ABSTRACT Poverty, and in particular child poverty, is a serious social problem. Statistics show that the number of children living in poverty has increased over the last ten years. Earlier research shows that there are huge gaps in our knowledge of how the actors in civil society handle child poverty. With this study we hope to help fill this gap. The aim of our study is to look at how four different organisations working in the civil society in Uppsala perceive and handle child poverty.

The goal of this project was to create a web-based, crowd-sourced, correlational database, that easily allowed users to submit objects and receive correlated objects as results. The webservice was created in the web development languages of HTML, CSS, PHP and Javscript, with MySQL to handle the database. Simultaneous development was kept in check with the aid of the source code management system GIT. Upon completion, the service contained several HTML-views, the ability to add and rate objects, a per-object dedicated page with information parsed from Wikipedia.org, and a view with objects ranked in accordance to the preferences specific to the current user. Roughly a month after the beginning of development, the website was publicly launched and promoted in order to collect data, and improvements were added to the website as needed.

The purpose of this report is to evaluate different methods for identifying states in robot models. Both linear and non-linear filters exist among these methods and are compared to each other. Advantages, disadvantages and problems that can occur during tuning and running are presented. Additional measurements from accelerometers are added and their use with above mentioned methods for state estimation is evaluated. The evaluation of methods in this report is mainly based on simulations in Matlab, even though some experiments have been performed on laboratory equipment.The conclusion indicates that simple non-linear models with few states can be more accurately estimated with a Kalman filter than with an extended Kalman filter, as long as only linear measurements are used.

The present study aimed to replicate Tversky & Kahneman's' survey of 1981 The Asian Disease Problem. A survey was conducted on the Internet (N = 200). An identical problem was added, yet with The Swine Flu as the disease. This was done to be able to investigate if there are any order effects, and also if it matters whether the mentioned disease is fictional or real. The results show the same results as Tversky & Kahneman already noted; positively and negatively framed problems generate different responses from the participants.

The development for Skanska Commercial Development (SCD) during the last years has been positive on all markets and Skanska therefore plans on expanding their activity. Central and Eastern Europe has had a considerable economic development, what is assessed to continue during the next following years. Bucharest is one possible alternative in the CEE for a new establishment by SCD. However, the investigation before an entry is a process with many factors that need to be taken into consideration. There are today no models on how and what a developer as SCD should evaluate in terms of opportunities and risks on a possible new market.

In order to survive constant economic, environmental and political challenges, it has appeared to become increasingly important for a firm to recognize the significance of corporate governance. In this thesis, the structure of the board at Smartner Ltd will be outlined and the relationship between the board members and the CEO will be clarified. In addition, the aim is to analyze the corporate governance system at Smartner Ltd to be able to outline and clarify the distinct relationship between the CEO and board of directors..

This project is a learning CD-ROM production aimed at first-time parents. It is using both sound and images, moving as well as non-moving. The purpose of the production is to be an interesting alternative to traditional books. We have been looking at similar productions like drivers license educational CD-ROMs and encyclopedias for inspiration and ideas on how to proceed. In order to give the content some dynamics, we've also added the element of 3D-animated sequences. The application is supposed to be run as a simple executable file with flash embedded.

BackgroundIncreased prevalence of obesity in children- and young adults and risk for diseases related to obesity will increase the burden on medical care. It is important to identify early risk factors that can be noticed by nurses in the daily work.AimThe aim was to investigate whether children- and young adults themselves perceive overweight as a problem and if there was a difference in the measured activity levels between overweight children- and young adults in families with different socio-economic family status.Method descriptionExisting survey from the Obesity Centre at the Akademiska Sjukhuset were examined together with the results from an accelerometer, where children- and young adults activity was recorded, compared to their perception of how active they were. The results were compared using a statistical software program and compiled with descriptive and non-parametric statistics.ResultsThe results do suggest that the majority of children- and young adults experiencing excessive weight have a problem in their everyday lives. Nearly half overestimate themselves as more active than what the actual measurements with accelerometer demonstrated. Much time is spent in front of the TV and computers.

Over the last few years, many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the aid sector have grown and become important economic, social and political actors in Sweden. However this sector has also been hard criticized in terms of aid effectiveness. Church of Sweden (CoS), a well established organization in this sector, has faced new challenges in form of demands from their environment regarding reporting aid work. These demands have pushed the International Department of Church of Sweden into a process for adapting the structure in order to meet the new effectiveness requirements. Using both, Contingency Theory and Resource Dependence Theory as theoretical framework and a single case study as research strategy, this master thesis goes in deep into the description of the change of the structure of the International Department. This work shows how the different parts of the organization functions and what impact will these changes in the structure mean for the future of the organization. The analysis of the empirical evidence related to the theoretical framework shows that the organization responds to external demands through a more centralized structure than before.

At this point seamen have a lot of tasks of administrative character, beyond the traditional tasks aboard a ship. Due to the new conventions that are formed by IMO, more requirements are added which often lead to time consuming administrative tasks and documentation that should be spent on activities which are contributing to the ships safety. The issue has been observed by IMO that has through BIMCO done a study with the aim to identify and reduce administrative burdens at sea.The primary aim of this study is to find out if safety officers aboard Swedish ferries consider that SOLAS Chapter III, 8.3 och 19.5 regulations are administrative burdens, restricted to muster lists and documentation of training aboard the ship.The secondary questions to the study are if it is possible to remove, combine or change the documents and how much time can be saved by doing this. The question about timesaving could not be answered, because the values were scattered and could not be used for further investigation. The observed values were accumulated by a survey and the result indicated that safety officers did not experience the two regulations as administrative burdens.

At this point seamen have a lot of tasks of administrative character, beyond the traditional tasks aboard a ship. Due to the new conventions that are formed by IMO, more requirements are added which often lead to time consuming administrative tasks and documentation that should be spent on activities which are contributing to the ships safety. The issue has been observed by IMO that has through BIMCO done a study with the aim to identify and reduce administrative burdens at sea.The primary aim of this study is to find out if safety officers aboard Swedish ferries consider that SOLAS Chapter III, 8.3 och 19.5 regulations are administrative burdens, restricted to muster lists and documentation of training aboard the ship.The secondary questions to the study are if it is possible to remove, combine or change the documents and how much time can be saved by doing this. The question about timesaving could not be answered, because the values were scattered and could not be used for further investigation. The observed values were accumulated by a survey and the result indicated that safety officers did not experience the two regulations as administrative burdens.

At this point seamen have a lot of tasks of administrative character, beyond the traditional tasks aboard a ship. Due to the new conventions that are formed by IMO, more requirements are added which often lead to time consuming administrative tasks and documentation that should be spent on activities which are contributing to the ships safety. The issue has been observed by IMO that has through BIMCO done a study with the aim to identify and reduce administrative burdens at sea.The primary aim of this study is to find out if safety officers aboard Swedish ferries consider that SOLAS Chapter III, 8.3 och 19.5 regulations are administrative burdens, restricted to muster lists and documentation of training aboard the ship.The secondary questions to the study are if it is possible to remove, combine or change the documents and how much time can be saved by doing this. The question about timesaving could not be answered, because the values were scattered and could not be used for further investigation. The observed values were accumulated by a survey and the result indicated that safety officers did not experience the two regulations as administrative burdens.

This paper concerns itself with the controversy between marginal theory and empiricism during 1946-63, its main focus is the debate that followed R.A. Lesters empirical research 1946 who wrote a critical paper concerning the maximization-principle. It also concerns itself with the debate that followed on Milton Friedman´s essay on positive economics..

The development of IT systems is usually accomplished by some form of system development methodology. It can be performed as the waterfall method, where each phase is completed before the next begins. One of the reasons to follow a development methodology is that the process is more structured, faster and that the product will have higher quality. One risk of not using a system development approach is that the code can be unstructured and difficult to maintain.This paper describes an alternative method in which the development occurred without the use of any system development methodology. This has been possible because there was a clear goal of the program that should be developed.

Graphic profiles are a part of companies? brand expressions. The graphical values reflect the brand values the business wants to convey. They consist of different graphic elements such as logo, company sign, colour schemes, templates, rules, fonts, pictograms, formats and references to how different graphic elements should look, for example, business cards, signs and materials for websites. This thesis aims to examine why firms choose to replace their graphic profiles by studying their underlying motivations.