This degree project has been carried out by Oscar Adolfsson and Marcus Blomqvist, during the spring of 2010, both studying to become Bachelor of Science in Innovation and Design Engineering, at Karlstad University. The degree project includes 22,5 credits.The work is done on behalf of Etac Supply Center AB in Anderstorp. Etac is a company developing and manufacturing home health care products, with operation in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, England and Germany, and with sales worldwide. Bo Lindqvist, R & D manager has been the contact person at Etac.During the project the students has had a workplace at Semcon Caran AB in Karlstad. Semcon has also been helpful as a sounding board.The objective of the work has been developing a new, wall mounted shower chair, assigned for persons with difficulty to stand up while showering.Etacs requirement of the shower chair is that it should be able to support a user with a weight of 100 kg, the chair shouldn?t have any outrigger, optional should be armrests and backrest.

I Sverige har det alltid funnits ett behov av att förhålla sig till Ryssland och Sovjetunionen, uttryckt här i en debatt mellan de båda forskarna Stefan Hedlund och Anders Åslund i dagstidningar och genom litteratur. Min uppgift har varit att granska debatten och se vilka områden som belystes och vem som kom att få rätt år 2007/2008. Kärnan i mitt arbete är inte den faktiska historien utan argumentationen om samtiden. Där debatten om Ryssland är av det slag att den tål granskning mer än ett decennium efteråt. Rent geografiskt är Sverige ett litet land på randen av det ryska imperiet som spänner sig över nästan hela kontinenten, Sverige och de andra nordiska länderna är placerade nästan som en blockad av det ryska imperiets strävan västerut, en strävan som pågått i flera hundra år.

At the end of April 1986 reactor number 4 of the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl explod-ed and large amounts of radioactive particles were then released into the atmosphere due to both the explosion as well as the consecutive fire of the graphite core. A cloud of radioac-tivity was spread over the northern hemisphere, including Sweden, due to the prevailing wind directions. The radioactive particles were washed out from the cloud by rain and snowfall in some areas of Sweden and deposited on the ground. The deposited radionu-clides, primarily cesium and iodine isotopes, were later absorbed into the soil and taken up by the roots of the plants. Some of these radionuclides, like 137Cs, still persist in some of the terrestrial ecosystems at relatively high concentrations which lead to contamination of the meat of moose, roe deer and wild boar even today.The two municipalities Heby and Uppsala, in the eastern part of central Sweden, experi-enced a relatively large deposition of 137Cs which resulted in high levels of 137Cs in moose and other game.

Long transport of products is an environmental issue discussed to an increasing extent. The consumers are increasingly aware of how far our comestibles really have been transported. The increasing levels of environmental emissions are something that concerns people. The question is nevertheless delicate and many choose to ignore it. This is no longer an option.

Competence Portals are software tools that are intended to make it easier for persons that have had no previous contact to find and contact each other. The portals can address areas ranging from finding an expert within an organisation to the marketing of the competence of a region or a research centre to other organisations. The purpose of the thesis is to examine the necessity of Competence Portals in research-intensive organisations. Important characteristics of the information in such portals have been identified and used as a basis for recommendations regarding how Competence Portals could be designed. Furthermore, the thesis focuses on the task of finding a source of knowledge within an organisation.

There have previously been very few studies of forests on Seram Island in the Eastern Indonesian archipelago and none before on lowland limestone primary forests. The COLUPSIA project on collaborative land use planning has therefore chosen Seram as one of two project sites. The objective of the COLUPSIA project is to establish collaborative and equitable land use planning. In order to achieve its objective the COLUPSIA project aims to improve understanding of traditional resource management and how it interacts with governmental systems, as well as enhancing knowledge about tropical landscapes and ecosystem services.The aim of this study was to contribute to the COLUPSIA project through describing lowland limestone forest on Seram Island in respect to (1) forest structure, (2) tree species richness and (3) tree species composition. We set up 5 plots, each of 0.2 ha, at one site, Mawalai, and collected data on tree variables (tree diameter ?10 cm) as well as for some other life forms and environmental data.

This essay investigates how the chapters of the interwar and the Second World War have changed in the high school history textbooks during the period from 1944 to 2008. In the study eleven history textbooks have been studied, most quantitatively but also qualitatively. For example the number of pages and rows devoted to different subjects and countries are compared in the books over time. The result of the study shows that there are some big changes over time but in most sections there are also big differences between the books, which make it harder to draw general conclusions. There are a lot more names, pictures and dates in the newer books compared to the older ones, although the number of different names is about the same in all the books.

This paper is a literature study aiming to describe scientists newest theories andknowledge concerning the El Niño and Southern Oscillation. Firstly I have described the?normal? conditions with rising and sinking air in Hadley- and Walker-cells in theequatorial Pacific and from there moved on to explaining the reversed circulation patternsand higher sea surface temperatures (SST) leading to rising air and anomalousprecipitation in eastern Pacific constituting the El Niño phenomenon. My outermostinterest regarding El Niño has been the associated teleconnections, especially in nontropicalareas. I have described the El Niño effect on the Indian summer monsoon, ontropical cyclones and on storms and precipitation on higher latitudes.

What is sketching for a landscape architect? Does it involve anything else than the sketching process, the tool withwhich we work and carry a project through? The answer is yes, it is a process but one that includes many functionslike making notes in drawings or words for remembrance, a way to convey your ideas to others and to clearifyideas for yourself or together in a group. This thesis aim to give a broader picture of what sketches and sketchingis through many voices, and images made by architects, a psychiatrist, a teacher, and landscape architect students.The focus is on the hand made sketch and show many examples of what a sketch can look like.What is a sketch? A sketch can be many things, but the general consensus is that it is made fast and as a draft. Itcan be made in any material, two or three dimensional.

This thesis explores how art produced in the former GDR has been looked upon, handled and exhibited after the reunification of Germany in 1990. Swedish Art History has paid little attention to art in the GDR. The debate starting in the 50s between the spokesmen for abstract art and the defenders of figuration restrained for a long period the ability to look upon art from the GDR without prejudices. This led to a rejection of all figurative art in the GDR and sweeping judgmental attitudes, like it´s all ?kitsch?.

This essay is a comparative empirical study of ethnic integration mainly of the Russian-speaking minorities in the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) in a post-communism setting. As Lithuania has a Polish minority that is as large as the Russian-speaking, they too shall be included in the study but not as thoroughly as the Russian-speaking minority. Thus the problem is: to what degree are the ethnic minorities integrated with the titular nations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? In order to study ethnic integration I have set up a theoretical framework largely based on Weiner?s theory of integration. The theoretical framework focuses on three dimensions: Citizenship, Identity and Segregation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect the Nazi threat had on the swedish labour movement between 1932 and 1939 and to enrich what kind of pre-understanding they had about the fall of the Weimar Republic and the upcoming and effects of the Third Reich.Brought by the development in Germany, a debate and struggle took place in the Social Democratic journal Tiden over the meaning of concepts and there ability, in the hands of demagogs, to overthrow democratic structures. The concept of socialism and its concepts attribute play a major part in this investigation. By establishing fields of tension such as - nation vs internationalism, socialism in theory and in practice, political democracy vs evolved democracy and the diverse principles of neutrality, the first principle meaning the defending of national boarders, the other meaning not only defending your own country but taking an active part in defending democracy in the world - I was able to observe the movement and change of concepts within this fields. The result showing that the concept of socialism and near related attributes, in the hands of national socialists had undertaken a wast change of meaning, which applied in the Swedish debate threatened to undermine the power and force of the Social Democrats applied in the political discourse in Sweden. To defend itself and strengthening the Social Democratic hegemony as well as maintaining the goal of evolved democratic expansion, they were forced to win the confidence and votes of the middle class.

North Western Kungsholmen in Stockholm is confronting big changes and Stockholmsstad is planning that the area will be an extended part of the existing structure in centralStockholm. Dwellings and offi ces are built and the population increase heavily. Th isresult in a need to look at how public green areas can develop and be designed. Th epurpose is to design a proposal for a master plan of S:t Göranområdets public greenareas. Exploateringskontoret, Stockholm stad, who has initialized the task, claim thatthere is a need of clarifying and shield the qualities in the green areas of today and howto create new green structure.The problem formulations which are current in this master thesis are:? Is there a need of a distinct identity for the green areas of S:t Göransområdet? If so,how is this created?? How can the green parks and nature areas inside S:t Göransområdet be improved anddevelop?? How can the connections between the green areas inside S:t Göransområdet beclarifi ed and how can they connect to the surroundings?To get inspiration and information for the design this thesis include a study of theincluding parts in the design process.

The aim of this essay is to analyze the political interests of the United States Government in Turkey, from 1997 to spring 2007, using a qualitative method. I will also analyze any strategic changes during this period, by using theories of realism, particularly Structure Realism and Rational Choice. Using the Rational Actor Model (RAM), I will analyze how nation states such as the United States act in the political arena in Turkey. How can the US Government legitimize the support to Turkey and at the same time criticize there democratic deficit and their view on human rights. Turkey has been an American Military Ally, via NATO since 1952 and its demographic situation has changed since the Cold War.

There is a lot of research made on second language (L2) learning (Jesney, 2004). However the relationship between foreign accent, intelligibility and acoustics within pronunciation tutoring is quite an unresearched area (Thorén, 2008). The aim of the study was to analyze how a course in Swedish pronunciation affected foreign accent, intelligibility and acoustics among L2-learners of Swedish. A total of 41 people participated in the study: 16 L2-learners, 4 native Swedish speakers consisting a control group and 21 perceptual assessors with Swedish as native language. The L2-learners foreign accent and intelligibility were rated by the listeners before and after a course in Swedish pronunciation on an eight-point Likert-scale.