Bovine Respiratory Syncytial Virus (BRSV) is a common cause of respiratory disease among young cattle. The virus causes severe losses; the herd mortality rate can sometimes be as high as 20 %. In this study the avidity (i.e the antigen binding force) of BRSV specific antibodies was measured to see if there was a difference between antibodies produced during an acute phase of infection and antibodies produced by earlier infected animals. A commercially available ELISA-testkit against BRSV-specific antibodies was used and an incubation step with 6M urea was added. The effect of the urea is that it breaks the weak bonds between antibodies and antigen while the stronger bonds remain intact. Four different groups of animals were included in this study; seven calves that were naturally infected, three acutely infected calves with known time of infection, five cows that were seropositive during several years and four experimentally infected calves that had been a part of a vaccine trial. The results of this study showed that antibodies produced during the acute phase of an infection had a low avidity and that the avidity increased with time after infection.

A mapping process is ongoing in Sweden concerning a phenomenon known as ?honour related violence?. The explanations of ?honour related violence? often focus on culture and ethnicity, thus establishing differences between the majority society and offenders and victims. Given that some scholars critique mapping for focusing on predetermined objects, my aim is to study discursive conditions for abused girls, who are constructed as being from within ethnic minorities, in relation to their contact with the Swedish welfare system.

 Problem   Are there any abnormal changes in the parent company's share price at the news of a spin?off.ObjectiveThe main purpose of the study is to investigate how the news of a spin-off affects the parent company's share price. In other words if the news of the Spin-off gives an abnormal return on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during the specific period of 1998?2008. In addressing this, the paper will also investigate the following sub sections: are there any differences in the abnormal returns in various sectors and what the reasons to perform a spin?off in the Swedish market are.MethodAn event study in which market data is used to measure specific events? impact on the value of the company and on the effects on the stock market.

Background: Having chosen to take a degree in international business, we have had many opportunities to meet people from different cultures. These encounters have, we believe, made our lives richer, but they have not always been problem-free. When different cultures come together, the differences inevitably become apparent. Being among friends, one can maybe laugh at these differences or it may be a good opportunity to get people to talk to each other, taking the time to explain why they do things a certain way. Being at work and experience these differences might not at all have the same ice-breaking effect - rather the opposite sometimes.

Syftet med vårt examensarbete är att studera vilka faktorer som motiverar fastighetsmäklaren i sitt arbete. Vi vill också undersöka om det finns skillnader mellan städerna Stockholm, Gävle och Tierp vad det gäller motivationsfaktorer och stressnivå..

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the attitudes of librarians towards young people's approaches to libraries and reading. The study also includes statements of the young as regards their own library usages and reading habits, as well as the attitudes of youth leaders. The latter are compared to the statements of librarians, and serve as referential frameworks. 28 interviews were performed, of which 22 with young people. The interviews and the following discussion were based on five themes; the library as a room, usages of the library, reading habits, the library as an institution, and library changes and developments.

This paper reports a study on the usability of e-commerce accessed through smartphones. There is much research in the usability of mobile interfaces and many sets of design patterns have been created but a few studies are available for specific domains, and in this report we focus on mobile e-commerce. In this study a framework is developed for how to design mobile e-commerce interfaces with a high degree of usability. Furthermore, the study also contributes a method to how other specific domain can develop a framework with general standards to work from when creating a web interface. By examining two sets of design principles and 14 design patterns, we evaluate which ones are critical in the design of a mobile e-commerce interface for achieving a high degree of usability.

AbstractThe purpose of this thesis is to examine if performing art is a good medium to convey human rights.To make this examination Riksteatern, The National Touring Theater of Sweden has been used as anexample. To bring more depth to the thesis and to be able to answer whether performing art is agood medium to convey human rights Riksteatern´s work with human rights has been examined andalso what kind of responsibility Riksteatern think they have to communicate human rights. Toanswer the questions the thesis have investigated Riksteaterns policy documents, webpage, differentprojects and performing arts performances. Moreover interviews with five employees at Riksteaternhas also been used to answer the questions. Different theories regarding theater, culture and learninghave been used to highlight what purpose art and culture has and to see what kind of qualitiesperforming arts has when it comes to convey human rights.

Hegel?s master-slave dialectic has often been used as a model or starting point for later theories about emancipation and subversive changes in society. But one often overlooks the fact that the chapter in The Phenomenology of Spirit ends in disaster, as Judith Butler remarks. Instead of realising freedom, the consciousness gets entangled in self debasing activities in its attempts to master the unrelenting principles of the abstract freedom. We get ?the unhappy consciousness?.

This essay examines the grotesque in Samuel Becketts wellknown play Waiting for Godot. The play is primarily seen as an icon of absurdism, and it is such not appropriate to examine the play as if it belongs to the litterary genre of grotesque. The primary purpose of absurdism is to reveal the pointless- and emptiness of existence. In order to illustrate these points absurdism will often make use of the common characteristics of the grotesque. With this in mind I present, within this essay, an eximination of whether Samuel Becket makes use of these characteristics to assist his portayal of emptiness in Waiting for Godot.A prior understanding of absurdism is required and i have as such primarly used Martin Esslins famous studies.The studies of the grotesque are mainly represented by two theorists.

The focus of this study is the ways in which the discourses of the three largest right-wing populist parties in Scandinavia ? Danish Dansk Folkeparti, Norwegian Fremskrittspartiet and Swedish Sverigedemokraterna ? are articulated and on defining which individuals they include and exclude. The discourses of the three parties are compared and analyzed to determine whether they constitute specific nationalist and culturally racist discourses. The problem is addressed by applying a social constructivist theory of nationalism and cultural racism, and specifically the binary opposition ?we? and ?them?, on a material consisting of the respective parties? member magazines from 2007.

What is a city? What do we mean when we describe something as urban? In what way should we build the city so that we can achieve a good environment for our own generation and for generations to come? These questions are constantly of interest and they are frequently discussed. It is also important to have considered these questions when working with city-planning. This essay contains a description of and reflections about the recurrent questions in today?s debate about the city and city-planning.

In this essay I have chosen to explore how computers are used in preschools. The study was done as a survey. How does preschool seize the children´s culture? In today´s society ICT and computers are a big part of children´s everyday life and reflects on their upbringing.Since I am using computers as a pedagogical tool in teaching the children at my preschool, I find this topic interesting to explore.Are the teacher´s using computers for an educational purpose with the children at preschools or are they using it in other ways?Do the teachers think they have the required knowledge to computers usage in teaching the children in a pedagogical way?What is the teacher´s attitude towards computers in preschool?The essay starts with a introductorial background section where I talk about my own experiences of using computers with the children in my preschool, and then referring to the society then and now, school law, curriculum, teachers' computer skills, media situation amongst children and young people, computer use in preschools/schools and health effects. I have composed a survey based on the answers of 50 teachers in 30 different preschools and in nine different municipalities.The result of the survey is reported and concludes with a part of discussion, where the results are put up against the introductorial background section.

In today?s individualistic society, I experience a need to bring forward the importance of collaboration. From a sociocultural perspective, I have chosen to highlight the positive and negative aspects of collaborative learning, with the intention of illustrating the effects for the individual learning and development. I have therefore made an interview with an educationalist, who?s been a teacher all her grown up life, with the intent of illustrating her thoughts on collaborative learning.

The recent development in several countries? legislation and best practice recommendations in relation to corporate governance in general and audit committees in particular have affected Swedish listed corporations in the form of the Swedish Corporate Governance Code and the coming EU-directive. This paper aims to discover what factors affected Swedish listed companies to form audit committees when this was entirely voluntary. We collected data from the annual reports of 121 Swedish listed companies and formed eleven hypotheses as to what factors we believed affected the voluntary formation of audit committees based on Agency Theory, economies of scale and circumstances specific to the Swedish environment. We then analyzed the data through the use of a multivariate logistic regression model.