AbstractEssay in political science, C-level, by Bo-Josef Eriksson, spring semester 2007Tutor: Susan Marton?Universal morality - does it exist? - A case study of small states foreign policy?The purpose of this essay is to examine how well does realism stand of against idealism when the focus of the study is on small states foreign policy? The essay takes it?s starting point at the debate between the two theories of international relations (IR). Realism is the theory that has had the most impact on the study of IR since the second world war. Idealism has been it?s greatest opponent and the debate is still active even up til this day.My case study of Danmarks foreign aid policy constitutes a worst critical case scenario for realism and therfore my assumptions were that idealism would be the theory that could explain the core-elements of the Danish foregin aid.

Officially, the EU gender policy since 2000 has been guided by the strategy of Gender Mainstreaming. This strategy aims to promote gender equality and is informed by a feminist ontology which stipulates that women are structurally subordinated.In this essay, I examine whether the European Commission has adequately adhered to this gender policy in its free trade negotiations with the ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement. As a result of my text analysis of documents related to the negotiations, opinion pieces by interested actors and policy papers of the EU, I find that the Commission does not act in accordance to its stated gender policy.To explain this discrepancy between policy intent and actions, I employ postliberal feminist theory and Robert Putnam's Two-Level Game Theory Model. By analyzing statistics and published research, I explore how gender issues are being represented politically on a domestic and international level.My findings show that a key cause of this discrepancy lies in the low levels of female participation in the political institutions of the EU and ACP; a lack of participation that is especially pronounced in the area of international economics. In explaining the constraints on female participation and the prospects of full implementation of the EU's gender policy in the international political economy, I emphasize the role of culturally and historically gendered institutions..

This essay studies the practice of both the political and the administrative leadership at the municipal level from the point of view of the politicians and the chief officers leadership role, and the relationship between politicians and administrators. I discuss and analyse how politicians and senior officials practice leadership, differences or similarities and if their practice of leadership raises any challenges in a democratic framework at the municipal level. I conducted interviews with the municipal political leader and the head of administration at the municipal level in Karlshamn and Sölvesborg. In the analysis I discuss communication as a leadership process which highlights ?enabling elements? and potentials of the leadership process.

Introduction: In January 2005, a nationwide mandatory bicycle helmet law for children under the age of 15 was introduced in Sweden. In the current study, the effect of this law was evaluated by analyzing national trends in hospital admissions due to bicycle-related head injuries during the period 1998-2011.Methods: An interrupted time-series design with segmented regression analysis was used to evaluate the intervention effect on head injuries as a percentage of all injuries (%HI) among cyclists in age- and sex-specific groups. Effect was measured as a change in level and/or slope of the trend at the time of legislation.Results: A total of 35261 cyclists (0-54 years) were hospitalized due to a bicycle injury during the study period. Linear regression analyses of the entire study period (not segmented) showed significant year-to-year decreases in the %HI of 1.3-1.7% in all age and sex-specific groups (p < .0001). Results from the segmented regression analysis showed that, at the time of legislation, a significant drop in level occurred among males under 15 years (-4.5% [95% CI: -7.7% to -1.3%], p = .01) and a significant change in slope occurred among females aged 30-54 years (-1.6% [95% CI: -2.9% to -0.2%], p = .025).Conclusions: The law seems to have had an effect on males in the target population (<15 years).

In this essay I evaluate the legality of Karl Popper?s criticism against psychoanalysis, regarding this theory of Freud?s being pseudoscientific. Popper?s criticism is based on his theory of demarcation in which he states that an empirical theory must be possible to test by observations in order to be, as most important is, hypothetically possible to falsify based on other empirical statements ? often in the form of new found facts that contradict the original statement/theory. In purpose of assessing Popper?s criticism I perform a modified idea analysis, based on a book by Evert Vedung (1977).

The global Positioning System (GPS) provides location and time information as long as there are unobstructed lines of sight to four or more GPS satellites. However, when this is not the case the signal may be inaccurate or sometimes even completely blocked. In these situations the Inertial Navigation System (INS) is an appropriate choice for positioning.  An INS has already been proposed in a previous thesis by Erik Andersson and the objective of this thesis is to fuse the GPS with the INS in a proper way. A part of this project is to decide the reliability of the GPS.Three methods for GPS reliability detection have been proposed. One method based on the statistical properties of each of the separate systems, and two methods based on the statistical properties of the residuals between the GPS and INS.

The purpose of this study is to examine the medial depiction of Muslims in the case of Pastor Terry Jones' intention to burn the Quran. Our study is based on theoretical framework regarding an alleged clash of civilizations, how that leads to global conflicts and controls the world politics. It?s also based on the western way of characterize Muslims as violent, irrational human beings, and how mass media have a tendency to depict Muslims as ?the others?. The questions we aim to seek answers to are: How were Muslims portrayed in CNN's and Al-Jazeera's reporting regarding Terry Jones plan to burn the Quran? Which discourses exist about Muslims in each news channel and what are the main differences between them? The qualitative method used is a critical discourse analysis on empirical data consistently of twelve articles.

Issue of study: The development of technology and society is closely linked. Mutual dependency and complex interrelationships make straightforward analysis of issues regarding the future of technology and society hard to perform. Therefore, the study addresses the question of how organizations should describe and analyze the interactions of technology and society in order to gain a better understanding of what the future may bring. Purpose: ? To develop a method for analysis of the future course of issues regarding technology and society in interaction.? To apply and test the developed method through a case study, where it is used to analyze the future of the Russian fuel market.

Information handling has been a key issue for different companies for a long time. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is used to transfer different business documents from one company to another. This is done in such way that the information itself is separated from how this information is stored and handled in the companies internal systems. As different companies have different systems there is a need for a standardised format for this exchange. There is a big difference between EDI-systems based on what kind of EDI-standard is used.

In this thesis we study four groups of students in grade 8, 9 and 10 when they try to solve a classical mathematical problem: Which rectangle with given circumference has the largest area? The aim of the study was too see how the students did to solve a mathematichal problem?The survey shows that students have rather poor strategies to solve mathematical problems. The most common mistake is that students don?t put much energy to understand the problem before trying to solve it. They have no strategies.

This essay serves to illustrate the main practical differences between the popular medium-level programming language C++ (C Plus Plus), and the newer high-level language C# (C Sharp). It will focus on the aspects that are readily apparent to the application programmer, such as differing syntax, constraints and capabilities.It will also feature a similar comparison between the open source OpenGL graphics library, and the proprietary Direct3D graphics library owned by Microsoft Corporation.It will not go into the differences in ?under the hood? mechanics that the application programmer seldom have to consider after having chosen his programming language or graphics API, such as C# being compiled into an intermediate language and is run on a virtual machine where C++ is compiled directly to machine code, or the differing principles of rendering in OpenGL and Direct3D.This is by no means comprehensive, many things have been left out or overlooked..

This study has been conducted in order to determine the existence of predictability for the Stockholm stock exchange. With this purpose the random walk theory has been raised against the theory of mean reversion in order to determine which theory is the most substantial. Data has been collected from Nasdaq OMX Nordic and furtherly been processed using the statistical software EViews. Swedish listed companies? daily share values between 2000-2014 have been analyzed using two tests; an Augmented Dickey Fuller test and a Variance Ratio test.

The information technology development that has occurred over the past decade has broughtmajor changes into people?s lives. We have gotten used to being constantly connected to theInternet and always having access to information through mobile technology. This has led tochanges in education and more and more courses have become available through Internet. Theseweb-based educations are nowadays very common in schools and in the business world as theyprovide increased flexibility for the user.Habiliteringen Lundbystrand has seen the potential in this kind of education and believes this isan opportunity for them to rationalize their work by replacing parts of their education for parentswith a web-based education.

The aim of this master's thesis is to describe the visibility of the university libraries in the strategic documents from the actual universities to which they belong. And also, the image of themselves they send out, are examined. By examining different kinds of descriptions we want to get a clearer picture of how and in what amount the libraries are mentioned in highest level strategies. By doing this we expect to find out the libraries' strategic role in higher education and research. The research questions are: What role and function are assigned to the university libraries in strategies created by the schools' highest administrative levels? How do the libraries present themselves in their own strategies? The approach is cross sectional and the time frame is year 2008.

The purpose of this study was to develop two types of prediction models for Scots Pine and Norway Spruce. The first type for calculation of the stump diameter under bark the year the tree reached breast height (Dstubh130). The second type for calculation of the annual difference, e.g. the number of growth years between stump height (0.2 m) and breast height (1.3 meters above ground level). The primary thought with these prediction models is to obtain the breast height age in the trees on basis of the number of annual rings at stump.