Actors deliberately change their preferences, contrary to the assumptions of rational decision models. This study shows why, and to some extent how. Preferences are necessarily ambiguous and unstable. Rationality is a regulating myth which has had a profound influence on Western conceptions of what an actor is.The aim of this study is to help individual actors understand the theoretical grounds of their actions. The analysis provides tools for examining decision methods and preference changes.

 The purpose of this essay is to study the republican and socialist Northern Ireland political party Sinn Féin and to examine its legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens of Northern Ireland. Is it possible to have a political agenda that includes violence and still maintain legitimacy? The Irish Republican Army?s (IRA) military struggle was for a long time a part of the party?s political agenda. This strategy has been described as to have a ballot paper in one hand and an Armalite in the other, and successfully made Sinn Féin one of the province?s largest political parties.

During Spring semester 2011, Linda Engstrom and Malin Heder performed ?Golden Ratio?, a thesis which included 22.5 hp. The thesis followed the syllabus for the Degree Project for degree of Bachelor of Science in Innovation and Design Engineering (MSGC12) which was a unit in the Innovation and Design Engineering program within the Faculty of Technology and Science at Karlstad University.The client was Crem International AB, a company located in Åmotfors that develops the design, manufactures and markets coffee machines. The supervisor at the company has been Peter Larsson and supervisor at Karlstad University has been Monica Jakobsson. Examiner for the thesis has been Professor Fredrik Thuvander at the Faculty of Technology and Science at Karlstad University.Crem International AB controls a patent, representing a new technology to streamline and minimize use of energy during the coffee preparation and results in a good coffee quality.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how a group of students experience their learning when working in groups, and determine if they prefer to work individually or in groups. This study will also investigate what the students believe that they learn when working in groups. The study is based on these two questions:How and what do students perceive that they learn from working in groups?Do the students in my study prefer to work in groups or individually?The method I have used to retrieve information has been to interview four different students. The interviews were individual; I did so to get a deeper view of how students perceive their own learning in groups.

The metaphor has been among us since a very long time, but despite over 1.000 years of reflection it is still uncertain how one should understand the concept. There are few, if any, doubts how to understand the definition of metaphor, but is it possible to find a real distinction between the metaphorical and the non-metaphorical? In this essay I seek an answer to when a metaphor is a metaphor or when it is instead a generally accepted concept of how something actually is. I will use previous research on the topic from Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Ricoeur and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. These persons have given me a wide perspective and approach to the metaphor ? and when a word should be considered as a metaphor or not.

During Spring semester 2011, Linda Engstrom and Malin Heder performed ?Golden Ratio?, a thesis which included 22.5 hp. The thesis followed the syllabus for the Degree Project for degree of Bachelor of Science in Innovation and Design Engineering (MSGC12) which was a unit in the Innovation and Design Engineering program within the Faculty of Technology and Science at Karlstad University.The client was Crem International AB, a company located in Åmotfors that develops the design, manufactures and markets coffee machines. The supervisor at the company has been Peter Larsson and supervisor at Karlstad University has been Monica Jakobsson. Examiner for the thesis has been Professor Fredrik Thuvander at the Faculty of Technology and Science at Karlstad University.Crem International AB controls a patent, representing a new technology to streamline and minimize use of energy during the coffee preparation and results in a good coffee quality.

Children's Need In Focus (BBIC) is a processing and documentation system used in child welfare cases to investigate, plan and monitor interventions. The BBIC has had a breakthrough in Sweden and out of the country's 290 municipalities, there are 284 that use the system daily as a tool in cases involving children. The purpose of this study was to examine how social workers experience the BBIC as a working system and what strengths and weaknesses there are in the BBIC concept. We wanted our study to examine how the BBIC could possibly enhance the quality of childcare matters, but also how the BBIC could potentially increase children's participation in cases. We have performed qualitative interviews with eight social workers who work in four different municipalities where the BBIC is applied daily.

Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Brodsky is a key figure in Soviet Russian literature. Expelled from the USSR in 1972, he became a US citizen in 1977 and Poet Laureate of the United States in 1991. In this essay, I have sought to examine the state of exile perceived in Brodsky?s poems. Using Russian literary critic Viktor Shklovsky?s concept of defamiliarization, I have strived to illuminate the formal composition of this state ? its technique.

This study examines how the media reports on the Pride Festival in Stockholm and what news topics and themes it prioritizes. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the media coverage of Pride highlights political questions related to social and societal problems. One of the main focuses of the study is on how the media covers male and female homosexuality. The newspapers examined are the tabloids Aftonbladet and Expressen and the respected dailies Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. The study extends over three periods: 19-07-2010 to 07-08-2010, 25-07-2011 to 14-08-2011, and 24-07-2012 to 11-08-2012.Several key theories and themes frame the study.

This study's main aim is to contribute with an insight regarding how employees of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) experience religion as a component of development work in religious contexts. The study focuses on whether or not religion is given enough space within Sida's development work and if the policies of Sida are enough to cover the needs in religious contexts. To answer these questions we have interviewed six employees of Sida which holds experiences of development work in religious contexts. The results show a lack of knowledge and encouragement of these questions within Sida and that the interviewees experience religion as a complex concept. The study also shows that the interviewees find policies, methods and tools within Sida as inadequate to cover the needs of religion in development work.

The purpose of this study was to examine how the authorities in Sweden collaborate when it comes to discourage trafficking for sexual purposes. More specifically the aim was to find which directives and problems the work of the individual authorities constitute in and how does it affect collaboration with other authorities. The study was based on interviews with six respondents, which have experience working within this field. Three themes were identified: what is collaboration, different perspectives, regulatory frameworks and different fundamental values within the organisations. The study concluded that collaboration is affected by several factors such as the absence of knowledge about trafficking for sexual purposes and the laws which regulate confidentiality, difficulties in defining collaboration as a concept and the authorities different ideas about what have to be done in the context of discouraging trafficking for sexual purposes.

This master?s thesis report is a summary of the analysis performed together with ITAB Shop Concept located in Jönköping, Sweden. As a last element of the Master?s program at the School of Engineering, this 20 point level D thesis project has been the final work to bring my education to an end.ITAB Shop Concept expressed an aspiration that the Shop Counter Program B10/B11 should undergo an analysis to point out and possibly lead to improvement.Through interviews and data collection proposals for possible improvements has been drawn up and the analysis points out current deficiencies. By following the idea generation, proposals to solutions for every individual problem is presented.

Health and fitness are two controversial and not easily defined topics that affect people in our modern society every day. We believe that we can find a link between individualism, globalization and the stress concerning weight and appearance ideals. Our bodies have turned into a popular subject for the media, and there is no indication that the interest will decline. As the world gets more artificial, "natural" ideals are getting more attention, such as the concept of a strong and healthy body. But there is also a downside, for example with health issues such as cardiovascular disease increasing following the birth of high-fat diets.

Studies show that older is an increased proportion patients in hospital and that it is a patient group that can be difficult to communicate with because of older patients' often multiple disease picture. Relatives to the patient can be help for caregivers in the communication and the care of the patient. The aim with the study was to examine relative's experience of participation, meeting/support, accessibility and information on a geriatrics rehabilitation care unit. The study had a descriptive design and was designed as a questionnaire study. It was implemented on one geriatrics rehabilitation care unit on the countryside in central Sweden, belong to Uppsala University hospital.

I detta arbete undersöker vi likheter och skillnader av hur litteraturen respektive utvecklare beskriver begreppet agile. För att komma fram till ett svar på frågeställningen gör vi en litteraturstudie där vi genom att jämföra dem olika agila utvecklingsprocesserna tar fram kriterier för hur begreppet agile beskrivs. Därefter gör vi intervjuer med representanter för 12 olika företag. Resultatet från dessa intervjuer ger oss ett svar på hur utvecklare beskriver agile..