In February 2002 the European commission put forward a proposal for a new directive on The patentability of computer-implemented inventions, but which during my work on this essay has not been decided on yet. The directive has divided the decision-makers in the union, the commission and parliament, into two different positions regarding by which range computer-implemented inventions should be patentable. The parliament has amended the commissions proposal in a substantial way and the legal process has caused a heated debate both within the unions administration and among various interest groups both in favour of and against a patent on computer-implemented inventions. The loudest protests have come from a group that feels threatened by a possible software patent: Open Source. In this study I examine both the arguments by the decision-makers and by the lobbying for and against the proposal.

Men's violence against women is an issue that exists all over the world. There are several scientists and organisations that work with this issue in one way or another. In Sweden an organisation called ROKS, and a scientist called Eva Lundgren, has been in the limelight for medias attention several times. The impression has been given that Eva Lundgren is a very controversial scientist and that her research is very different from other research about men's violence against women.The aim with this essay is therefore foremost to look at research from different scientists and compare them to Eva Lundgrens research. I found three so called levels about why men use violence against women.

English is an international and global language that students, regardless of mother tongue, encounter in their everyday lives. In Sweden, students are introduced to English teaching in year 1, 2 or 3, and in some cases, year 4. English teaching can sometimes be problematic when the language of instruction often consists of Swedish, which for second language students becomes a challenge to acquire new skills in a week language.The study aims to examine, with a qualitative study, how pedagogues plan and implements English teaching in first grade with students whose mother tongue are other than Swedish. Further, the aim was to examine how pedagogues say they relate to the fact that second language pupils participating in English lessons and if they think it affects their English teaching.The conclusions is that the pedagogues has probably not been problematized the phenomenon examined and say they do not adapt their teaching. In the interviews reveals information about the teaching method which, in my opinion, indicates that, unconsciously, adapting their teaching when they have second language students.

In the growing concern for the state of the environment more tools are being integrated in the decision-making processes. Sweden actively makes use of environmental impact assessment (EIA), which is supposed to minimise negative impacts of a project, policy or plans on the environment. The EIA process in Sweden still requires certain improvements to be more efficient. In this study actor interaction was analysed with trust being the framework for analysis. The aim is to find out whether it is possible to use trust as a framework for analysis since trust research is very discipline dependent.

Being physically active is important for a healthty lifestyle, but what do the girls who have quit playing sports in an atheltic club do afterwards, or the girls who are not active within an athletic club what so ever. It is the girls who are not active in an athletic club that Karlstad municipality wants to attract to the spontaneous sports sites there are within the city limits. They also want the girls opinion on how to improve the sites in order for the girls to want to go there.The purpose with this study was to investigate this. This study used qalitative research method. The study interviewed seven girls aged 14-17 years.

The purpose of this graduate thesis is to illustrate what could be theeffects of urban renewal carried out in a too hasty manner, the pointbeing that there could be features which have (yet) not been identifiedand therefore are lost if the planning of the city is not given theadequate amount of time and resources.Through a case study located at the wharf of Gullberg (Gullbergskaj)the significance of urban fringes and areas without too strict of aplanning are highlighted. Some guidelines to successful and consideratecity development are somewhat suggested.The survey is mainly based on two types of sources: contemporaryphotography and interviews with a number of people who are allresidents or tenants at the Gullbergskaj. Their testimonies regardingGullbergskaj and their use of this particular environment are used to drawconclusions of the qualities, which are not the typical cultural-historicalqualities but rather a quality defined by the user (of the quay), held by thissection of the Göta älv shoreline.This thesis is also concerned with the potential impact on the qualities ofGullbergskaj, was it to be the object of city renewal.The results of the study are compared to debating articles published in thenewspaper Göteborgs-Posten for a wider understanding of Gothenburg as atrademark, and the public opinion regarding the city planning related toCentrala älvstaden..

The main aim of this bachelor thesis is to describe through a quantitative study the extent of support received by foster families, their opinion of the support and any areas that might need improvement. The foster families receive foster care support through a private agency. We concentrated on the following areas of support; education, health, contact with the children?s biological relatives and behavioral difficulties. These four areas have, in previous research, shown to be problematic for foster children.

The aim of this paper is to examine how dyslectic adults define the service quality at the public library of Gothenburg. The purpose is also to investigate what level of service quality the library provides and which responsibilities the library has towards the dyslectics. Answers are sought to the following questions: - How do dyslectics perceive the service quality at the public library of Gothenburg and is that service quality satisfactory? - What responsibilities does the public library of Gothenburg have towards the dyslectics according to cultural policy documents? In this paper six persons have been interviewed. Of these, four are adult dyslectics, one works with people with special demands and the last one is the chief librarian.

Concern about personal privacy continues to grow among online users along with the fact that new technologies help online companies to share user's private information. Still the usage of online entities such as social networks and e-commerce sites continue to increase. This raises the question of why online users act in such a contradictory and irrational way.Our study examines what impact one recently developed application called social login, which is provided by several social networks and used by millions of online companies, has on consumer's evaluation of online brands when they are primed for various types of information concerning privacy issues. Our assumptions are built up on the theory of cognitive, dissonance and suggest that there will be no differences in evaluation of the brands due to the human need to rationalize their existing behavior and attitudes when they receive new or contradicting information. The potential effects are measured by a manipulation presented in a survey distributed in an online environment to a sample of users (n=,154).

The purpose of this study is to examine certain aspects of work with men who use violence in intimate relationships. In a Government bill in late 90s the Government presented its action plan on what is expected to be done in each municipality, but investigations show that the work is stationary. 46 percent of the men, who are in treatment, choose to cancel it. We wanted to find out how society will meet up with men who use violence in their intimate relationship and how to go about in the meeting. Those who lead us to the answers in this qualitative method are three social workers and a therapist who has the task of helping these men. The study is based on interviews from three municipalities in southern Sweden, the municipalities made ??as in between 30-60 000 residents and businesses are startups; theoldest has been in operation for five years.The results showed that they had chosen to put these activities under the sections of the Social Services but is counted as a separate project, as the driving force may apply for funding via the County Council.

Purpose: Our aim is to get an insight on how home care workers experience, handle and looks upon their work. We also want to form an opinion of how home care workers experience the relationship to the clients they meet.Questions: How does home care workers experience their daily work with their clients? Home care workers daily meet many different sorts of clients with different needs, how do they handle this? What kind of support does home care workers get in their work?Method: A qualitative design with semistructured interviews.Conclusion: The most central conclusion from all of our interviews were: that home care service workers has a very stressful and demanding occupation, that the work has a low status, that the personnel has a big responsibility for the wellbeing of other people and that they often find their work satisfying and fun. To have someone to talk to and exchange ideas with was also mentioned by the informants as a vital part of feeling support in their work. From the Antonovskys theory, a sense of coherence, and Goffmans views of the society, we also find that the larger part of our informants feel a high sense of coherence and that when they have to adjust to their different caretakers they play different roles..

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the daily press, morning and evening papers respectively, describe homeless people and their situation from a number of chosen articles. Was there a possibility to make clear if the public opinion of homelessness has changed from a media perspective during the last five years? In order to meet the purpose of the study, the authors have used discourse analysis of the chosen articles as well as the theory of social constructions and the theory of stigmatizing. The articles have been chosen from the two largest daily morning papers and the two largest evening papers. From each article many rich and close quotations are used, which subsequently have been analysed and interpreted.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to study how librarians experience reference work. We wanted to get a better understanding about librarians assignments through the study. We chose to limit the study to public libraries, and to the south of Sweden. The questions used in our study are: How do librarians interpret the conception of reference work? What values do librarians have concerning reference work? How do librarians experience reference work? How do librarians look at different roles in reference work? We chose to use a fenomenographically inspired method.

In most software engineering project, users are only involved in the beginning of the project as a help to design the requirements specification but users can be involved after this phase too, but is it effective to do so? With this report we would like to investigate how effective it is to involve users after the requirements specification has been written and approved. To find out how effective it is to involve the users we try some fast and simple involvement techniques on a quite far gone project. These techniques include ethnographic studies, prototypes and surveys. We also interviewed a couple of people who work with usability and finally delivered a report with our results to them to find out if they found our result relevant.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate a few economy students? perceptions of user education connected to essay work, focusing on aspects of information literacy of importance to the studies and the role of the user education in this context. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach. Five economy students were interviewed regarding their experiences of working with information, their perceptions of user education and its impact on their essay work. The interviews were transcribed and analysed with Bruce?s (1997) relational model of information literacy.