The aim of this study is to look at censorship and attempted censorship of books about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual (GLBT) people in public libraries in the USA. People from the public can submit formal challenges to a book at the library when they find the material offensive which can lead to those books being taken away from the library shelves. The questions asked are why GLBT- literature is being challenged, and sometimes banned, and how do the libraries deal with the challenges to the books.It is nowadays the people from the public, rather than the government or the librarians that are behind many cases of removal of books with homosexual themes. The study presents some of the fictional GLBT- literature that has been cause for much controversy in the USA. All the five examples mentioned are children?s books concerning GLBT- themes and are among the most challenged books in American libraries in the past twenty years.

Atlas Copco Tools develops and manufactures handheld industrial tools. Heat and surface treatments are used to provide the tools with certain properties. There are no routines for the choice of treatment or for how to specify treatment on drawings. Production documents that are sent for production abroad may not be clear enough. Some treatments are known as trademarks and there are no instructions for how to specify these on drawings and in CAD-models.The purpose of this master thesis work is to create recommendations for the procedure of choosing heat and surface treatment.

 The luxury market has steadily grown from the industrial revolution and onwards. Changes in society, trends and the increased living standards has enabled more people to consume luxury goods.The world is going through a major economic crisis at the moment. Studies shows that companies that have focused on added value rather than lowering prices has survived past financial crisis. It is also obvious that companies act very different during times of crisis. Adding to the problem is trends that point to a more careful consumption and environmental awareness.

This study aims to examine attitudes and conceptions of staff who work with mentally disabled persons, concerning normalization and gender. Six qualitative interviews with such professionals were performed and subsequently analyzed. Since the method of this study is qualitative, no claim of generalizability is made. The interview material has been categorized into themes by means of coding. The result of the study is presented according to those themes.

This thesis has the purpose of developing a normative theoretical framework based on different political philosophers and scientists view on deliberative democratic theory, discourse ethics and a modified norm of citizenship. This framework is supposed to contain the ideal communicative situation for people seeking asylum. Hence, the thesis argues that political influence is best practised through communicative rights, and that people seeking asylum are in title to such rights. We conclude that the standards needed to be met in order to reach the ideal are: translators, translated information, arenas for- or channels of communication, language education, and deliberative education. Once the framework is established we focus our interest on the Swedish state.

With this thesis I wanted to find out how a teacher-team in Stockholm reason about and whether they have specific expectations of male teachers in the early school years. Interviews with five teachers from pre-school to grade 3 and in after-school have shown that specific expectations of male teachers is something obvious. Are male teachers expected to enter into the role of male role models to contribute with masculinity and a male perspective? However, the informants are not able to define how a male role model is or should act. Men and women are often defined as two separate, and often as opposite, groups.

Concurrently with higher demands on comparability between companies, all Swedish listed parent companies are guilty to apply international accounting standards, IFRS/IAS, no later than January 1, 2005. In this thesis IFRS 7 Financial instruments: Disclosures, that treats information about financial instruments, is investigated. IFRS 7 aims to establish a good international standard for disclosures about financial instruments. The purpose of this thesis is to study differences in the interpretation of IFRS 7 Financial instruments: Disclosures between Swedish life insurance companies, problems ? if any ? that associate with the recommendation, the recommendation?s effect on accounting and the attitudes towards IFRS amongst the Swedish life insurance companies.

Kitron had wishes to be able to test and measure how disturbance affects their vehicle electronic units before they have been verified by SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden in Borås. This work started with the writing of a demand specification together with Kitron for a product PSQS, Power Supply Quality Simulator, which can generate some test pulses according to a standard for electronic units to Volvos vehicles. A design proposal was developed with the help the demand specification and was verified with the help of simulations. All electric schematics was designed with the guide of the design proposal. The pulses realized in the works of this thesis are those which Kitron experienced that they have a need to test in their own premises and which are possible to generate with the means available.

The purpose of this study was to investigate produced laser data from the new national height model's airborne laser scanning in Sweden, what quality it has and whether it can be used for forest management planning. From airborne laser scanning one can obtain information on forest variables such as tree species, height, diameter and basal area. Norra skogsägarna is the principal employer of this project and they wanted know to the quality of the laser data which needs to cope with their standards. If the laser data the quality required it can replace some of the operations performed by field planners. To examine the quality of the produced laser data a control tax assessment has been performed in 30 forest departments. This was done in an objective manner.

Aim: A business ratio is a measuring instrument that companies use in their financial report to show profit and progress. As it is today, there are no standards to follow that shows which business ratio to present in a companies annual report. Our aim with this report is to see if there are any trends in the use of business ratios by looking into how thirty growth companies are applying them.Method: To see what business ratios are used in practice, we have collected information from the thirty companies? annual reports. With help from the literature, we have created an understanding about the most frequently used business ratios.

Chlamydia is a sexually transmitted infection. The infection rates have increased in the last decade. During 2008 the trend rates declined in all counties and regions in Sweden. Chlamydia infections have a geographical spatial pattern differences. This is seen from the national surveillance data report from the Swedish Institute for infectious disease control (SMI).

Starting in January 2007, capital adequacy of internationally active banks will be regulated by the new Basel Capital Accord, International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards ? a revised framework, [Basel II]. The framework introduces for the first time minimum capital requirements for operational risk and encourages market discipline of capital adequacy by initiating requirements for public disclosure of quantitative and qualitative information on operational risk exposure. This thesis examines the nature, definition, management and public disclosure of operational risk in Scandinavian banks based on regulations and recommendations presented in Basel II. We find that the models currently available for addition of operational risk to the capital requirement do not reflect actual operational risk exposure of banks.

ABB and Prevas have initiated a collaboration to sell a system to optimize steel industry furnaces, called FOCS. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate possibilities for integrating Prevas FOCS and ABB 800xA.The result of the investigation is used for an implementation of a prototype of the integrated system. The study shows a general method that can be used when implementing two software systems. The prototype of the integrated systems is made with usability principles in mind. This is a very important aspect in order to create a good working environment for the operators of a steel plant.

Clarice Lispectors is one of Latin Americas most famous writers, and she wrote a number of books during her lifetime. Her novel Stream of Life (Água viva), which came out in 1973 and was translated into Swedish in 2007, is considered to be one of Lispectors most difficult texts to read. It consists of several fragments put together into one text; however the text has no traditional narrative or structure. It is the flow of moments that moves the text forward, as it is written down by the protagonist in the book.The primary aim of this essay is to examine how the protagonist in Stream of Life through different means, as the moment, the description, the word and the variations, creates an active participation in the formation of its identity. I will discuss the moment and its act of constructing the book?s circular structure, which is of importance.

This report describes the design and implementation of a multi-master, packet based protocol for small and tiny microcontrollers where resources are limited. The protocol was named "Tiny Controller Network" or TCN for short. The protocol is meant mainly as a control bus for automation and sensor acquisition applications but due to its flexibility can also be used for other purposes as well. It borrows some of its functionality and design ideas from the well known CAN bus and Modbus but also has a number of major differences like the use of standard hardware and time synchronisation. One of the key aspects during the design was the use of very little system resources and common on-chip hardware peripherals like a UART.