The purpose of this study is to examine how participants perceive virtual agents shown on a computer display. In particular, it is explored to what extent participants transfer gender and attraction stereotypes that are commonly applied in the physical world to virtual agents. Previous related studies have often explored only text or voice interfaces, without any visually appearing agents, and here indeed found evidence for a transfer of gender stereotypes. Our hypothesis was that the addition of a visual agent interface would reinforce this effect. The results support our hypothesis that participants transfer human gender and attraction stereotypes onto virtual agents, as well as that these processes are affected by the visual representations of the agents..

This report is the written documentation of a project work carried out at the Division of Engineering Materials at Luleå University of Technology in cooperation with Seco Tools AB. The project deals with the analysis of residual stresses in Ti-Al-N thin film grown on WC/Co cutting inserts. The composition of Al varied from 0% up to 75%. Increasing the Al content in the Ti(1-x)Alx N compound improves the compressive residual stresses even after annealing of the material. The experiments have been performed in a high temperature x-ray diffractometer (HTXRD) where the interplanar atomic spacing was determined in-situ and subsequent converted into stresses.

This is a historical documentary research study across Neva Leona Boyd (1876-1963). The theoretical perspective is based on the historical perspective of knowledge from ancient Greece to the approach of modern symbolic interactionism. The study shows that Boyd, who was Viola Spolins teacher, was a proponent of the modern view of group play theory. 1909 she founded Chicago School for Playground Workers, later transformed to the Recreation Training School. Until 1927, the school entered in Hull-House initiated by Jane Addams.

Our increasingly globalized world has contributed to that more Swedish companies has expanded their business to more distant areas. One of these Swedish companies that now stands before their first international expansion is the Swedish fast-food chain Max AB. Max has chosen to start their expansion in Saudi Arabia, a country far away from Sweden, not only in terms of geographical distance but also in cultural. The cultural differences that Max will encounter may affect the business and result in to various adaptations that must be done in order to establish successfully. The thesis investigates the existing circumstances for the fastfood business in Saudi Arabia and shows which adaptations international fast-food chains should or must do as a result of the cultural distances they encounter.

This Bachelor of Science thesis was carried out at Metso Panelboard AB, located in Sundsvall, Sweden. The work lasted for 10 weeks and began at the end of February 2007. Metso Panelboard is one of the leading suppliers of complete lines, single machines, engineering knowledge and after-market services to the fibreboard industries. The task involved building a 3D-model of a dryer cyclone in the CAD-program Pro/ENGINEER. A dryer cyclone is the part where the tree fibres are dried in the process of manufacturing fibreboards. Currently, it takes about two weeks to draw a dryer cyclone. By creating a 3D-model of it, which should have the functionality to be generated to different sizes, the goal is to decrease the drawing time to about 20 hours and to increase the quality of the work. This report includes the fundamental theories behind the manufacturing of fibreboards with focus on the dryer cyclone.

This thesis takes its starting point in the humanistic cultural-geographical concept of place, with the aim of achieving a greater understanding of what constitutes the place Mon today. Mon is located in the northwestern part of Dalsland. Until 1879, the area was described as outlying land, but with the extension of the railway between V?nern and the Norwegian border, Mon's station community emerged. In the mid-20th century, all activities in Mon were phased out, and since then, the place has been inhabited by only about 10 year-round residents.

Distributed system development is a common occurrence in today?s technological and global world. Because the consequences of its geographically distributed nature it creates barriers between people that affects their communication and collaboration efforts in the distributed context. Despite a lot of technological breakthroughs over the last decades and the occurrence of video-conference applications and other tools for communication and collaboration, cultural and geographical issues have so far not yet been completely resolved. In this study I have made a literature study over distributed system development to form a set of central factors that affects the distributed development process.

Målet med detta arbete är att bättre förstå hur riktlinjer ska skapas och användas. Utgångspunkten har varit att media uppmärksammat ett flertal incidenter där främmande människor tog oönskad kontakt med olika förskolor i Karlskronaområdet. Författarna ville då se över hur kommunen arbetade med frågor om yttre hot vilket medförde att arbetet utmynnade i ett försök om att bättre försöka få förståelse för riktlinjer och dess användning då kommunen vid arbetets start saknade riktlinjer för yttre hot av denna typ. Metoden som använts är av kvalitativ art i form av intervjuer med några säkerhetsansvariga för förskolor i andra svenska kommuner. Resultatet av dessa intervjuer tillsammans med kompletterande material från generella tillvägagångssätt för identifikation och analys av säkerhetsproblem resulterade i ett förslag på arbetsmetoden vid skapandet av riktlinjer samt en påminnelse om att se över befintliga riktlinjer för yttre hot..

The aim of this qualitative study was to give an deeper understanding of how employees in the engineering industry experienced health education and how they understood and gave meaning to the terms health and health education. The study was based on interviews with eight men and women who participated in a health education project which had been held on their workplace. When the study took place the interviewees were in the age between 28 and 58 years. The results indicate that the employees understood health as a combination of both physical and psychological factors. The positive aspects described by the interviewees based on their experiences from the project were increase physical activities and that the project had helped them to get a better diet.

The everyday work at a staffing agency and how its leaders deal with the problems that appears: A case study at Maxkompetens.The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how leaders at a staffing company deal with the everyday problems that arise from a geographically dispersed workforce.The staffing industry has grown by 30-40 percent annually and has over the past 15 years been the fastest growing industry in Sweden. This shows that the interest and demand for the staffing industry and its activities are now rising at an increasingly faster pace. This is an industry that is operating under specific conditions and with a geographically dispersed workforce. This will make the leaders of a staffing company to an important link between the staffing leaders and the staffing personnel.The relationship between the staffing company's leaders and its personnel is important, but not completely trouble free. Difficulties arise in that the employees may be located in different places and at various client companies with the result that the leaders of the staffing company cannot have a daily personal contact with their geographically dispersed personnel.We have used a qualitative approach on our paper and our empirical methodology has been a case study with ethnography and interviews.

Föreliggande rapport är avsedd som ett examensarbete i elektroteknik (20p).Syftet med arbetet är att skapa en applikation för att finna störningar pålågspänningsnätet upp till 95kHz. Bakgrunden till arbetet kommer frånenergibolagen som vill kunna skicka datainformation direkt pålågspänningsnätet, detta vill de kunna göra med hastigheter mellan 2k ? 5kHz. Beroende på med vilken hastighet man vill skicka information kan störningar mellan givna frekvenser hindra datatransmissionen, därför är detviktigt att hitta vid vilka frekvenser störningarna uppstår så att lämpligaåtgärder kan vidtas.Grundläggande delar i applikationen är ett oscilloskop för mätning, dator medGPIB- kort för upptagning av data och LabView programvara för hantering avdata. För frekvensanalys kommer Fast Fourier Transform, FFT, att användas,varvid en grundläggande beskrivning kommer att medfölja..

Sweden has a long tradition as a mapmaking nation. Tens of thousands of historical maps,dating from the sixteenth century and onwards are still preserved in archives today, providinga rich resource for studies of city growth and changes in the landscape through time. For morethan ten years an effort has been made by public authorities to transfer this material frompaper onto digital media. Due to modern technology, as for example GeographicalInformation Systems (GIS), researchers have been given improved possibilities to study andanalyze this material. This study uses a qualitative approach, based on both literature studiesas well as map studies.

The everyday work at a staffing agency and how its leaders deal with the problems that appears: A case study at Maxkompetens.The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how leaders at a staffing company deal with the everyday problems that arise from a geographically dispersed workforce.The staffing industry has grown by 30-40 percent annually and has over the past 15 years been the fastest growing industry in Sweden. This shows that the interest and demand for the staffing industry and its activities are now rising at an increasingly faster pace. This is an industry that is operating under specific conditions and with a geographically dispersed workforce. This will make the leaders of a staffing company to an important link between the staffing leaders and the staffing personnel.The relationship between the staffing company's leaders and its personnel is important, but not completely trouble free. Difficulties arise in that the employees may be located in different places and at various client companies with the result that the leaders of the staffing company cannot have a daily personal contact with their geographically dispersed personnel.We have used a qualitative approach on our paper and our empirical methodology has been a case study with ethnography and interviews.

This thesis analyzes and discusses the role of institutions concerning countries' abilities to create economic wealth. The countries that we are analyzing are the former members of the Warsaw pact and former Yugoslavia. These countries are referred to as transition countries. In order to analyze the transition countries institutional structure we are using Douglass C. North's theory regarding institutions and institutional building.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how places can be marketed through tourism brochures. The study is based on a discourse analysis and texts and pictures from three brochures, which come from the region of Småland in Sweden, have been analyzed. The first brochure is from Visit Småland, the second from Vetlanda municipality and the third from Värnamo municipality. With the rise of globalization one of the consequences has been the increased opportunity for tourists to visit places all over the world, which also resulted in a greater competition between places than before. One reaction to this has been the increased marketing of each place unique characteristics in the tourist brochures.