The European Union is seen as democratic, and one of the criteria for a democratic decision process is that it must be fully transparent for the citizens. That is the only way for them to make their own decisions about political issues, and it is only possible as long as the citizens have access to relevant and reliable information. However, this is not always the case within the European Union, since it is often difficult to get a hold of different documents of the institutions, and since the civil servants to a great extent are forbidden to give away any information..

This study investigates educators? experience of Intensive Behavioral Therapy (IBT) for preschool children diagnosed with autism. The aim is to examine, from the educators? perspective, how useful this method has been, what difference it made for the children with autism that took part in this training and also how the educators? have been able to organize and implement the method. The study is based on 6 semi-structured interviews and 29 surveys.

Background: Hepatitis E (HEV) is a small, non-enveloped virus that belongs to the viral genus Hepevirus. HEV is a positive sense single-stranded RNA virus and there is insufficient information regarding its replication. This is mainly because the virus has low capacity to grow in normally used cell cultures. Many specific strand assay detection studies have been done in order to understand more about HEV replication. Unfortunately, these assays have the disadvantage of giving false positive results.Aim: The aim of this project was to improve the positive strand assay to increase specificity and eliminate false positivity which is due to high sensitivity of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Swedish law is very keen on the fact that every person should be treated equal when facing the legal system. When it comes to cases concerning children, social workers and judges are expected to strictly obey the rules of the law but at the same time make individual judgements based on the best interest of the child, something that requires a great deal of empathy and knowledge. Is it possible to live up to the maxim about equality and to simultaneously see the individual needs? With so many different parties and angles in the case, how does one manage to make a solid appraisal of the situation that truly serves the best interest of the child?The purpose of this study was to examine the capability within the social services with focus on objectivity. More specifically it's aim was to find out how the social workers and judges see their capability of being objective in the investigations concerning children.

The personal brand derives from the marketing brand, and argues that a person can take control over other people?s perceptions about him or her. The personal brand can benefit the person but it can also give advantages to his or her company. The interest in, and the purpose of the personal brand, has increased the last ten years. Leaders of large companies in Sweden consider it to be of utmost importance to have an influence on their co-workers.

Road transports stand for a great part of Sweden?s total CO2-emissions. Transports are expected to increase over the coming years, and with those the emissions. A greater environmental awareness leads to increased demands for environmentally friendly transport. The aim of this thesis is to study the consequences of changing transportation modes from road to railway.

Even though the American author H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) has been praised as one of the most influential writers of horror literature in the 20th century, his style of writing has occasionally been criticized. Lovecraft was using a writing style based on strict scientific language, where the human condition and existence are irrelevant in the narrative. This includes less focus on character development and more on the importance of atmosphere and environments. I am presenting narratological analyzes of what is often considered to be three of Lovecraft?s ?greatest works?: ?The Call of Cthulhu?, At the Mountains of Madness, and ?The Shadow over Innsmouth.? These analyzes are used to highlight Lovecraft?s science-oriented language and narratological techniques, with the focus of studying what methods Lovecraft was using to give his works and his readers a sense of dread, hopelessness, and an alien atmosphere.

Henric Schartau was the prominent figure in a Christian revivalist movement thatspread mainly in south west Sweden during the 19th century. Priesthood followers in thetradition, commonly named Schartauans, often preached from his drafts, and were generallyvery loyal to the state church. Schartau and his followers placed a strong emphasis onministry and correct biblical teaching. The movement had a great impact on the diocese ofGothenburg for a protracted time period..

The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether institutional ownership has an influence on CEO compensation in companies where the institutions have invested. In order to fulfil the purpose of the thesis a quantitative study was carried out within the Swedish corporate context where we have studied Swedish institutional investors and companies quoted on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Our period of study was the financial year of 2007.The empirical questions at issue is; Was there a connection between Swedish institutional ownership and the size of the CEO compensation, and, does Swedish institutional ownership lead to a certain type of CEO compensation in terms of structure?Our results did not suggest that an increased institutional ownership neither leads to a certain type of salary level nor a certain kind of salary structure. These results contradict earlier American research, which has been done within this area and has previously shown a secured connection.The reasons for our results may be many and it is difficult to state any concrete conclusions to why we received differing results.

This thesis discusses main problems associated with dictionary-based Cross-Language Information Retrieval as lexical and translational ambiguity of query terms, translation of compounds and phrases, dictionary limitation. The purpose of the study is to investigate how query structure influences the effectiveness of CLIR regarding performance of three query types: original query, unstructured query and structured query. Query structuring refers to the application of #syn-operator to group query terms. The study comprises an experiment that was performed in the InQuery IR system with TrecUta database that contains 550,000 news articles from different American newspapers. 24 topics were used for the experiment.

This paper examines the interpersonal and intercorporate networks of interlocking boardmembers among Sweden's 50 largest publicly traded companies in 1985 and 2005. We find that both the interpersonal and intercorporate networks of 1985 are considerably more coherent and densely connected than those of 2005. The observed changes in social network structure are compared to changes in company ownership in Swedish publicly traded companies during the same period, and it is found that the observed changes in network density and cohesion can be related to a notable increase in the number of foreign board members. These results imply that the social organization of the Swedish system of corporate governance has changed notably during the period. Social network theory suggests that these changes can explain the greater demand for external regulation, decreased homogeneity of board members and increase in board member compensation observed under the period.

This thesis aims to describe and characterise the foreign policy change the United States has experienced towards Europe. This thesis claims that the United States is presenting a more supportive attitude today towards the development of the European Union. This more positive attitude has developed during successive U.S. administrations and has become visible since the end of the Cold War.Washington is today less ambiguous and less ambivalent towards the integration of Europe. The United States appreciate that a common foreign- and security policy in Europe is in accordance with American interests.

For some time now, there has been a debate concerning the relationship between the Cultural Heritage of Sweden and the public. It is said that mediation has been, and still is a, one-waydialog between the two. As a result, people have found a new way to interact with our heritage, thru cultural tourism. This area has been blamed for commercializing our CulturalHeritage, but also ignoring the great problems concerning fragile monuments and sites, which can be destroyed by tourism. Is it possible to find a solution regarding these problems, andcan these two areas benefit from each other?.

This report is a documentation of a Master?s thesis of 20 credits performed at the educational program of Technical Product- and Production Development with Design at Halmstad University. The project is carried out in cooperation with Hafa AB in Halmstad.The purpose of this project was to bring forth a concept of a bathroom cabinet for Hafa?s new selection Young through creative design methods. The selection is supposed to attract the younger purchaser but also a target group that dare to experiment with home furnishing and appreciates new design.

To Swedes in general and, to hunters in particular, there is a great interest for moose (Alces alces), witch is Sweden?s largest deer species. In the province of Öland (Sweden?s second largest island) the local people show a great interest for the moose existence, both for consumptive (hunting) and non-consumptive use (tourism). This became apparent in 2002 when the moose hunters on Öland voluntary agreed to temporarily postpone the moose hunt on the island.