A new type of chartered holiday, fitness holiday, has evolved during the last years and has also been mentioned in different media channels. Despite this, fitness holiday is a relatively new and unexplored phenomenon, which caught our interest to further explore this. The desire to travel on a holiday of this type has also increased. Therefore, a study about this particular phenomenon with focus on the traveler?s motives behind the choice to go has been done.It?s a qualitative study and most part of the data has been collected during a field study to Playitas Resort, Canary Islands.

With the increased significance of information technology (IT) in today?s society the term ?electronic democracy? (e-democracy) has gained much importance within the democracy theory. Naturally, there are several competing views on how the technology should be used for democratic purpose. One aspect of this is the somewhat revitalized claim for direct democracy in accordance with the hypothetical opportunity to finally realize it as a democratic system. The ideal of direct democracy combined with the almost total credence in the potential of technology constitute the idea of a ?push-button democracy?.

AimThe main aim of this study was to find out how teachers reflect on their work with developing pupils? interest towards mathematics in grade nine. As a teacher in mathematics, it is important to be aware of different views on interest towards mathematics and how it is possible to work in that direction. Since developing interest towards mathematics is written the in syllabus as criteria for teaching mathematics in grade nine, it is important to know and take an active role in finding ways to approach the issue.Main issues? How do teachers in grade nine reflect over their work with development of interest towards mathematics?? How are teachers? Beliefs Systems reflected in their work with interest?MethodThe main focus of this study was teachers? perspective on their own work on developing interest towards mathematics.

Due to increasing regulations regarding new diesel vehicles particulate matteremissions the new Scania truck, Scania Euro 6, has been equipped with a particulatefilter. This component effectively stores the particles in the exhaust gas but must becleaned in order to prevent itself from clogging. The filter is cleaned through aprocess named regeneration which is a thermodynamic process in which thetemperature of the filter is raised through fuel supplied to the exhaust gas.The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the development of improved controlstrategies of the temperature during the regeneration process through thedevelopment of model-based controllers. These controllers are designed in order tohave good performance in stationary as well as automatic regeneration.In order to develop these model-based controllers a model of the system isconstructed. The model is described as a linear thermodynamic grey-box model withflow varying parameters, showing good results in validation.The model provides a simulation environment during the controller design, which isfocused around the development of linear regulators with the exhaust gas mass flowas a scheduling variable whose size determines controllers? mode of operation.

Rwanda is one of the poorest countries in the world and about 70-80 % of the population lives in rural areas. The land is strongly affected by land erosion which makes it difficult for the agriculture and food production. Agroforestry is a system where tree plantation is combined with livestock- and crop production. The system provides soil fertilization and binds the soil together. Some of the trees used in agroforestry systems are also used as fodder.

The Annexin-V/propidium iodide (AV/PI) assay detects early membrane changes in spermatozoa and viability using flow cytometry. It is an objective method that evaluates a much larger number of single spermatozoa compared with the usual estimation of motility, the most commonly used method for routine sperm evaluation. In the present study four ejaculates from four stallions were used in a split-sample design to investigate whether and how the number of intact spermatozoa is affected over time and after incubation at different temperatures, either those recorded during shipment of stallion semen for AI (9 or 5°C) or room temperature (20°C). The Annexin-V results did not reflect the motility results that were monitored in parallel. While motility decreased over time, the number of spermatozoa with intact membranes (viable) remained unchanged for at least 21 hours following a short period of initial instability.

The Swedish stock-market gives investors an opportunity to benefit from the global growth while financing companies invests and contributes to a socio-economic development. Parallel to the ownership of the funds also follows a responsibility as companies in the funds affect society and the environment. The growth of savings in funds, combined with an increased focus on sustainability has developed SRI (socially responsible investment). Therefore it is interesting to examine whether responsibility is an exception, which only concerns SRI-funds or a general principle, which includes the whole Swedish stock-market.The results of the survey makes it clear that all the Swedish major banks actively works to integrate sustainability within the respective bank's business to achieve a more sustainable financial system. Thus concludes the investigation that responsible investments are a general principle on the Swedish mutual stock-market.How responsibility is integrated in fund management differ between the banks.

Image indexing research today is either conducted on a visual attribute level or on a higher semantic level, forming a semantic gap between the two. There is much to gain if research progress from the two fields is combined. Image retrieval using access points in both visual and semantic significations could improve retrieval and bridge the gap. In social media today, images are often the primary communication agent and the number of images on the web is increasing in an uncontrolled way. New and efficient ways to index and retrieve the images are needed.The purpose of this study is to examine if emotions could be a semantic access point for image retrieval and if folksonomy indexing is useful when searching for images that represent emotions.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the subject matter of visual communication in presentation brochures of two Swedish regions: Region Halland and Region Dalarna. My focuses are the following questions: what is the aim of the brochures and in what ways does the visual material relate to that aim? How can strategic communication be defined through a visual perspective and in what ways is it useful in the context of presentation brochures of the regions? What sort of communicational functions are specific for the visual material in relation to the written language of the brochures? Lead by these questions, I start by analyzing the brochures through a textual analysis and a social semiotic approach. The result shows that the aim seems to be both political and commercial, but that the visual elements relate more strongly to the commercial aim than to the political aim by the way they strive to present a positive image of the region. The visual elements work in strategic ways that I define as visual strategies.

There are several methods avaliable to find areas of interest, but most fail at detecting such areas in cluttered scenes. In this paper two methods will be presented and tested in a qualitative perspective. The first is the darg operator, which is used to detect three dimensional convex or concave objects by calculating the derivative of the argument of the gradient in one direction of four rotated versions. The four versions are thereafter added together in their original orientation. A multi scale version is recommended to avoid the problem that the standard deviation of the Gaussians, combined with the derivatives, controls the scale of the object, which is detected.

Projektet har genomförts i samarbete med Lokalförvaltningen, Göteborgs Stad.Eftersom behovet av lokaler i en stad förändras över tid efterfrågas en byggnad som kan användas till flera olika ändamål under dess bruksperiod. Ombyggnation av befintliga byggnader kan bli kostsamma och tidskrävande eftersom bärande komponenter eller fasta installationer ofta måste flyttas eller bytas ut. En flexibel byggnad som redan vid uppförandet förbereds för ombyggnation kan enkelt anpassas och användas till flera olika verksamheter. Att bygga mer effektivt och flexibelt minskar kostnader och bidrar till ett mer hållbart byggande. Syftet med arbetet var att ta fram en byggnad som genom enklare omställningsarbeten i byggnadens invändiga utseende kan fungera för tre olika verksamheter.

Plant Protection Products (PPP) used in the horticulture industry can be both chemical and biological. They are used for weeds (herbicides), insects (insecticides), and fungi (fungicides) and as growth retarders.Many horticulture workers get in touch with plants, treated with PPPs and many of these don?t use any protective equipment.The aim of this project is to illustrate the work environment hazards for staff working with greenhouse pot plants, after they have been sprayed.The method used was observations of the operations for packing plants. I studied the operations and took notes of how operations were performed and what protective equipment they used. I also took photos and asked questions.A literature study completed the observations.

The focus of our dissertation is masculinity which is often a topic of debate in today?s society concerning areas such as violence, sport and paternal leave. Male studies are a relatively new field which means there is a lot remaining to be explored. We have chosen to explore how social class reflects on male identity. The reason we have chosen social class as a variable is due to a focus in the general debate of identity amongst the social sciences towards identities formed through consumption in the world of global mass-media.

The aim with this paper is to investigate how the Social Democratic Party (SAP) deals with the question of economic migrants, or more specifically how the problem is represented by the Social Democratic Party, and how this representation has developed over time. The SAP's theory became recently contested by a competing theory that was caused by the predicted future demographic development in Sweden, combined with the EU's eastern expansion. The first factor contributed to the re-write of the theory, to a theory that saw economic migrants as a solution instead of a problem, in direct contrast to SAP's theory. The second factor was a direct threat to SAP's labour immigration policy. This leads to my second question, how did SAP respond to this pressure?The answers to these questions are achieved by using discourse analysis by applying a problem oriented theory on empirical material, constituting propositions, articles in mass media and parliamentary debates.

The purpose of this study was to explore the connection between substance abuse and completed/attempted suicide. Central questions were who the substance abusers who commit suicidal actions were. The study also tries to find out which factors that contributes to this behaviour and why it is so common amongst substance abusers. All from the point of view of three scientist and three persons working with treatment of addicts who were interviewed. The results of these interviews were analysed on an individual level with a psychological theory.