To complete an overweight treatment program is associated with better weight loss. Previous studies have in principle focused on drop-out from the entire program, not individual parts of a program. Factors previously shown to influence the patients´ weight loss results are: frequency of individual meetings with a professional, the lack of social support from family or friends, the lack of motivation and in a few studies vacations. In several studies the drop-out patients have stated that their reasons for drop-out were dissatisfaction with the staff and the program design. Drop-out has also been shown to be connected with difficulties in adherence to the diet.

In recent years, the penetration of new players on the telecom market hasdrastically increased the work pace, affecting both design and production. Inthis report the technical and economical potential of a DC/DC converterplatform is investigated, in order to shorten the time of the design process.This is done in comparison with the present discrete type designs. PowerIntegrations offers a product, the DPA-Switch?, enabling this.By developing a wide DC/DC converter platform based on the DPA-Switch?,many advantages are gained. The component count is decreased by up to48 % and the yield increases by up to 2.9 % which in all yields a costreduction by up to 43 % or ?390 000 for 100 000 manufactured units.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine if the realistic youth novels of today can provide support and inspiration for its readers with the purpose of dealing with own difficulties. I have examined four Swedish novels from 2006 and studied in what way and from whom the young fictive women get advice and support. In the background section of the essay I have made studies of how it is to be a young woman in modern society. It also covers a historical perspective of the modern youth novel and presents studies based upon reading and reader-response theory of young people.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how five childrens librarians in Ireland and five in Sweden interpret and implement the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in public libraries. This study is hermeneutic. Using a qualitative method consisting of ten interviews with childrens librarians and structural factors such as; library policies and laws; together with an insight into Irelands political, social and economical history and the historical development of childrens public libraries in Sweden and Ireland, has enabled us to create an understanding for the interviewees statements. Anthony Giddens structuration theory has been used for the analysis, helping us to determine how the duality between the structure, the actors and their action effect the interpretation and implementation of the Convention in librarian work. The result of the analysis clearly shows that in comparison to Irish librarians, the Swedish interviewees are more aware and have a better understanding of the Convention and how to put it into practice.

Göteborg Energi has a surplus of district heating during spring, summer and fall. The heat surplus is due to a constant production of waste heat from oil refineries and heat from waste incineration over the year. It would be desirable to increase the demand for heat and the uptime for the newly built combined heat and power generation plant, Rya Kraftvärmeverk. One alternative could be to integrate Rya Kraftvärmeverk with a pellet production facility. By producing heat, electricity and pellet in a joint process the energy use can be decreased.

A real option model is developed to examine the crucial factors affecting the agricultural firms? decision to quit the production and rent out the land to a company building a PV power plant. The public policies in support of investments in renewable energies have created the conditions for a market regarding investments in PV installations in agricultural areas.The decision to switch offers to the agricultural firm and to society several economical, social and environmental benefits, representing sustainability. However, PV installations in agricultural areas require the allocation of a certain land area. By assigning a part of land to PV installations, thereby the area of land allocated to agricultural production decreases.

In the digitized world many organizations experience a large flow of information. To sort and manage all the information can be difficult. Individuals may experience a phenomenon called ?Information Overload?, due to the fact that the information flow is too extensive. There are various reasons why individuals are affected by this phenomenon.

The first company to send TV-commercial was the American company NBC, it was in the year of 1941. In Sweden, TV-commercials were first shown in 1987/88. TV 4 was the first channel to send commercial in Swedish television.TV has the advantage of showing both sound and picture, which makes TV the strongest channel of communication to mediate a message between a company and the consumer. Although TV-commercial is the most expensive choice to mediate a message, it is also the most effective one. (Persson, 1993)Almost everyone is exposed to TV-commercial daily.

The access to good sanitary facilities is an important factor that elevates the experienced living standard as it improves hygiene and reduces the transmission of deseases. The ratification of the millennium goals by 189 countries demonstrates that this is an important international issue. Together the countries have taken upon themselves that the proportion of the population that lacked access to sustainable safe drinking water and sanitary facilities in the year 2000 will have been reduced by half by the year 2015. In Peru, the construction of sewage pipe networks to transport the sewage out of the direct human environment is progressing. The safety and sustainability of these systems can be questioned, since in Peru the sewage seldom receive any treatment before being emitted to a recipient. This is taking place in Picota and sorrunding villages as well. In the last 25 years several systems implementing small-scale onsite treatment have been introduced throughout Latin America in an attempt to give more people access to sustainable and safe sanitary facilities, reducing water consumption and taking advantage of the agricultural values of the sewage fractions while protecting the environment from its negative impact. In this study three different sanitary systems and the effects of different population growths were compared.

This is a qualitative case study of young womens? experiences of blogging about One Direction on the social media/microblogging platform Tumblr. The aim of this study was to find out what fan blogging is and why fans blog. We did this by creating an account on Tumblr where we invited young women between the ages of 16?29, who had active fan blogs dedicated to One Direction, to answer an open-ended questionnaire.

Our greatest interest within crop farming is to grow sugarbeets, that?s why we want to write about something new in this sector. We heard that a new concept had come to Sweden so we wanted to find out everything about this machine. This new technique was a self-propelled cleaning loader for sugarbeets. This machine is supposed to replace a loader and a cleaning machine when the sugarbeets is going to be loaded, cleaned and delivered to the sugerbeet factory. The cleaning loader picks up the sugarbeets with rollers from the pile, which is placed close to the road.

Background: As a part of a national health control program, Statens VeterinärmedicinskaAnstalt performs diagnostics to screen flocks for certain pathogens causing high mortality,morbidity and/or serious economical losses. There are several viruses in the programincluding IBDV (infectious bursal disease virus), IBV (infectious bronchitis virus) and NDV(Newcastle disease virus). Method: 96 serum samples were collected from different poultryflocks in Sweden and analyzed by ELISA, which are currently used in the health controlprogram as well as by a commercial prototype of a multiplex immunoassay manufactured byLuminex Corp., which is currently under evaluation at the United States Department ofAgriculture USDA. This 4-plex assay detects antibodies for the three above-mentionedviruses as well as antibodies of avian reovirus. In the context of this study the ELISAs run inroutine diagnostics as well as a REO ELISA were used as the standard for comparison.Result: The antibody concentration in serum from vaccinated chickens was high while theantibody concentration level in serum from not vaccinated chickens was low.

Conqueror for Indigo is production treated with an active chemical to maximize the ink adhesion.ArjoWiggins has found that another chemical, the candidate compound, would improve the propertiesof the paper. ArjoWiggins therefore wish to replace the current compound. To strengthenthe patent requirements for ink adhesion needs to be determined. A theory is developed to whychemicals with certain properties maximize the ink adhesion. Experiments are performed but theresults are inaccurate.

Wooded pastures are common in the agricultural landscape in Sweden, often rich in naturaland cultural values. It is not a well confined biotope but consist of a semi-open landscapewith a complex pattern and wide variation of tree and shrub coverage. The values in thewooded pastures have been created through a long history of management.One major threat to wooded pastures is ceasing management. Yearly and intensive grazinghas been demanded for several years in order to receive economical support. At the sametime trees and bushes have often been regarded as vegetal invasion.

Telemedicine is the use of information and communication technology to provide clinical health care at a distance. This approach is usually adopted to bridge the distance in rural settings, but it is also a method to meet demographical and economical challenges. Västerbotten, a sparsely populated county with an ageing population, is in leading edge when it comes to telemedicine. The purpose of this report was to examine the diffusion and the inventory of telemedicine in the county council of Västerbotten from a geographical perspective. To gain a deeper understanding of diffusion and inventory of telemedicine, my purpose was also to examine these processes from an international and national perspective.