The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The past years in Sweden has been infected by a discussion about immigration and immigrants, both spoken in politics and media. The aim of this essay is to study the attitude about immigrants in the third period of immigration in Sweden found in the local press. And also what image the press gave of immigrants. The study looks at Smålandsposten, which is a large local press in the Växjö area. During the period for this study was the attitude in the local press very negative. The studied articles in Smålandsposten shows a profound idea of a ?we? and ?them?.

This thesis is a case study that examines what political decisions have been taken and how these policies have been implemented. Further this thesis discusses how legitimacy of local policy makers and implementors is affected. The subject studied have been the social service of Jönköping municipality and the intervention of safe-housing aimed at women who have been, or are subject to violence by person close to them. In our study we have examined local policy within the territory of the intervention and how this policy is implemented. A qualitative method with semi-structured interviews was used in combination with quantitative methods to examine protocols from the social welfare board and an action program named "Skydd och stöd för misshandlade kvinnor och deras barn? [Protection and support for abused women and their children].The purpose of this study has been to highlight how the social services implemented the local policy of safe-house accommodation in Jönköping municipality from the legitimacy and discretion perspectives.

The local politicians in Sweden are responsible for a great deal of the welfare system why one would assume that there are a lot of demands put on them - demands for certain skills or a certain level of competence. I have in this study tried to find out how the demands on the local representatives concerning the demands for competence and the actual level of competence among the politicians are affecting the local politics. This was done through investigating how the local politicians are perceiving their level of competence and the demands put on them, but also how the employees are perceiving the demands and the level of competence put on the politicians. The study was made in the municipality of Gislaved in Southern Sweden. I was using both quantitative method (an opinion poll among the politicians and employees in the municipality) and qualitative method (interviews with three politicians and three employees and literature studies).In order to investigate the demands for competence I split the concept into ?soft? competence (socially and emotionally based skills), and ?hard? competence (skills based on knowledge, education and experience).

Through a case study, I wanted to find out what advantages and disadvantages local companies consider with scrum and what they think about its future. To find out what scrum is, I read the literature and scientific articles and then wrote surveys based on my thoughts. Further, I also wanted to find out if it?s possible to use scrum in a school environment and therefore I visited a high school class who used scrum in one of their projects. The result was good but could have been better as it requires more training of scrum to understand everything. The surveys were distributed to various local companies. After having received a lot of answers, I concluded that the clear priority was the most positive feature of scrum and the most negative was that it was difficult to get the rest of the organization to understand scrum, which creates problems. Both high school class and local companies believe in scrum?s future, even if they think scrum will be partially modified to adapt to the software-development in the future. According to the survey responses, the most important to get the projects to be successful both now and in the future is that everyone who work with scrum is right educated..

This thesis is a case study that examines what political decisions have been taken and how these policies have been implemented. Further this thesis discusses how legitimacy of local policy makers and implementors is affected. The subject studied have been the social service of Jönköping municipality and the intervention of safe-housing aimed at women who have been, or are subject to violence by person close to them. In our study we have examined local policy within the territory of the intervention and how this policy is implemented. A qualitative method with semi-structured interviews was used in combination with quantitative methods to examine protocols from the social welfare board and an action program named "Skydd och stöd för misshandlade kvinnor och deras barn? [Protection and support for abused women and their children].The purpose of this study has been to highlight how the social services implemented the local policy of safe-house accommodation in Jönköping municipality from the legitimacy and discretion perspectives.

The purpose of this thesis was to study the origin of the local news in local newspapers. Do the news originate mostly from the police, the municipality, from press releases or from the reporters own ideas? We also wanted to find out what kind of content predominated in texts with its origin in press releases respectively the reporters own ideas. Of course we also wanted to find out if there were any similarities or differences between the two studied newspapers.We used a type of constructed week, but with non random selection instead of random. We chose one of each weekday the newspapers were published and studied the news covered in the papers that specific day.

The survey is a qualitative study that aims to investigate the ethnic housing segregation in the residential area around Malmvägen that is located in Sollentuna. Malmvägen is a millionprogramarea that?s made up of unattractive tall buildings with grey facades. The majority of the residents have foreign backgrounds and the unemployment rate is high among the youths in the area. The apartment rents on Malmvägen are low and many of the residents belong to the subclass of society.

This thesis takes its starting point in the humanistic cultural-geographical concept of place, with the aim of achieving a greater understanding of what constitutes the place Mon today. Mon is located in the northwestern part of Dalsland. Until 1879, the area was described as outlying land, but with the extension of the railway between V?nern and the Norwegian border, Mon's station community emerged. In the mid-20th century, all activities in Mon were phased out, and since then, the place has been inhabited by only about 10 year-round residents.

ABSTRACTCitizendialogue in the District of RasboA Case Study in the Municipality of UppsalaAuthor: Camilla ÖstlundSupervisor: Stig MontinThe essay is written inside the scope of Örebro Universitys evaluation of the new organisation in the municipality of Uppsala.The purpose of this essay is to study the citizendialogue in the district of Rasbo. This will be done partly by an examination of how the participants themselvesperceive citizendialogue. Their descriptions are put in relation to deliberative democracy and its critics amongst other. Partly by study how those involved have choosen to put it into practice. The opponents of the reorganization chose to start a non-profit association, Rasbo in co-operation, to carry on local mobilization and it will be compared with other similar groups.

AbstractTitle: Where does the news that you read in your localpaper come from? (Vilket ursprung har nyheten som du läser i din lokaltidning?)Number of pages: 45 (57 including enclosures)Author: Elin RantakokkoTutor: Göran SvenssonCourse: Media and Communication Studies 30 hpPeriod: Fall of 2007 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University Purpose/Aim: This paper has the aim to make a systematic survey of the information source and channels that local newspapers use. How much space they get in the paper and how the newspaper works with these sources and channels. The front pages of the newspaper are going to be compared with the insides of the newspaper. The reports roles in the making of news are also examined.Material/method: To be able to answer my questions I?m going to use three different methods.

The location on the river delta of Klarälven, adjacent to lake Vänern, makes Karlstad one of the Swedish cities where a significant flood risk is present. The city has several major floods in its memory which has caused great material damage and economic losses, the latest of which occurred in the winter of year 2000/2001. The purpose of the study is to examine how the approach to flood risk has changed in the municipality of Karlstad since the 1950s, and how this change has affected the current situation regarding the city's vulnerability to flooding. To investigate this, a document analysis was conducted, where key documents in the media and from the municipality of Karlstad was studied. Furthermore, an interview study was conducted with respondents who currently are employed or previously have been employed in the municipality of Karlstad, who in various ways work with issues of flood risk. The result of the study shows that several changes have taken place since the 1950s in terms of the municipality's approach to flood risk, which for instance has led to preventative measures being taken to a greater extent than previously in the physical planning.

A refugee reception has been placed in Kungshall, one of Nybros residential areas. The area has a bad reputation and there are arguably prejudices about the area from the local population. I therefore want to investigate if an ethnic residential segregation exists in Kungshall, from a postcolonial perspective. The following research questions have been formulated: How do residents who doesn?t live in the refugee reception, look at ethnic residential segregation in Nybro? How has Kungshall changed since the refugee reception? Does a cultural racism exist in Kungshall? The study is a qualitative study using semi structured interviews of four people living in the residential area, a person who has moved out of the area and a person working on the housing corporation ?Nybro bostads AB?, who is one of the housing corporation responsible for the residential area Kungshall.

Equality is a central aspect within development work. All development work is expected to be influenced by a gender equalty thinking, and these directions are distributed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, through Sida to Forum Syd and down to the very grasroot level, through Forum Syds local cooperation organisations. The essays question of research is a reflection over empowerment, with other words how international organisations influence other societies understanding of the society dynamics. This aspect triggered my interest for the subject, aswell as the link between aid, equality and men, and how these factors are in need of eachother. My study is mainly build on theoretical starting points, and not on earlier studies.

This study is case study of political participation among the Kani tribe from Kuttichal grama panchayat in the Thiruvananthapuram district in Kerala, India. The study is based on the collected data of 117 people of the Kani tribe living in four different settlements: Pankavu, Mangode-Valippara, Chonampara and Kaithode. The aim of the study is to examine the impact on political participation by different factors, which is done by the use of the quantitative method of cross tables. The study confirms previous studies in its conclusion that high status individuals, defined in terms of education and economic standard, are the group of the highest political participation, when this is defined as being involved in political work and holding a party membership. On the local political scene however, where political participation consists of participation in local assemblies and voluntary work, the impact of the examined variables are very limited.