The formation of sovereign states in regional blocks has become an essential feature in the world system. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate which motives and driving forces that affect the creation of projects of regional integration outside Europe and the Western World. By choosing the Latin American project of integration ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas) as a case of regional integration outside Europe and the Western World, the study investigates the motives expressed by the most prominent actors of the project, Venezuela and Cuba. ALBA is chosen as a representative and a unique case and through the consumption of the gramscian and the realist approaches, the essay defines two motives that affect the creation of projects of regional integration. As a way of investigating the actors? motives, the paper studies political statements, especially those of the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and official positions expressed in central documents and declarations.

By conducting a text analysis this study analyzes possible similarities in the portrayal of story characters between historical Norse myths and contemporary film productions. The chosen historical texts are two stories from Norse mythology which render a myth about Thor and a giant named Hrunge as well as the myth Trymskvädet. The selected movies are two of the comic company Marvel?s productions about super heroes ? Thor and The Avengers. Different categories that this study compares are how the characters are defined by their possessions or artefacts, the actions and the choices which the characters make, and also how their relations, roles and origins are being portrayed.

The aim of this study is to understand the situation on the Swedish Market for Drugstores and a creation of a new approach to marketing research, based on the thesis? methodological proceeding. With the help of different methodological approaches and different theories the study's purpose will be solved in an uncommon, untraditional way..

The purpose of this master thesis is to present a model that illuminates the important factors when deriving technical information from market data within a company. For companies to be able to become and stay competitive in the market, product quality is an important factor. Whilst good product quality leads to customer satisfaction and loyalty, lack of quality brings costs in service and replacements. To improve product quality, the developers need information and knowledge about what quality issues affect existing products. Most companies gather data from market about known issues, but in order eliminate known quality issues in new products; this data has to be transformed into information and knowledge.

This paper describes the redesign of a site (Kolonn.se). Some of the problems with the site were a lack of structure and a design that was unclear both visitor and search engines. The site now has a new design and structure that has been taking form in Axure prototypes that has been tested and applied into WordPress. The results are a site with a new main menu, new graphic profile and logo. Also SEO-adapted content such as correctly structured headers, meta tags, descriptions and key words that has been implemented in the content.

This research explains and describes the role music notations may play in an unconventional way. The aim of this research is to show that by balancing composition, interpretation and improvisation, the performer(s) could produce or open the door to a reservoir of new sounds, which could emerge through a composer?s awareness of the need to balance these elements. That act of balancing depends on the musician?s interpretation through their interaction with the music notation, with their action process on the instrument and each other.

Detta arbete utgör specifikation, implementation och utvärdering av ett läroverktyg sett till hur man säkerställer att en ensam utvecklare lyckas i varje enskild problemdomän. Detta nås genom en metodik för kravinsamling och specificering grundad i Co-Creation, designmönster och kodstrukturering som stöd i själva utvecklingen samt agil utvecklingsmetod sett ur perspektivet av en ensam utvecklare..

This graduation thesis is about baths and beach like places in city centers. It focuses on recreation and the creation and development of public, social spaces in the city containing water as a visual and useable element. The thesis is divided into three parts; background, inspiration and application. The background examines four factors which we consider important for the occurrence of inner city baths; water, the history of bathing, inner city recreation and social life in public places. A discussion of the (future) importance of inner city baths and beach like places' is then presented. The inspirational part is divided into examples of existing places and examples of types of places. The first is used in an attempt to examine the function and importance of inner city baths and beach like places as well as the opportunities and challenges associated with them. The latter contains a presentation of six categories developed by us to facilitate the planning of inner city baths and beach like places.

Political consumption is a manner of impinging politically that has become more frequent lately. Adolescents seem to be attracted by the idea of expressing oneself politically through ones wallet. The purpose of this analysis is to elucidate this essay?s participants? manner of expressing political consumption and analyze how they discuss motives against and for political consumption with a sociological perspective. To accomplish this, this essay will aim to answer the following questions: In what manner do the participants express their political consumption and what are their motives for and against political consumption?  In order to answer the essay?s purpose and questions, two focus group interviews have been made.

China is a unique market that differs from the Western market in many ways. Companies are not required to publicize financial reports, and furthermore a heavy focus on business relationship building can make it hard for companies to have high quality streams of data to get insights about their markets. For a consultant company to successfully enter the Chinese market and helping producing and technological global firms improving their insights on the Chinese market, the consultant company needs to understand which the important factors are and how those factors can help in creating value for their potential customers. To help the analyzing and consultant firm called Kairos Future, a qualitative case study was conducted on 16 different global companies with focus on industrial production. The case study was mainly conducted through face to face interviews with decision makers who had a broad understanding of their respective companies.

I got a request from Eleiko Sport AB regarding them needing help with trying to improve one of their products. The following examination project includes the principal- and primary construction reports within trying to make some improvements and optimizations on a stand for Kettle bells. I have in this project both made my own proposals to the stands legs, proposals on how to strengthen the shelf and also made an optimization of the original Kettle bell-stand. In this report, the project goes from idea to being built and analyzed in Catia, including the creation of drawings and material definition..

The secondary control must be part of the production plan, since the capacity will bedeployed in advance, just as the primary control. The activation of the new frequencycontrol should be preformed in Vattenfall's operations centers (DC) to minimizecommunication delay. Vattenfall needs to work towards a more holistic optimizationsystem. The main issue for Vattenfall Generation is not how we produce but ratherwhen, which is done with creation of bids. This is where there is the mostopportunity for improvement.

Our purpose with this research is to highlight that there is a scope for increased value creation in the experience room during concerts, and how value-enhancing strategies can be a competitive advantage for different venues. In our investigation of this we have worded the following research question: How is the perceived customer value affected during a concert in the experience room and its physical environment? With the background in this question we have identified three key concepts that we believe are the influence of the total concert experience which are; sensory experiences, interaction and identity. From these concepts we have drafted a number of propositions to test the reality by our empirical data collection. .

In this essay I examine the auto fictive self in Jeanette Wintersons Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. I do this through a close reading of the novel using Mieke Bals narratological terms;narrator, story, fabula, time and order. These narratological terms have been merged together with central themes of the book. I look at the readers understanding of the novel, the relation between fairytale and realism, symbols, intertextuality, the mother-daughter relationship and silences and I analyze these themes in their relation to autofiction and the auto fictive self.  Gemma Lopez Seductions and Narratives has been a key reference, mainly her theories on self-creation in narratives, and the construction of the self, trough language. The narrative is the place where the self can transgress and reshape, which gives the narrative a subversive power. I analyze this presumed power, and look at how the story shapes an opportunity for the subject to see itself.

In supporting an efficient way to gather and develop contact information for the Uppsala Association of Technology Physicist alumni, it is crucial to have in place an adequate and user-friendly system allowing the continuous collection and storage of such contact information. This can achieved by the creation of a website where alumni can enter information about themselves and where such information in turn is stored in a database. A database containing relevant tables has been developed in MySQL. In utilizing phpMyAdmin, the programming language PHP and Web Server Apache, a fully functional website to be included on the Association's website has been created..