The three post-communist states - Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine ? have gone different ways in terms of freedom and democracy since the breakdown of the Soviet Union 1991. During these years, the state and the civil society have been fundamental actors in the struggle against, and even for, authoritarianism.A strong state with great capacity in Belarus has undermined the chances for the civil society to fulfil its task as a watchdog of the state and link between the citizens and the government.Failed authoritarianism in Moldova has led to a situation where both the state and the civil society are weak. The major problem is lack of organization and cohesion; both the state and the civil society have often been divided by ethnical differences and are therefore not strong enough to promote democracy.In Ukraine, the dominance of a strong state ended in 2004 when the Orange Revolution took place, sometimes called a ?peak of democracy? where popular mobilization and protests succeeded in it's opposition against the state.

Today is one of the goals with zoos to conserve endangered species and some animals may also become reintroduced. But behaviours can change in generations of captive animals because of environments that differ from the wild. Animals must then be prepared before being reintroduced and predator training enhances the animal?s chance to survive in the wild. When training animals to avoid predators it is often necessary to use frightening stimuli.

By studying literature concerning design, didactics and reflection, and complementing those explorations with interviews with experienced design educators, this thesis challenges the idea of aesthetic media education being purely aesthetic in its characteristics. Drawing from their own experiences as a media aesthetics educator and an industrial designer, the two authors argue that the work flow used within most fields of design, commonly known as the design process, might provide a suitable didactic alternative to a field of education lacking relevant methodology. The literature study offers a better understanding of the design process and how it may be defined and viewed within an educational context. The interviews provide a more practical insight into the world of design education. The result shows that the design process as a didactical method theoretically offers both elements of critical thinking as well as direction and frames for students lacking aesthetic and artistic experience.

This study is about youths, democracy and school. It seeks to describe and problemize the school's role in the democratic society. Firstly, using Social Representations Theory, 44 upper secondary shool pupils? representations, or conceptions, of democracy are described and discussed. These representations are then analyzed in relation to the school's role in the democratic society, as it is described by different researchers.The results show that many of the youths have a rather simplistic and abstract view of democracy, describing it only in terms of general principles and the main features of the representative democracy, such as voting in national elections.

This examination work aims to describe how a supply chain around the biggest pellets factory in Sweden will be configured in a logistic perspective. The plant and associated infrastructure are in the building phase and will have production start on the 2 November 2009. The key question that is set in this examination work is to recognize the logistic processes which are essential for an effective flow of materials and information that link the source of supply with the ultimate customer. In order to get the answer, a flowcharting of these supply chain processes is required for understanding the pipeline activities such as input and storage of raw material, the production system and the output of pellets to the customers. The basis for this supply chain map is a model-based representation of these logistic processes and activities that are involved around the pellets factory.

This thesis is based on qualitative text analyses of four works of fiction, used as teaching materials in the school subject of Swedish, from a queer theoretic perspective. The purpose of the study is to examine how sexual identities and expressions are being presented, as well as what positions are offered a reader, in relation to the heterosexual norm. Basis for this thesis are the schools fundamental values, which highlights the importance that intolerance be confronted through both knowledge and active measures, and the syllabus, which states that fiction should be viewed as a tool for identity development as well as an understanding of the outside world.The analyses reveals a distinct connection between the generally accepted heterosexual norm and a professed (or taken for granted) heterosexuality which is being carried out by the characters or the books as a whole. Out of the four titles only one disputes this norm, by offering a wide range of sexual identities and expressions. These expressions, however, are being invalidated ? through insufficient ability to relate to the norm ? or made invisible ? through an imagined heterosexuality which, by superiority over other expressions, excludes them..

Todays travel trends go towards independence and self planning. If you need advice or help when performing your trip, there are several different series of guidebooks on the market and one of these series comes from the travel magazine Vagabond. This degree project concerns the redesigning of the travelguides of Vagabond, or to be precise: their cityguide over Istanbul. The purpose of the new design is to assure the resemblance between the guidebook and the magazine, as wanted by the Art Director of Vagabond Angelica Zander.Prior to the redesigning process preliminary studies that make up the fundamental ideas were made. Three other big titles of guidebooks on the market were analyzed, and in addition a great deal of focus ? considering the final purpose ? was put on the concept of magazine design.

"Speak up! I can?t hear you"This qualitative study is built on an investigation of a newly instated model that is used when building or renovating schools. The principles of the model are based on building schools with an open plan design where the walls are made of glass and the classrooms are not shut closed by walls, instead the classrooms are completely open except from screens that are used to indicate the ambit of the rooms. This model has been well debated and that is the reason why we chose to do this study.The purpose of this study is to find out how students and teachers experience this model. To do this we have done interviews and observations.

One aim of this thesis has been to trace the driving forces among active members of the Swedish Pensioners? Interest Party (SPI), but also to render how party values and ideas are connected to the concepts of is-sue space, distrust, and New Party Politics (mainly populism). Since there are several pensioners? parties in other countries, my second aim has been to investigate whether the party is a result of a diffusion proc-ess of copying a successful equivalent party; in other words to find out whether a master frame has inspired the forming of a Swedish pension-ers? party. Through interviews and document analysis, I have found seven issue dimensions explaining the motives behind my respondents? engagement in the party.

This thesis investigates in which way principles and theories of usability is revelant when evaluating interactive systems for children aged 10-12. It also investigates whether there are specific factors that you should keep in mind while developing interactive products for the targeted group.The results of the qualitative study shows that priciples and theories of usability is relevant when evaluating interactive systems for the targeted group. However there is one concept that is more significant than the others. Our study shows that our targeted group is sensitive to time-consuming activities such as loading times etc. which has to do with the efficiency of the system.

The study has answered the questions to what extent people with disabilities are involved in SVT- and TV4- news reports and how people with disabilities are represented in news reports. The material is based on 140 news items.The study has demonstrated that news reports SVT and TV4 have different grades of misconceptions about disabled people. Disabled people are constantly being reinforced by negative disabling terms, the disability being of central importance for the news broadcast and they still occur in stereotypical depictions. Through the image of disabled people forms the bed-rock on which the attitudes towards, assumptions and expectations of disabled people are based on. They are fundamental to discrimination and exploitation that people with disabilities face on a daily basis, and contributes significantly to their systematic exclusion from mainstream society.

The increasing complexity in the development of a configurable real-time system has emerged new principles of software techniques, such as aspect-oriented software development and component-based software development. These techniques allow encapsulation of the system's crosscutting concerns and increase the modularity of the software. The properties of a component that influences the systems performance or semantics are specified separately in entities called aspects, while basic functionality of the property still remains in the component. When building a real-time system, different sets of configurations of aspects and components can be combined, resulting in different configurations of the system. The temporal behavior of the system changes and a way to ensure the predictability of the system is needed.

The aim of this Master thesis is to make a survey of the public library staff-relations at work and discuss relationship marketing as it applies to public libraries. Relationship marketing involves the establishment, maintenance and development of users and other library-related relationships, including the relations among the library staff itself. Good relations among the library staff is a necessary condition for good relations with others. The focus of relationship marketing is at the user?s needs, wants and demands instead of the library collections and services.

Land management for food production is a fundamental human activity and one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century will be to increase the global food to accommodate a world growing to 10 billion or more people, while undergoing climate change. The increasing temperature and the current and projected increase in concentrations of CO2 lead to concern over possible impacts on agricultural pests. This assay is summarizing the knowledge of weeds in a changing climate in Sweden. Global warming and other climatic changes will affect the growth, phenology, and geographical distribution of weeds. The climate change will also affect the weed composition indirect by causing changes in the agriculture.

Purpose: The current thesis assignment aims to explain, understand and follow the strategies the young children employ into a conception of numbers. This thesis is based on a study performed by Doverborg and Pramling Samuelson.The following research questions serve to refine the stated goal:How mathematical thinking regarding conception of numbers occurs within younger children and which strategies they use?How is the interaction between the teacher and the younger children?Method: The study is organized as a qualitative study and was conducted in a pre-school with a group of four children. The children that have participated within my study are between two and three years old. They were filmed in four exercises.