exploded in recent times. This has also led to the introduction of several new mobile operating systems. To streamline application development for multiple platforms, techniques have been developed to be able to reuse the same application regardless of the operating system. If the same application can be used on multiple platforms it will save both a lot of time and money. Today there are three types of techniques to develop an application; web, hybrid and native application, where the latter is specific to the operating system it has been developed to.

This thesis studies how the Swedish government articulates social exclusion within the spring budget of 2007. Through a discourse theoretical approach, inspired by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the empirical findings are reconstructed through the nodal point of labour and two chains of equivalence, based upon the duality between employment and unemployment. By viewing social exclusion as a phenomenon concerning discourse, identity and politics, this duality forms the basis of a deconstructive and hegemonic analysis.I argue that the term social exclusion is a powerful and flexible political concept in that it obscures ideological assumptions and objectives as well as draws attention away from alternative social concepts. Throughout the thesis social exclusion is stressed as a social category constituting the relation between individual and society. Hence I argue that it is of vital importance that the values underlying its usage are made explicit and that social exclusion as a floating signifier is made an object of academic analysis..