Our paper is a study about youth and their self-images. During our practical training period we found that the problems young people had always were connected with their self-image. We therefore wanted to find out what youth believe influence their self-image. The purpose of our study was to examine young people and their self-images in a perspective of the ecological systems model. Essential issues have been what self-images young people have, what they consider influence their self-image most, how they think they can resist influence from the environment and how they would like to be influenced by the environment if they could decide themselves.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate what distinguishes the views of staff at centres for learning as regards users? motivation at centres for learning in public libraries. The following questions were asked:? How do staff at centres for learning view the users? motivation to studies?? How do staff at centres for learning view causes for lack of motivation and obstacles for motivation to studies?? What methods do staff at centres for learning use to motivate potential users to studies and to market the learning centres? ? What distinguishes these views of staff on users? motivation at centres for learning in public libraries?The methods used in this study are: literature studies, qualitative interviews and questionnaires. Interviews and questionnaires were done with six employees at six centres for learning.

Managing credit risk might be the single most important business area for any commercial bank. The assessment of "good" and "bad" corporate clients is a important task for a creditor. A bad debtor is a corporate client with hardships in meeting the continous claims (interest payments) that a creditor requires. One way of evaluating or separating a "bad" client from a "good" client is to assess the propensity for the client to file for bankruptcy. This thesis examines 226 firms in the Swedsh market in the quest of predicting corporate bankruptcy.

This masters thesis aims to explore the branch libraries in Kalmar municipality and their relation to the Information and communication technology ICTsociety. How do they adapt to and assimilate with, the ICT-society? What are their roles in local social networks and do they make a difference there? To answer these questions, critical discourse analysis, CDA, as founded by Norman Fairclough is applied to four interwievs with branch library managers. Other theorists used are Michel Foucault, Chaïm Perelman and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A solid description of todays society on different levels is also given.

Detta examensarbete har studerat försäljningsprocessen vid leverans av kundanpassade system. Examensarbetet undersökte försäljning ur perspektivet nöjda kunder. Vid leverans av kundanpassade system beror kundens upplevda kvalitet inte bara på den direkta produktkvaliteten utan också på hur väl säljarna identifierat kundens önskemål på anpassningar och sedan kommunicerat dessa anpassningar till leveransavdelningen. Försäljning har setts ur ett holistiskt perspektiv, det vill säga, som en process som startar i de inledande kundkontakterna och avslutas med idrifttagande av leverad produkt. Under arbetet antogs, och motiverades, att leveranskvaliteten påverkas av att alla säljares arbete följer en etablerad och genomarbetad process.

The period of church awakening in Sweden during the first half of the nineteenth century, has had a great influence on the Swedish society. During that time certain persons are to be noticed. Peter Fjellstedt and Peter Wieselgren, priests in the Swedish Church, are among those who were of special importance. But even the British preacher George Scott and later the Swedish layman Carl-Olof Rosenius became aware of the importance of networking. They all felt a call from God to preach a message of redemption and restoration.

n this dissertation a comparison of two evolutionary methods for evolving ANNs for robot control is made. The methods compared are SANE with enforced sub-population and delta-coding, and marker-based encoding. In an attempt to speed up evolution, marker-based encoding is extended with delta-coding. The task selected for comparison is the hunter-prey task. This task requires the robot controller to posess some form of memory as the prey can move out of sensor range.

In Sweden, the County Administration board is responsible for improving the water quality in lakes and watercourses according to the European Union Water Framework Directive. In Västmanland county, where river Lillån is situated, the County Administration of Västmanland have the main responsibility for the aquatic environment in that area. The knowledge about the different watercourses in the chatchment of river Lillån is today limited. The aim with this study was to evaluate the ecological quality of River Lillån based on water chemistry analyses and benthic fauna investigations. The aim was also for the benthic fauna to compere different samplingsites and sampling methods with each other in order to see how the species composition changes in the river, and to see the advantages and disadvantages with different sampling tecniques.

No infrastructures today are growing faster then communication network. The requirement of being able to communicate in a fast and qualified environment to a low cost increases in line with the development and competition. Itera Networks is no exception when it comes to rapidly developing new and better network solutions for themselves and for their customers. With these requirements in mind their needs for an analysis of the existing communication solution becomes very obvious. This project contains such an analysis in which various studies of the existing network environment have been made.

AbstractThe research project Liberation, supported by the European Commission under the Environment and Sustainable Development Programme (Fifth RTD Framework Programme) aimed at developing a decision support system for ecological risk assessment of contaminated sites has proposed a tiered system including the triad method. This method integrates contaminant chemistry and bioavailability analyses with observed ecotoxicological effects in soil and groundwater. In this study the triad method was used to perform a risk characterization of a former surface treatment and metal industry, now used for the student union buildings of the Mälardalen University in Eskilstuna, Sweden. On the site, high concentrations of copper, zinc and nickel have been detected in the soil in a preliminary investigation of contaminant levels with XRF. For performing the risk assessment of the site according to the triad method, contaminant bioavailability, soil metal concentrations and soil toxicity were determined and an ecological assessment was carried out on four selected soil samples (one reference soil and three samples with low (B), medium (C) and high (D) contaminant levels). Contaminant bioavailability was measured through leaching (ISO TC 190/S7) and biouptake tests (DGT).

One of the distinguishing features of successful societies is the ability to adapt to change, bothsocial but also natural changes like climate change. Climate change is a complex, dynamic,non-linear process with a great deal of uncertainty concerning the time perspective, risks andconsequences. A combination of factors like climate change, geographical vulnerability, adensely populated and highly built up coast line along with factors like deficient handling ofsurface runoff and a large usage of ground water leads to an increasingly vulnerable society. Italso puts a greater pressure on the society to have preventive measures in place.The number of actors working with preparing society to the expected impacts of climatechange and variability is increasing. However more than half of Sweden?s municipalities donot consider changing climatic conditions when planning, and many times even allow theconstruction of new living areas in known climatically vulnerable areas.

The purpose of our study was to examine 13 to 14 year olds experience of bullying from a perspective of human developmental ecological systems. The questions at issue were: How do the young people themselves define the concept of bullying? Which own experiences do the young people have of bullying? How come bullying exists according to the young people? How do the young people experience that their surroundings view bullying? What do the young people consider that you can do about bullying? We used a qualitative method to collect and handle our primary empirical data. We did individual interviews with ten young people.The results of our study shows that the majority of the persons interviewed thought people bully because they have bad home conditions and that they are unsure of them selves. Many of the young people talked about three different groups in a school class: The popular, the less popular and the nerds.

In the future network-based Swedish Defence (NBD), attaining information superiority will be of great importance. This will be achieved by a network of networks where decision-makers, information- and weapon-systems are linked together. As a part of the development of NBD, we have performed a study of user interface design for a future network-based tool package for analysis of sensor systems, referred to as the C2SR-system. This thesis was performed at Ericsson Microwave Systems AB, Sensor and Information Networks, during the autumn 2002. A pre-study concerning the requirements of usability, trustworthiness and functionality of a user interface for the C2SR-system was performed.

The aim of the study is to gain a deeper understanding of how young people's current identity is affected by their criminal background. We also want to understand the impact of resources in these young people?s social networks (that is their social capital) on their life course and formation and reformation of their identity. The theoretical frameworks used (as a tool to be able to analyze the empirical data) are theories of stigma, identity and social capital. The empirical study was conducted using semi-structured interviews that focused on questions about the life-story of informants.

In order to understand the human impact on today?s remaining ?virgin? forest and to develop sensible management strategies for future reserves, it is necessary to know how these forests have developed. This knowledge can be gained by using forest history analysis. here are large areas of forests still untouched by modern forestry in the mountainous region in the county of Norrbotten. These forests are highly interesting study objects from an ecological and historical point of view.