The research work performed in this thesis has been carried out at the Production Tech-nology Centre where the Thermal Spray research group of University West has its work-shop and labs.This research work has been performed in collaboration with the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), Hyderabad, India.First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to my supervisors Dr. Nicolaie Markocsan and Dr. Nicholas Curry for their guidance, great support and valuable suggestions without which this work could not have been possible. I would also like to thanks Prof. Per Nylén for keeping faith in me and providing me an opportunity to work at PTC, which is a great place to perform research.

This essay has the ambition to examine and compare Croatia?s and Bosnia and Herzegovina?s development towards a consolidated democracy. By applying Linz & Stepen?s theory on how to consolidate a democracy and put focus on political society, behavioral patterns, attitude and constitutional structure the purpose is to find similarities and differences between Bosnia and Croatia within this field.The focus of this study is to compare two similar countries that have developed in very different ways. By applying the theory and a comparative method the purpose is to examine why two so similar countries with so much in common have developed in so different ways?In order to better answer the question there are two part questions and these are:What difficulties, concerning consolidation of democracy, have Croatia and Bosnia faced since the democratic transition in the beginning of the 1990s?What similarities and differences in the area of democratic consolidation (with focus on political society, behavioral patterns, attitude and constitutional structure) are there between the two countries?As the analysis shows, the main reason why these two countries differ so much is that Bosnia is a divided country with different nationalities and each nationality only wants to realize its own interest and does not care about what is best for the country as an entity.

In recent years the concern about the future of the European Union and itssupposed lack of democracy, efficiency and legitimacy has increased. Thisconcern has resulted in extensive debates and the establishment of a conventionwith the task to create a draft treaty for a European Constitution.The aim of this essay is to study how the three theoretical concepts,democracy, efficiency and legitimacy, have been described and used in the debateabout the future of the European Union. My main interest is to see how theseconcepts are described in a debate regarding a political system that goes beyondthe borders of the nation-state. I have made a comparative textual analysis of thedebates taken place in Sweden and Spain during a period of over two years. Ihave, for instance, found out that openness and clearness have a prominentposition as democratic values together with equality and justice (in Spain) and theinstitution of accountability (in Sweden).

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how librarians andteachers work together and with the help of other researchtry to understand what influences this cooperation. The studyis based on the following questions:1. These two professional groups have differentprofessional identities and work in two differentprofessional cultures. How does this affect theircooperation?2.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) promotes the Ecosystem Approach (EA). In this thesis it is analyzed how the EA approach could be applied to regional management of coastal areas in Sweden. The aim of this report is to compare management for preserving biodiversity on a landscape level in two regional coastal areas in Uppsala and Västra Götaland respectively. In Uppsala, one of the plans consists of a previous nature reserve and in Västra Götaland, a Regional landscape strategy has been established. The ecosystem approach is used as a theoretical framework in this thesis.

Hjalmar Söderbergs romaner presenterar en hel del olika kvinnobilder. Det handlar om dom svaga typiserade och schablonmässiga från romanerna: Ellen, en förtyckt arbetarflicka, Dagmar som på något sätt försöker bevara husfriden till allt pris, Harriet Skotte en kvinna för kärlekens och tidens ideal. Det handlar även om de nya starka kvinnobilderna från perioden kring sekelskiftet: Märta som representant för den borgarkvinna medveten om sin tids moral, den okända kvinnan som skildras med en inre styrka som gör att hon håller emot den orättvisa könsrelationerna och samtidigt älskar sin man för kärlekens skull, inte lojaliteten, vi har Helga Gregorius som tar sitt äktenskap i egna händer och försöker styra sin framtid, och slutligen den starkaste kvinnobilden av dem alla, Lydia. Lydia, en kvinnobild som tävlar på samma villkor som männen, som är i makt över sin egen sexualitet och samtidigt lever ett liv som sedan länge innan hade varit vigt åt männen. Detta är vad uppsatsen försöker presentera, en ny syn på Hjalmar Söderbergs romankonst och hans kvinnobilder. Hur nära den verkliga samtiden låg Söderbergs beskriving av kvinnorna? Det är en central fråga för uppsatsen.

Turkey?s nearly fifty-year-old aspiration for admittance to the European Union took a crucial step forward with the signing of the Ankara agreement in 1996. The aim of this thesis is to examine the trade effects that evolve from the creation of a customs union. Our objective is to study how Turkey?s trade patterns adapted to the liberalized trade by examining the effects on resource allocation, specialization and welfare.

Hallgren, Emma & Ottosson, Ann (2008). Interaktion - En komparativ studie mellan I Ur och Skur och traditionell förskoleverksamhet rörande samspelet mellan barn och pedagog. (Interaction - A comparative study between ?I Ur och Skur? and traditional pre-schools, concerning the interaction between child and pedagogue.) Skolutveckling och ledarskap, Specialpedagogik, Lärarutbildningen, Malmö högskola. I vår studie har vi undersökt eventuella skillnader i mötet mellan pedagoger och barn i traditionell respektive utomhuspedagogisk förskoleverksamhet, I Ur och Skur. Vi ville lyfta fram de eventuella skillnader som finns för att förstå om och hur verksamhetens form påverkar mötet mellan pedagoger och barn och i vilken mån barnens behov och intressen tas till vara i verksamheten. Genom vår studie vill vi även lyfta fram den eventuella betydelsen av olika verksamhetsformer för tanken om en verksamhet för alla.

This essay aims to examine and compare Swedish and Norwegian social work with children. It is a comparative study between two social welfare offices, in districts with similar population and problems, one located in Stockholm and one in Oslo. The main questions were; how is the work organized and carried out, what type of help and assistance is available and what kind of discretion and powers do the social workers have. In our essay we used qualitative methods mostly based on interviews, vignette questionnaires and documents, but also written research. In our analysis we used modern organisation theory and street level bureaucracy to seek explanations.The two welfare offices have similarities and differences.

The Common Agricultural Policy the European union´s common agreement about the agriculture financial support. A major change is about to take place in the next 3 years. This reform affects the first 15 members as well as the 10 new members in CAP2. This study contains a future of how agriculture will look like in Sweden in 10 years. The study is mainly based on interviews with key-persons3 in Sweden. The first part describes the CAP-reform in theory, the second part the interviews and the last is a conclusion of the material. The future will see larger farm units.

In Sweden there is an integration policy and a policy for national minorities. The integration policy aims to integrate newly arrived immigrants (nyanlända invandrare), whereas the minority policy aims to maintain and strengthen the rights of the national minorities. The national minorities are though, at times, included into the integration policy, even though they hold a minority status in Sweden. This paper aims to, through discourse analysis, investigate the research question: ?how is the content of integration referred to, when it is related to immigrants, contra when it is related to national minorities?.

The society?s view of pupils with needs of special support in nine-year school has changed over time in Sweden. The teachers? views of the pupils have had an influence of how the special education process is designed. The aim with my paper is to make a comparative study of how special education teachers in rural schools and schools in Stockholm have designed their work with pupils with needs of special support.

Tax revenue is crucial in order for states to survive. States vary a lot in terms of tax revenue however, and different explanations are frequently debated among political scientists. Recently, scholars have argued that the variations in tax revenue among European states today can largely be explained by their ability to collect information about the citizens and their belongings during the early modern period (1450-1800). States that were early in acquiring this information in so called cadasters, could use it in order to collect tax. This fiscal capacity thereafter sustained in a path dependent manner.

In recent years, many efforts on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferations have been made by non-nuclear states and civil society. The dissatisfaction has motivated non-governmental organizations to pursue a ?humanitarian initiative? based on international conferences aimed at highlighting the humanitarian consequences of certain arms and nuclear weapons. This study examines the five key roles, according to Rapport et al. (2012), that civil society organizations have played in the establishment of arms control conventions, more specifically the Mine Ban Treaty, also called Ottawa Convention, and the Cluster Munition Convention.

Detta examensarbete har genomförts i samarbete med byggteknikavdelning på Ramböll Sverige AB, i Norrköping/Linköping. På företaget finns ett behov av att förenkla arbetet med vindlastberäkningar för hallbyggnader enligt Eurokoden. Idag använder företaget en förenklad metod som överdimensionerar. För att kunna göra en mer exakt beräkning helt enligt Eurokoden och effektivisera arbetet har det i detta examensarbete skapats en beräkningsmall för detta ändamål. Beräkningsmallen har tagits fram i programmet Microsoft Excel.För att också kunna se konsekvenserna av att jobba med en förenklad metod, har det utförts en jämförelsestudie mellan två befintliga projekt på företaget.