When I was fifteen I decided that I wanted to become a blacksmith. At the time of my decision I had been obsessed with fantasy for several years. I came to the conclusion that if I could not live in a fantasy world then at least I would make bits and pieces from it. That became the entry point of my fascination for material and techniques. I started with blacksmithing since it had an aura of magic or mystique in the material and in the making process.

Mobile Arts have a technical platform for handling maps and community-featured Points of Interest in cellular phones, where the users themselves can share locations with other users either in groups or public. Development of the platform regarding network communication has been included in this paper. The work evaluates different feasible business models regarding packaging the platform as a commercial application and also faces issues users have when using the product. Even if users found maps and POI interesting and cool in cellulars, the technical difficulties and lack of product focus during beta testing, were present. Therefore, the writers recommendation is more development of the platform and using a business model where Mobile Arts deliver to existing communities.

Data retrieved from airborne laser scanning represents a new source of forest data. Today, the technology has matured so that it can function in an operational environment. The aim of this study was to compile areas of application of laserdata in forestry. Moreover to analyze costs and accessibility of laserdata. The goal was to provide private forest owners information to support assessments of possible benefits of laserdata.

I denna studie har vi undersökt vilka strategier som är viktiga att beakta vid implementering av beslutsstödjande system. Vi har utgått från Alters (1980) teori, där han beskriver ett antal strategier som delas in i olika kategorier, och jämfört denna med empirin som vi undersökt vid tre företag. Vår undersökning visar att de olika strategierna inte beaktas och tillämpas i lika stor utsträckning. I vår undersökning har vi funnit att strategierna som ingår i kategorin utveckla en tillfredsställande grund är särskilt viktiga att beakta. Vi har även funnit grund för en kompletterande strategi som behandlar vikten av att identifiera, möta och säkerställa informationsbehovet hos intressenterna..

I have been studied Microsoft SharePoint on behalf of Prevas in Karlstad.The purpose of my work was to see if Microsoft SharePoint was what Prevas wanted as a replacement for the existing intranet, which they are not satisfied with today.My work was a kind of foundation for Prevas so they could make a decision in this matter.The work began with installing SharePoint at one single server at Prevas. We used a virtual technology (VMware) at the installation, which can be described as that we created two ?miniservers? in a bigger server, one for SharePoint and the other for storing the information. This kind of technology is strongly advancing. The main work consisted of setting up the structure for the navigation and designing both the portal and the local homepage for Prevas Karlstad.

From interviews with biology teachers and pupils, some important factors are presented that motivates and interests pupils in biology. Some of these are varied education, commitment of the teacher, narrative skill and individually reachable goals. Other important factors are practical application and connection to daily life, as well as actuality of the subject and pupils experience of the use of learning.Circumstance around teacher and pupils will influence which factors that has the most impact. It´s up to each teacher to make a decision which factors to be used based on his or her own qualities and depending on the group they will teach.Teachers and pupils agreed about factors that will cause an interesting lesson. The pupils emphasize that variation is the most important factor.

Approximately 60 million cubic meters of round wood are transported every year with trucks in Sweden and stand for 15 % of all truck transportation in the country. The big amount that is transported results in many haulage companies works in different parts of the country with different conditions to get a good flow on their transports. Today the transport pricing is very general and the payment consists of the unit round wood they are transporting and the distance of the transport. The purpose of this study were, from the freighter and the haulage company?s perspective, try to find ways to change the today applied transport pricing to more differentiated and compare them to historic payment of transportation.

Because society?s demand for quality, efficiency at low cost is constantly increasing, companies are increasingly choosing to invest new methods to achieve these points. Those who manage to find ways to improve their processes are often the companies that have the greatest chance of becoming a winning player in the market. BIM is a new method that can reduce the internal costs while increasing communications between different parties. However there is disagreement about what BIM is and its purpose.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the United Nation?s work and structure to find possible factors that can explain why some peacekeeping operations have achieved to mainstream a gender perspective, when others have not. This study is based on two cases; the peacekeeping operation in Namibia and the peacekeeping operation in Kosovo.The theory I have chosen to apply is feminism, a theory that allows an alternative explanation to this phenomenon. The conclusion is that there are three decisive factors: The leadership and its will to recruit female personnel to decision-making positions, the number of female employees and whether the peacekeeping operation cooperates with local women-organisations or not. All this is of great importance whether the institutional hegemonic masculine culture within the United Nation and its peacekeeping operations, is challenged or not..

The essay studies Romania and the Roma in the country as a minority from an Europeanization perspective.The aim of the essay is to study EU´s impact on Romania in general through Europeanization and to illustrate this Europeanization by studying the situation of the Roma in particular.The paper focuses on Romania´s Europeanization process and the Roma as a minority. It looks at how these mechanisms have affected Romania´s efforts to prohibit discrimination and to promote Roma´s rights.Heather Grabbes´s Europeanization mechanism; models, money, gate ?keeping, benchmarking and monitoring, advice and twinning is the framework for the essay. Besides this Claudio Radaelli´s definition is used because it is broad enough to cover different areasThe conclusion is that Europeanization has affected Romania in its adaption to EU membership. Romania has been affected by a top-down Europeanization process.Regarding the Roma the conclusion is that the mechanisms have pushed Romania to focus more on the Roma.

The foundation for this thesis lies in whether or not, and how, the body representation in printed commercials, specific products directed to the body (shampoo, body lotion etc.), has changed during the last fifty years. Four years have been chosen because of the changes in society that we believe might have had an impact. The commercials that have been picked out are the ones that best represent the general view of the body. We have found that the changes when it comes to body presentation has followed the social development to a certain degree, but it is difficult to say how much the society has had an affect on the body ideal in advertising. Representations of the male body is something that has escalated since the early 70?s, fifteen years earlier few commercials was made with male models, and the few there were, never showed more than the face.

This rapport is about how often private forest owners follow the measures proposed in their forest management plan. The survey is made in cooperation with the forest-owners association Norrskog. The private forest owners are relatively satisfied with the forest management plans and with the measures proposed. There are some differences between those who live on or near their property and those who live many miles away. The forest owners who live on their property are those who follow the proposed measure of precommercial thinning to the largest extent. That group also values precommercially thinned stands higher than thinned stands. The complete opposite is the case for the group that lives far away from their property. Almost all of the respondents thought that the forest management plan would be or had been a good help in the decision making about the forest..

This thesis examines the Swedish labour market with a focus on the immigrant part off the population. There are big differences between the immigrant and particular non-European immigrant part off the population and native Swedes. In the first part off this thesis I will show that immigrants in Sweden have a higher rate of unemployment, lower rate off employment, lower wage incomes, higher risk off unemployment and are overrepresented in low skilled, low status jobs. Even when controlling for different factors such as education level, knowledge in the Swedish language, age etc. a big gap remains.

I detta arbete studeras möjligheten att förbättra en metod för analys av biologiska sekvenser. En på senare tid populär metod för sekvensanalys är baserad på Hidden Markov models (HMM). HMM har haft stora framgångar i att modellera biologisk data, såsom proteinfamiljer, men används även inom bland annat taligenkänning. Existerande problem med HMM är bland annat långa träningstider och oförmåga att finna globala lösningsoptima.En metod för att försöka effektivisera träningsfasen hos en HMM presenteras och utvärderas. Denna är avsedd för att undersöka om modeller som på förhand kan initieras med hjälp av förkunskap i problemdomänen får lika bra klassificeringsförmåga som modeller som tränas på konventionellt sätt.Metoden tillämpas på två proteinfamiljer av relativt olika karaktär.

The purpose of this study was to interview different groups of people (preschool teatcher, parents and theire childen) involved in preschool about their view on outdoor activity and children´s motoric development, and how a preschool yard should be designed to promote childrens development.All parties regard outdoor activity as very important for the development of children. They also think that the outdoor environment today is good but that it could be improved by including some trees and hills. The yard should also contain soil, sand, clay and water. The children prefer grass on the ground over other substrates. This study also gives good indications to decision makers how to build new or to reconstruct pre-school yards in the future..