When studying the voting behaviour of the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) concerning the Services Directive within the EU, what patterns can be observed? With a starting point in previous findings about voting behaviour, this study analyses the results of the given Roll-call votes in the European Parliament in regards to the Services Directive. Here I focus on the division of votes within and between the member states and the parliamentary political groups; with the aim to identify patterns that might show clash of opinion concerning this issue. I found that ideology seems to play a role in the MEPs voting behaviour. Parties on the far left reach the highest level of cohesion and together with the party on the far right, they voted against the Directive, but due to different reasons.

Today?s cell phones include more and more functionality, it is no longer uncommon to be able to connect to the Internet or take photos with the cell phone. In this thesis the question is if the cell phone users are interested in this new functionality. Are there people who are interested in a cell phone that in this thesis is called ?Basmobilen? (the entry level phone), which include the following functions; phone call, SMS, phone book, calling lists, clock and the possibility to change the call signal.

Abstract In the contemporary world of information technology you find a multitude of applications and systems covering a broad spectrum of areas of need in different companies. One effect of this multitude of programs is the difficulty to make them exchange information with each other or to collaborate, since they are developed by different programming languages for different platforms, with different standards and different data formats. Our aim with this work is to describe how it is possible to tie these programs together to make them actually communicate with each other in order to exchange information, share their native methods and also to become a part of the overall business processes. In this integration task you will, among other things, find different levels of application integration such as data level, method level, application interface level and user interface level integration. Application integration also involves hardware components, called middleware, that facilitate the physical connection between applications. There is a range of different middleware products offered today on the market.

The objective of this thesis was to research and gain knowledge about people involved in organized crime in Sweden. By conducting interviews we were able to analyze what factors played a role in an individual's choice to become a member of a criminal gang, as well as to gain an overall picture of these people. The qualitative research was carried out in three different cities in Sweden. Three people, aged between 30 and 60, who are currently members of a gang, were interviewed. In these interviews they shared their life stories in terms of childhood, youth, gang involvement as well as their hopes for the future.The results were then further analyzed to explore any similarities and differences among the participating individuals.

My purpose for this essay is to examine what factors are considered to have high influence on motivation to study and what measures can be taken to enhance student?s motivation to study from a student perspective. The main source of theory for this study has been the classification of motivational factors that has been based on Herzberg?s twofactortheory with complementary theoretical sources. The study is based around two research methods, one survey together with complementary student interviews. The empirical material consists of 118 completed surveys together with nine student interviews. The study?s results have found that students find the main source of rising motivational level originates from the professional role of the teacher. Additionally the students find the main source of subsiding motivational level originate from rising level of stress and uninspiring teachers.

More recently, the number of elderly immigrants has increased. This means that Sweden is faced with new challenges. The purpose of this study was to illustrate how the elder immigrants general situation in Helsingborg looks like, as well as how social workers work to integrate this target group. Furthermore, I wished to have an answer on whether social workers feel that there is a continuing need to be concentrated on the integration of elder immigrants. To get answers to my questions, I have interviewed five social workers in Helsingborg who are working on issues that concern elder and integration.

The study is quantitative and the purpose was to examine the effects of ethnicity and education on three working-related identities and striving among 80 participants. The participants consisted of foreign-born people living in Sweden and people who were born in Sweden, with different educational background. Each groups consisted of 20 participants. The result showed that the highly educated participants had higher professional identity. The participants with lower education level had a stronger colleague identity than the higher educated participants and the Swedish-born participants had a lower identity.

The aim of this study was to examine if performance-based self-esteem, personality (Type A), perceived stress, age and gender predict the value of own or others life-stress (VLS). The aim was also to examine whether the variables were correlated significantly with each other. The investigation was conducted in a town in the mid-south of Sweden. The instrument consisted of two forms where the first measured Type A personality and the second tapped perform-ance-based self-esteem, perceived stress and the level of life-stress. The results showed that the level of life-stress could explain, on the basis of the predictors, performance-based self-esteem, personality (Type A), perceived stress, age and gender.

The banking industry is a fundamental part of the economy in Sweden. Despite its importance, the competition and the concentration level within the Swedish banking sector is relatively unexplored. This paper aims to examine the development of the concentration level in the Swedish banking sector during a period of ten years, 2003 to 2013. The examined banks in the study are the four largest banks in Sweden; Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB and Swedbank, and four selected niche banks, ICA banken, Ikano Bank, Länförsäkringar Bank and Skandiabanken. In order to examine the development in percentage change, there are six selected variables; loans, deposits and borrowings (both public and households), net interest income and return on equity, which are observed during a period of ten years.

The Swedish government have a goal that wind turbines shall produce 30 TWh by the year 2020, compared to about 3,5 TWh produced in Sweden during 2010. To minimize the disturbance that wind turbines create the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has stated a guideline value that noise from wind turbines at nearby residents shouldn?t exceed 40 dBA, at 8 m/s wind speed. With advanced calculation models, like Nord 2000, the emitted sound from future wind turbines can be calculated at an early stage to optimize the power production without exceeding the 40 dBA. When the turbines have been built there is a need to verify that they really are within the guideline.

The aim of this study has been to get a better knowledge and understanding of the way teachers are working with reading comprehension in the grades 1 and 2, which was done through description of 5 teachers way of working.The theoretical basis of this study grounds in the sociocultural perspective. I based my study on Vygotsky?s theory which claims that strategies transferred from adults to children through social interaction get internalised and then used independently. I have also made use of several theories that specifically deal with reading comprehension that allowed me to identify this area of teaching as a complex one, consisting of several elements. In order to understand a text on a deeper level a reader has to be able to infer, or read between the lines.

This thesis is a study about wether first year students in Swedish senior high schools understand the learning intentions and the matter of the subject of history specified in GY 11 introduced in July 2011. The overall question that this master tries to answer is: Do the students understand what and why they are studying history? Three classes studying the first history course in the new system answered a survey regarding five of the specified learning intentions for the course and their overall opinion of grades and level of knowledge and intentions. By measuring the level of understanding and the students? general opinion the conclusion is following.

This article starts with a review of the literature regarding the normal reproductive physiology of the mare, prolonged luteal phase and medical drugs used within reproduction of the horse, with emphasis on Ovuplant®. The purpose of this article was to measure the progesterone level in blood, of mares implanted with deslorelin acetate (Ovuplant®). The study was performed at the Department of Clinical Sciences, SLU, in Uppsala. There were seven mares included in the study. They were divided into two groups, one experimental group (four mares) and one control group (three mares).

Sydkraft Vattenkraft AB owns and operates the Traryd hydropower plant, located in the river Lagan in the southern part of Sweden. The gravity dam is classed according to RIDAS guidelines (Hydropower Industry Dam Safety Guidelines) as a class 1B dam. This means that the dam must discharge a class 1-flow which has a return period of 10 000 years. The inflow into the dam has been calculated in an earlier report to 495 m3/s, with a waterline at an elevation of 126, 3 meters above sea level. The gravity dam has a discharge system with two rectangular weirs, which results in a smaller discharge than the necessary 495 m3/s.

Several studies have examined the effects of perceived justice of preferential treatments to customers, but few have studied these effects when customers have different input. The purpose of the study is therefore to enhance the knowledge and understanding of the effects of preferential treatments to customers with varying input. More specifically, the study focuses on how perceived justice, customer satisfaction and loyalty are affected depending on the customer's input and received treatment. An experimental study with 263 respondents showed that the perceived justice and loyalty intentions among both the receiver and the non-receiver of the preferential treatment were of highest level when it was given to a customer with large input. Customer satisfaction however, was found to be of highest level when customers themselves received preferential treatment, regardless of the size of their input.