The aim of this study was to measure the castration coverage and the attitudes among people towards castration in an area in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, where a castration program has been running for a few years. Another aim was to review the literature to examine the link between castration coverage and rabies prevalence. Two areas (Area 25 and Area 23) in Lilongwe were studied through standardized household interviews. In Area 25, a non-governmental organization had been castrating dogs weekly to twice weekly for free for 3 years. In Area 23, no official organization had done castrations, and this area therefore acted as a control in the study.

The sandy beaches of Vänern are threatened by overgrowth and thereby the biodiversity is at high risk to decline. This study is based on an inventory of vegetation of overgrowth character and mosses. The frequency and spread of mosses is perceived as an indication of initial or present overgrowth. External factors that have been taken into consideration are wind-, wave- and ice erosion, the slope of the beach, wear and grade of exposure. The purpose of the investigation is to control the beaches grade of overgrowth and find out which external factor is of most importance for the maintenance of the biotope. The results show that the beaches environment is affected by the slope of the beach, grade of exposure, size, wear and overgrowth.

A clean and affordable energy source for cooking is deficient in developing countries. People rely on fuels that contribute to environmental, social and health problems.Biogas is an alternative energy source and an increased investment in small-scale biogas production can in several developing countries be found. Several projects have started to use the technology in developing countries because of the benefits with biogas. Some cases in the establishment of biogas plants have succeeded and some have not. The study is a literature review supplemented by two field studies.

Abstrakt All around the world there are a lots of people that suffers from chronic pain. One great factor for the devolopment of chronic pain is the phenomen fear-avoidance/kinesophobia that appear to have negative effects on rehabilitation of chronic painproblems. The aim of the present study was to describe and identify how patient that took part in a rehabilitationprogram in year 2004 and 2005 with focus on behaviourchanges estimate their fear-avoidance/kinesophobia and examine if there was any changes estimate fear-avoidance/kinesophobia respectivly before and after and respecivly before and 12 month after the rehabilitationcourse. The study had a describing prospecitive design. Data was collected by the Swedish version of Tampascale for kinesophobia.

PURPOSE: To analyze how companies in the Swedish beer industry strategically workingwith CSR externally in order to increase their legitimacy.METHOD: Qualitative interviews and text analysis to enable data to stakeholder analysis.MATERIAL: Respondent interviews with key individuals, textual analysis of CSR-relateddocuments of the largest beer producers in Sweden.MAIN RESULTS: The study shows that it is possible to distinguish three main categories ofstakeholders to the beer producers. These have various high stakeholder values, wherecustomers are those with the highest value, then consumers and third critics. That these havevarious high values allows different strategic approach to the key issue of how preventivemeasures, that can be said to work against their own products, affects the beer producerslegitimacy among stakeholders..

The purpose of the study is to analyze what conditions the specific company provides employees to enable organizational learning. To clarify the framing of the study a few quastions has been specified to narrow the issu. The questions that has been used are: what opportunities does the company creat to enable organizational learning and how does the emplyees contribute to organizational learning.In the search of knowledge to the previously questions this study becames a qualitative study with an ethnographic approach based on observations and interviews. This method gives the knowledge that makes us understand the actions that takes place in the oraganization and the shared image the oraganization provides. An understanding for the employees and the organization has been achived after compiling the empirical material from observation notes and transcripts from the interviewsIn the work whit the analysis the empirical material based on transcripts and observation notes has been the main material.

PURPOSE: To analyze how companies in the Swedish beer industry strategically workingwith CSR externally in order to increase their legitimacy.METHOD: Qualitative interviews and text analysis to enable data to stakeholder analysis.MATERIAL: Respondent interviews with key individuals, textual analysis of CSR-relateddocuments of the largest beer producers in Sweden.MAIN RESULTS: The study shows that it is possible to distinguish three main categories ofstakeholders to the beer producers. These have various high stakeholder values, wherecustomers are those with the highest value, then consumers and third critics. That these havevarious high values allows different strategic approach to the key issue of how preventivemeasures, that can be said to work against their own products, affects the beer producerslegitimacy among stakeholders..

Due to the forest industry downsizing, many communities in rural forest regions in Canada and Sweden are facing problems to survive. In order to create community sustainability, resilience and well-being in remote forest regions, the view on the forest resources has shifted towards multiple use, through the concept of sustainable forest management (SFM). Beside the economic and ecological elements of sustainability, the social forest values are needed, contributing to the human well-being, local participation, stakeholder collaboration, human rights and cultural connection. In this thesis the embodiment of the social component of SFM within Prince Albert Model Forest (Canada), and Vilhelmina Model Forest (Sweden) will be examined. Being partners and facing similar challenges as rural boreal forest regions, the two model forests are compared through analysis of projects and activities, conducted interviews and organization documents. Looking at projects mentioned as successful by the interviewees, they all have elements from the social values of SFM. The direction can be explained by the introduction of the Forest Communities Program in Canada, demanding the Model Forests to work towards community stability and resilience, the Model Forest organization concept itself and the way global focus are increasing around social forest values. In the future, it may be important that the role of the MFs enable some kind of political authorization and legitimacy in order to improve conflict solving and indigenous rights equality.

The aim of this study was to investigate how school counselors experienced collaboration with social services and whether they felt they have the ability to improve upon this collaboration. The empirical data consists of qualitative interviews with eight school counselors from public schools, ages 13 to 15, in eight separate municipalities in the Stockholm area. The main results showed that the school counselors recognized the positive benefits from collaboration, but that they in practice experienced difficulties turning this into a high-quality collaboration. The school counselors experienced that due to uncertain expectations in the collaboration it led to unclear distribution of areas of responsibilities. The school counselors expressed small or no possibilities for them to improve upon collaboration but pointed out that higher commitment and a positive attitude are valuable attributes to improving collaboration.

AbstractTitle: Welfare officers personal experiences of stress and coping in an emergency hospital in StockholmThe purpose with this study was to describe how welfare officers in an emergency hospital experienced stress in their workplace and what coping strategies they used. Through qualitative interviews the welfare officers thoughts and experiences were examined. The result showed that welfare officers experienced some stress at the workplace; this was related to lacks in the organization, heavy workload and short of time. The most commonly used coping strategies were social support, physical training, short breaks during the day to handle the stress at work. The conclusions of this study was that factors that reduces stress for welfare officers who work at emergency hospitals was a functioning organization and management, the ability to control and at some levels effect their own work, to have guidance and other opportunities to ventilate with co-workers.

English title: Is a literary canon necessary? A comparative study based on seven senior high school teachers´ different approaches towards the place of canon in the education of Swedish. The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze how seven senior high school teachers relate to a literary canon in Swedish while teaching literature in senior high school, identifying similarities and differences among the teachers? view and opinions about an outspoken formal literary canon and a silent, informal canon.The earlier research opens the door slightly to the American debate and gives insight about the complexity of the concept of canon. The study continues with exploring possible relations to postcolonial theory and didactics.    The study reveals that the majority of the concerns against canon are that too much centrally governed education may decrease the motivation and commitment of the teacher. In addition, the dominant canon passivizes a certain variety of literature, thus various points of views. On the other hand, views on the equalizing effect of canon on the level of education and its benefits in increased knowledge of the history of the literature are salient. .

Due to increasing product availability and higher demands on fast deliveries, the competition between companies is growing. To be able to satisfy the customers? requests an efficient logistics system with short throughput time is required. By using tools associated with Lean production companies are able to make great improvements in their manufacturing systems and reduce lead times to satisfy customer demands.There are two classifications associated with manufacturing, high variety and low volume (HVLV) and low volume and high variety (LVHV). The general belief is that the concept of Lean production is difficult to implement in a production environment with high variety and low volume due to the concept being adapted to mass production.

This report describes a system for verification of fingerprints against a previous created template. It describes how and why a fingerprint image must be processed before it can be used to either identify or verify a person. The method is based on special features of a fingerprint, called minutiae points. The whole process from image to matching is described, every step in the process with image enhancement, binarization, thinning and how to find the minutiae points. Also what false minutiae points are, how they arise, why they deteriorate the result, and how to handle them, is discussed.

In recent years, Lean has been implemented in a variety of companies with focus areas that differ from the conditions that characterizes manufacturing. This transfer has contributed to fairly superficial results because companies almost exclusively focus on Toyotas methodology and not on the goal of Lean. The effort of transforming Lean from manufacturing to any organization requires a definition on a general level and a view of Lean as a system. One of the core principles of Lean and the foundation of continuous improvements is standardized work. In product development there is a negative view on standardized work, where the engineers state that the principle is not applicable for knowledge processes that include non-repetitive and creative work.In the framework of this master thesis literature has been studied to find support that standardized work is applicable for product development and areas that include knowledge processes.

This is a study of some risk factors for Diabetes Mellitus (DM) in dogs. As a pilot study it is meant to give information to be used in a planned later, larger and better controlled study. The present study hypothesized that suboptimal feeding (high percentage of homemade and table foods), lack of activity and overweight contribute to the risk of DM. Twenty consecutive dogs diagnosed with DM at the Veterinary University Clinic in Uppsala between 2000 ? 2003 were chosen as the experimental group.