New family stuctures are constantly emerging in society. Are these changes mirrored in foster care practice? The aim of this study was to explore to what extent homosexual families are represented when a child is given a foster home. The nuclear family has throughout history been assured a stable position both in society as well as in the foster care practice. During the last ten years a homosexual relationship has been legaly accepted through different amendents and it has also been more integrated and accepted in society.

The purpose of this work was to provide a better understanding of urea?s decomposition and byproduct formation in an SCR system on heavy trucks. In my experimental setup with TGA-DSC-FTIR (a combination of two thermal analysis methods and a method for gas phase detection), an FTIR method for urea in the gas phase was developed for the qualitative and quantitative determination of urea and its decomposition products. Chemicals such as urea, biuret, cyanuric acid and melamine of p.a. quality were used in this method development. Beforehand, there was no FTIR method available to detect these substances; hence, the aim of this work was to develop an FTIR method to understand the degradation chain of urea. The combination of TGA and DSC was used for analysis of different samples, where urea, biuret, cyanuric acid and melamine in varying amounts have been weighted in for various experiments in order to study the temperature at which a phase transition or reaction occurs, i.e.

This M.Sc. thesis is a material application evaluation commissioned by the advanced body engineering department at SAAB Automobile AB. The purpose of the thesis is to evaluate implementation of the innovative sandwich design material Hybrix into an automobile body. Today the most commonly material used in the body is galvanized steel sheets and by shifting material to Hybrix several problematic issues have to be dealt with. Hybrix is an innovative sandwich sheet that inherits thin stainless steel face sheets and a stainless steel fibrous core.

This thesis is a queer masculinity reading of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?s short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894). The analysis focuses on the dissonances, tensions and queerness that reside within the text itself. This has been done from my problem statement: How is Sherlock Holmes and John Watson?s sexuality and masculinity portrayed within the boundary of the text? What is being said, what is hidden, and what is dealt with silently? To reveal these queer parts this analysis has been focused around five themes: the late Victorian male, the Woman, countertypes and decadence, the homosocial sphere and sexuality.

Prescribed burning was commonly used for site preparation in Sweden to establish new forests until the 1960?s, when mechanical scarification was introduced. During recent decades the interest in prescribed burnings has increased again, mainly due to certifications of forestry stating that 5% of the regeneration areas should be burned on dry and mesic soils. The objective of the study was to evaluate actual influence of prescribed burning compared to other site preparation on stand stem density, growth parameters and tree damages for Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) after direct seeding and planting. The study also attempts to simulate growth until first thinning.

Summary Today energy prices are rising. As a result biomass fuel is getting more and more interesting. Wood chips is very popular, but also straw from grain production is on the table. Lunds Energi AB project a combined power and heating plant in Örtofta out of Lund. Wood chips is meant to be the main energy source, complemented by straw. In this thesis the transportation of straw for fuel is studied.

The need for roundwood transport capacity vary throughout the year. The need during a period is influenced mainly by the volume transported the period, the number of days during which transport can be carried out, seasonal variations in road conditions and the weight of the roundwood, and the origin of the wood (private forest owners/ forest companies). The need for transport capacity generally increase during the winter and in spring, after thawing. Lack of logging trucks combined with a lack of drivers for these trucks make it hard to hire extra help during periods of increased transport capacity needs. It is also very expensive to keep logging trucks for use only during these periods. In this thesis, two new concepts based on the partial transport by truck tractors have been examined, to find out the possibility for increased performance and flexibility.

AbstractTitel: The optimal salary system in the real estate industry Authors: Emma Bjo?rkman och Tere?se Emanuelsson Widstro?m Tutor: Tommy BergquistProblems background: The challenges companies face is to recruit, retain and motivate empolyees to work in a way that promotes the company. Skilled staff are difficult to recruit, more difficult to maintain and expensive for companies to lose but undeniably the most important key to success. How should the optimal salary system be composed to attract operators in a competitive market such as real estate industry, with a predominance of commission based salary?Purpose: To examine how the salary system is linked to motivation and goals in the real estate industry.

For a long time, economic activity has decreased and shows a downward trend in the food sector. To break this requires efforts to strengthen corporate position with the ability to meet market challenges. In the small producers is a great potential for them to be able to increase its profitability thanks to its ability to offer added value in the product. But to achieve this requires not only a willingness and creativity out of the ordinary but also factors that lead us into this report, current issues. The issues are related to marketing, brand building and the importance of developing a stable network. The study aims to investigate how small businesses operate in rural areas are experiencing the possibilities of support from various networks and organizations and that, from a business perspective, and also see which areas that they need more support in to achieve a growing business. The work has been followed by an inductive method, when we initially could not say anything about the empirical results.

The title of the study is: "Stories about helpful conversations - a narrative study of active processes in therapy and treatment." The purpose of this study was to examine clients' stories of what has been helpful to them in therapy / treatment. The study has been made in light of the ongoing discussion in society about the requirements for empirical studies within welfare areas. The choice to make a narrative study comes from the desire to have clients' own stories at the centre of what has been helpful in the therapeutic process. The author has interviewed and talked with four people (clients) who told us about their experiences of therapy / treatment. Narrative research methodology is based on people's life stories.

District heating covers around 80 % of the heating demand in apartment buildings and 10 % in single-family homes in Sweden. In the year 2010 the total input of energy to the Swedish district heating grids was about 70 TWh, which corresponds to 11 % of the total energy input to the whole energy system in the country. Through the combined production of heat and power the CHP-plants often reaches an efficiency of 90 % from energy in the fuel to produced heat and power. In order to keep the efficiency high it is important for the owners of the plant to have good knowledge about the plants performance at different operation points. Strängnäs Energi AB initiated this diploma work together with FVB Sverige ab in order to come up with a program for short term planning of the production of heat and power at the company´s CHP-plant.The work consists of three main parts.

During the early Middle Ages beech forests (Fagus sylvatica L.) spread out over large parts of southern Sweden. They had a crucial role in human survival for hundreds of years. For various reasons, the beech forest area has decreased since the 1600s. Spruce planted on former beech forest land was the primary reason for the decline during the second half of the 1900s, which made many worried about the future of the beech forests and led to a beech forest act in 1974. This study describes the background to the beech forest act based on parliamentary official documents.

Background and Problem discussion: Strategic evaluations are important as they providecrucial information regarding Swedish development assistance and recommendations on howto face problems and inadequacies found in the evaluations. Therefore, the follow up ofrecommendations is of great significance as well. Unfortunately, SIDA?s ManagementResponse system for follow-up of strategic evaluations has not been functioning in asatisfying way and needed actions have not been taken. Thus, Swedish developmentassistance has been criticised for the lack of implemented actions and the public has startedto question the work carried through by the organisations.

The information flow of today is endless and the advances in information technology astounding. In today's information society it is of utmost importance not only to be able to find the right information but also to evaluate the information. The expression ?information literacy? is not a new one but it has never been as pertinent and essential as today. Information literacy is however not something which is easily and swiftly achieved.Swedish youth education is based on problem based learning in which the students are expected to research for material, evaluate their finds and use their skills to produce a good written or oral presentation.

The biogas plant Kungsängens gård, owned by Uppsala Vatten och Avfall AB, produces biogas and biomanure from organic household waste, food processing waste and slaughterhouse waste. In year 2012, 4.4 million Nm3 of biogas were produced from 25 200 tons of waste. Before digestion all substrate is sanitized by pasteurization at 70°C in order to kill pathogens. Another method, integrated thermophilic sanitation (ITS), is of interest in order to decrease the energy demand. The method implies that the substrate is sanitized during ten hours in the digestion chamber, where the temperature is 52°C.