The aim with this Master's thesis is to study the debate that takes place in the local community when a public library branch is threatened by closedown through the local newspapers. Through this it is our aim to understand why the debate takes place, and why so many people gets concerned with it. By relating this debate to contemporary research of library- and information science, and the discussion in three major Swedish library journals, we have found the answers to these questions. By studying the debate, we found six subjects that where essential for this study. These were Politics and economics, Urban and rural districts, Democracy and accessibility, The service of the library, The meeting place and To replace a closed down library.

The municipality of Olofström is intensifying the co-operation with Sölvesborg and Karlshamn, the two other municipalities in the west of Blekinge. They co-operate in two local federations and for the moment negotiations are going on about a third local federation in continuation school, but the municipalities do not agree. The aim of this thesis is to examine why Olofström co-operate with Sölvesborg and Karlshamn, if there are any problems and where the limit of this co-operation is. The method in the thesis is qualitative interviews with local politicians and officials and an actor-structure-perspective is used. The result shows that Olofström is a municipality where the population is decreasing, and it has lost state subsidy during the last decade.

A debate on environmental issues and food safety has been ongoing in Sweden and it is suggested that consumers' are seeking local produce instead of global and exotic foods. Moreover, studies show that the consumers? positive attitude towards local produce does not reflect their actions. The purpose with this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of the dissonance between the consumer?s attitudes and actual behaviour towards local produce.

Some MNEs encounter frustration or failures when they enter a new market. The main reason is due to a lack of adaptation. There is a lack of theoretical study about the local adaptation phenomenon of Swedish MNEs in China. Most studies are at the level of experience. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find out the dimensions subject to local adaptation and their degree for the Swedish MNEs in China.

The subject for this thesis is to examine the portrayal of the local farmer in four different museums in Scania. The purpose is to examine these two questions: 1. Which narrative and museal strategies are used in the portrayal of the local farmer by the local history societies? 2. How do the actors of the local societies relate to the living conditions and hierarchies of the rural society of Scania? The source material consists of guided tours and text material from the museums. The theoretical fields consists of history culture, use of history, historical narrative, museology and rural science act as our theoretical fields. Peter Aronsson, Anna Eskilsson and Maria Bjo?rkroth act as our main theoretical framework. Our research presents two central discourses in the portrayal of the local farmer.

Because of a more globalised world the national states have been forced to make structural changes at both national, regional and local level to cope with different challenges. The regional community has become an important area which has resulted in a policy of more self governing, both for the regional and the local level.The aim of the thesis is to study the relation between regional and local level in the partnerships organisation. To fulfil the aim of the thesis, a case study of Region Skåne is used. The analyse is based on expressions such as cooperation, conflict, power and influence.The result of the thesis confirms that the opinion between the regional and the local level is very different. The representatives from Region Skåne experience the cooperation as quite good because it creates an opportunity for discussions and a possibility to learn from the other actors which in turn creates a qualification in the exchange of knowledge.

Det pågår en skolpolitisk debatt om andelen kärnämnen respektive karaktärsämnen inom gymnasieskolans teoretiska och praktiska program. Syftet med studien var att undersöka om det finns en skillnad i studiemotivation bland gymnasielever i kärnämnen respektive karaktärsämnen beroende på om de går ett teoretiskt program eller ett praktiskt program. Deltagarna i undersökning var elever på ett gymnasium från den sista årskursen dels från ett teoretiskt program, Naturvetarprogrammet (NV) och från ett praktiskt program, Omvårdnadsprogrammet (OP). Metoden som undersökningen använde sig av var en enkät som tog upp området motivation till kärnämnen och karaktärsämnen. Resultatet visade att motivationen hos elever på det teoretiska programmet var högre för kärnämnet än vad det var för elever på det praktiska programmet, de hade en högre motivation i sitt karaktärsämne.

Society and the workplace are two factors that are important for the individual's health status. It is important that the individuals has the right skills to take care of their health. For organizations, it is important to strive for the welfare of their employees. This has proven to have a positive impact on work performance, reduced absenteeism and reduced costs for rehabilitation. In 2007, the local authorities in Umeå implemented a wellness offering for all employees working in the municipality administration.

Some MNEs encounter frustration or failures when they enter a new market. The main reason is due to a lack of adaptation. There is a lack of theoretical study about the local adaptation phenomenon of Swedish MNEs in China. Most studies are at the level of experience. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find out the dimensions subject to local adaptation and their degree for the Swedish MNEs in China.

Due to globalization, decentralization and the capitalist system's need to physical location cities have become increasingly important economic spheres during thee last decades. City mayors are seen as increasingly important actors, who can shape the future economic development of their cities through networking with businesses and strategic policy development. Therefore several European countries have introduced mayor reforms to enable mayors to take a bigger responsibility for the local development. These reforms raise interesting questions concerning what leadership changes they produce at the local level and if there is a difference between local leaders and leadership in different countries. This paper further explores the connection between the local leader and the locality since this relationship often has been neglect in studies concerning mayor reforms.

Due to an increasing amount of people being put on a sick-list the issue of work health has come to receive a lot more attention. To confront the problem, different varieties of keep-fit measures have been launched in the workplace. A prime example of such a measure can be found at Centralsjukhuset Kristianstad, which this survey is investigating. The primary goal of this study is to investigate the use of the Keep-fit measures program and to identify what motivates the employees to utilize this program. Further we would like to investigate if the program, through motivation and learning, generates improvement and retention of the individuals? health.

This work is a quick look at the overall quality of the teaching program at Växjö University and how the program is viewed by the students, future teachers, who attend it. This work aims to deduce how Växjö University uses it's resources to improve the overall quality of the teaching program..

Studien försöker belysa vilka svårigheter elever som läser det individuella programmet möter och vilka möjligheter de har i deras strävan att gå vidare till ett nationellt program. Studien ger också svar på frågan om IV-elever trivs med att läsa programmet och om de börjar en gymnasieutbildning efter IV. Jag ville också ta reda på om vad elever i grundksolans årskurs nio tyckte om informationen om gymnasieskolan, och om alla fick chansen att prata med en studie- och yrkesvägledare. Studien belyser också frågan om ursprung har en viss betydelse för fortsatta studier på nationella program..

Welfare is every person's right. To create conditions for a good welfare it requires coordinated strategic interventions at national and local level. Efforts must be politically supported to be able to strengthen public health. Local welfare management is a measure used to control and monitor public health. The purpose of this study was to investigate local actors perceptions of collaboration in strategic public health efforts with local welfare management in a municipality in central Sweden.

This thesis describes new methods for automatic crack detection in pavements. Cracks in pavements can be used as an early indication for the need of reparation.Automatic crack detection is preferable compared to manual inventory; the repeatability can be better, the inventory can be done at a higher speed and can be done without interruption of the traffic.The automatic and semi-automatic crack detection systems that exist today use Image Analysis methods. There are today powerful methods available in the area of Computer Vision. These methods work in higher dimensions with greater complexity and generate measures of local signal properties, while Image Analyses methods for crack detection use morphological operations on binary images.Methods for digitalizing video data on VHS-cassettes and stitching images from nearby frames have been developed.Four methods for crack detection have been evaluated, and two of them have been used to form a crack detection and classification program implemented in the calculation program Matlab.One image set was used during the implementation and another image set was used for validation. The crack detection system did perform correct detection on 99.2 percent when analysing the images which were used during implementation.