This study examines whether the policy breadth and the alternatives in European politics affect variations in voter turnout between member states in elections to the European Union Parliament.The theoretical approach assumes that; a larger political polarization, an increase in EU-skeptical parties and a greater voting mobilization among groups with less means results in higher voter turnout figures. The study also consider four other variables; whether the election is held on weekends or weekdays, whether elections coincide with other national elections, whether a country has held the presidential of the EU during or the immediate term prior to the election and finally the turnout figures from national elections.The research design is based upon a quantitative analysis using data from EP elections, national elections and databases from the European Elections Studies (EES). Study unit is twelve member-state countries and their four latest EP elections (1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009). The selected member-states origin from the EU-15 excluding Belgium, Greece and Luxembourg due to their compulsory voting laws.The study found relationships between higher turnout figures in EP-elections and increase in EU-skeptical parties, greater mobilization among groups with less means, elections held on weekends, elections coinciding with other, national elections and an increase in voter figures in national elections..

Today?s society is very focused around technology and something that is very popular is the usage of mobile devices such as Smartphones or Tablet computers. One of the reasons why these devices are so popular, is because of the large amounts of services or ?apps? that they can provide for the user. They can do a lot of things that makes everyday living easier for the users.The focus of this study is to find out what kinds of mobile services the users of these devices are expecting and/or wishes to see in the future and what is required to be able to develop and use these services in a good way.We started of the study by searching for earlier studies on the same or similar subjects.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate whether accounting quality is a priced factor by investors. The event studied is the release of year-end result and the release of the annual report. To assess accounting quality a sample of 30 companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during 2003 to 2007 are studied. We assess accounting quality by the absolute size of discretionary accruals using the modified Jones model developed by Dechow et al. (1995).

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease, where joints are attacked by the own immune system, leading to chronic inflammation and destruction of bone and cartilage. Inflammation is a complex process, controlled by many different substances. One of them is adenosine, which has anti-inflammatory properties. In this project, three polymorphisms in different genes, involved in synthesis and signaling of adenosine, were genotyped for 188 patients with RA and 362 controls without RA. The results shows that for the polymorphism in A2a, a gene coding for an adenosine receptor, there was no significant difference in genotype distribution between the groups.

In this thesis we focus on the issue of crowdfunding and especially how a project relates to and embraces its community. While a lot of related research focus on what makes people give, our research instead delve into whether a creator looks upon the sponsors as something more than just a financial resource. To manage this task we used a triangular perspective consisting of a case study, a questionnaire and a netnographic study. The goal was to gain the perspectives of creators, crowdfunding platforms and sponsors on how the communication between the community and the project works and can be improved.       The three crowdfunding platforms we reviewed (Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, Rockethub) all had fairly similar models on how to attract sponsors and make them involved in the project, while the questionnaire and netnographic study demonstrated how a community could contribute in different ways.

Relationships between defence mechanisms and body movements were investigated in regard to three hypothesis; I. that a difference in frequency of body movements correlates to different signs of defence mechanisms, II. that themes of body movements can be identified in regard to signs of defence mechanisms, III. that no significant differences will be found between the different groups of gender. The aim of the study was to seek a relation between quasicommunicative body movements and defence mechanisms.

This essay is about persons who have had social assistance and the individual?s experiences of social assistance. The focus is on how the individual develops in a new life situation and if and how they are motivated to get out of it. The essay has an individual perspective where the relation between society and the individual is important. The result is based on four qualitative interviews with a hermeneutic perspective.

I take interest in whether and how students in primary schools nowadays in Sweden participate in book clubs. My focus is on why teachers and school librarians choose to run book clubs and try to understand the structures that make book clubs possible. The method form my work is the qualitative research interview. I interviewed a group of eight people, five school librarians and three teachers from a medium-sized city in southern Sweden. My theoretical framework is a model contructed by researcher Patricia Montiel-Overall called Teacher- and Librarian Collaboration.

Swedish students' knowledge of mathematics has deteriorated in recent years. Teaching of mathematics is therefore starting point in an ongoing discussion among researchers, school leaders, politicians, teachers and others, who all thinks they know best about how teaching should be designed to the greatest extent possible to raise students' proficiency levels in the subject. Teachers' practices have long been the focus of discussions and views on these differ. The purpose of this paper is therefore to study students 'conceptions of mathematics and mathematics teaching, with teachers' methods and tools of focus, in relation to previous research on the subject. The method used was a survey of students in secondary school and a textual analysis of previous studies on the subject.As revealed by the survey was that the textbook has a big advantage in mathematics education in Sweden today.Many students are not accustomed to working in a different way and thereforedoes not know either what the alternative approach entails.

Aim: The aim was to investigate and describe, how students on high school level in Kronoberg county self rated their health with relation to irritation, nervousness/anxiety insomnia and gender. An additional aim was to investigate if there are differences between students born in Sweden by Swedish parents, students born in Sweden by foreign-born parents and foreign-born students. Methods: A quantitative method was used to analyse data gathered from students (n=1936) on high school level in 2006. All statistical analyses were made with help of SPSS V-12. Finding: The findings showed that most of the students self rated their health as ?good?, however migrant students self rated their health as ?not so good? and they had more problems with insomnia. The overall findings showed gender differences. Particularly, foreign-born girls self rated their health as ?not so good? and reported more problems with insomnia. There was no divergence between the groups regarding irritation, nervousness/anxiety. Conclusion: School nurses and health workers must have deep knowledge about differences in gender, self- rated health and insomnia when they work with public health.

In Sweden there is an integration policy and a policy for national minorities. The integration policy aims to integrate newly arrived immigrants (nyanlända invandrare), whereas the minority policy aims to maintain and strengthen the rights of the national minorities. The national minorities are though, at times, included into the integration policy, even though they hold a minority status in Sweden. This paper aims to, through discourse analysis, investigate the research question: ?how is the content of integration referred to, when it is related to immigrants, contra when it is related to national minorities?.

According to FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) shall at least a mean of 10 trees per hectare including riparian zones and other areas with high biological values be left in final felling. In addition large clear areas should not be created and all retained trees with high environmental value shall be spared. To leave trees in final felling means a lower cutting volume and hence a lower income from the cutting, but it also means that the production in the next generation becomes less because of competition. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect retained trees have on the production in the new generation of forest, and to investigate if there is any way to lower this effect. The environmental care has also been estimated by the amount left in final felling.

In this project an iPhone application for storing food and drink experiences was developed with focus on an easy interaction design. The already existing market of similar applications were studied and evaluated to extract their positive and negative features. Interviews with experts within the food and drink business where made in the pre study to get a good perception of how to divide and categorize the sections in the application. To optimize the usability, workshops with potential users with different technical experiences where continuously held during the development of the design.During the development two variants of development environments where evaluated. The final result of the application was developed in the environment that made the best impression and seemed to be the best alternative.The resulting product has a thought out design meant to be easy to understand, even for the first time users.

Successful forest regeneration is a prerequisite for sustainable forest management. Therefore, it is important to prevent browsing damage on the commercially important tree species Scots pine. In this study I have tested a new alternative way to increase the available amount of forage and increase the use of these resources by especially moose. The method is based on a slash treatment at harvest, where the accessibility of slash as forage is increased during final felling or commercial thinning by gathering the slash and putting the Scots pine slash on top of the slash piles. This study has compared the availability of forage, the amount of browsed biomass and the number of fecal pellet groups between conventional and slash treated stands after final felling and commercial thinning in southern Sweden.

AimThe purpose of this study is to, from a perspective of a PE teacher, look at how teachers of physical education in elementary school designs and assesses the teaching of swimming. The issues underlying the study are as follows:Which elements are included in the swimming education and how do teachers work with these operations?What does the PE teachers classify as swimming ability and what do teachers experience as obstacles for the students development of swimming ability?How do the PE teachers interpret the knowledge requirement in Lgr 11?MethodThe study is based on six interviews of qualitative nature, with PE teachers from various municipalities in the region of Mälardalen.ResultsThe result yielded by the study is that the swimming classes can take different forms depending on whom the teacher is. Common to all the teachers in the study is that they teach emergency management and lifesaving. When it later comes to teaching how to swim and practice, the teachers who teach in the younger age groups work more concentrated and continuously with swimming, while the teachers who work with the older age groups just checks whether students can swim or not.