The technical evolution has a great influence on the public libraries. Electronic media becomes more and more common. This Master´s thesis is based upon the Swedish Library law 9§ (SFS 1996:1596) which says: Public- and school libraries should pay special attention to children and teenagers by offering books, information technology and other media, adapted to their needs, to encourage development of language and stimulate reading. From this point of view we have examined why the children´s departments in public libraries offer CD-ROM games which are based upon characters from the literature, how they are used in the daily activity and how they can contribute to the development of the children´s department.We have made literary studies and empirical investigations including interviews, observation studies etc. The results from this studies shows that both young and adults appreciate the CD-ROM games.

As energy prices skyrocket and the environmental issues become more frequently debated, interest in energy-efficient buildings has increased sharply in the past decade. Because of this, the interest to achieve high air tightness in building envelopes have once again awakened, due to a good air tightness contributes to lower energy consumption in several ways and to a healthier indoor environment.As the regulations for energy consumption and controls of achieved air tightness has tightened considerably in recent years, the work regarding sheets for air tightness changed significantly for construction contractors. This thesis includes a study that aims to detect what kind of manuals, recommendations or instructions contractors working according, and how a number of randomly selected construction companies in Halland, Sweden, are dealing with the matter of high air tightness of the building envelopes. The study also includes a knowledge inventory of supervisors, site managers and skilled workers, and what their opinions and attitudes are like towards work regarding the sheets of air tightness. The results have been compared with a similar survey dated to 2004, conducted by the SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden in collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology.

This report tries to discuss the concept of social sustainability; what it means and how residential development can be made more socially sustainable. This is done by interviewing several and various representatives in JM AB, the municipality of Uppsala and residents of Åriket to explore how JM AB as a housing developer and the municipality are working with issues regarding social sustainability and what the residents in one of the new housing projects themselves think of these issues. The result of these interviews will be compared and analyzed with the prospect of finding common variables and hopefully ways of improvement.This will result in our own recommendations of areas of improvement either by broad initiatives or specific actions to increase the social sustainability. Areas such as meeting places, sustainable functions and joint efforts between different parties. During the work on the report we come in contact with several other areas of interest that we are not able to process ourselves and therefore recommend them for future studies..

Fuel produced from renewable resources is of big interest. In this project the difference between a few different renewable materials are compared on the matter of environmental load when ethanol is produced. The renewable materials that are compared are Salix, straw and reed canary-grass (rörflen). The cellulose in the material is cut down to small pieces and then hydrolysed so that the sugar from the cellulose can be fermented into ethanol. Tha amount of ethanols that is studied in this work is the smount of ethanol needed to cultivate 1000 ha. The functional unit in the report is 1000 ha.

Through extensive research it has shown that today?s sail boat owners are very frustrated concerning the limited choice of engine alternatives offered by today?s market. Besides rising fuel-costs, environmental awareness is very important in today?s society. Hence it is vital to find alternative environmental-friendly motors and replace combustion-engines. Zilent Ocean is an extensive project within Development engineering program at Halmstad University.

The environmental monitoring in Sweden has been developed by several different parties and is now being coordinated and made more effective in order to meet the current demands on high quality information regarding the state of the environment. Sweden has been divided into five different water districts based on watershed areas because of requirements in the Water Directive of the EU. In Sweden there are two common types of environmental monitoring programs used to gather information on changes in time and in space. Currently both these two types are used for lakes in the water district of the western sea but only one is used for watersheds. The purpose of this report is to supply basic information regarding the possible need for a second environmental monitoring program for watersheds in order to better describe the spatial variation within the district as well as to determine the number of samples necessary in order to describe the district over time and space.

A growing number of Swedish forest owners are choosing to certify their forestry. However, there appears to be a lack of field surveys which describe differences between certified and non-certified forests concerning the degree of completed environmental considerations. In order to know to what extent certified forests contribute towards improved environmental consideration, we need studies on how large the difference is in relation to non-certified forests.Differences between certified and non-certified forest clearings were quantified through an inventory of the number of retention trees, dead trees and snags. The result showed that the retained number of the investigated parameters varied greatly between individual clearings, regardless of certification status. However, the results suggested that the certified clearings had an average higher incidence ofthe investigated parameters.

This study explores Environmental Storytelling techniques and whether these can beused in combination with each other to lead a player through a game scene in aspecific pattern, affect the player?s narrative and exploratory view and explorewhether Self-paced Exploration can be combined with these techniques.It is a qualitative study conducted by six gaming sessions with accompanyinginterviews in which six people get to play one of three versions of the same gamescene. The only differences between the scenes are the different guidance techniquesused. The informants' movement patterns are identified and interviews recorded byaudio, as well as screen recording. The results shows that Environmental Storytellingtechniques can very well be used to control the player's exploration patterns, bothnarratively and navigation purposes and Self-paced Exploration can be utilized to agreater efficiency in combination with these..

It?s not for nothing the time we live in is often referred to as the age of information. Children and young adults who grow up I today?s society have greater access to facts and opinions than any earlier generations. This also applies to popular culture that during the last couple of decades have taken new expressions that no one could have ever dreamed of and more time goes to the consumption of it via visits to the cinema, television and computers.

This Bachelor's thesis in Environmental Science studies the quality of an index of performance measurement of Swedish municipalities' sustainability governance offered by the environmental magazine Miljöaktuellt. Executed for six consecutive years, this evaluation is arguably the most comprehensive and widely spread local sustainability assessment in Sweden. Contextualizing this quantitative measurement tool in the paradigm of New Public Management, the research questions posed are: 'to what extent does the index employed by Miljöaktuellt correspond to the requirements of a set of quality criteria for sustainability assessment?' and 'is the index appropriate as a measure of, or a goal for, Swedish municipalities' internal sustainability efforts?' Through the perspective of evaluation theory, Miljöaktuellt's index is seen as a performance evaluation, thus categorizing this study as a meta-evaluation. Through a qualitative thematic approach, the index is analyzed using the 8 BellagioSTAMP-principles that were developed as tools for assessing quality of sustainability assessments as themes for the analysis.

Within process or manufacturing industries, the production of goods and services or the products themselves may have negative side effects such as pollution. An important task for environmental policy is to control and limit these pollutions, for example via regulatory measures. Although, the efficiency of such measures vary greatly between different industries and an increasingly important task for environmental policy is then to encourage companies to engage in environmentally motivated innovation. Governments can utilize other measures than regulation to indirectly decrease pollution. This thesis aims to analyze such activities and how it affects the innovativeness of wastewater treatment, refrigeration and automobile manufacturing industries.

Ethanol fuel is a biofuel, which been widely reported in the public debate and on the fuel market the last years. Ethanol is sold as both E85 and as a five percent admixture of all petrol sold in Sweden. Research studies on ethanol fuel often focus on environmental issues surrounding the production and utilization of ethanol as a fuel, and omits the private and business aspects of the subject. The purpose of this study is to illustrate the economics of ethanol as a fuel. How the Swedish market for ethanol is and how it evolved over time and what the future prospects are.

Abstract This master thesis is a result of the work thas was done for my entry in the international architectural competition Urban spaces and urban life in Ørestad South, that was announced by Ørestadselskabet on the 31st of October 2006. The project work lasted from early November until the deadline on 14th of February. In addition to the proposal that was handed in, the master thesis consists of a number of reflections about the work that was done and design work in general. The proposal is an answer to a not that evident task. One would expect that the assigment was clearly defined in the brief of the competition like this. And so it seems to do but to define the real assignment and join your own aims to it from such an extensive brief can be quite time consuming. Why do architects participate and what is an architectural competition? How does the brief affect the choices and statements made by the entrants? What is a square? What is the strategy that leads to a convincing concept? The role and use of a concept in the design process.

Background:When the patient is critically ill the family is in a vulnerable position. The nurse's role is to support and help the family to find meaning in the difficult situation and to provide realistic hope. Balancing between the patient's and the family's needs is difficult. Knowledge about how nurses experience difficulties in the interaction with family is required in order to grant good care too critically ill patients and their family-members.Aim:To describe nurses' perceived difficulties in the interaction with family-members of critically ill patients.Method:The study is a qualitative literature-based study based on qualitative research. Results: The analysis resulted in four main themes; difficult disunion, environmental constraints, interpersonal difficulties and communicative difficulties.

Important issues for the local authorities are what to do with the sludge produced insewagetreatment plants. The tax for landfill leads to higher costs with 250 SEK/ton. On the 31December 2004 it will be forbidden to landfill sludge.In Sweden the yearly production of sludge is 240 000 tons, counted as DS. The phosphorouscontent is 3 % in sludge. The total yearly production of sludge gives 6000 tons of phosphorous.