The effects of the climate changes are expected to generate several substantial direct and indirect consequences on both ecosystems and societies. It is the extent of the negative consequences that determents the vulnerability of the things or the ones exposed. The knowledge of the effects and consequences by a changing climate provides an opportunity to take measures to reduce the vulnerability.Our society?s vulnerability depends on how we choose to act out of the existing knowledge and what measures we choose to take. Karlstad municipality has good knowledge and perception of the increased flood risks the climate changes will generate and the probable consequences that most likely will follow. How the municipality decides to manage the flooding issue is not just affected by the will to mitigate the vulnerability but also by the vision to increase the number of citizens.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate to what extent municipalities in Sweden use democratic innovations to include citizens in the decision making process. Along there are three research questions:? What different forms of democracy innovations are Swedish municipalities applying in order to increase the civic participation between elections and what forms are dominant?? What potential influence in decision-making are citizens getting through these democratic innovations based on the results?? Based on the results ? in what ways is the democracy innovations used in municipalities challenging representative democracy? The method used to fulfill the purpose and answer the research questions is a web survey including 287 of 290 (in total) municipal websites. The theoretic framework includes a model which is called ?Smith?s ladder of participation? and is influenced by the research of Graham Smith and Sherry Arnstein.

Title: A study about conditions for leadership in knowledge-intensive firms.Authors: Cecilia Ekström and Niklas SandbergKeywords: Leadership, knowledge-intensive firm, hierarchies, followers.Background: Leadership is becoming one of our greatest social myths and is considered a total solution for many problems that occur in an organization. The view of leadership is usually from a top-down perspective, which contributes to an often underestimated view of the follower. Just as it is important to understand the leader's view of leadership, it is important to understand how employees view the structure from which the leader derives its legitimacy. The existing conditions in knowledge-intensive firms, such as autonomy, place special demands on the formal leadership.Purpose: The purpose of this study takes an employee perspective, to understand what the conditions are for formal leadership in knowledge-intensive firms.Method: A qualitative research method was used and empirical material was collected through interviews with employees in knowledge-intensive firms. The empirical material was analyzed by the respondents? mental images which were set against the theoretical framework of the thesis.Conclusions: The conditions for formal leadership in knowledge-intensive firms make it advantageous to have a leader with a withdrawn role.

Aim: The aim is to create a review that examines different forms of massage therapy and their effects on hypertension.Method: Literature review of 10 scientific articles on the subject of massage and its effects on blood pressure. The literature searches were made with PubMed and Cinahl using the keywords "massage therapy", "effects" and "blood pressure".Results: The articles showed that massage had a positive effect in lowering blood pressure. This could be explained by greater extent of relaxation in the participants investigated and an increased activity of parasympaticus and reduced secretion of stress hormones. The articles do not agree on what form of massage therapy is most effective in lowering blood pressure and it is uncertain for how long the effect can remain.Conclusion: Massage is usually seen as a treatment without scientific basis. There is evidence that suggests that massage therapy is an effective treatment for lowering blood pressure.

Aim: The aim is to create a review that examines different forms of massage therapy and their effects on hypertension.Method: Literature review of 10 scientific articles on the subject of massage and its effects on blood pressure. The literature searches were made with PubMed and Cinahl using the keywords "massage therapy", "effects" and "blood pressure".Results: The articles showed that massage had a positive effect in lowering blood pressure. This could be explained by greater extent of relaxation in the participants investigated and an increased activity of parasympaticus and reduced secretion of stress hormones. The articles do not agree on what form of massage therapy is most effective in lowering blood pressure and it is uncertain for how long the effect can remain.Conclusion: Massage is usually seen as a treatment without scientific basis. There is evidence that suggests that massage therapy is an effective treatment for lowering blood pressure.

Today, Sweden is to be regarded as a country formed by the influences and effects of immigration. The government is considering integration as a process aimed to influent all forms of welfare politics and as a project working both at an individual and at a social level. The aims of integration policies are to guarantee equal rights and opportunities, to form a public community characterized by diversity, and to mobilize all citizens to participate in and to be jointly responsible for a social development characterized by mutual respect and tolerance. During the Swedish election campaign of 2002, integration policies became one of the most reported and discussed political questions in the media. The aim of this essay is to study and analyze discursive statements on integration policies made by politicians during this election campaign.

This investigation is about how teachers in school can motivate and create interest for science among younger children. Teachers were interviewed about attitudes to their subject and how this affects their lessons.I have also tried to find out, both by interviewes but also by studying litterature, what the most important thing is to teach in science, which knowledge is necessarry in the future and why.My result indicates that teachers find science both interesting and important but at the same time they also think it is a difficult subject to teach even if they are educated. Both the litterature and the teachers in my study agree that knowledge in science gives us a chance to ask questions, take stands and solve problems and that this knowledge is important for us in our future..

Background: The main purpose of our study is to try to give an idea of what a multicultural school is and what difficulties girls find with Swedish as a second language. We are at the end of our teacher education, which means that in a few months, we will be responsible for creating environments that are conducive to the students and to ensure that opportunities that allow the students to develop exist. We are aware that in a multicultural school that we no have in Sweden there has been some discussion regarding the Swedish language, which can be interpreted as the Swedish language being at a disadvantage with the students because of all the integration that occurs in schools and the lack of knowledge regarding the different cultural backgrounds. To get this knowledge we had to seek more knowledge on the subject.

The ambition with this study is to look into and create an understanding for how an intranet can work as a support system in work processes in capacity as a source of knowledge. We want to enhance the understanding for which kind of knowledge that can be coded in and transmitted by an intranet, and which that is lost in this process. We also want to clarify what it takes to get this knowledge, in collaboration with the intranet, to support the work in an organization. It is a qualitative case study at a Swedish bank. It consisted of semi standardized, half structured interviews with five people in one of the bank?s local offices.

The purpose of this ideology critical study is to investigate the hidden content in the reform Gy11 and compare it with the concept new public management. After the clarification of the hidden content, we compare the structure of the organization in Swedish high schools with the structure in public sector called new public management. The main questions of this study are the following: Is it possible to see the foundation of new public management in the Swedish high schools when it comes to the views of knowledge and the formation of goals? Which similarities can we find when we look at the organization new public management and the Swedish high school?The result showed many similarities, both regarding the views of knowledge and the formations of goals. The structure of new public management has been largely implemented in the Swedish high schools and the schools now focus more on instrumental knowledge rather than universal knowledge based on understanding.This is not surprising due to the social progress.

The aims were to investigate the public awareness of aphasia in a Swedish sample and examine if knowledge of aphasia relates to gender, education or age. Participant?s sources of knowledge of aphasia were examined. A total of 153 individuals, aged 18-90, were surveyed. Participants were categorized into three groups; heard of, knowledge of and not heard of aphasia.

The e-commerce in Sweden has increased each year for the past several years, but still just over half of all the consumers feels worry about payment security. This could be the reason why over half of the consumers just shopped about one time on the Internet during the whole year of 2009. Another reason could be that the many consumers have a lack of trust to the different payment methods that are available during payment on the Internet, because they might don't possess enough knowledge regarding the payment methods and their security. If the consumers were to gain more knowledge about the payment methods and their security, it may lead to that the they would feel more comfortable when shopping online, and do it more frequently. It is this that will be investigated in this paper.The purpose of the paper  is to research if consumers believed knowledge concerning the different payment methods available on the web and their security influence the consumers trust in the payment methods.

On March 1, 2012, Google introduced its new privacy policy which is applicable to all Google services. This means that search history may be saved by Google indefinitely and may also be associated with the specific account during the first 18 months. We assume that few people read this policy and we have hypotheses that a deeper knowledge of the contents of the privacy policy affects how users perceive Google as a company and/or the usage of Google services. In this study, we have conducted surveys at the IT University of Gothenburg, to investigate how many participants that have read or possess some knowledge of the privacy policy. We have found that very few participants claim to have read the privacy policy.

This examination intends to find out what thoughts children in around 12 years of age thinks about their own television consumption. To examine this, the questions in issue is: ?What does the children watch on television?? ?Why do they watch the programs they do?? ?How do the children speak about their own consumption?? ?What does the children learn from TV?? ?Are the children concious of the impressions they take from TV?? ?Do they speak critical about TV?? ?Is there anything indicating on some kind of influence from the childrens television consumption?? .To answer these questions I have chose to hold qualitative interviews, to let the children?s own thoughts be the foundation of the examination. The theories in this examine are that the person who does the consumption from different forms of television takes the information personally out of her own reality. Meaning that the person watching is the judge of how she applies the information to herself.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how social workers perceive the concept of knowledge within social services, particularly within children and youth services. Our goal is also to study the employer's expectations and demands on graduate social workers. The main questions we address in this thesis are; What knowledge is seen as useful by employers and graduate social workers working in social welfare offices? To what extent does university education bring useful knowledge to the work being done by social workers? What practical knowledge is there in the workplace for social workers to learn? When recruiting, what expectations does the employer have of graduate social workers? What challenges are there with recruiting a graduate social worker?We have interviewed six social workers and four employers in the social childcare division in different municipalities in Skåne region, Sweden. We have used epistemology in our analysis.