Difficult calvings and stillbirths are problems in Swedish dairy production that result in large expenses for the farmers and welfare issues concerning the animals. A common opinion is that the live weight of SRB and SLB is increasing, and whether increased weights have caused the increase in calving problems has been discussed. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the relative birth weight (calf/cow) and calving difficulty and stillbirth, respectively. The importance of breed and parity for the relative weight has been investigated, and comparisons with previous studies have been made to evaluate whether the relative weight has changed over the last decades or not. The study was based on 807 calvings, registered during the period 1993-2003 in the experimental dairy herd of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Jälla).

The present study examined high school students? attitudes to higher education at university/college and their study engagement in an industrial town in klarälvdalen in the county of Värmland. The main research question was whether there are any differences between students in vocational and theoretically oriented programs regarding their attitude to higher education and study engagement. The results was also compared with a study with the same research question conducted in Countryside town in fryksdalen, Värmland county to see whether attitude and student engagement differ between high school students in different parts of Värmland. The method used was quantitative with data collected by using questionnaires.

Introduction: Each year 1200-1300 patients are diagnosed with head neck cancer. Treatment that involves radiotherapy can cause severe side effects for example trismus that affects quality of life.Purpose: To study health-related quality of life in patients who have undergone radiation treatment for head and neck cancer and participated in a intervention group who received training intended to prevent trismus or in a control group who received standard treatment.Method: This is a prospective study in which data is collected from 66 patients participating in a randomized study aiming to evaluate a training program to prevent trismus. Thirty three participated in the intervention group and thirty three in the control group. Both patient groups assessed health related quality of life (HRQOL) with EORTC QLQ C30 and QLQ-H&N35, at start and end of the radiation treatment, and at 3 and 6-months after completing radiation treatment.Results: There is no difference between the intervention and control groups regarding symptoms, functional status and global health, except for intake of nutritional supplements.  For both groups almost all scales measuring HRQOL deteriorated under the radiation treatment. However, 3 and 6 months after end of radiotherapy HRQOL had improved and had returned to the baseline values.

Students at the School of Engineering at Jönköping University have on behalf of the swimming organization ?Nässjö Sim och Livräddningssällskap? conducted research on how to monitor and evaluate swimmers and swimming groups in a simple and efficient manner with a focus on usability and user friendliness. Since no system existed that could meet these requirements, the client had a desire to tailor and develop such a system. The purpose of this work was to develop a system that would work as a tool to be used by coaches and swimmers alike and allow them to eventually follow the development of swimmers and swimming groups. The organization also wanted to have the ability to create tests and exams, both for land and water training, register these in the system and in a structured way know which swimmers took and passed these.For this thesis, the following questions functioned as a framework for progress.UsabilityHow to design a usable system and what is required?SystemWhat type of system is best suited to meet the client's requirements and preferences?Competition resultsHow can one retrieve all the competition results for swimmers of Nässjö SLS?DatabaseWhat type of database is best suited to easily share data with an external existing database?Usability has been the main focus throughout the project.

AimThe purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between off-ice horizontal jump tests and on-ice skating among students at hockey high schools. Questions: What is the association between the performance on horizontal jumps and skating 10 meters standing start among students in Swedish ice hockey high schools? What is the association between the performance on horizontal jumps and skating 10 meters flying start among students in Swedish ice hockey high schools?MethodStudents at three ice hockey high schools in the Stockholm area participated in the study. Two schools were national approved sports educations and one at lower level. All 50 students (41 at national approved sports educations and 9 lower level) that were included in the study were men and went year one and two in gymnasium.

AimThe purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between off-ice horizontal jump tests and on-ice skating among students at hockey high schools. Questions: What is the association between the performance on horizontal jumps and skating 10 meters standing start among students in Swedish ice hockey high schools? What is the association between the performance on horizontal jumps and skating 10 meters flying start among students in Swedish ice hockey high schools?MethodStudents at three ice hockey high schools in the Stockholm area participated in the study. Two schools were national approved sports educations and one at lower level. All 50 students (41 at national approved sports educations and 9 lower level) that were included in the study were men and went year one and two in gymnasium.

AimThe purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between off-ice horizontal jump tests and on-ice skating among students at hockey high schools. Questions: What is the association between the performance on horizontal jumps and skating 10 meters standing start among students in Swedish ice hockey high schools? What is the association between the performance on horizontal jumps and skating 10 meters flying start among students in Swedish ice hockey high schools?MethodStudents at three ice hockey high schools in the Stockholm area participated in the study. Two schools were national approved sports educations and one at lower level. All 50 students (41 at national approved sports educations and 9 lower level) that were included in the study were men and went year one and two in gymnasium.

Teenagers are the group that spends most money on clothing. When choosing clothes, the so called internal and external signals could affect the perceived quality of the teenagers. The external signals are for example price, brand and place of purchase while the internal signals are the physical composition of the product as for example garment and size. The perceived quality is the attributes that the teenagers perceive that the specific article of clothing has. Today?s marketing, within the fashion line, is mostly to present the design of the product and aim the marketing for curtain segments and to keep a distance to others that are not within the segment group.

The focus of this essay is to further investigate and describe psychological strains experienced by child welfare workers. The method used was qualitative interviews, two group interviews. The research aimed to understand how child welfare workers were affected and handled the psychological strains generated by work through theory of coping and symbolic interactionism where humans are viewed as pragmatic actors. The research showed, as previous studies shown, that the child welfare workers experience a great deal of psychological strains generated by high turnover in staff and pressuring work demands. The child welfare workers felt inadequate and alone in their work tasks and experienced stress and anxiety.

This study examines in which way literature is presented in four schoolbooks for the Swedish senior high school of today, compared to descriptions and selections in Swedish universities. The study covers two basic schoolbook categories used in the teaching of Swedish and comparative literature: anthologies and textbooks.The four anthologies structures and their joined canon are presented, and the text canon of 12 common writers is studied and compared to the corresponding text canon in the universities selection of texts to main courses in comparative literature. The four textbooks are analysed by close reading of the presentations of four different writers and their works, where the textbooks for the Swedish senior high school are viewed through the glass of literary guides used in Swedish universities.The study also analyses what literary perspective is present in the Swedish school principles for education in literature and display, through earlier didactic studies, a sketch of the classroom reality of education in literature.The study finds that the examined schoolbooks for the Swedish senior high school tend to, not only shorten the text length and amount of texts but also, simplify the selection and presentation of the writers production. This leads to certain fixed and, in some cases, almost stereotyped ?roles? that are assigned to the writers and limits their production.

Background: Loneliness is an ordinary but complex concept which exist of several dimensions. Loneliness can mean and create suffering for the individual but there is sometimes a need to be alone and some individuals who live alone can experience a communion with the existence itself.Aim: To clarify the concept loneliness and its complexity with focus on the experience of loneliness in elderly individuals.Method: Walker and Avants (2005) model for concept analysisResults: The defining attributes the analysis resulted in that the experience of loneliness in elderly individual's is: a subjective and unique experience; positive or negative and ranges in intensity; strongly connected to communion and social relationships with other individuals; connected to loss and miss of one or several elements as meaningful interactions, communion, physical abilities, work, respect, health and quality of life. The attributes were also closely connected to their antecedents and consequences. To clarify the concept further was a model case, a borderline case and a contrary case created. The empirical referents are presented in the discussion.Conclusion: Through clarifying the core of the concept with focus on elderly individual's experience of loneliness is the hope that this concept analysis can support nursing staff to search for understanding for the elderly individual's experience of loneliness and pay attention to its complexity..

The use of silicon carbide (SiC) as a base material in power electronics has manyadvantages, including high breakdown voltage and excellent temperature endurance.However, the packaging of such electronics presents major challenges and there is aneed for packaging that can operate in higher temperature. The purpose of this thesishas been to develop a test method and verify the functionality of SiC powertransistors prototypes with a new packaging technique developed by Swerea IVF AB.It includes setting up an electrical test-bed for power and high temperature cyclingand analysis of the results. Even though test confirmed functionality after thepackaging process, (at room temperature) the performance seemed to have been reduced. This could be a result of the measurement setup and the packaging process.In higher temperature the transistors failed to operate longer than a couple ofminutes which showed the weaknesses in the design and the challenges with this typeof packaging..

With the advance of the modern information society, the importance of reliable identity authentication has increased dramatically. Using biometrics as a means for verifying the identity of a person increases both the security and the convenience of the systems. By using yourself to verify your identity such risks as lost keys and misplaced passwords are removed and by virtue of this, convenience is also increased. The most mature and well-developed biometric technique is fingerprint recognition. Fingerprints are unique for each individual and they do not change over time, which is very desirable in this application.

This essay deals with the issue how to define the concept successful school and what ingredients it includes. To aim this task I have interviewed four principals at upper secondary schools, two placed in community schools and the other two working for non-community schools. We have discussed how the principals define a successful school, whether they believe that the principal has a major part in contributing to the schools success or not and further if they think that schools have anything in common with private companies.The principals all agreed on what components they believe a successful school consists of, that is good school results from the pupils, a high comfort level for the pupils at school, professional management from the principal and a high level of young people who wants to attend the particular school.Further I have studied Swedish and foreign research in the area of successful schools and management in schools to get at good background in this matter..

In published studies it is found that the fuel consumption on a forwarder is relatively constant, on time basis. A certain variation between different sizes of forwarders occurs as well as between different working elements. The aim of the study was to establish a forwarders comparatively fuel consumption when driving on road and in the terrain, loaded and unloaded, with high and low gear and with high and low speed as well as with hydrostatic and hydrodynamic transmission. A hypothesis was that low rpm gives lower fuel consumption on distance basic, at all trials. The test driving was made with a Hemek 750 which is a three geared hydrostatic machine and with a Hemek 700 which is a hydrodynamic machine with six gears.