The aim of this study has been to, through a couple of chosen theories, examine in what way and for what purposes Japan has used its international aid system, How can the nation have been said to have implemented and acted in lines with the philosophies and principles set forth in the ODA declaration. What approaches, concerning positive and negative aid sanctions in the matters of aid to Cambodia and Burma, have been chosen and what have the motives for these choices been. What have been the determining factors of the outcome related to these sanctions - economic, political and/or matters of identity? I have found that a concern for possible decrease in economic profit and investment related areas, combined with a feared loss of political prestige and worsened diplomatic relations to the neighbouring countries in the Asian society, have come to overtrump the notion of advocating democracy, human rights, environmental and anti-militaristic issues..

The aim of this paper is to define the perceived consumer values that physical record stores create in order to compete with other distribution technologies. A qualitative method has been used, based on interviews with managers of three records stores in Stockholm. Interviews with their customers have been conducted also. The content has been analyzed with passable theories and the two sources have been compared when adequate.The conclusion of the study is that the physical record stores create many different consumer values, and that many of these are hard to transfer to other distribution technologies. One of the most important values for the consumer is that the personnel have a broad knowledge about music.

During the second part of the 20th Century celebrities became more commonly used for commercial purposes as they could enhance purchase intentions, word-of-mouth- intentions and change attitudes towards brands and products. Over the last few years blogs and bloggers have become more and more used for product placing and the bloggers? power over consumers? behaviour has grown rapidly. The aim of this study is to compare a celebrity?s and a blogger?s impact on consumer behaviour and try to understand the underlying reasons why they do have such power over their audiences.

This report is prepared in cooperation with Södra, Norra Halland SBO. The survey gives the members an opportunity to influence the services and also gives the staff at Södra a hint of the member?s demands.Södra is the largest co-operative forest company in Sweden with over 50 000 members and is divided into 31 areas. Norra Halland SBO is one of them.A questionnaire was sent to the members and 516 (or 53 %) of them answered. Of the respondents 68 % were between 60 and 69 years of age.

Managing credit risk might be the single most important business area for any commercial bank. The assessment of "good" and "bad" corporate clients is a important task for a creditor. A bad debtor is a corporate client with hardships in meeting the continous claims (interest payments) that a creditor requires. One way of evaluating or separating a "bad" client from a "good" client is to assess the propensity for the client to file for bankruptcy. This thesis examines 226 firms in the Swedsh market in the quest of predicting corporate bankruptcy.

Reliable methods to analyze food for the presence of almond are important ? not only for those allergic to almond, but also for monitoring the compliance with labelling regulations (EG directive 2003/89). Until now the Swedish National Food Administration has used methods like rocket immunoelectrophoresis and real-time PCR to detect almond in food. These methods are, however, not sensitive enough for protecting the most sensitive individuals. Therefore, the performance of a commercial ELISA kit was tested with regard to specificity/cross reactivity and limit of detection for almond both in solution and in different matrixes.The limit of quantitation was at least 3,1 ppm (mg/kg) in solution and similar concentrations were measured in bisquits and chocolate.

This Bachelor thesis examines the possibility of replacing an outdated, analog video recording system to a digital counterpart. It is key that the video and audio signals remain synchronized, generator locked and time stamped. It is up to nine different video sources and a number of audio sources to be recorded and treated in such a manner which enables synchronized playback. The  different video sources do not always follow a universal standard, and differ from format as well as resolution. This thesis aims to compare a number of state of the art commercial of the shelf solutions with proprietary hardware.

This thesis examines if commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) systems meet the needs in different types of organizations. This was investigated through a case study of a COTS system. The system is built for contact centers and used in different types of organizations. Contextual inquiries with users from six different organizations were held together with interviews with stakeholders of the system. This gave an understanding for how the system is used and the needs to be met in the different organizations were recognized.

Every year about 30000 people have a stroke. It is caused by either a bleeding or a blood clot, and depending on where the damage is, the patient can get different types of difficulties following after the stroke. About 40 % of all stroke patients sufferfrom some kind of speech and/or communication difficulty, like aphasia or dysarthria. As hospital staff it´s important to know how to communicate with these people, to get a deeper understanding regards their needs.Aim:The aim of this study is to out of a patient's perspectivedescribeexperiences ofcommunication difficulties that can follow after a stroke.Method:A content analysis with a qualitative approach was used to analyse five autobiographies.Results:The result showed in what way stroke patients experienced their communication difficulties, and how they felt about the hospital staffs treatment related to their communication difficulties. During the analysis two major themes emerged: suffering and wellbeing.

AbstractAim: The aim of the study is to analyze ten different columns written by Linda Skugge, in order to see what kind of rhetorical means she uses to get her message across. It is also to examine if, and to what extent, these means are of female nature, and to see what kind of persona Skugge uses in order to be trustworthy.Method: Rhetorical analysis of ten columns written by Linda SkuggeMain results: The study has shown that Skugge´s rhetorical strategies differ from the ones recommended in theories about female speech. Skugge writes with a lot of character and emotionally based arguments, which, according to the theories, is more of a male way of speaking. Skugge gives an impression of being strong, competitive and offensive in her character, but also reveals that her role is consciously chosen in order to receive respect and to gain power.Number of pages: 42Course: Media- and Communication studies DUniversity: Department of Information science, University of UppsalaPeriod: Spring 2005Tutor: Amelie HössjerKeywords: rhetoric, rhetorical analysis, feminist studies, persona, Linda Skugge.

The aim of this issue is to study how Swedish public libraries deal with the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of information in connection with public use of the Internet. The authors intention has been to find out whether the public use of the Internet has caused ethical problems for library workers and how the libraries solve situations when they consider their principles violated by library users. The authors study the debate on the issue in a couple of Swedish library magazines published during the late 1990s and they also give a few examples from the USA during the same period. They study the ethical principles and directives for schools published by the Swedish Board of Education as they claim that many of the public library users are students who bring along their ethical conceptions and thereby affect the ethical climate of the libraries. In their study the authors refer to ethical rules given to librarians by their trade union DIK and to the conclusions drawn from the hearing Good Ethics on the Net held by the Swedish IT Commission in 1998.

This thesis in Art History and Visual Science is about values to graffiti and graffiti artist Banksy. I have studied values relating to Banksy´s graffiti images through which context they are placed in and where they are located. I have selected two different images of Banksy as an example on the basis of a transnational phenomenon, where the images that circulate in the public arena by street art and other images and imported into the galleries and consumption market. My conclusion is that the values of the images are based on the context in which each room have its surroundings and that therefore the impression will increase. The public space context, signal availability and the white cube context indicates art, and the commercial context signals goods and items that can be bought.

The aim of the present study was to examine students' text comprehension in grades 4 and 6. Participants were 61 students without documented or suspected reading and writing difficulties, in grades 4 and 6. The focus was on texts designed by Bishop and Adams (1992), containing two types of questions: literal and inference questions, and three different ways of presenting the text; listening, silent reading and silent reading with the text available when responding to the questions. The texts have been previously used in research and as a tool for clinical, qualitative estimate of reading comprehension in speech and language pathologists? assessments.

In Montessori pre-schools early reading and writing is an important feature. By tracing sandpaper letters with their fingers and voicing the sound simultaneously the children connect phonemes to graphemes and normally learn to write between the ages of four and five. 24 sixyear old children who attended Montessori pre-school and 26 six-year old children who had not attended Montessori school were assessed with a test assessing their linguistic awareness.The result showed that the Montessori children were more linguistically aware than the children who hadn?t received any literacy training. The scores of the Montessori children were highest on phonological awareness.

This thesis describes how large Swedish companies finance their debt and identifies some factors that affect their decisions. The study is based on 10 well-known companies of which 9 are listed on Nasdaq OMX Nordic. The results show that the companies display several similarities concerning their debt structure and the factors which their choices are based upon. All companies in this study primarily use corporate bonds for their long-term borrowing, commercial papers for the short-term borrowing, and bank-facilities as back-up. There is a tendency that smaller companies in larger extent use bank-loans for long-term borrowing due to larger emissions costs when using market financing.