In subsequent to Post-colonialism the African nations have dilated into different political directions. While some nations have established well-functioning democracies, others are still under authoritarian regimes. The aim of this thesis is to examine if civil society has an impact on democratic development in West Africa. Therefore the theoretical starting point is Putnam?s theory of social capital, but this study will also examine other possible causal explanations for democratic transition.This study will be based on a comparative analysis of Ghana and Guinea.

This study was built on the concept of Emotional Intelligence (EI) as an ability with four branches, to effectively: (1) perceive (2) reason (3) understand and (4) manage emotions. By closely studying the four processes of EI through eight semistructured interviews with psychologists, counselors, CBT-therapists and psychotherapists, a study of participants' stories from real practice was done and then analyzed and interpreted. The purpose of this study was to get the participants to describe and put words on practical experiences that occur with clients that correspond to the four domains that define the concept of EI according to Mayer et al. (2008) and find out about if their way of "doing" EI gets trained and developed after several years of professional activity. The results shows that the practitioners used all four branches of EI in dialog with the client, both intra- and interpersonal.

The group of elderly people in Sweden will increase significantly in the future and science point out that the future elderly people will not accept today?s standards and offers of assistance in today?s public elderly care. Therefore public elderly care stands before a significant challenge in terms of development that has to be sustainable. New research also points out that middle managers can be a great strategic resource, and a founder of success, in the challenge of sustainable development. The aim of the report was to increase the knowledge about what middle managers in public elderly care think sustainable development has to embrace, when it comes to quality and personnel administration, in order to meet the needs of the future elderly people.

The actual project presents the development of a testing rig for a steam engine. A short overviewabout the development of steam engines is presented, until arriving to the development of thepresent engine, which will require to be tested in different ways.The testing rig studied on this project (based on a Lanchester engine) will be used to testdifferent materials and layouts for the group Piston-Cylinder.The engine is a high performance steam power engine, which is going to have a highpower/dimensions ratio, what will lead to require high performance components and materials.An introduction to the testing rig is presented, and the entire design project is done in order toreplace the disappeared documentation of the current testing rig, built on the 1970?s. Also somemodifications done in the original testing rig are presented, as well as some detected problemsand their possible solutions..

The purpose of this essay was to explore how the concept of gender identity is constructed, by doing a discourse analysis of texts from two different perspective discussing intersexuals, and to define the areas where the discourses doesn't agree. The two perspectives were; feminist- and medical perspective.How are sex/gender identity constructed in the chosen articles?What themes can be seen in the discourses?My method was discourse analysis. A discourse can be described as a way of talking about and understanding a part of the world. The analytics task is to define the discourses, which the world is constructed by.The areas of conflicts have been found.

This thesis describes possibilities for Metso Paper to lower their costs of spray pipes for their pulp wash press TRPE, with maintained good functionality and quality.Information that can be used by competitors has been censored in this version of the essay.To find solutions, alternative suppliers have been contacted and asked to quote. There has also been a new spray pipe designed. The manufacturing costs of the new design have been calculated.The thesis also contains a concept generation of an alternative product to the spray pipes in installations where a high pressure washer is used.To be able to ask other manufacturers of spray pipes to quote, a demand specification based on the currently used spray pipe was made. This was then sent to two alternative suppliers.An investigation of earlier used spray pipes, and the currently used, shows that the nozzles are a big part of the total costs of the spray pipes. To attempt to reduce the nozzles high cost an concept generation was made to find the best solution for a new design.There was a request that it should be possible to change the internal brushes in the spray pipe without cutting and welding.

This thesis describes possibilities for Metso Paper to lower their costs of spray pipes for their pulp wash press TRPE, with maintained good functionality and quality.Information that can be used by competitors has been censored in this version of the essay.To find solutions, alternative suppliers have been contacted and asked to quote. There has also been a new spray pipe designed. The manufacturing costs of the new design have been calculated.The thesis also contains a concept generation of an alternative product to the spray pipes in installations where a high pressure washer is used.To be able to ask other manufacturers of spray pipes to quote, a demand specification based on the currently used spray pipe was made. This was then sent to two alternative suppliers.An investigation of earlier used spray pipes, and the currently used, shows that the nozzles are a big part of the total costs of the spray pipes. To attempt to reduce the nozzles high cost an concept generation was made to find the best solution for a new design.There was a request that it should be possible to change the internal brushes in the spray pipe without cutting and welding.

The purpose of this examination paper is to get an understanding as an upcoming teacher about how friends make an important impact on children?s identity development in school, their choice of friends circle and what kind of groups there can occur among them. With a deeper comprehension of these circumstances should an educationalist be more considerate and adapt his or hers education to prevent negative group formations and to be an outsider. To achieve my results I used a qualitative research method where I through observation handpicked eight students from upper level of compulsory school with different friend circles from two classes for further interviews. Beside this I observed students in their school environment for three days.

This study aims to illustrate the Leader approach and analyze the work of collaboration development within Leader. The idea has also been to describe some of the difficulties that might be encountered in this type of development work. By highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of this approach we hope to enhance the chance that future work in similar projects can be implemented more easily. Leader is a tool and methodology used in the European Union (EU) for work on sustainable rural development and it has been used since 1991. The purpose of Leader is that by supporting rural projects they will gain social capital and development in the rural communities.

The purpose of this essay is to study if and how five South African educators work with music as a special pedagogical tool in children's language development. To achieve the purpose of this study, two research questions were created. As method, interviews of a qualitative character were chosen.  The aim of the method is to give the educators the opportunity to think about and use their own experience before answering the questions.The result shows that the South African educators are not using music as a special educational tool. They rather use music as an everyday educational tool to promote children's language development. The result indicates that music in educational activities promotes children?s communication with each other.

This Master?s thesis is one of two parts of a combined project called Sustainable development around the Lake Victoria, the purpose of which is to investigate the importance of local anchoring and active participation in the work towards sustainable development. The present study aims to investigate whether men and women are empowered by the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) process promoted in their villages by the VI Agroforestry Project Masaka/Rakai. The study is primarily based on interviews with farmers within the project area and brings up a local perspective on the concepts sustainable development, active participation and empowerment. The study shows that to improve the farmers? livelihood and to create a sustainable development in the community, the farmers have to be actively involved in, and in control of, the process.

This study aims to describe the conditions, of which some youths who live in a segregated area in Sweden, see as important for their development of an identity. The study have been conducted in a manner where we put the youths own words in focus. The youths are in charge of deciding what they regard as important for their own development of their own identity. In this study we assume certain contexts, of which we base the study. These contexts include the society, the urban districts, the school, the family, and the language.

The project was carried out together with OC Off Course who manufactureand distribute mainly electric bikes.In today?s society, alternative sources of transportation becomes more andmore present and several bicycle sharing programs arises in major citiesacross the world every year.Something that doesn?t exist too much as of yet is bike sharing programsthat uses electric bikes. An electric bike is a convenient way oftransportation as well as a good way of avoiding traffic. With an electricbike you avoid having to sweat when biking over hills or when you need totravel over longer distances.The goal of this project is to develop a bike sharing station according tothe functions need to be met.This thesis Is based on Fredy Olsson´s methods principkonstruktion aswell as a couple of concept generating methods from Kenneth Österlin.From this, a number of sketches were made that later was evaluated inseveral steps in conjunction to a set of specifications. A 3D model of theselected concept was later made in CatiaV5 for a complete product..

The profit a company makes is dependant of its employees which means that their competence is important for the company to perform well. The middle manager has a central position in the organization and is expected to take on different roles. This probably puts a lot of demands on the middle managers and their competence. We want to contribute with a comprehension of how learning, competence and needs for competence can look at a middle management level. Furthermore we also want to find out what kind of strategy for competence development the middle managers want the company to use so their competence development can be facilitated.

The purpose of this study is to examine how pre-school teachers think about the importance of circle time in regard to the child's language and social development from a sociocultural perspective. Furthermore the study will include what role the educators? have during the circle time.To answer our purpose we have chosen the following question:What is the role of the teachers in the circle time?What are the teacher?s thoughts about the circle time?s importance to children's social development?What are the teacher?s thoughts about the circle time?s importance to children's language development?The study is constructed on qualitative methods, where we conducted structured interviews with six preschool teachers and observed their circle time to collect our empirical material. The study is also based on Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective which says that all learning takes place through relations and interaction with other people in the cultural context you are in. The results have shown that pre-school teachers are aware of the circle time?s importance to children?s development, and purposely plan the circle time to give children the opportunity to develop both socially and linguistically skills..