The recent history knows numerous examples of creditor?s inability to evaluate financial solvency of the client correctly. Creditors? risks do not only concern individual relations between the two parties but the economy in general. The standard loan-giving procedure considers evaluation based on a number of financial ratios.

The background for this degree thesis is a need to replace the existing seal used to protect equipment containing secret or sensitive equipment used by Swedish Defence. The target design should satisfy both the need for tamper evidence and reduce Life Cycle Cost. In developing a new design for a seal, additional benefits such as improved logistics support and indication of attack methods such as heat and solvents have been considered.The lack of guiding principles for end users of seals became evident during the interviews. Major concerns for the future are education of users, information about actions if a seal is broken and user liability.The design work was divided into several phases. A feasibility study was performed including investigation of theory of labels, materials and possible technologies.

Within the literature and film sciences there are clear models of storytelling and methods of creating a good story. In the game industry it's more difficult because the games are often non-linear, and games are a less established medium than the other two. With this study our purpose was to examine game developers and methods they used when creating a videogame, with focus on storytelling. Four interviews were made with representatives from four different videogame companies in Sweden. The information from the interviews was put in relation to theories regarding the structure of videogames and an established model for creating videogames.

This thesis presents and evaluates a project, undertaken in 2001 by a librarian the writer of this thesis and a teacher. We met with a number of adults with reading and writing disabilities, and presented and discussed books and experiences of reading, with the aim to increase their joy of reading, as well as finding out more about our own ways of co-operating with each other across our professional borders. The documentation and evaluation emphasizes on the process and the results of the project, and on our own participation, by asking the following questions: How did we carry out the project? What obstacles did we meet? What went well/wrong? What did we achieve related to our goals? In order to illuminate the project from different angles, consequences of reading and writing disabilities for adults are discussed, as well as the specific nature of adult education and projects more or less related to ours. Action research is chosen as a method, because it allows the process of the project, and our own learning process, to be exposed.

Communication is a part of everyday life. The more sensitive information we handle, the more interesting the question around security of your information becomes. There are two ways of handling security around the information you want to communicate, either you control the means by which you are communicating. Or you control the way you communicate, making you able to use existing communication channels. Existing methods within cryptography enables two parties to communicate information securely.

This report describes a study of two different methods to achive the best possible result in setting out apartment details. These two methods are the setting out of details with a measuring tape from baselines and the setting out procedure with an instrument (totalstation).Through our knowledge in surveying and mapping technology and help from a carpenter, this investigation has been implemented. The setting out using a tape has been performed by letting the carpenter to set out windows, bathroom and water- and drain-details from baselines and drawing. The setting out using a surveying instrument was carried out by means of a Trimble Total Station. These two methods have been compared in order to detect and show the difference that occurs.The report shows the investigation background story from the practice of Swedish Mätcenter in Karlstad.A result of differences in accuracy and time is described in the report, as well as their theoretical consequences.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to describe and analyse the origin and development of the library of Workers´ Educational Association in the community of Oskarström. This library is special because the organisation run it much longer than usual, until 1977, and to find an answer to why, we have the following questions: Why does the library of Workers´ Educational Association start their activity in Oskarström, and how does it develop, in relation to premises, librarians, financing, the stock of books and the numbers of books out on loan? What is the reason that the library in Oskarström is municipalized as late as 1977? The methods we use are hermeneutics and evaluation of the sources. The library is founded in 1914 and become important for the workers. Important sources of income are the subventions given by the state, municipality and other associations.

In this master?s thesis the problem of simulating conditional Bernoulli distributed stochastic variables, given the sum, is considered. Three simulation methods are considered, namely the acceptance/rejection technique, Bondesson?s method and the Markov chain Monte Carlo method.To compare the three methods the bias and the standard deviations of the simulated variables are evaluated. The results of the simulation study shows that the Markov chain Monte Carlo method is not the best method for this type of simulation.

Abortion during late gestation is often caused by placental dysfunction such as placentitis. To prevent this from happening the placenta can be monitored pre partum so treatment can be started at an early stage. Methods for monitoring the placenta include hormonal monitoring, presence of clinical signs of placental dysfunction and ultrasonographic evaluation of the fetus and the placenta. Transrectal ultrasonography provides a very good image of the caudal portion of the allantochorion where an ascending placentitis normally establishes. An increased combined thickness of the uterus and the placenta, CTUP, has been associated with placental failure. This study included ten Swedish standardbred trotter mares in late gestation. They were monitored by transrectal ultrasonography of the placenta two times with approximately a month in between. CTUP was measured on each examination.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how young adults withunilateral cleft lip and palate assess their own speech and communication,and to let speech and language pathologists make a perceptual analysis ofthese individuals? speech at the age of 19 years. An additional aim was toexamine the relationship between these two different ways of evaluation.Data was collected through perceptual analysis from audio recordings and byusing a self-report questionnaire based on the ICF-structure (InternationalClassification of Function, disability and health). Altogether, 33 peopleparticipated. One third of the participants had no speech deficiencies.

Operators and Internet service providers invest in broadband to be able to deliver new services that require higher data transmission rate. A way to make this possible is to use ADSL, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, as the access technology. To be able to handle this technology, the service providers should do a pre-qualification. Methods and tools are needed to analyze the local copper lines and decide if these qualify for ADSL with respect to service availability and possible bandwidth through the lines. This report brings up some methods for pre-qualification of ADSL, the important quality parameters and how to gather them from the available services today.

During the last few years the western world has seen an increasing interest in the topic of atheism, with bestselling books by writers like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. The critic of religions that these writers have brought to the table have not gone unmet, with writers like Dinesh D'Souza rushing to the defence of Chrisianity.Taking on the arguments of New York Times bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza in the current debate on the existece of God and the usefullness of religion, I here examine the claim by D'Souza that atheism, in fact, is responsible for the worst mass murders of history. In taking D'Souza's arguments and analyzing them on its own philosophical merits, with methods like the process of elimination and information evaluation (i.e source criticism), I will here show just exactly how persuasive these arguments prove to be. In the following pages we will not only discuss the role of atheism in 20th centuary totalitarianism, but also answer questions like ?Was Hitler an atheist or a theist??, ?Is atheism responsible for the worst crimes of history?? and ?Are people who believe in God in fact more moral the those who do not??.

This thesis shows the result from investigations of methods that use distance vectors when matching pictures. The distance vectors are available in a distance map made by the Euclidean Distance Transform. The investigated methods use the two characteristic features of the distance vector when matching pictures, length and direction. The length of the vector is used to calculate a value of how good a match is and the direction of the vector is used to predict a transformation to get a better match. The results shows that the number of calculation steps that are used during a search can be reduced compared to matching methods that only uses the distance during the matching..

The research objective of this thesis was to conduct a holistic evaluation of an operational information system. By holistic evaluation we mean that an equal focus was placed on both the system system perspective and its users user perspective, in the actual environment where the system and its users function contextuality. In addition, the methodological objective of the study was to test a new research approach in a real life setting. The participants of the study were twenty newspaper journalists employed at Göteborgs-Posten GP. The information system NewsLink is a manually indexed full-text database containing all articles published in GP since 1994.

This Batchelor?s Thesis concerns 20 points at the MDA-program (People, Computers and Work) at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Ronneby, Sweden. 10 points concerns Computer Science and 10 points Human Work Science. The thesis is about the process of starting a new department of Blekingesjukhuset [Blekinge Hospital] in Karlshamn, Blekinge called Sjukvårdsrådgivningen [Health Care Advice Bureau]. The thesis starts with a description of the ethnographical methods used, followed by the process of establishing the department. In this new department, the nurses are using a computer based system called Teleråd, developed by TietoEnator. The thesis takes up the issues of how the department uses this system today and concerns what ?user-friendliness? is.