The castration of piglets is performed routinely all around the world. Most castrations are done without anaesthesia and analgesia, despite the fact that this procedure has been proved to induce acute pain and stress for the piglets. The procedure regarding castration of piglets is currently a hot topic of debate and an important political issue. The underlying issue is the boar taint which are highlighted in the heating of the meat after slaughter, which in turn can lead to reduced meat sales as it can be perceived as unpleasant for many consumers. The purpose of this study is to examine alternative drugs which may be selected in order to replace the practice of castration of piglets without anaesthesia, in light of improved animal welfare.

There are several reasons why organic chicken production is scarce in Sweden. Lack of slow growing (SG) strains combined with higher production costs, lower meat-yield and uncertainty of consumers? willingness to pay seems to be the main reasons. EU-legislations imply use of indigenous slow- or medium growing strains in organic production, nevertheless, fast growing (FG) broilers are often used due to their effectiveness. Increased consumption of processed food creates a market for conventionally rearing of very heavy broilers.

The purpose of this report is to evaluate different methods for identifying states in robot models. Both linear and non-linear filters exist among these methods and are compared to each other. Advantages, disadvantages and problems that can occur during tuning and running are presented. Additional measurements from accelerometers are added and their use with above mentioned methods for state estimation is evaluated. The evaluation of methods in this report is mainly based on simulations in Matlab, even though some experiments have been performed on laboratory equipment.The conclusion indicates that simple non-linear models with few states can be more accurately estimated with a Kalman filter than with an extended Kalman filter, as long as only linear measurements are used.

The aim of this paper is to see if Sweden has implemented the recommendations and taken notice of the guidelines for employment that the Commission and Council set up every year and from this see the role of the Commission and Council for the national employment politics. The years that I focused on in the paper are year 2000- 2004. The method that is used is a case study research that is exploratory and explanatory. The theoretical starting points are theories about delegation, cooperation and a variation of control and autonomy. This is recognized in the Principal- Agent theory and the Principal- Supervisor-Agent model.

Arbetet med att stärka ett arbetsgivarvarumärkes attraktivitet, både internt och externt, det alltmer välbekanta begreppet ?Employer branding?, är ett vanligt förekommande koncept i dagens organisationer. Syftet med studien är att försöka ta reda på vad fenomenet ?Employer branding? är och hur organisationer kan bedriva arbetet med att göra sitt arbetsgivarvarumärket attraktiv på den svenska arbetsmarknaden. Tieto, COWI och Klarna AB är de företag som deltar i studien.

Ever since Lipsky wrote about street-level bureaucrats in 1980 the main belief has been that certain characteristics of their jobs make it exceptionally difficult to severely reduce their discretion. However, discretion comes at a price and if public servants abuse their power the legitimacy of government is at risk and ultimately even the democracy.This thesis address this question by analysing the Swedish employment service which in the beginning of 2001 started a project called ?Af Sverige? trying to improve internal rule of law. By comparing two local and fairly equal jobcentres and how the street-level bureaucrats within use their discretion, I seek to find support for my hypotheses that organizing local jobcentres according to the principles of machine bureaucracy plays a significant part in reducing discretion.My findings show that a jobcentre characterised by strict rules, few units, good communications and a forthright manager who delegates formal power to the employees results in a stricter and more uniform application of regulations among the street-level bureaucrats. My conclusion is therefore unambiguous.

The EU guarantees the free movement of persons. The citizens of the EU Member States have the right to move freely without barriers within the EU borders and this result in an integration of the peoples in Europe. The integration result in several international family relationships. It is not unusual in the present situation that families have international relations. For example, spouses in a married couple may have different nationality.

In this essay I will look at the independence of the Swedish municipalities. By looking at articles for the biggest journal in Sweden on this subject Kommun aktuellt I will look at the discussion for the years of 1978 and 1998 to see if one can draw some parallels in the debate and see if some subjects are always returning in the agenda for the independence. The autonomy of the Swedish municipalities is a very important part of the Swedish welfare model. The municipalities handles for example both the primary schools and the social welfare services. Both these institutions are money draining and the municipals right by law to claim local tax does far from all the time cover its expenses.

In this essay we aimed to find how economic scarcity among children and youth presents itself in school, according to how school staff experience it. We have conducted interviews with student welfare staff to hear their experiences of this subject and how the schools try to help these pupils. We have used interpretative phenomenology as a base for our work. We have also used some of this traditions most important notions along with notions of Erving Goffman and Sara Ahmed during our processing off the material.  With help from these, we report our most interesting results. We have seen that a lack of resources exists among youth today and that everyone not has easy access to things many of us might take for granted.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the origin of generalized trust. We compare existing theories on trust to determine what approach is more fruitful in explaining the prevalence, or absence, of trust. Our conviction is that trust should be viewed as an interaction, rather than a disposition or a rational choice. The sample is based on the countries of the OECD. In total, five different hypotheses are tested: i) that generalized trust is created by equal distribution of income, ii) that generalized trust is created through monitoring of the state, iii) that generalized trust is created through rule by law; iv) that generalized trust is created when the welfare apparatus is guided by principles of universalism; or iv) that generalized trust is created when the state integrates trust networks.

Most descriptions of stereotypic behaviours have in common that these repetitive behaviours only has been observed in captive animals and therefore it has been proposed that stereotypies exist because we house animals in environments that are sub-optimal to them. Some scientists claim that performance of stereotypies in itself decreases the animal's welfare due to costs in time, energy and health and a poorer quality of life. Other scientists assert that individuals performing stereotypies may have a better welfare compared to the rest of the animals in the same environment, since these individuals have developed strategies to cope with stress. Studies have estimated the prevalence of abnormal behaviours in horses to 18-30 % of the population. Several studies on cribbing have revealed a prevalence of 4-5 %, although some results indicate that more than 10 % of the horse population performs this stereotypy.

The aim of this paper is to see if Sweden has implemented the recommendations and taken notice of the guidelines for employment that the Commission and Council set up every year and from this see the role of the Commission and Council for the national employment politics. The years that I focused on in the paper are year 2000- 2004. The method that is used is a case study research that is exploratory and explanatory. The theoretical starting points are theories about delegation, cooperation and a variation of control and autonomy. This is recognized in the Principal- Agent theory and the Principal- Supervisor-Agent model.

The Vaxholm conflict was initiated when the Swedish Trade Union for Construction Workers shut down a construction site in order to prevent a Latvian construction company to build a school after the two parties had failed to agree upon a collective agreement in compliance with Swedish regulations. An emotional public debate followed that resulted in a discussion of the proposal for the Services Directive of the EU, based upon the country-of-origin principle. In this thesis we will analyze whether the country-of-origin principle or the country-of-destination principle is best suited to capture the gains-of-trade that the common market hoards and improve welfare within the EU. We conclude that the country-of-origin principle is the more apt of the two, though it leads to some short-run costs such as structural unemployment. But these will be more than outweighed by the gains in aggregate welfare for the EU in the long run..

Imperialism has for a long time been an important concept in international relations. The literature identifies many different types of imperialism. After the great de-colonization scientists stopped discussing ?classic? imperialism, i.e. using physical strength in the form of conquest and occupation to subdue weaker states.

We came across the discussion about the so-called duty to report (14 kap 1 § SoL) and we found some previous research, showing that preschool teachers are hesitant to report, and that they want real evidence that children are being mistreated, even though the duty to report clearly states that they have to report as soon as they suspect that a child is being mistreated. Our purpose became to study what tendencies and conditions preschool teachers and principals, placed in the municipalities of Hässleholm and Kristianstad, have to fulfil their duty to report according to the social services act, when there is a well founded suspicion that a child is being mistreated.  We split the purpose into the following research questions:   Do local guidelines about how preschool teachers should act when suspecting that a child is being mistreated exist, and are they being followed? To what degree does the staff has knowledge about these guidelines? How do preschool teachers experience the treatment from colleagues, principals and social welfare officers when they´ve done or wanted to do a report? How do preschool teachers experience the reactions of a report from custodians? We did conversational interviews with two principals, one from the municipality of Hässleholm, and one from the municipality of Kristianstad. We also made focusgroup interviews with the staff, three persons each from one of their respective preschools. Our conclusion is that preschool teachers are unwilling to report mistreatment.