Since prehistoric time man has used wood to build their environment. The material?s availabilitycombined with its good mechanical properties has often made it the material of choice. Like allmaterials exposed to natures degradative processes the properties of wood decreases over time.Rot, UV radiation and attacks by insects and pests damage wood if not protected. Since we wantwhat we build to consist, optimizing our building materials durability is of great interest.Techniques and methods for increasing the endurance of wood have been developed in severaldifferent places and for a long time.

The aim of this master thesis is to study the students usage and experiences of the reference services at the university library at Linköping University. The four questions that I seek answers to are: - What kind of help do the students most often ask for at the reference desk? - To what extent do the students use the reference services for their studies? - What are the students experiences of the help they receive at the reference desk? - What are the students experiences of the treatment they receive from the librarians at the reference desk? I have studied literature that describes reference work and evaluation of reference work. I have also studied Christian Grönroos theory of service quality. I have distributed questionnaires to students at Linköping University.

Today, individual indoor stalls and individual outdoor paddocks are the most common way to house horses in Sweden. The way that we manage, house and feed the horses are not optimal for the species natural basic behavioural needs. However, the awareness of this grows in the context of research and the emergence of alternative housing systems. One of the alternatives to the traditional format in individual boxes is called group housing. Group housing systems allow horses to live in herds and they can choose how they want to distribute the hours of the day between movement, resting and foraging. The purpose of this study is to examine how frequently the young horses in a group housing system use the indoor lying area.

BackgroundOur main goal in the clinic is to offer rehabilitation for individuals with hearing losses. The outcome of audiological rehabilitation shall be evaluated in line with the HSL (Swedish health law 2008:3). It is most important to evaluate the results of the audiological rehabilitation for the individual as well as to make sure to reach the goals of HSL.AimThe aim of this study was to try to investigate the audiologists? opinions end experiences how to evaluate audiological rehabilitation. The aim with the focus group interview was to collect increased knowledge regarding questions, answers and observations audiologists consider when evaluating audiological rehabilitation.

Today, we can see that social navigation is embedded in different kinds of websites, but there is still little support for social navigation in the web browser. Our main concern has been how we construct a tool that fills this hole in the web browser. By letting the theory, the prototype and the focus group serve as input/output to each other we could create a better overview of how the different pieces were intertwined. This has been a crucial mental model for us to obtain since it has helped us to understand how we could realize the theory through our prototype and thereby come to the conclusion of what aspects of the theory that we should put forward to further development. After constructing the prototype we thought that it would support social navigation, but realized after analyzing the discussion of the focus group that we are not there yet.

BACKGROUND: Previous research shows that many nurses feel that patients with borderlinepersonality disorder (BPD) are more difficult to provide care to than patients with otherdiagnoses. Experiences of these meetings with BPD patients are often negative. With thisbackground, a literature study was made in order to elucidate the patients' perspective. AIM:Compiling knowledge of how patients diagnosed with BPD experience their treatment and themeeting with health care professionals. METHOD: Through the databases PsycINFO andPubMed, twelve qualitative articles were selected and summarized in a literature study.

BACKGROUND: Exercise on Prescription (EoP) means that a doctor writes out a customized form of exercise to the patient instead of medicine, or in combination with medication. The activity becomes a part of the treatment. Since many today do not follow recommendations for physical activity occurs in the long term a number of public health diseases. EoP promotes health and prevents disease. AIM: The aim of this paper is toexamine whether EoP from a patient perspective perceived to be an efficient and effective method of treatment.

AbstractIn my work on language development in preschool the purpose was to examine how and to what extent the pre-school supports children with special needs in their language development. Trough qualitative interviews with four preschool teachers, I wanted to see how they work with language development in preschool. In the study, Main questions asked in the inquiry :How do teachers and support children?s language development?What techniques, resources and tools available to facilitate language development? The conclusion that I made from my inquiry is that the primary language stimulation methods teachers use to encourage children?s language development are rhymes telling, books reading and song singing based on active selection of pieces that match the children?s maturity level.And how they are using different language stimulation techniques Karlstad model, TAKK (Signs of augmentative and alternative communication) and TRAS (Early registration of language development) to promote children?s language development. Keyword: Language development, language stimulation, treatment, communication, methods..

In this paper we analyze a social network specifically designed for the elderly, people with Dementia and people with generally low computer experience. This is a relatively unexplored use for such software, and our goal is to find out whether the technique to be used is simple enough to use for the intended user group, and generally how the whole situation is experienced by the users. To achieve this we conducted an expert evaluation and interviewed a number of users at two separate occasions during their first weeks with Modernfamilies. We came to the conclusion that this software generally is simple enough to use for the intended target group. Some of the users we came in contact with experienced the software as a positive addition to their daily lives, while some could not see any reason for a further use.

The purpose of my study is to find out which way the extended school staff has their knowledge about conflicts, what they think is the cause of a conflict and how they handle conflicts.To answer these questions, I have chosen to do interviews with an available group. I interviewed six persons of different gender, age, nationality and they have been working from three to twenty years at afterschool care.I have analyzed my empirical material using Szklarkis four causes of a conflict and Malténs strategies for conflict management.My conclusion is that the after-school staff's knowledge is mostly based on experience, partly through work with children group in afterschool care and as a youth leader in the voluntary sector. The strategy almost always used for the after-school staff were the collusion strategy.

This essay deals with the subject of communication through Facebook. In this survey we studied 100 youths from Karlstad and their communication habits and behavior patterns on Facebook. The social network site Facebook has since its start in 2004 made a mark in modern communication. Today in 2010 the site has more than 500 million users. This paper wants to study what happens to other types of communication.

Background: Bone anchored hearing system is a surgically implantable system for treatment ofindividuals with hearing loss. The Softband is intended for patients who can benefit from a boneanchored hearing system but who are not yet suitable for implant surgery.Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether an adhesive bone conductor, Adjoin, canbe used as an alternative to Softband.Material and Method: Twenty adult subjects with normal hearing participated in the study.Measurement of functional gain and speech intelligibility was performed with Softband and Adjoinwhich then were compared. A questionnaire was answered by the participants after the measurementsthat treated their subjective experiences with each option.Results: The objective measurements yielded no overall difference between Softband and Adjoin forthe group studied. The subjective results showed differences in the perceived comfort as well as whichof the two bone conductors that would be preferred to use in everyday life, with Adjoin being thepreferred option. No difference was detected on participants perceived gain, sound quality and speechintelligibility.Conclusion: Based on the measured results, Adjoin seems to be a suitable alternative to Softband.However, there are questions about how Adjoin works with long-term use..

Background: During the 1980s, the fear of HIV spread over the world. Health professionals'attitudes to patients with HIV, was negatively impacted because of their fear to be infected.Patients with HIV have therefore,during disease history's first two decades, experienced stigma and discrimination in the response from health professionals. Because of the increasing knowledge of HIV it is of interest to study patients' contemporary experiences of the encounter with health professionals. Aim:To explore how patients with HIV experiencing the meeting with health professionals. Method:Literature study with seven qualitative and three quantitative articles.

The aim of this essay is to problematize the role of living support in a group home and to examine staff reflections about the users' opportunities for and possibly limits to self determination and, in addition to this, how they work towards supporting this right. The study is conducted through seven semi-structured qualitative interviews. The theoretical points of departure are theories of empowerment and paternalism. We have analysed the study results from the vantage point of these theories. The results are consistent with earlier research showing lack of guidance for supporters and also a lack of common approach towards users..

People with Aspergers syndrome (AS) have proven difficulties maintaining jobs according to previous research. This is a quality study. Four women with AS were interviewed about their experience of employment. What difficulties and contributions have they experience at work? What is the self experienced need of support within the research group? The result has been analyzed with different types of ?support?.