Studien behandlar försöksverksamheten Region Skåne och deras kommunikation och information via texter om verksamheten till beslutsfattare och medborgare. Texterna ligger till grund för beslutet om fortsatt försöksverksamhet och påverkar även allmänheten. Genom en narrativanalys har vi urskiljt fyra teman; ?Permanenta självstyrelsen!?, ?Region Skåne är positivt och en nydanande föregångare?, ?Införandet av regioner är en naturlig och logisk utveckling?, och ?Region Skåne är konkurrenskraftigt och bidrar till tillväxt?. I dessa narrativa teman använder regionen övertalningsdiskurs och myter, men även grepp som dramatisering och iscensättande.

Region Gotland har under en längre tid privatiserat tjänster som tidigare utfördes av Region Gotland själva. Hur går det till när en privat aktör tar över eller startar en verksamhet och hur ser kraven på verksamheten ut? Idag använder Region Gotland Balanserade styrkort i sin styrning och hur påverkar denna typ av styrning privata aktörer? Denna uppsats fokuserar på vilken effekt Socialnämndens styrning har på upphandling, kommunikation och uppföljning.Problemformuleringen i denna uppsats lyder: På vilket sätt styr Socialnämnden privata och offentliga aktörer inom särskilt boend epå Gotland.Syftet med denna rapport är att undersöka hurvida Region Gotlands styrmodell påverkar upphandling, kommunikation och uppföljning mellan Region Gotland och aktörer inom särskilt boende på Gotland.Intervjuer har gjorts med personer i nyckelpositioner inom Region Gotland. Fördjupade intervjuer har gjorts med verksamhetschefer på två olika boenden. Ett boende i privat regi och ett boende i offentlig regi.

Transportation of oil and gas by the Sea characterizes challenges from a safety viewpoint. In this type of transportation, different sizes of special tankers carrying oil and gas. The marine transportation of these scarce natural riches is involved with risks and hazards, which may lead to many losses; for instance, wasting oil and gas, injuries of people, damaging ships and properties, and damaging environment. The main purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the risks, hazards, and accidents during transportation of oil and gas (mainly Crude Oil, liquefied petroleum gas, and Liquefied natural gas) by the Sea with concentrating on transport safety. Hence, a better understanding of these risks and hazards can contribute to decrease of addressed losses.This study is carried out on risks associated with maritime transportation of oil and gas starting with describing the general casual chain (dealing with causes, incidents, accidents and consequences/causalities), continuing with describing risk analysis techniques (including event tree analysis and fault tree analysis) and risk control measures/options, and finally implementing aforesaid investigations on real data from two areas; namely UK territorial waters and the Baltic Sea.In this study, the results of analyzing data from 1991 to 2010 in UK territorial waters revealed that collision and grounding were two most common accidents in terms of crude oil tankers, LPG and LNG carriers in which 44% of all accidents were equally divided between collision and grounding.

The Oresund Region, consisting of the Swedish county of Scania and the Danish islands of Sealand, Lolland, Falster and Bornholm, is widely recognised as a successful example of European cross-border co-operation. The purpose of this region building project is to form a cross-border fully integrated functional region in order to accomplish a high level of economic growth and employment.This thesis argues, by the means of discourse analysis, that the project can be viewed as a kind of post-politics, defined as a politics that under a neoliberal hegemonic consensus strives to manipulate citizens (and to redefine them as consumers and investors) into better economic performance.This manipulation is carried out by extensive discourse production aimed at convincing people that the Oresund Region exists, that it is a successful region, and that the people who inhabit it are also successful. The deliberate vagueness and contradictory character of the Oresund discourse is investigated and explained as a discursive strategy to incorporate as many views and desires as possible..

This study investigates the concept of regionalism in the context of the Swedish middle-level political arena. The used method is qualitative theory and two cases are studied: Västra Götaland and Norrbottens läns landsting.The aim of the study is to see what the politicans think about Swedens regionalization process by compare the views of politicans that function in a region and in a county council. Do they have the same vision about what constitutes a region and which advantages do they see in working in a region or in a county council? Also dimensions about territorially and sectorial autonomy on the regional level, presented by King and Pierre are investigated in order to explain the different regionala organs functioning accordingly to these dimensions.The empirical material that have been analyzed is taken from 17 interviews, from government writings and reports from the SKL association, Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting, about the topic of regionalization and the effects and goals in Sweden.The conclusion of the material is that there is common opinion among the politicans about the goals of a region and also about which areas that can benefit the most from the perspective of beeing a region instead of a county council. When it comes to explaining the dimensions of territorially and sectorial autonomy the results have shown that the region has the most both territorially and sectorial autonomy, which is due to the regions rightfullness to taxation right, which is high in the region and ensured by a strong catchment area.

Acidification is a central concept in the environmental debate. The effect of acidification of the soil is a matter of a decreasing amount of cations and thereby a decreasing ability to resist a supply of hydrogen ions to the soil. Acidification has gradually increased in the O horizon in Västerbotten over a 30-year period from the 1970th to the 1990th. The aim of this study was from inventories of The Swedish National Forest Soil Survey and The Swedish National Forest Inventory explain and quantify the acidification that has occurred in the O horizon of two regions in the north of Sweden. Data from SMHI, The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, has also been used.

The Baltic Sea, due to its special conditions, is a unique and vulnerable marine environment. There are many pressures that have an impact on the sea and one of the major problems is the extensive flow of nutrients from land. The most visible effect of the supply of nutrients is the annual algal blooms. One of the main sources of nitrogen and phosphorus supply is agriculture. Nutrient losses from arable land have been increasing as agricultural production has intensified. At the end of the twentieth century an increased awareness of these problems led to the formation of organizations such as HELCOM and Baltic 21.

Abstract and summaryThe glocal province of competence.The regional building up of knowledge at Växjö University and its choice of home region.The aim of the study is to give views on knowledge and to describe and discuss which home region Växjö University has chosen as its context. Taking my point of departure in the literature and in examples, I illustrate, discuss and examine how three different disciplines at the university have chosen their home regions. The disciplines are history, economics and biology. The study covers the last 33 years.The empirical study, with its focus only on regional matters, is based on four sources. 1.

The Arctic region has not been a topic of discussion or a reason for a conflict in the past, but with the development of environmental issues which has resulted in melting of the ice, so has the interest for the region developed. This has resulted in a conflict over the area, with five countries as main actors. This paper investigates the five main actors? goals with increased influence in the area, using the thoughts of Rational Actor Model, with states as utility-maximizing actors and foreign policy as the expression of national interest. Furthermore the paper investigates the means of getting to the goal, what kind of tools they use.The paper shows that all of the countries are interested in the economically benefits that are buried under the melting ice and the short cuts in sea routes that will be a possibility to use ones the ice melt more.

Background: Sweden and the rest of the world went through the biggest financial crisis at the end of 2008 since the 1930s. The major Swedish banks have goodwill related to their acquisitions inside and outside Scandinavia. Swedbank, SEB and Nordea has acquired in the Baltic countries and Russia, however Handelsbanken has established itself in Great Britain. The crisis in the Baltic countries led that real wages fell, unemployment rose, real estate prices collapsed and the number of borrowers who had trouble repaying their loans increased rapidly. All this led to the problem of impairment of goodwill in the Swedish banks that had expanded rapidly in the Baltic countries.Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the application of IFRS 3 in Swedish banks before, during and after the financial crisis, and to investigate the low-downs in the four majorSwedish banks in 2006-2010.Completion: The study is primarily based on the case studies by the examination of the annual reports from all banks as well as evaluation of the interviews.The authors have chosen to makea strategic choice of a small number of cases through the concentration on the impairment of goodwill in the bank sector of Sweden.Results: The result of this study is that there are problems for banks in implementation of IFRS 3 in practice because of insufficient information in the banks' financial statements.Generous estimates used in the calculation of impairment testing.

This study deals with the contribution of the genetic variant lactase persistence among Neolithic people from the Baltic Island Öland. Skeletal remains from twelve individuals went through DNA sequencing in order to find the mutation that allows adult individuals to digest milk sugar. The twelve individuals were chosen from two different Neolithic sites, where the archaeological and isotopic data suggest that the individuals from Köpingsvik were hunters and gatherers and the individuals from Resmo were early farmers. The individuals with the genetic variant lactase persistence can be described with selection and genetic flow.  Only five individuals produced results and the mutation was found in two of the subjects. All the individuals who were successfully sequenced came from Resmo, whereasno individuals from Köpingsvik yielded any results.

Previous studies have shown that economic sanctions have adverse effects on the level of human rights in sanctioned countries. The focus of research on the effects in sanctioned countries has left the question of whether economic sanctions can have a regional effect on human rights levels in countries not sanctioned in the same region. Therefore, this essay has sought to investigate if economic sanctions aimed at an individual state have a regional effect on the level of human rights in countries not sanctioned within the same region. A previous study found that economic sanctions in Latin America positively affected the level of human rights in non-sanctioned countries within the same region. This essay has examined whether the same result can be found in a region with a different level of democracy.

Kulturens roll i samhällsutvecklingen är något som diskuteras allt mer intensivt. Idag kan en tendens där man använder kultur som verktyg för att uppnå utveckling urskiljas i kulturpolitiken både i Sverige och utomlands.Denna uppsats syftar till att studera och beskriva Region Hallands kulturpolitik, med fokus på att urskilja hur man använder kultur som verktyg för att uppnå regional utveckling. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten i studien utgörs av två kulturpolitiska modeller genom vilka jag undersöker hur kulturpolitiken har utvecklats de senaste åren, samt på vilket sätt kulturen integreras i andra samhällssektorer.Materialet i uppsatsen har inhämtats genom intervjuer med representanter för de sex största partierna i Region Halland, samt med regionens kulturchef. Dessa intervjuer har tillsammans med en del sekundära källor legat till grund för uppsatsens empiriska del.Det huvudsakliga resultatet i denna uppsats är att det råder en stor konsensus kring kulturpolitiken i Region Halland, oavsett partitillhörighet. Kulturen är på god väg att bli en fullständigt integrerad del i regionen, och den har stor betydelse för flera olika områden.

This essay is a comparative empirical study of ethnic integration mainly of the Russian-speaking minorities in the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) in a post-communism setting. As Lithuania has a Polish minority that is as large as the Russian-speaking, they too shall be included in the study but not as thoroughly as the Russian-speaking minority. Thus the problem is: to what degree are the ethnic minorities integrated with the titular nations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? In order to study ethnic integration I have set up a theoretical framework largely based on Weiner?s theory of integration. The theoretical framework focuses on three dimensions: Citizenship, Identity and Segregation.

Turbot (Psetta maxima) and flounder (Platichthys flesus) are two species of flatfish both having their nursery areas around the shores of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The common brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) is a known predator on newly settled plaice (Pleuronectes platessa) in the North Sea area and is also found in the Baltic Sea. Experiments were carried out to see if the brown shrimp is predating on juvenile turbot and flounder, and if so on which sizes, and if the brown shrimp prefers any of the flatfish species, and also to see if there is a difference between day and night in density of the shrimp, i.e. when the fish might be subjected to predation. The results showed that predation decreased with size for both turbot and flounder.