This essay is about the massive Iranian aid to Hezbollah and the Saudi Arabian, likewise, towards the Taliban. The main view is that the two countries aid respective aid to Hezbollah and the Taliban is/were not a gesture of goodwill but rather an economic method of getting influence and controlling the receiver. This view that is based on a theory called; economic statecraft. The economic statecraft theory is used in this paper to investigate why Iran?s influence towards Hezbollah has been successful while the Saudis ambitions with the Taliban have failed.

A change of generations occurs several times during a company?s lifetime. It is a process that requires planning and time. If the current owner wants to keep the company within the family, he has two options; he can either sell the company to a family member, or give the company to the new owner, like a gift. When the owner sells the company, it is common that he accomplishes it to a losing price.

After contacting the company Elite Group Sverige AB, who sells strollers under the brand Crescent Baby, it was determined that the project group were to develop a three wheeled stroller which was going to be Crescents first own developed stroller. Only the frame of the stroller was considered within the demarcation of this project however care was taken to the placement of the carry-cot and the wheels etc. Crescent Baby wished for the frame would be smaller than the competitor Urban Jungle, that the frame would have at least three unique selling points and that the number of unique parts was to be minimized. The work began with information seeking regarding strollers, competitors, independent tests, European standards and consumer interviews. After that a number of concepts were developed and past to Crescent.

The aim with this independent degree project of master thesis is to find what the user opinions of the intranet in a county council is. The paper seeks how the question about how the culture in the organisation was affected by the use of the intranet. An important part is to explore the expectations and acceptance of the intranet and get a picture of which functions and services support day-to-day work with good quality. One goal is to find out how the intranet users feel that the communication, information and usability can be developed.The focus group interview is a qualitative method that has been applied for gathering data from the respondents, who participate in the investigation from the county council. The used method is unstructured focus groups containing the three dominating categories of staff in the county council.

A Large part of the education provided at colleges and universities of today requires for thestudent to be more independent in their studies. This demands that the physical space,where the students choose to study, is designed in a way that can encourage and supportlearning. It seems as though that many of the learning spaces of today don?t always meetthe students? needs. The university library at the University of Umeå is currently planningto design new learning spaces for the students.

The primary goal of this study was to investigate how the radial growth of retained trees responds after thinning-from-above. The National Board of Forestry which initiated this study, was interested in whether there were differences in the growth-response between the tree species Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) and Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.). Another question of issue was if there were differences in the growth response between trees of different sizes. It is within the framework of the National Board of Forestry?s, Continuous Forests Project that these urgent questions are to be answered.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate the differences between the traditional way of conducting a reference interview and the electronic way. The main questions of this thesis are: How does the electronic reference interview appear in comparison to the traditional one? How do the librarians experience the differences? Is quality affected in the electronic reference interview? Examples from Fråga biblioteket Ask the Library have been used in this study. The method used in the investigation is based on qualitative interviews in combination with studies of relevant and recent literature. The librarians interviewed all have experience from both traditional and electronic reference work.

The purpose of this essay was to find an understanding of what factors whichaffect refugee reception in two municipalities in the southern part of Sweden, themunicipality of Vellinge and the municipality of Landskrona. Three interviewswere made with three local politicians and these interviews were then analysedusing postcolonial theory. With the help of Matthew J. Gibney we identified sevenfactors which aided us in the analysis these were: Integration history, Ethnicaffinity, Determining who is a refugee, The wealth of the municipality, Thehousing market, The labour market and The action of other municipalities.We found that these factors were all useful in creating an understanding ofrefugee reception in the two municipalities. However they affected themunicipalities differently.

WesDyne TRC AB is a fully owned subsidiary of the global WestinghouseElectric Corporation. WesDyne is a world leader in non-invasive methods for theinspection of nuclear power plants. One of the inspection platforms used to scanfor defects in and around the welds in the reactor vessel is called the T-crawler.The T-crawler operates under water in a radioactive environment by stepping onthe vessel (reactor tank) inner wall using suction cups. The environment is harshand many traditional positioning sensors are not suitable for implementation. Thisthesis investigates the possibility to use a gyroscope and a pressure sensor tocreate an alternative and independent positioning system.

The purpose of this study is to examine young peoples' perception of their media criticial competence in relation to digital news. The study is based on quantitative research interviews with young people (15-17 years) and qualitative interviews with people in the same age group as well as teachers and international media professionals.This study's theoretical point of departure is McQuail´s observation that peoples' values and views to a great extent are influenced by the media. Another source of theoretical inspiration was Haberman's ideas about how a diversity of views and arguments increase the citizens' ability to reflect critically on social developments - maybe even more so than in societies with  independent media and "neutral" news.The study shows that the young generation of web based news consumers assumes that it is very important to be an aware and critical consumer but also that they do not feel sufficiently equipped with the right tools required to understand the long-term impact and effect of the media reporting online. Young people basically seemed to acquire their knowledge about media by doing and learning on their own. Surprisingly, according to the young people that were interviewed for this project, the schools seemed to play a secondary role in the development of their media critical capacity.

Unaccompanied children that arrives in Sweden are usually placed in homes for care and residence, called HVB. It is the municipality's responsibility to provide adequate care and protection for the children. The aim of the study is to examine how a workgroup on a HVB home for unaccompanied children is working to meet the needs of the children, and how the workgroup improves the children?s integration process. The study also aims to examine the emotional labour of the workgroup, which illustrates how they can manage their own emotional behavior when working with the unaccompanied children.The study is based on a qualitative approach with detailed descriptions of five semi-structured interviews with the workgroup and assistant managers.

In 1985 the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions published a paper on recommended depreciation time on capital assets for the public sector. This paper should only be seen as guidance, but many municipals use it without any further investigations. Swedish municipals are not like private companies; one very distinguished difference is that they are not allowed to make any profit. The municipals in Sweden are regulated by the constitution law which means that they can not go bankrupt. The public and the private sector have different legislations that result in different ways on how they for example treat depreciations.

Revisorn står inför ett fundamentalt dilemma, där oberoende måste prioriteras under revisionen samtidigt som konsulttjänster utgör en viktig inkomstkälla och kräver en god relation till klienten. Detta dilemma kan vara extra problematiskt i små bolag eftersom risken för socialt beroende antas vara större när färre individer är involverade. Syftet med studien är att skapa förståelse för hur revisorer resonerar kring gränsen mellan rådgivning och revision i små bolag. För att uppnå syftet med studien har sju revisorer intervjuats och materialet har studerats utifrån social identitetsteori. Resultaten indikerar att revisorer för små bolag har stark identifikation med klienten, vilket kan göra att deras oberoende riskerar att nedprioriteras till förmån för klientens behov.

The abscence of the brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral (1886?1973) in the general art history is investigated, using the colonial structure as a starting point. In South America she is regarded as one of the greatest artists in modern time, in the rest of the world she is more or less unknown. The conclusion is that the colonial mechanisms are still in progress in our assumed postcolonial world, and has excluded Tarsila do Amaral, and the anthropophagic movement she was a part of, from the art history. The study points out the importance of looking into this neglected artist and the historic event.

This thesis explores the opinion of different participants in the music business regarding music being made available at the public libraries. The aim of the thesis is to answer the following questions; which are the most important issues concerning the distribution of music? How do the informants perceive the public libraries mission and activity in regard to make recorded music available? Which are the benefits/disadvantages with music being made available at public libraries? Seven qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives from the following organisations; SKAP (The Swedish Society of Popular Music Composers), FST (Society of Swedish Composers), SAMI (Swedish Artists and Musicians Interest Organisation) SMF (The Swedish Society of Musicians), SOM (Swedish Independent Musicproducers), IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) and EMI Music Sweden. A study of literature and articles generated nine themes, which constitutes the frame of reference for the thesis. The result shows that several of the informants have not reflected upon the public library as an important actor when it comes to the distribution of music.