AbstractThe Swedish Road Administration in the region of Mälardalen has since 2004 worked to in¬crease the efficiency of the maintance of bridges based on limited functional requirements and time demanded action.The maintenance of the bridges is contracted in the county of Uppsala since 2004, and Örebro since 2007. The county of Nyköping and Västerås is contracted by the traditional system. The contractor will perform a regular maintenance on all bridges. The bridges are inspected by the contractor at least once every year.The contractor registers the result of the inspection in a database called BaTMan. BaTMan is a Bridge and Tunnel Management system and is a strictly web solution were the user logs in via the internet.The Swedish Road Administration also inspects the bridges to se that the demands on the bridges are followed.My work is to compare these different inspections and to see any development..

Ultrasound is a diagnostic aid often overlooked by the veterinary practicioner who works with farm-animals. However, it?s use increases, particulary for breeders where ultrasound has long been used to evaluate ovaries and to diagnose pregnancy or disturbances in reproduction. There is much knowledge in how to examine ovaries and uterus by transrectal ultrasound, but when it comes to doing ultrasound of other organs in the abdomen the knowledge is more limited. Cows are very large animals, so it is not possible to examine everything inside the abdomen with ultrasound, simply because the ultrasound beam has a limited penetration. There is also lots of gas inside the gastro-intestinal tract of a cow, mainly in the large intestine and the rumen, and that makes it impossible to examine the organs behind the gas since the ultrasound waves are reflected when reaching the soft tissue-gas interface.

The aim of this master´s thesis is to examine how librarian´s views of the users can vary for different types of materials in public libraries. We have seen that literature and reading are the central parts of the libraries in Sweden. All other types of media are traditionally seen as complements and in focus for the study is feature film as an example of these other medias. We examine policy documents to see the official view of the general target group of the libraries and compare it to the view of the users of feature films as expressed by the librarians. The study includes several different types of empirical materials such as interviews, observations and documents and the method used is case studies.

This project report shows the work around a mockup to a three-dimensional avatar-making application. An avatar-making application is a computer-based software program in which it is possible to create your own personal virtual character. The possibility to use three-dimensional avatars can in the future be essential for adding extra personal information or characteristics to social communication over the internet or over mobile phones. The problem of transforming a physical form and reconstruct it to a virtual basis has been an important problem to solve for many companies and software developers in the, for instance, virtual worlds area. Methods and ideas over making this transformation is the key throughout this project.

The CASA-paradigm, Computers Are Social Actors, was introduced in the book "TheMedia Equation" by Reeves and Nass. One of their experiments concluded that we tend to be polite to computers in the same way as we are to people. In this study I have replicated Reeves and Nass experiment but instead of a text-based interface I have used a virtual agentin order to find out if we are polite to the agents, or still to the computer. Two experimental setups was conducted. The two setups had a common first part that was carried out on onecomputer with one agent.

AbstractPurpose/Aim: To describe in-classroom use of mobile phones amongst teenagers.Material/Method: The data was collected through as use of focus groups and field studies.Main results: The main findings confirm the findings of other studies on teens and mobile phones. Teens use their mobile phones for much more than just sending text messages and making calls, there are many different types of localized usages. There is also a strong emotional connection between the device, its content and the user.Keywords: mobile phone, teens, classroom, focus groups, observation, field studies, mobility..

The communication with government and municipality through Internet has in-creased during the last couple of years. Therefore we have chosen to focus our bachelor thesis in this particularly area and the needs for usable web services for the citizens. In this bachelor thesis we are studying a increasing group users, namely elderly citizens. During the study we have analysed E-governments ser-vices usability through usability tests. The combination of conversations and meetings with individuals, observations of interactions and literature studies give us the opportunity to explore the users needs.

This study is a formative evaluation of a prototypecollaboratory for sharing data collection instruments inlibrary and information science (LIS). The aims were to findout: how the study participants, five hospital librarians,experienced the interaction with the prototype while workingwith predetermined tasks; and their views on the differentfunctions of the prototype collaboratory.Methods used for data collection was as a survey; followedby a think-aloud session where the participant verbalisedhis/her thoughts during the interaction with the prototype;and finally a semistructured interview. The survey wasanalysed with a frequency distribution, while the data fromthe other methods were analysed qualitatively by extractingthemes from the transcribed sessions.The results show that although the librarians expresseddifferent problems while working with the interface, mainlyrelated to the language in the prototype collaboratory anddifficulties with the page for applying metadata, all of themwere confident in being able to learn the system after using itfor a while. The librarians had a positive attitude towardssharing data collection instruments as well as comments inthe prototype collaboratory. At the same time, they wereaware that students and researchers might have differentabilities or incentives to work and share information.

AbstractAttitudes towards the reference situation and the meetings between library users and librarians have become the subject of much debate in the library setting today. The aim of this two years master´s thesis has been to examine six librarian?s attitudes and apprehensions concerning the interactions between the librarian and the users in the library setting. We were also interested in knowing how a library can work to become more service oriented and customer centred. We conducted six interviews with librarians located at three different libraries in Sweden.

Namibia, southern Africa, suffers from an energy shortage and is therefore facing severalchallenging problems. The use of firewood as fuel for cooking is common in the whole countryand has negative consequences for health and the environment. This work have focused ondeveloping a solar baking oven, calledSunbaker, adapted for Namibian families needs forbaking. The development was based on classic solar cooking limitations, specific needs forNamibia and to have a feasible manufacturability.The project started with a theoretical study in Sweden where different solar cookers, informationregarding Namibia, technical aspects and end user aspects were studied. To assess the need for asolar baking oven aMinor Field Study took place in Namibia during eight weeks in July toSeptember 2009 and resulted in a product design specification.

I detta examensarbete har det undersökts vilken teknik för trådlös kommunikation som passar bäst att användas då en ljudsignal ska strömmas trådlöst till multipla mottagare. De tekniker som jämfördes var Wi-Fi och Bluetooth. Andra tekniker för trådlös kommunikation, ZigBee, ANT+ och NFC, valdes bort för att deras maximala datahastighet eller räckvidd inte var tillräcklig. 3G och 4G valdes bort för att det krävs en licens för att få använda dessa. Som mottagare skulle i första hand Android- och iOS-mobiltelefoner användas.

This work derives from the question ?What is a beautiful road??. The question is being discussed in interviews with two employees at the Swedish National Road Administration and two former members of the ?Council of environment and beauty? at the Swedish National Road Administration. The interviews are summarized in my own discussion about the concept of ?Beautiful roads?.

This thesis work resulted in a template for how the thermal spray process can be controlled through robot programs. The robots today and their programs need to be replaced, therefore a new structure which can be matched with the new robot systems is needed. The work is limited to only concern structured programming on the new robots on Thermal Spray Centre (TC) with the programming language Rapid. The basic data for the program was retrieved from interviews with concerned personnel at TC, from studies on process parameters for thermal spray and from existing specifications at Volvo Aero Corporation (VAC). The thesis work briefly describes the process thermal spray and the four methods used at VAC.

This bachelor thesis is about an ultrasonic sensor, implemented in a bubble chamber in Artis. The sensor consists of the piezoelectric sensor and an electronic control circuit. The control circuit consists of a programmable microprocessor, PIC18F2420 and a circuit, which sends the excitation signal to the piezoelectric sensor, and later receives the echo. This bachelor thesis consists also of a theoretical study, which examines different techniques of liquid level sensing in a chamber. The study discusses which factors are important in liquid level sensing and examine accepted methods.

This report describes the initial work intended for updating the car sharing service Roadmate. Roadmate is one of the services received by the car rental company Hertz First Rent a Car. The goal was to present the client with design- and structure proposals for a car sharing service that includes high usability and at the same time remains aesthetically pleasing.The work is based on an initial study with data collection, mapping the target user group and its needs. Subsequent structural and design proposals for Roadmates company carpooling service are based on the facts surrounding the target group's needs. The result are well developed and tested design sketches with accompanying visual identity and sitemaps that can be the basis for the further work on the development of the service..