The present thesis is about how preschool children develop their language skills. The purpose is also to discuss how library and preschool can collaborate and in different ways together help the children to achieve different skills and to use their first and second language in a more appropriate way. The main problem identified from literature and own observations is why library and preschool dont collaborate to help young children to develop their language skills? Which reasons are behind a lacking collaboration? What can be done to increase collaboration between the library and the preschool? How can librarians and preschool teachers use their different professional skills in the best manner to be able to help the children to develop their skills in language acquisition? Is it possible to measure childrens language skills and how can one decide what characterizes a good collaboration? We started with a literature review and continued with collecting qualitative data by means of interviews with people who worked as librarians and preschool teachers, who were supposed to collaborate in a language oriented project. We have chosen different language theories by well-known scientists and we have only picked a few of them, which we considered relevant for the chosen topic.

The purpose of this study was to analyze two local tourism related organizations in Umeå and how they used the marketing method Storytelling. The aim of this study was to examine what kind of stories the tourism related organizations were using, what these stories said in a direct, or in-direct way and how the reception was of the stories and the destinations. A qualitative study in the form of a discourse analysis based on Laclau and Mouffe's view on discourse analysis was conducted. The results of this study shows that storytelling is more effective when it is incorporated in the whole destination/organization when it comes to tourism related organizations and destinations. It also shows that storytelling in itself isn't only an innocent and positive tool and can cause negative feelings if used wrongly for an organization/destination.

Corporate Social Responsibility is a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns into their core business and in their interaction with stakeholders on a voluntarily basis. The purpose with our thesis is to study how Swedish insurance companies work with Corporate Social Responsibility and to analyse the underlying strategies of the companies? social, environmental and economical activities. We will analyse where, how and for whom value can be created with CSR. Where does the value creation take place, how can it be created through these activities and who will benefit from Corporate Social Responsibility? Theories point out that companies need to assemble and value the total package of benefits to be able to create successful corporate initiatives.

In the spring of 2006 a pilot project was initiated by The Rural Economy and Agricultural Societies of Sweden together with The Swedish Ornithological Society in order to increase collaboration between bird watchers and farmers. The project as a whole comprised 11 farms in South-Central Sweden. The aim was to benefit the decreasing populations of bird species related to the agricultural landscape. The purpose of this master thesis was to study how similarities and differences between bird watchers and farmers regarding opinions about nature, landscape, agriculture, birds and nature conservation have influenced the collaboration. Four of the farmers and five of the bird watchers that participated in the project were included in this study.

The goal with this essay is to investigate problems in processes of a government agency andthereby determine whether a Business Process Reengineering can create a more effectiveworkflow. The foundation of this essay lies in how customers perceive its business processesas reported from Internet forums. By adopting a qualitative approach, this is supplemented bythe statements and reports from the public business. The qualitative method that has been usedin this study is a content analysis of the threads from two major Internet forums that highlightthe problems associated with the examination of firearms licensing and the routine that exists.The method also gave us the opportunity to study the public business own view of theirprocesses. This was done by exploring their statements in media and their own reports aboutthis area.This essay is the result of a case-based study and during the course of the study we haveidentified five themes related to; time, management, communication, competence, andregulations.

The aim of this study was to describe how body language of humans affects the domestic dog (Canis familiaris) and how it can be implanted in the stressed situation that occur at an animal hospital. The subject is brought to notice because the author has experienced that dogs can get more stressed when a stressed and nervous owner is attending. Humans affect each other through posture, facial expression, voice and movement, and are often driven by their emotions, which can differentiate the verbal communication from the non-verbal communication. This occurs both consciously and unconsciously. Every human uses body language but not everyone knows how it is used or how to understand it.

This Masters thesis is performed at the request of the National Board of Forestry in order to investigate how the Swedish municipalities use their forests. The study is of general character with emphasis on the social values of the forests. The municipalities? purposes with their forests have varied over time, but lately the social aspects have been recognised as interesting. The social values of the forests can be defined as the values from the forests that contribute to the wealth of humans. This has socio-economic importance for the municipalities. The study was performed as a quantitative questionnaire survey, complemented with qualitative interviews.

AbstractFood and recuperation has a superior importance in human life and it is hard to deny thedistinction of the food in everyday life. Nutritious food gives energy to benefit activitiesof the day and influences on behavior and performance as well as well being. Themeaning of the terms meal and mealtime are key concepts in this study and the severalbeneficial aspects beyond the physiological function. Inadequate time for the mealmight provide degenerative consequences for individual health and generate outgoingsfor society. The aim of this study was that from an individual perspective describe workenvironment conditions for meals and recovery potential among employees withirregular working hours using mixed methods with both questionnaire and interviews.Four (4) airline employees participated.

The expectations of a successful outcome are great during childbirth. The overall objective of prenatal care and birth care is that midwives contribute in creating the most positive experience of pregnancy, child birth and infancy as possible. During the past 30 years there has been a significant increase in sectiofrequency both in Sweden and the rest of the Western world. More parents feel an overall insecurity when it comes to child labour. The purpose of this study was to describe how midwives experience the work of creating a sense of security and good nursing when meeting the expectant parents.

That animals should be able to express their natural behaviours, even in captivity, has become a more important issue lately. Nowadays Zoos work much more with educating people and helping conservation projects for endangered species. This is two important reasons for making the environment as natural as possible for zoo animals. Both in captivity and in the wild capuchin monkeys have been seen to use tools such as stones and sticks to get food and are therefore seen as a natural and important behaviour for them. This study was carried out to evaluate a specific sort of environmental enrichment where a group of three capuchins had to use sticks to get different kinds of food out of bottles.

The Armed Forces is looking to improve control of where articles are and the monitoring of their condition within its clothing supply. That is why Försvarets Materielverk is working on a motion to tag the Armed Forces clothing with passive RFID-tags. A cost/benefit analysis has been made in this report in order to find out whether the investment is economical justifiable and what costs and benefits arose. The analysis tool that was used is based on the PENG-model. The analysis had three scenarios with the difference that each scenario included various amounts of clothing to tag.  There has also been made an analysis where only the benefits regarding decreasing amount of lost clothes and simplified inventory were included.The result of the first analysis was that none of the scenarios was profitable during the first year.

The average length of life is increasing in the western world, hence the older population is growing. A common health problem among the elderly is malnutrition. Malnutrition causes decreased body strength and is associated with an amplified risk of infections, depression, fractures and increased mortality. The health care system is therefore faced with the challenge to prevent malnutrition among the growing population of elderly. This could be done by providing nutritious foods developed to meet the specific needs of elderly. The overall objective of this project was to test a healthy energy dense drink based on oats targeted for the elderly consumers as a strategy to prevent malnutrition among elderly.

The purpose of this thesis is to systematically describe and map how authorities define the school library and its function based on the current policy documents for the Swedish upper secondary school. The study is guided by the following questions: ? What dimensions does the school library have according to the explicit definitions, descriptions and requirements? ? What implicit arguments, references and unspoken assumptions about the school library and its role, function and significance can be derived? The study is delimited to the national policy documents, which have been divided into two groups ? structural and teaching focused ? corresponding to the two questions above. Further delimitations have been made to avoid noise and to manage a manual content analysis. Each question required its own analysis tool.

The object with this bachelor thesis is to illustrate if equality is present during the interaction between female and male players in the World of Warcraft with focus on the female players conception. The main question is: How does gender matter in the interaction between female and male players in WoW? This question is particularly interesting because WoW is in its own construction neutral in regards to gender in the aspect that gender does not hinder or benefit your avatar when it comes to the avatars development or possibilities. This bachelor thesis describes the views three of female WoW players and how they perceive the interaction with male players with focus on equality. The informants? personal thoughts and experiences are described.

Lantmäteriet (the Swedish mapping, cadastral and land registration authority) has been laser scanning Sweden since 2009. From the laser scanned data a digital elevation model (DEM) in grid format, with a resolution of 2 m, is produced. This DEM is called GSD-Höjddata, grid 2+ and from its data and the laser point cloud itself (in the form of a las-file) contour lines can be extracted. Lantmäteriet has not yet done this, but plans to update the contour lines in their cartographic products exist. If this is to be done in a satisfactory way an evaluation of different methods for it is needed.