Based on phenomenological hermeneutics and narrative theory the study explored how parents experience and create meaning when the child receives the diagnosis of autistic disorder. Interviews were conducted with eight parents and the analysis concerned both contents and form in their stories. The resulting aspects of the contents is presented in seven areas: stories about the time before the diagnosis, seeking help, receiving the diagnosis, the meaning of the diagnosis, coping, living with autism and stories about the future. The six resulting aspects of form included: chronology of the stories, creating order out of chaos, cultural norms, rewriting the story about the child, aspects of metaphors and changing perspective. The conclusion of the study is that the diagnosis serves as a way for the parents to transform experiences into a meaningful whole.

The purpose of this thesis has been to explore in what ways Franz Kafka?s ?The Metamorphosis? can be read as a story of gender. By bringing together Judith Butler?s theory of materialization and Lennard J. Davis?s crip theory I have spoken of Dismodernity as the domain of abject bodies that have been repudiated by (post)modern societies as untintelligible and dysfunctional.

The assignment is issued by Scania Maintence AB seeking a new approach to detect power changes in their industrial processes. The work has taken place at Ångströmslaboratoriet and tests have been performed at Scania AB Södertälje.Today?s society consumes enormous amount of energy. In both economically and environmental view, it is important that the processes are effective, with high power factor. There are many ways to measure power in the industry, what they all have in common is that the installation is advanced, requires time and planning.

Previous research has established coaches' important role in developing elite athletes (Durand, Bush, Thomson & Salmela 1996). Athlete enhancement and assisting athletes achieve ?peak performance? has been a major objective for elite coaches as well as sports scientists (Williams & Kendall, 2007) Despite this common goal, research also question whether sports scientists and the research they pursue really effects coaches knowledge and constitute a foundation for today and tomorrows athletic performances (Bishop 2008).  This study examined elite coaches? needs and use of sport science research as well as the interaction between elite coaches and sport scientists. Following interviews of ten elite coaches, content analysis revealed that sport science is both a formal and informal resource of knowledge for coaches. Development of athletes is seen as the main objective of research retrieval and personal and/or direct contact with the sport scientist is considered to be the best way to assemble.

The main purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine three Swedish librarians views on their role regarding their local learning centre and its adult students. The thesis also tries to find out whether the persons responsible for the local learning centres in these municipalities regard the libraries as a resource in this context and if the municipalities express the importance of such a cooperation in documents. Previous research in information seeking and learning is presented and a survey of lifelong learning, local learning centres and libraries is made. Relevant theories, such as Loertschers taxonomy, Kuhlthaus approaches of library skills instruction and levels of mediation as well as Bruces categories of information literacy, are presented and later used in the analysis. A qualitative method was found to be most appropriate for this study, as the majority of the empirical material has been collected through interviews.

This study has investigated how urban vegetation can be used in a multifunctional way to support ecosystem services in urban environments. Nacka municipality is in the start-up phase of building what is to become Nacka city. This provides a unique possibility to study and analyse what role the vegetation play in making the city a healthy living environment and how it needs to be adapted in order to be resilient against changing climate conditions and how the effects of those changes can be regulated. The study further investigates how airborne pollution, caused by urbanization processes, can be regulated or reduced by vegetation or species selection. Methods used in this study were a combination of qualitative interviews and literature studies, seeking to answer the questions: Which specific ecosystem functions are needed in the urban environment and which aspects will influence the ecosystems ability to deliver the functions in demand? And which plant species have the right mechanisms needed to deliver those functions? These questions have been studied and analysed in a local based context where the local conditions ands site specific needs of Nacka define criteria for plant selection.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine how comics, here defined as a combination of text and images, are handled by the libraries in regards to subject analysis, classification and indexing. A comparative approach has been used in this study. First, common practices, methods and theories concerning subject analysis developed for documents consisting of text or images are presented. Then the current systems at two special libraries, specializing in comics and consequently dealing with both text and images, are examined and related to the above mentioned practices, in order to discover differences and similarities.

This thesis aims towards an understanding of information systems and subject representation in relation to academic disciplines. This is achieved by comparing how a discipline, History of science and ideas, represents itself compared with the subject representation of its dissertations in an information system, LIBRIS. The point of departure for this thesis is the domain analytic view of Hjorland which states that the quality in information seeking is enhanced if the subject representation considers the contexts in which documents are produced and used. The importance of concepts such as domain and discipline is discussed. The disciplines view of itself is established by the study of articles written by scholars in the discipline, by how the discipline presents itself on the homepages of five university institutions and by the examination of titles and keywords given to dissertations in the discipline.

Research in international trade situations has mainly focused on understanding the exporter?s actions and has showed ways on how these can be optimized. Although the importer in most cases, until this day, has been left outside this focus, it has been showed that the importer often is the active participant in an international dyad. It is the importer who is actively seeking suppliers for its production or distribution. Based on previous research in the area, the following study identifies the factors that are vital to the importer for satisfactory relations.

A debate on environmental issues and food safety has been ongoing in Sweden and it is suggested that consumers' are seeking local produce instead of global and exotic foods. Moreover, studies show that the consumers? positive attitude towards local produce does not reflect their actions. The purpose with this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of the dissonance between the consumer?s attitudes and actual behaviour towards local produce.

Varför väljer ungdomar att dricka alkohol och att använda droger? Det är inget nytt och det hör ungdomstiden till att experimentera och prova. Syftet med studien var att undersöka om självkänsla och sensationssökande, via attityder, är orsaker till att ungdomar i övre tonåren (18-20 år) konsumerar alkohol och använder droger samt vilka effekter som eftersöks av deltagarna och deras tillvaro, ses också som möjliga faktorer för påverkan på både konsumtion och attityd. I studien deltog 166 elever ur avgångsklasser från olika inriktningar av gymnasieskolor i en medelstor stad i Sverige. Som mätinstrument användes till stor del standardiserade frågor ur Centralförbundet för alkohol och narkotikaupplysningens årligen använda frågeformulär, Zuckermans ?Sensation Seeking Scale form V? dessa kompletterades med frågor för att mäta självkänsla och tillvaro.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how two separate museums have realised the task of digitizing their collections, as well as to learn what options, possibilities and resources have been available to them during this process. Additionally, the aim here is to find how the two museums have dealt with problems in connection to the digitization projects, since there are as-of-yet no established regulations or standards to guide them in their digitization efforts. However, national and international working groups seeking to establish better collaboration between archives, libraries and museums ALM institutions have recently begun to formulate recommendations and suggested standards. Some of these recommendations have been used here as a theoretical framework in the examination of the two museums. The research questions posed are: What options, possibilities and resources have been available to the museums in their digitization projects, in terms of economy, staff, technical equipment and time?; For what purpose are the museums digitizing their collections?; and How does their purpose influence the process and chosen procedures? Also discussed here is how the museums relate to some of the existing recommendations.

Absenteeism due to sickness has increased during the last few years and has become a serious problem of society in Sweden. Among the sick-listed there is a group that apart from being sick are also unemployed.The aim of this paper was to study if and how the unemployed seek employment when they are sick-listed. Central questions have been if the unemployed seek employment while they are sick-listed? To what extent do they seek employment? Which methods do they use and what demands do they make of their prospective jobs?The survey was based on a quantitative method and the answers that 100 unemployed sick-listed in the northwest of Skåne, Sweden gave to questionnaires. The result was analysed using a bivariate analysis in order to find patterns or obvious differences.The result showed that more than half (60 percent) of the people in the survey group used up to an hour or more per week to search for or apply for work.

Suicide research has a long tradition within sociology. Parallel to the Durkheimian tradition, seeking the causes of suicide in societal factors, a more cultural understanding of suicide has been emphasized. Attitudes to suicide have been stressed as important for the understanding of suicide mortality levels in different societies. For Russia, where suicide mortality levels are among the highest in the world, an understanding of this kind might be of particular importance.Based on a survey study from Moscow 2004, attitudes to suicide were studied in relation to social, economic and demographic factors as well as to attitudes to other morally disputable behaviors. Suicide attitudes in different age and sex groups in the sample were further compared to suicide mortality levels in the corresponding groups in the population.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate a few economy students? perceptions of user education connected to essay work, focusing on aspects of information literacy of importance to the studies and the role of the user education in this context. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach. Five economy students were interviewed regarding their experiences of working with information, their perceptions of user education and its impact on their essay work. The interviews were transcribed and analysed with Bruce?s (1997) relational model of information literacy.