The purpose of this project was to produce signal relay stations that could receive information via 2.4 GHz radio and relay the information to a designated target station. If a relay station was located outside of signal range for the target station it was supposed to utilize other relay stations to transfer the information to the target station, so called multi-hop.The would-be application of the relay stations was orienteering. When an orienteer punches a checkpoint the signal stations would relay information of who punched the control, when it was punched and the checkpoint that was punched to the speaker tower in the goal area.The work resulted in prototypes which fulfilled the statement of purpose and was tested at an orienteering competition with satisfactory results. The performance of the prototypes was tested and found adequate for the would-be application..

In speech and language intervention, the ability to interact is seldom evaluated; rather intervention is evaluated in terms of improved testresults.  If goal-setting in intervention also is based on everyday communicative needs, the relevance of the treatment may be increased and intervention outcome may be implemented in the patient?s natural environment.The present study, as part of a research-project, is based on analyses of interaction and interviews to examine everyday conversations and speech and language intervention. The aim was to explore if there is a relation between everyday communication needs and goal-setting in speech and language intervention for people with aphasia. A further aim was to investigate if there are everyday communicative needs that may form goals for speech and language intervention.Two individuals with aphasia and one individual with both dysarhtria and aphasia participated in the study. Three speech and language pathologists and two relatives also participated in the study.

During 2001-2002 a prototype, IMIS (Integrated Mobile Information System) was developed at BTH (Blekinge University of Technology) to demonstrate how mobile IT-systems can be used in healthcare. The prototype was based on the activity theory of Engeström. An ongoing project started in spring 2003. The purpose of the project is further development of IMIS with special focus in the diabetes healthcare. Participants in the project are scientists and students at BTH, ALMI Företagspartner, Blekinge FoU-enhet, Barndiabetesförbundet Blekinge, Blekinge Diabetesförening, Vårdcentralen Ronneby and Vårdcentralen Sölvesborg.

Photography has a big role in information sharing today. Especially in the hotel industry where it is the closest thing a customer can get to the product that is being sold. This study intends to find out how you can make use of rhetorical models and techniques of photography to enhance the communication skills of photos of hotel rooms. The main focus was to understand the difference between informative and emotional photographs and what consumers themselves focus on when choosing a hotel, and also how to use the collected information to create a larger buying interest through hotel photography. Using previous research work and quantitative data collection method, we have concluded that the informational and emotional photography methods have obvious differences but also many similarities, and are most effective used together and that the hotel consumer is more aware of the images influence then we assumed..

The purpose of the study was to investigate, through an experiment, if positive mood promotes creativity and flexible thinking. Participants were a total of 93 college students. The main hypothesis was that subjects induced with positive mood would perform better than subjects induced with negative mood, at a test reflecting creativity. To further explore the implications of priming (subliminal manipulated moods), a neutral control group was included. The cognitive test used in the study was Duncker´s The Candle Problem, a test which aims to get the subjects to apply flexible and creative thinking.

A vulnerable group in society is people with ASD (autism spectrum disorders) or autism. This group seems to increase, mainly due to genetic factors but also environmental problems. Medical research has accelerated in the U.S. and Europe. The biggest problem for people with disabilities is the inability to communicate, both verbally and socially.

AbstractThe purpose of this paper was to examine preschool teacher?s thoughts about using Manual Signs as Alternative and Augmentative Communication as an aid for children in/with communication disabilities. The method I?ve used in the survey is qualitative interview.The three interviewed preschool teachers use Manual Signs foremost for those children who have a poorly developed spoken language. Manual Signs are used as a complement to the spoken language and the preschool teachers use it to increase the children?s power of concentration.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the conditions that prevail when companies put their marketing in social media with the purpose of creating a perception of the risks and opportunities it brings to businesses and ultimately how it may affect the corporate image and identity.Theories: The basis of the problem area are presented through a theoretical framework with the purpose of highlighting the notions of social media, communi- cation, marketing communication, groundswell, corporate identity and image.Methodology: To investigate the research questions this study adopted a qualitative approach in which the authors study the properties of a phenomenon in order to seek a deeper understanding of the problems we have presented. There is an exploratory approach to knowledge and the authors have chosen to conduct qualitative research interviews based upon three themes: driving forces, challenges and impacts.Conclusion: The study revealed that traditional models of communication are no longer applicable in social media. Companies are up for a challenge and must clarify their sole purpose when establishing communication in the social landscape. The general motivation for marketing in social media is making profit, however, building relationships is not a natural motive for most companies. The risks companies expe- rience is the exposure caused by social media and the study also reveals that this fear is firmly attached to their lack of knowledge of these new channels of communicat- ion and their primary areas of use which indicates that skilled employees plays a vi- tal role with their use of social media in their communication process.

The electrical grid needs to be changed in the future in order to manage more distributed and renewable generation and also to make it possible for electricity consumers to be more active and aware of their electricity consumption. This future grid is usually referred to as a smart grid. With the transition to a smart grid, new challenges occur. One method to determine those challenges is to perform risk and vulnerability analyses. InStockholm, the new urban district Stockholm Royal Seaport is built.

The main purpose of this study was to examine the knowledge in biology by immigrant pupils. My investigation is based on the pupil and I have focused on positive and negative factors that affect their performance in biology.The study is based on marks in year 2006/2007, a survey and interviews made with four immigrant pupils at a compulsory school in Västra Götaland.The study indicates that the result in biology of immigrant pupils is lower compared to Swedish.Difficulties in language, the commitments by their parents and their surroundings are the main factors that affect their results negative..

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine the information access of female Ph. D. students in connection with their situation as women and researchers within the academic setting. In order to examine this, qualitative interviews with ten female Ph. D.

The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of the immigrant-writer. By studying the literary criticism on four debutants, all of whom have been categorised as immigrant-writers, I have come to the conclusion that the critics tend to focus on the authors' otherness. By using postcolonial theory I've analysed the role as representatives of a supposed other reality that is imposed on these four authors by the literary critics. The theories of Pierre Bourdieu, especially his concepts of symbolic capital, literary field and position, have been used to contextualise these conclusions. Although the otherness that the critics accentuate seems to work as a negative symbolic capital in a bigger societal perspective, in the author's position within the literary field it grows their positive symbolic capital.

The aim of this study is to find out if there is any difference between how a state-owned company and a publicly listed private company communicate its sustainability performance in its sustainability report. It also aims to find out if the communication regarding sustainability has changed over time. The poll was conducted in two Swedish companies, Sveaskog AB and AB SCA, operating in the forestry industry and through a quantitative content analysis, the companies' sustainability reports from 2005 and 2010 were examined. To get a result, the reports has been examined by the GRI framework (Global Reporting Initiative) and an assessment of the communication was made based on a scale of 0-3. The results has been evaluated based on stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory and the growing interest in CSR. The analyses found evidence that there is a link between the form of ownership of the company and how it communicates regarding sustainability.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the function of TalkingMats in a group of people with Huntington?s disease, with main focus on theeffectiveness of communication. Four individuals with Huntington?s diseaseand their group leader participated in the study. The group was videotapedduring four sets of conversations; two with and two without Talking Mats.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att försöka förklara vad det är som påverkar tiden som en mamma ammar. För att undersöka vad det är som påverkar tiden som en mamma ammar, har en Zero inflated negative binomial-modell (ZINB-modell) tagits fram. Resultaten visar att det som avgör hur länge en mamma kommer att amma är: Graviditetens längd, mammans ålder, mammans rökvanor under graviditetens sista månader, mammans rökvanor samt mammans nationella ursprung..