Humans have always been fascinated by the thought of bringing non living objects to life. We wanted to explore the possibilities of trying to create an artefact that the audience would consider possess emotional states and have a life of its own. TaS is a interactive chair that functions as a social entity. The idea is to try and enhance the bond between human and artefact, based upon the emotional connection. We try and produce, enhance and maintain this bond through curiosity based interaction. Bachelor thesis in Interaction Design by Andreas Eriksson, Johanna Lund and Fredrik Lundh, spring term 2008, Malmö University, K3 School of Arts & Communication..

Tree fiber lengths controls properties like strength and smoothness in paper and other wood products. For forest researchers it is of interest to be able to determine the fiber lengths in standing trees. Mo?rling et al. (2003), among others, have developed methods to estimate fiber length distributions in standing trees without damaging them.

This master thesis deals with classifications schemes in multicultural societies. The aim is to investigate how well the Swedish classification scheme SAB has been adapted to the multicultural society of today. I have done a comparative analysis between the SAB and the UDC to see if an international classification scheme would have better possibilities to represent a multicultural society. I have asked some institutions that have a large collection of documents dealing with minority cultures how they experienced the SAB. I have also read literature about classification theories and compared universal enumerative, facetted and special classification schemes to see if the possibilities to classify documents on, or related to minorities differed from each other.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how teachers in the municipal Music schools Schools of arts (kulturskolor) estimate the quality of their teaching rooms, which factors that are significant for their opinion, and if they have experienced any tendencies of improvement in the quality of their teaching rooms. The examination is built on a questionnaire, which was sent to a number of music- and ?culture schools? in Sweden. From the answers you can read that the majority (66%) of the teachers are satisfied with their teaching rooms, even if a relatively large part (33%) seems to be unsatisfied. The single factor that are of most importance for their opinion are how much of their teaching they spend in rooms that doesn?t belong to the music- or ?culture school? and also are used for other kinds of education.

The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze the geographical distribution of everyday criminality in the town of Borlänge during the year 2002 and to analyze which measures to be taken in the physical social planning to decrease this everyday criminality there. The term everyday criminality is here to be understood as those categories of crime that appear most frequently in the records of reports to the police every year. Here two kinds of crime have been in focus, thefts from cars and office burglary.In fulfilling this aim two main questions have been answered. The first one is how the everyday criminality was distributed geographically in the town of Borlänge during the year 2002. The second one is which measures to be taken in the physical social planning to decrease this everyday criminality in the town of Borlänge.In order to answer the first question a spatial autocorrelation analysis, Local Moran LISA has been used.

The aim of this thesis has been to discuss whether remainders of colonial influences exist within the UN's definition of torture or not. The discussion has been presented from a postcolonial point of view, in dialogue with contemporary power critical theorists. In order to raise awareness of a potential colonial influence, the following questions were intended to be answered:?                                        Are there any reasons, if so ? which ones, to regard the UN's definition of torture as a colonial project? And;?                                        To what extent is the term ?inhumane? limiting for the prohibition against torture from a postcolonial perspective?One of the most central arguments of the chosen theories is that the term ?inhumane? evokes prejudices that a racializing apparatus within the social norms of the UN automatically produces. These prejudices are, according to the theorists, influenced by images of people in non-western and non-secular (especially muslim) societies as more prone to exercise ?violence? and ?cruelty? towards their own citizens as well as towards the population of the world in general.

This essay examines the relationships between the different elements in Lisa Jonasson?s collage Existentiell Progg #6 and her very detailed technique. The essay has as its aims to understand and analyze both the details and the wholeness of the artwork and to try to put the collage in an art historical context. The thesis finds that Existentiell Progg #6 has a connection to the imagery of Africa and other collage artist such as Hannah Höch and Nancy Spero, which also gives the paper a perspective of feminism in the arts. The paper continues to create an understanding for the collage work by putting it in to Theodor Adorno?s theories about nature, the human being and the animal kingdom.

Social movements have long been valuable components of the struggle for a world with true justice. Along with the changing and modernization of society these movements also change, both in their actions as well as in the goals they want to accomplish. Technology is taking a greater part in many aspects of social life, creating new dimensions but also new social divides. This thesis examines how new social movements make themselves visible and affect the world around them through different kinds of networks. For the purpose of this study, we have chosen to study two social movements; the Zapatistas in Mexico, who have become known worldwide for carrying out the first informational revolution, and MoveOn.org, an American grassroots organization that struggles for increased democracy in the US.

This essay is a combination of an interview, survey and an observation that involves seven different teachers and thirty-eight pupils in a school situated in a suburb of Stockholm. The purpose of my research is an attempt to give a picture of how a team of teachers in a primary school act together when teaching maths, as the majority of the pupils have another mother tounge than Swedish. Yet another purpose of this essay is to examine what possibilities this team of teachers have in trying to develop the Swedish language within other bilingual pupils and at the same time develop their math comprehension. I have chosen to initiate the theoreti-cal starting point through the points of Rodell-Olgac & Rönnberg & Rönnberg; these authors discuss the importance of language comprehension when it comes to developing ones math skills. I have reached the conclusion in my examination that it is important to raise the impor-tance of language comprehension within math-education.

Studies in the field of interaction design and the human memory claim there can be positive effects on the memory when information is presented for the user as a graphical pattern rather than a series of numbers. This thesis aims to influence designers to choose graphical patterns as an interface for information display. Low-fi and hi-fi prototypes of graphical patterns were constructed and tested in a variety of configurations by two users. The users showed differences in the ability to memorize a sequence of digits depending on how this sequence was presented. This study suggests that users are more easily able to recall information presented via a graphical user interface than when the same information is only presented digitally..

This thesis deals with query formulation in full text retrieval. The variables studied were query expansion and query structur[INS: e :INS , and the aim of the thesis is to study their co-effects on retrieval performance in a probabilistic system. The expansion was made with synonyms, and the structure by expressing facets and phrases. The study was performed using QPA, Query Performance Analyzer, which includes InQuery retrieval system and a sub-collection of TREC documents with its topics. The measurement used was precision at 11 DCV points.

AbstractThe opinions about the European Union vary considerably between the member states. There are likely several reasons of this, the following study examines one that ought to play a major role. This study examines the idea that media affects the public opinion. According to the theory of Framing media can not only tell us what to think about, media also has the power to influence how we think about the matter. ?Framing: Toward Clarification of a fractured paradigm? by Robert M.

Organisation and market orientation of elderly careThis comparative literature study is intended to describe how elderly care is organised and financed in Germany and Sweden. Furthermore, it analyses the degree of competition and market orientation in both countries' care systems. Important aspects in this context are the kinds of measurements which are used on the two markets and the question if there are quasimarkets.The theoretical backgrounds of the study are Esping-Andersen's "Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism" and Harold Wilensky's convergence theory. Esping-Andersen's theory describes Sweden as a social democratic and Germany as a conservative welfare regime which means that there are different conditions for the development of welfare. The use of Wilensky's theory shows that both welfare systems are converging since the end of the 20th century.

The purpose of our master thesis was to investigate how a multicultural society is reflected in childrens books picture books, books for children and young people, published in 2002. We found this issue interesting since children of today experience a change in society, where people of many ethnicities, cultures and religions live together to a greater extent than before. Since children in their everyday life are exposed to these different cultures, we think they also should be exposed to them in the books they read. In order to enhance an understanding of why such books are important to children, especially immigrant children, we have in our thesis included a passage with childrens linguistic development, identification and stereotypes. Other passages concern libraries and their roles in a multicultural society.

The purpose of this study is to examine how young people with experience of running away and/or getting thrown out look upon and understand the phenomenon. Another purpose of thestudy is to examine how the youth evaluate the help and support they did or did not receive at the time of their experience, as well as to examine what the ultimate help and support would be according to them. The study was done in a qualitative approach with the use of focus groups and individual interviews. The results were analyzed through the perspective of the ?sociology of childhood?.