Eight out of ten Swedes has once in a while pain in the back, neck or shoulders. This often depends on inactivity and monotonous work under a long time. Pain affects us mentally since the body and mind affect each other, which can lead to an evil circle of pain and depression. A typical imbalance in an office worker with the arms in front of the body while working is that the muscles on the front of the trunk will be shortened, since they never work with their full length and become strong because of the constant use. On the other hand, the muscles on the back of the trunk will be weakened and elongated, since they are working in an extended and static position.

   Officially, Sweden has a very low level of corruption and in 2008 topped Transparency International?s list in terms of the perception of a lack of corruption. However, on closer examination it would appear that the Swedish public sector is not as clean as the Transparency International list suggests. What appears to be relatively common and quite widely accepted in Sweden, especially in local government, are conflict of interest situations in which public officials use their position to obtain advantages for themselves, their friends and their colleagues, in particular with respect to public procurement. According to the Swedish constitution, the public administration shall be governed by the principles on legality and objectivity. Grave violations of these principles are deemed illegal and contrary to the penal code provisions relating to bribery, public misconduct and breach of confidentiality.

Arbetsförmedlingen is the Swedish national authority responsible for the work politics, and its main purpose is to create and build a solid and sustainable job market.Economic crises together with changes in the society and in the organization over the past few years mean that the unemployed individuals that come in contact with Arbetsförmedlingen are no longer a homogenous group. A lot of effort is put into helping those who may find it difficult to enter the work environment, such as youths (19 ? 26 years old), people who have been unemployed or on sick leave for a long period of time, people with disabilities or immigrants who are newly arrived in Sweden.A harder social and economic climate can lead to frustration among the unemployed which mean that security measures at the offices has had to become adjusted. Local offices now have a public area where they have meetings with their clients and a locked open plan office space to which the public have no access. Working within an open plan office environment can cause health problems, mostly due to the constant background noise that comes from people having conversations on the phone, or with each other.

The aim of this thesis is to clarify the affect that preferential and regional trade agreements have on the World Trade Organization (WTO), as being establisher of the international trading regime. The essay is an explanatory literature study, which strives to answer the following questions:Are regional and preferential trade agreements a threat or a complement to the WTO?Is an undermining of the MFN principle weakening the WTO?How do regional trade agreements made by the EU affect the future of the WTO?The empirical material is to be analyzed using an explanatory framework, which is based on neo-liberal instutionalism, theories on regime changes and a game theoretical approach, using prisoner?s dilemma. I will employ the EU-ACP relation, the Cotonou agreement to exemplify how an agreement of this kind can have an influence on multilateral trade. The result shows that preferential agreements do have an impact on the WTO, one that is fairly negative in scope.

In recent years, global organizations safeguarding financial stability has started to track commercial property markets. One of the reasons for this refers to the fact that commercial property constitutes a large share of bank lending. Simultaneously, bank exposures to commercial property are extensive and risky since collateral values are strongly correlated to borrowers cash flows. Since banks are viewed to play a key role for financial stability, studying the relationship is well motivated. To better understand how commercial property markets interact with financial stability, this paper develops an econometric model for studying the commercial rental market.

Den civilsamhälleliga arenan förknippas traditionellt med gräsrotsrörelser, och elitgruppers närvaro kan därmed förefalla vara ett kontraintuitivt och främmande inslag. Uppsatsens syfte är verifiera vår tes om att International Crisis Group är en aktör i det globala civilsamhället, och att globaliseringen av civilsamhället utgör den strukturella förutsättningen för detta aktörsskap. Genom en teorikonsumerande fallstudie med ett induktivt förhållningssätt har vi studerat organisationens aktörsskap i det globala civilsamhället. Det teoretiska ramverket består av aktör-strukturteori kombinerat med teorier om det globala civilsamhället, varur vi har konstruerat en analysmodell som bistår med ett nytt sätt att betrakta globalt aktörsskap. Globaliseringen av civilsamhället, som är en förutsättning för globala aktörer att verka, fordrade den strukturella förändringen som slutet på Kalla kriget bistod med.

National and international studies, such as PISA and TIMSS, which are part of the national evaluation system, are carried out continuosly. Skolverket, in collaboration with researchers, are responsible for the implementation, evaluation, and analysis of the studies. National results show an increasing percentage of pupils who do not reach the goals in mathematics. The last completed international studies PISA 2009 and TIMSS 2007 show an impaired trend of knowledge, in international comparison. Moreover, studies also show that the differences between schools and also within the same school in Sweden have increased.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze DVD covers for the genre romantic comedy from the 2000s as a way to obtain patterns and codes provided by the genre. The theoretical framework consists of previous research that analyzed various posters, theories about semiotics, genre, and visual rhetoric.  These theories will help answer the main question and help with the analysis.The objects for observation are ten DVD covers from the genre romantic comedy and a qualitative content analysis is used for this thesis. The movies are from the US and they are all high in Box Office. Box Office stands for how many tickets were sold and how much money a film has earned.

International organizations are important actors on the stage of world politics, and how these actors securitize the climate change issue is of importance for how it will be tackled by actors on global and national levels. The purpose of this study is to contribute to research on climate security discourses and how climate change is defined as a security concern amongst different actors. This study, in contrast to previous research, focuses on systematically mapping the definitions made by different international organizations by asking: whose security is at stake; who is responsible for responding to the threat; how is the nature of the threat defined; and what responses are suggested? By analyzing material consisting of a variety of documents and statements from five international organizations, I aim to identify differences between these actors ? in how the climate change issue is conceptualized from a security perspective. The result of the study shows that only one of the organizations shows clear elements of the national/geopolitical security discourse, while all of the other actors primarily use the human security discourse.

This thesis is a qualitative study in which 12 award-winning printed adverts, awarded with either a Swedish ?Guldägg? or an international Clio Award, have been analyzed from a rhetorical perspective. Visual rhetorics were used to analyze the adverts in order to expose the rhetorical concepts and to find out whether the rhetorical concepts represented in the Swedish adverts are the same concepts represented in the international adverts. One of the conclusions drawn is that pathos-arguments, a rhetorical concept where the senders allude to the emotions of the receivers, are the most prominent in both Swedish and international adverts, but are used in different ways. Another conclusion drawn is that the adverts are overall characterized by their messages not being explicit.

The world is getting smaller. Global markets, political processes and communication technology bring people together. Even though many of these processes are dynamic and constructive, they have also resulted in a need for better and more effective ways of international conflict resolution. This thesis investigates central issues connected to the concept of humanitarian interventions in relation to current and future legislation of the European Union. The overall question is whether the rapid globalization process has resulted in a change of international law towards more liberal view where authorization of the security council is not always needed? And, if there has actually been such a liberalization, how does that affect the legal possibilities for the European Union to carry out armed operations without the consent of the global community?The conclusion of the thesis is that international law has been modified mainly in two aspects: First, the concept of sovereignty is no longer seen merely as a right of the nation, but also as a responsibility.

This report is written in cooperation with Eskilstuna municipality public administration for urban planning. The reports purpose is to look into how other public authorities carry out public purchase of consultants and entrepreneurs in the urban planning area. The goal is to come up with suggestions of how Eskilstuna municipality public administration for urban planning can improve its purchasing process in this field in order to minimize the risk where a consultant or entrepreneur files an appeal against the decision of awarding a contract to another rival. The appeal can be filed to the county administrative court.The public administration for urban planning can do its purchases through the model of "lowest price" or "economically most favorable" for them. When using "economically most favorable", the department can value a number of soft parameters by giving them points and the offer which gets most points can be rewarded the right to sign a contract.

In Europe, the central governments are the ones to coordinate the international standards and strategies regarding GPP; Green Public Procurement. However in Spain a GPP program was introduced late and only applied to the Central Government Institutions, (AGEA) (BOE nr. 027, 2008). These means that smaller administrations, such as, Autonomous Regions, Municipalities and Town Councils were not included in the program. The absence of a national program which excludes those governments made them introduce their own criteria for GPP, and the difference in criteria varies from one government to the other.

This study has been executed at the Public Employment Office, an institution that has beensubject for much debate during the last couple of years. The government has instructed theLabour Market Board to change the Public Employment Office toward a more effectiveorganization. This study examines one of the Public Employment Offices that are included in apilot project that aims to improve and develop work methods with the objective to become amore service minded organization. From this starting point we have investigated which effect thisorganizational change has had on the employee within this organization and within the pilotproject. In addition we investigate whether attitudes of the unemployed has an effect on thestaff´s work situation.

After a workshop in Kuopio held in June 2006, Interbull decided to go forward with the development of a system for beef international genetic evaluation and a three year project called Interbeef was launched in June 2007. The participating countries are so far limited to Europe and the only trait evaluated at present is adjusted weaning weight (weight at 200 days). The results from a first international genetic evaluation have been shared with the countries but are not yet official. The evaluation is based on data from purebred Charolais and Limousin. To achieve good estimates of proofs in an international context it is important that methods for data validation and model selection are implemented.