This thesis aims to study the impact of the transition from communism to democracy on the public libraries in Poland. The central areas of study are changes in: the organisation of the public library system, the role of the public library in society, the librarian's daily work and job situation and collection development. The thesis is based on qualitative interviews with public librarians, public library managers and researchers in Warsaw, Torun and Gdansk. The theoretical background consists of chapters outlining thoughts on democratic and communist library ideas and public libraries' responses to a changing society. The results show that the public library system has been affected by two major decentralisation reforms in Poland, leaving the libraries in the care of local governments.

The purpose of the study is to investigate methods and work procedures that aim to motivate people to leave a cult and/or supporting them after a cult exit. The study was limited to investigate how Sweden?s, within the area, three premier voluntary organizations Föreningen Rädda Individen, Rådgivning Om Sekter and Hjälpkällan work with present -, ex ? and relatives to cult members. In addition to the mentioned organizations we have also investigated the work procedures and methods used by Åke Wiman. The study has got a qualitative approach and includes semi-structured interviews.

This master thesis has been carried out on behalf of Stoneridge Electronics AB and is an investigation ofhow intelligent switches can replace the traditionally used direct controlled switches. The concept ofintelligent switches is that the switches contain electronic identification components which, by connectingthem to a network, give the same function independent of the location of the switch. This infers anincreased flexibility and configurability which can be a great advantage in development, production andcustomization in the commercial vehicle industry. Especially in the current situation when commercialvehicle manufacturers provides more and more functions and dashboard configurations.LIN (Local Interconnect Network) is a network protocol introduced in 1999. It is a simpler and lower costcomplement to CAN (Controller Area Network) and is adapted for applications where the demands forbandwidth are lower, for example reading sensors and switchers.

The purpose of this report was to identify the current waste management of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste in a few Swedish construction companies, based on the different steps in the waste hierarchy with a focus on waste prevention, reuse and recycle. Additionally, the purpose was to attempt identifying opportunities, obstacles and as well as to propose possible solutions from an environmental perspective. The method used was a qualitative study using interviews conducted through emails and phone with employees occupying positions that could answer this reports questions. The results of this report indicates that waste management of construction and demolition waste has improved, and less waste goes into landfills. The concern is that the overall amount of waste being produced is not decreasing, thus calling for actions preventing the production of waste.

In Eskilstuna and Sweden in general the level of reuse of surplus material containing soils and rocks from excavation is low. In this report the potential for increasing the reuse of excavated material in Eskilstuna by using a web-based earth information database has been examined. The purpose of a web-based earth information database is to connect those who have surplus material with those who need material for a fast and simple transaction. The intention is to give Eskilstuna a more environmentally and economically efficient handling of surplus material by increasing the level of reuse and thereby reducing the amount of surplus material that is wasted and emissions given off to the atmosphere during transportation. The potential has been examined in two different ways, by tracing information about a number of projects to see if excavated material driven to the dump could have been used in another project and by interviewing eight of the work leaders active in Eskilstuna.

The objectives of this research were to determine whether the natural rattan resources in Sulawesi, Indonesia can cope with the strongly increased harvesting pressure that has occurred over the last centuries. I was furthermore looking for patterns in the rattan population dynamics that might give a hint on how the harvesting system could be improved to ensure a maximum sustainable yield. To answer these questions, I developed an individual-based model to analyse the dynamics of rattan growth in connection with rattan harvests by locals to identify sustainable levels of rattan harvests around villages in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Scenarios with different harvesting intensities were run to compare the change in harvest amount. For a given harvesting pressure, scenarios with a high number of harvesters and a low harvesting frequency had the same effect as scenarios with high harvesting frequencies and a low number of harvesters.

In a column experiment the effect of three different biochars on nitrous gas emissions, nitrogenretention and water filled pore space (WFPS) were studied in a Swedish sandy soil, classified as aCryopsamment. Ammonium retention was positively correlated, while KCl-extractable ammoniumwas negatively correlated, with the specific area of the biochars. The question was raised whether thenegative correlation between extractable ammonium and biochar specific area reflects the amount ofammonium present in the soil or its extractability from the biochar, and whether methods forextracting soil mineral nitrogen, like KCl-extractions, have to be modified for application on biocharamended soils. There was a tendency of increased nitrate retention and KCl-extractable nitrate withbiochar and KCl-extractable nitrate was positively correlated with the specific area of the biochar. pHwas higher for all biochars compared with control, although the differences were not significant, andWFPS was lowered by biochar addition, significantly in one case.

The use of mobile devices has during the last years expanded and on the market you can see a huge amount of applications. The development of mobile applications differs from traditional systems development since mobility infers that mobile applications can be used in different technological and social contexts. Although previous research has recognized that mobility can present mobile application developers with certain challenges, empirical studies of how problems arise and how they can be handled has thus far been limited. In this study we focused on the requirements engineering process from a development view with the purpose of finding challenges emerging in the development process. The study is based on a qualitative case study that employed semi-structured interviews with both project managers and system developers active in the requirements process.

The following study is a comparative analysis on the usage of history in Ridley Scott?s epic Kingdom of Heaven. Based on the thesis that this movie has a lot to say about contemporary political values, it compares the theatrical version from 2005 with the 45 minute extended Director?s Cut, which came out on DVD in 2006. Firmly based in the popular-cultural context I tried to evaluate whether these changes related in any way, to matters concerning the current gender debate and post-colonial theory.

With a growing population on earth the amount of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) and other scrap steel increases. The European Directive 2000/53/CE? requires a minimum of 95 % reuse and recovery and 85 % re-use and recycling no later than 1 January 2015, for end-of life vehicles. This imposes a need for more efficient recycling and recovery. Despite this shredder residue (SR) is commonly land filled.This report investigated the magnetic fines residue generated at Stena Metall shredder facility in Halmstad, Sweden.

The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare the news covering of Swedens three biggest cities (the metropolitan areas) and their surrounding areas with the covering of the rest of the country (the provincial areas) in two daily national newspapers, Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter. The aim has been to answer the following questions:- What amount of the news coverage in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter concern the metropolitan areas compared to the provincial areas, and how do these two newspapers differ in the news covering of these areas?- Is there a difference in the news articles size and content, depending on weather they concern the metropolitan or the provincial areas?- How has the balance between news concerning metropolitan and provincial areas changed over the recent 20 years?The theories used in this study are News values, the media commercialization and Popular Journalism, and The Agenda Setting Theory. The method that has been used is a Quantitative Content Analysis.Despite the essays hypothesis, that the news coverage in the two newspapers would be dominated by material from the metropolitan areas, the result showed that a majority of the examined articles concern the provincial areas. It also showed that Aftonbladet has a bigger percentage of provincial news than Dagens Nyheter.

 AbstractThis study is performed by studying seven livestock businesses in the agricultural sector. The focus of the essay has been put on the structures that limit and enable the lives of the farmers in this study. One of these major structures that affect everyday life is the gender structure and to this day the housewife role exists where the women are responsible for the home, family and domestic pets while the men are responsible for the production, machinery and the heavier tasks on the farm. This is grounded in the history and the development that agriculture has gone through, but also in the strong patriarchal power structure that exists in this industry. In this essay I also show how the life form analysis of Liselotte Jakobsen and the independent life form can not be fully applied to the farmer as he is not completely independent in his work.

The company Sol & Energiteknik wanted to examine the possibility to make a standardhouse totally energy independent. Based upon this I have, during the spring of 2007,examined the possibilities available at the market today through litterature studies, contactwith several companies and reading reports at the internet.The first thing to examine has been to determine the energy consumption for a standardhouse, and find out if there are better technologies to be used for energy conservation.My conclusion in this matter is that there are possibilities today for building a house moreenergy efficient.When I had reached the point at which my design for the house was decided, I also hadto choose the different products to use to produce energy as well as to store that energy.To produce heat and electricity to the house I decided to use a wind turbine and a solarwater heater.The most difficult part of designing a house that is energy independent is that theproduced energy must be stored somehow. Storing the heat is relatively easy beacuse theheat can be stored in a large water tank. The electricity is a bigger problem beacuse itmust be stored in batteries, which today are too expensive to be used in a standard house.In the future producing and storing hydrogen might be used to produce electricity, buttoday that technology is both expensive and not tested enough.My final conclusion is that a standard house can not be built to be totally energyindependent today, unless it is very expensive to connect the house to the electricitynetwork. As an alternative solution I came up with a proposal for a house which isconnected to the electricity network and have some amount of own produced energy.This house prooved to be a good investment if you choose to build it today, and it couldbe a very good investment in the long run beacuse energy prices increase every year..

The intention of this essay has been to investigate how the new digital technology has affected the tourism industry and marketing, as well as how travel agents and tour operators adapt to this. We also aimed to get a broader view of how the future might look like when it comes to marketing and virtual service landscapes. We decided to base our research according to these following four questions:? What affect travel agents? way of adoption to the technical development?? What purposes do the travel agents have for building up their virtual service landscape?? How much does the travel agents emphasize on digital marketing?? What can travel agents do to better adapt to the technological development in the future?We have chosen to use a qualitative research for this essay. The reason for choosing a qualitative research was to gain a wider understanding that would represent a big part of the changes of technology development.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study whether bibliometrics can serve as a method to analyse the humanities.To investigate this a literature study was conducted that examined previous studies concerning bibliometrics and the humanities. Furthermore a bibliometric analysis of comparative literature was carried out. These research findings were then further examined through the perspective of theories on intellectual and social organization of the scienceThe bibliometrical study includes 38 literature journals (11 855 articles in total) which were downloaded from ISI's Web of Science. The material was analysed by using co-citation analysis and co-word analysis. The results of the study are presented in five co-citation maps.