In the low-income countries of the world, rapid urbanization and decaying infrastructure results in an increasingly unsustainable situation when it comes to solid waste management. Often, the solution tends to focus on introducing technical advanced interventions based on the conditions of the high-income world. However, this thesis aims to ?nd site-speci?c solutions on solid waste management at a local scale. By taking in consideration of local conditions a customized approach is possible where the solution is not dependent on expensive structural changes.

The main purpose of this master's thesis is to investigate to what extent municipal politicians govern a selected public library. This means to clarify who determines the direction of the library and its services and in what way. It also involves examining the relationship between library staff and local politicians in the decision-making process. Which decisions are made by the politicians and which are left to the employees? The study is based on an investigation of a public library in a municipality over a period of ten years the 1990s.

Problems with the current energy system, which partially relies on non-renewable fuels, are increasingly recognized. Emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels may speed up global warming, which in turn leads to a number of negative consequences. Nuclear energy is risky and relies on consumption of a scarce resource. This leads to a demand of renewable energy that is also economically feasible. One possible renewable source of energy is solar energy.

Pica is a behavior that can be seen in several animal groups. In cats, it means that they are eating, chewing or licking on material that is non-food. In this study the data was collected through an online survey. In total 522 responses, of which 26% of the cats were exhibiting pica. It was found that 28% of the housecats and 26% of purebred cats exhibited pica.

The population of Grey Partridge is decreasing worldwide as a result of anthropogenic activities. Increased agricultural production, requiring homogenous farming landscapes and increased use of pesticides are believed to be the main factor causing population declines in the Grey Partridge. Actions to enhance Grey Partridge populations are available; however, those actions are vain if the acceptance to conduct them is low. To gather information about acceptance among farmers, hunters and the County Administrative Board towards 18 available actions enhancing the Grey Partridge population, nine face-to face interviews were conducted as an exploratory case study. The results showed that willingness to conduct enhancing actions differ between and within the groups of stakeholders.

It seems like Swedish municipalities are dominated by beliefs that all citizen participation is good for the development of local democracy. A critic of this certainty is rising among Swedish scholars of political science. However, a critic with an ambition of such generalization is harsh. Different democratic projects contents different qualities and thereby diverse problems in the democratic process. If these democratic problems within the process can be recognized, a deeper understanding can be found and in the prolongation a strengthening of the democracy.This essay examines the democratic process of Lomma municipality's democratic project of citizen participation.

Organic agriculture is financially promoted in Sweden by special environmental support and as consumers we are all encouraged to buy organic food. At the same time scholars at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences claim that organic farming does not provide any environmental benefits. The main criticism is that organic farming has lower yields than conventional, which means that more land is needed to produce the same amount of food as in conventional farming, leading to deforestation and loss of biodiversity. As for climate change, the critics claim that the significantly higher productivity in conventional crop production compared to organic, releases surplus land, which could be used for bio-fuel production and thereby replace the fossil fuels. The critics also claim that organic farming causes higher nutrient leaching than conventional.

Due to the growing population in Stockholm, some of the urban green areas are beingsubjected to exploitation. Hammarbyskogen is an urban forest in the south of Stockholm andis an example of a green area that is planned to be transformed into an urban environment.This paper investigates key qualities and values of an urban forest of Hammarbyskogenvalued by local inhabitants of the neighbourhoods of Hammarbyhöjden and Björkhagen in thesouth of Stockholm. In addition to that, the study seeks to investigate people?s perception ofthe planned development of the forest as well as investigate how these perceptions andqualities are being incorporated into the process of neighbourhood development.Using text analysis, interviews and discussion forums, findings have been made showing thatthe local inhabitants value the urban forest mostly for its ecological and recreational qualities.Regarding perception of the change, people are either positive or negative to the developmentwhich can be explained by people?s experienced sense of place and place attachment of thearea and the forest itself. The study has also shown that the urban planners rely on localinhabitants? view, as well as on expert knowledge during the process of planning.The results of the study contributes to a better understanding of why and for what purposesurban forests are important for the city dwellers..

The purpose of this study was to investigate hove some suburban areas image is shown to the public in the media coverage of suburban areas, and this is why I in this paper want to look more closely at the image of Tensta in the news media and how people in Tensta perceive themselves. News media has a very important role in the creation of human worldview. It influences our own identity and affects what a person believes is the difference in us and them. In the post-colonial theory, identity creation is a central role in philosophy, us and them. Based on the above purpose, I formulated an overall main question that this essay should answer.

Injuries are considered to be a major public health issue. More than 4600 people die each year and 10 % of all hospitalization in Sweden is related to injuries. The cost in a societal perspective is estimated to 59 billion a year. Injuries are possible to prevent. However it needs knowledge that the injury has occurred and the surrounding circumstances.

This study aimed to explore the perceived role and mandate of civil servants employed in municipalities in Kronoberg county. The study aimed to answer the question whether civil servants engaged in municipal economics have different perspectives on their mandate and role based on how said civil servants implement and manage policy tools available in Swedish municipalities. The study aimed to through policy tools theory explain how civil servants through four categories view the policy tools employed in the municipality. The study is based on the reasoning that policy tools influences exercise of authority that in turn influences view on policy tools. In order to study civil servants perspective on perceived mandate and role interviews were conducted with a sample of civil servants from each of the eight municipalities in Kronoberg county.

The wind power increase of Gotland as well as other parts of Sweden during the last ten year period has meant that this renewable energy source has increased its share over other fossil sources. The year of 2011 became the first when the wind power produced more energy than an average nuclear reactor. Now that wind power is in an expansive phase, the land issue will be of great interest. Land with good wind resources will be of interest to wind energy developers. The problems that this essay is based on are; how can landowners altering the economic conditions at a wind power establishment? What opportunities and obstacles exist for landowners who choose to set up wind power on their land? The purpose of this essay is to highlight the economic conditions that exist for landowners for the establishment of wind farms, with regard to compensation for the leasing and return on invested capital.

Automatic query expansion has long been studied in information retrieval research as a technique that deals with the fundamental issue of word mismatch between query and document. The purpose of this thesis is to compare the retrieval effectiveness of different strategies for automatic query expansion. The strategies are based on local analysis of the corpus and use statistical information from the local document set to extract terms that suppose to adapt themselves to each individual search and therefore appear to be searchonyms to the index terms. The strategies compared are: association clusters, metric cluster and scalar cluster. Baseline queries of 24 topics are expanded using terms from the different clusters and searches are made.

Ear piercing performed in hairdressing salons and jewellery shops using a piercing gun has been set aside from the obligation to notify the local environmental and public health authorities, due to the use of disposable cassette with the piercing gun. According to the Swedish environmental code each practitioner are required to prevent any health hazards arisen from the operation. Local bacterial infection is the most frequent complication associated with the ear piercing procedure and to prevent the potential risk of such an event, hygiene conditions in both the premises and in procedures are essential. The purpose of the report was to examine the presence of ear piercing practitioners in Umeå and their current hygiene conditions. The study consisted of interviews with employees and managers on site whose answers was evaluated and compared to the general recommendations of The National Board of Health and Welfare.

Many invasive species propose a big threat against the native fauna in the area that they colonise. Today the raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) is speeding from Finland over the border in to northern Sweden. A project to stop the spread and eliminate the individuals that already have established was initiated in the autumn of 2008. To investigate areas that might be interesting for raccoon dogs and to confirm sightings, cameras with auto triggering mechanisms are used. To get the raccoon dog in front of the camera some kind of lure is used. In this study three kinds of different lures was tested against each other?s.