By studying a place or a phenomena research contributes to the creation of the image of the thing that he or she studies. Also, planning is seen as a democratic tool, a way to ?make? democracy. In order to see what democratic ideals that is being express it becomes important to study the research about democracy in Botkyrka. It is from this thinking this study about democracy and research has been formed.

This thesis is a product development project that was performed at Alfa Laval Tumba AB. In the past Alfa Laval have manufactured gas separators for engines where gas flows were cleaned from oil. A new business area for this kind of technology has shown to be the manufacturing industry where oil mist has to be separated from the vented air. Therefore a new and bigger design is needed to be able to handle the greater gas flows. A product like that would be a strong competitor on the market when the maintenance would be low in comparison to today?s equipment.During the project several concept suggestions were developed using customer interviews and research as input.

This paper constitutes graduate work at the landscape architecture program at the Department of Urban and Rural Development at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. The main purpose of this paper is to create a project from an idea to reality. The place for the project is the environment of Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi in the north of Sweden. Icehotel is a unique hotel concept and each winter a hotel, a church and a bar is built at the area of only ice and snow, and each spring it all melts down and returns to the Torne river. During the project a plan for the environment, in ice and snow, will be made and then a part of it will be built in January 2010. The purpose is to improve the outdoor environment with landscape architecture to enhance the experience of Icehotel and create an exciting entrance to the area.

In this thesis I try to examine the consumtion among people that are retired and therefore can be considered as being in the third age. This studie is carried out in Norrköping, with interviews of people living in or close to Norrköping. I have used theories about the third age, consumtion and the space of the city. I have examined the importance of the city space as a meeting place and where the elderly buy the things they need for there everyday life. I also try to examine if the things they buy has an importance that goes beyond the immediate use, such as communicating a persons status to others.

It may seem obvious that the urban space in our northern cities should be design to function and inspire throughout the whole year. This is not always the case. The urban space is often designed on a summer basis and the winter is regarded more as a problem then a resource and its potential remain unused. I have in this master thesis studied the impact of the winter on people and spaces and ponder on how to design functional and attractive places for winter. The project ends in a design concept for Broparken in Umeå on the theme "everyday winter day". The work with this thesis has given me, as a landscape architect, valuable experiences and filled a gap of knowledge that I had in this subject. I hope that this thesis can inspire Umeå kommun and others who are interested in how northern cities can benefit by its climate and develop towards a more complete city. The thesis begins with a chapter that present the subject from four different perspectives.

The aim with this Essay is to examine the two most read magazines in Sweden covering the areas of exercising, fitness, bodybuilding, diets and ?wellness? ?Fitness and Body. Fitness?s target group is predominantly woman, while Body is almost exclusively read by men. The analysis is first done quantitatively, by systematically categorising the contents of the magazines.

In this essay I describe the development of my prose work entitled Jorden a?r platt (Earth is flat). In the text we encounter a woman whose 40-year-old brother is diagnosed with lung cancer. The brother has been living a hectic life of drug addiction. The relationship between brother and sister is characterized by ironic distance, but also a lot of love.

Equestrianism is a big sport in Sweden with many practitioners. It is a dangerous sport and it is important for the rider to be aware of the risks, to study equine ethology and know how to handle the horse, to avoid accidents. Today most people have their first contact with a horse through a horseback riding school. Ölmstad rid- och körsällskap is a riding school that provides their pupils with a different kind of lessons. The lessons are 90 minutes long and contain both riding and horse-knowledge education.

The scope of this investigation is to decide how and to what extent the energy consumption of apassive house is affected by the users? knowledge and habits. To achieve this a literary study hasbeen made and as a complement the planning of a passive house was completed.The result of a primary study of the rules and regulations that effect passive houses in Swedenshows that the user?s influence on passive houses is a completely unregulated area. Even thoughthere is no regulation, a need for some general knowledge of the passive house concept has beenexpressed.To further investigate how the users? knowledge and habits affect the energy consumption and ifthere is a difference between different households? energy consumption , three main factors havebeen identified.

Recent statistic shows that about 28% of adolescents living in Stockholm drink alcohol at such a high level that their consumption counts as risky drinking. The correct term to use in this matter would be binge drinking adolescents.  In the more wealthy areas of Stockholm this group of binge drinking adolescents counts for as much as a third of the population. In contrast, the adolescents living in exposed areas do not drink nearly as much. Binge drinking adolescents in these areas only counts for 15%, nearly half as much as in the wealthy areas.In light of this the intentions of this study is to investigate which explanatory factors that can clarify the range-rated differences in binge drinking between adolescents in Stockholm.

The amount of electricity is limited in Namibia and the large distance between towns andvillages complicates the energy supply in the country. Therefore an alternative way to provideaccess to appropriate energy technologies is needed. The Government of the Republic ofNamibia (GRN) has adopted an approach of helping off-grid households by establishing EnergyShops in each region in Namibia and these shops are going to sell basic renewable energy andenergy efficient products. The Renewable Energy Efficiency Institute in Namibia (REEEI), theinitiator of this thesis, is coordinating the establishment of these Energy Shops.The main purpose of this thesis was to examine the needs of energy products for the Namibianpopulation and develop an assessment method for the Energy Shop in how to select appropriateenergy products already on the world market. The purpose was also to develop a method forchoosing an Energy Shop.

AbstractThis study is a critical analysis of three different views on human dignity and its function in the discourse of human rights: that of Christopher McCrudden, Jürgen Habermas and Elena Namli. The three positions are interpreted, analyzed and compared in order to see which is most reasonable.The conclusion is that Habermas?s and McCrudden?s view of human rights as legal reduces human dignity to a legal concept. Namli?s perspective of human dignity as a moral principle generates a wider understanding of human dignity and its function.

Social media has meant that organizations can engage in dialogue with their audience without journalistic intermediaries. PR 2.0 is a term that defines the new way for organizations to work with public relations in the new media landscape. The aim of our study is to examine how IKEA uses social media to create, maintain and develop their relationships. Furthermore, great interest is directed to the concept profile. This essay will examine how the stated profile IKEA has pervades the work on social media.

- To be trapped in a roller-coaster That ?s how some of the patients are describing the situa- tion of living with heart failure. To be stuck in their home not knowing if they will have to seek care today and not knowing if they will have the energy to attend that birth- day party later this week.Each year 2-3% of the Swedish population are diagnosed with heart failure, which results in 30,000 new individu- als with the disorder. Cardiovascular disease is rapidly in- creasing in the world and before 2030, people with heart failure will increased by 100%. Our improved living condi- tions and better health have allowed us to grow older and made us more dependent on other types of care, care at home.Today the patients are only looking for changes in weight and if they have excessive water in their body.

The purpose of this essay is to examine different conceptions of God children express in speech and image. The essay also concern how children's images of God are shaped in a secular and pluralistic society, such as Sweden. The children included in the investigation are in first and third grade in middle-sized Swedish town's primary school. In the essay, two methods are used, which is picture analysis and qualitative interviews. The material consists of 47 children's drawings and a smaller selection of interviews with the child's drawing as a starting point.