Background: The meeting industry has had undergone a extensive changes due to a number of factors. The globalization has meant that supply increases and congress organizers have more options to choose from. Development in communications, for instance internet, means that meetings can take place without a physical presence. Congress organizers as clients have also changes. Stockholm as position as a leading city to hold congresses in has also changed for the worse, in 2006 Stockholm dropped of the top-10 list.

Background: Increasingly, companies choose to finance their business with corporate bonds which has resulted in an increased demand on credit ratings. As such the rating agencies have a very important role in the financial markets. Examining the value of a credit-rating can be very interesting for both issuer and investor. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to identify and define the value of rating. Execution: The study is built upon nine interviews with rated and non-rated firms and investors.

In this essay we aimed to find how economic scarcity among children and youth presents itself in school, according to how school staff experience it. We have conducted interviews with student welfare staff to hear their experiences of this subject and how the schools try to help these pupils. We have used interpretative phenomenology as a base for our work. We have also used some of this traditions most important notions along with notions of Erving Goffman and Sara Ahmed during our processing off the material.  With help from these, we report our most interesting results. We have seen that a lack of resources exists among youth today and that everyone not has easy access to things many of us might take for granted.

The interest in businesses active on the countryside and their funding situation has increased in recent years. In a survey, conducted by Leif Berndtsson (2003), it was reported that there is a lack of external capital in rural areas. According to Berndtsson (2003) the lack of external capital inhibits the rural firm?s growth. The essay attempts to answer whether the shortage of external capital is a factor that inhibits development for rural businesses.

Denna litteraturstudie fokuserar på Enterprise Architecture (EA), dess definitioner och underliggande ramverk. Vi har valt att göra en litteraturstudie då access till företag med information kring EA ansågs vara svår och utesluter därför intervjuer och andra direkta tillvägagångsätt då vi upptäckte att det är svårt att få tag på vettig information. Zifa konferensen är en internationell EA-konsult konferens som förespråkar konsulter och säljtekniker istället för att fokusera på grundvärdena av EA. Detta föreslår att ett objektivt resultat bara kunde erhållas genom en litteraturstudie. Ännu en anledning bakom valet av studie är att EA är en grundläggande process på detaljnivå, denna inkluderar basala saker så som inköps-/försäljningspriser.

Det övergripande syftet med denna undersökning har varit att undersöka vilka nyttor som förväntas vid implementeringen av ett affärssystem, vilka som realiserats av systemet samt om dessa nyttor har mätts eller värderats på något sätt för att möjliggöra uppföljning av investeringen. Studien har genomförts med en kvalitativ metod och semistrukturerade intervjuer. Respondenterna som har intervjuats arbetar med ett affärssystem i det dagliga arbetet på olika Statoilstationer i Sundsvall och Hudiksvall. Därför har även huruvida de upplevda nyttorna är beroende av driftsform på stationerna, bolagsdrivna stationer och franchisedrivna stationer undersökts. Respondenter från Svenska Statoil har också intervjuats för att få en bild av hur de ser på detta eftersom de tog beslut om att införa systemet på samtliga stationer.

This Masters thesis work describes a comparison between two different methods for estimation of the down channel (base station to mobile subscriber) in Wide-band Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA). The first estimation method, Optimal Feed-forward Channel Estimation (OFCE), is a conventional method that bases the estimates on data that is known to both sender and receiver, so called pilots. The second method, Decision Directed Channel Estimation (DDCE), is an elaboration of OFCE. It also uses user data for estimation. Simulations show that DDCE, in comparison to OFCE, does not attain an improvement in signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) for high bit error rates (BER).

During thousands of years, reindeer have adapted to living under harsh conditions with large seasonal variations in climate and forage availability. This adaptation implies that body functions and nourishment needs are strongly bound to the season. In the summer the reindeer has to maximize food intake to build up fat and protein reserves for the winter. More than 200 different plant species are included in the reindeer diet, but since reindeer have an unique ability to use the nourishment in lichen, different lichen species make up a large portion of their winter diet in many areas. Fundamental for reindeer husbandry is access to natural grazing during most of the year.

Today many different types of lock systems are used all over the world. Passwords, finger prints and magnetic strips are a few examples. When the key is a three dimensional object, lika a physical metal key, the security depends, in a high degree, on that you can?t copy the object without access to it. One approach to copying the object is photographing the object, and from these photographs create a copy.

Background: The meeting industry has had undergone a extensive changes due to a number of factors. The globalization has meant that supply increases and congress organizers have more options to choose from. Development in communications, for instance internet, means that meetings can take place without a physical presence. Congress organizers as clients have also changes. Stockholm as position as a leading city to hold congresses in has also changed for the worse, in 2006 Stockholm dropped of the top-10 list.

This thesis analyses how friendship between children is described in four Swedish childrens books, published in 1995-2001 and recommended in Barnbokstipset, which is used in libraries for recommending books. Today there are many childrens books that describe various aspects of childrens everyday lives and these books can have an influence on the children who read them. But I found that there has not been much research about how friendship is described in childrens books, although much has been written about the importance of social relationships with peers for childrens lives and development. I analyze the books one by one with the help of a number of questions and categories that I have constructed beforehand. In the analysis I apply Zick Rubins theory of two different stages in childrens understanding of friendship and William Corsaros theory of interactive space which deals with who is allowed to join in games and friendships and who is not allowed to do so and how this is played out.

The aim in this thesis is to study what attitude music teachers in Sweden and New Zealand have towards Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in music education and obtain a better understanding of how their attitudes affect the way they use ICT in their teaching. Another intention is to discuss differences and similarities between the teachers´ preferences regarding this issue in the two different countries, and whether it has any effect on teaching. It's a qualitative study based on interviews with music teachers from both countries. Through the answers we can get an impression about how ICT is used in music education, how the curriculum is interpreted when it comes to use ICT in music education and how the teachers' attitudes towards ICT affect the music education. This thesis shows that teachers are positive towards ICT in music education but the attitude, knowledge and the way of using it differs, due to access to technology and different opinions about what is essential in music and what is pedagogical.

Syfte: Syftet med föreliggande studie är att studera smärtupplevelser, smärtfrekvens och smärtintensitet hos patienter med akut kranskärlssjukdom, som genomgår PCI-behandling med punktion av a. radialis, vid ett universitetssjukhus i mellansverige. Syftet är även att studera skillnaden i smärtfrekvens mellan män och kvinnor som genomgår PCI-behandling. Metod: Deskriptiv, komparativ tvärsnittstudie med kvantitativ ansats. Totalt 31 deltagare tillfrågades varav 20 medverkade i studien, bortfallet uppgick till 11.

Test is an area in system development. Test can be performed manually or automated. Test activities can be supported by Word documents and Excel sheets for documenting and executing test cases and as well for follow up, but there are also new test tools designed to support and facilitate the testing process and the activities of the test. This study has described manual test and identified strengths and weaknesses of manual testing with a testing tool called Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) and of manual testing using test cases and test log templates developed by the testers at Sogeti. The result that emerged from the problem and strength analysis and the analysis of literature studies and firsthand experiences (in terms of creating, documenting and executing test cases) addresses the issue of the following weaknesses and strengths.

Sustainable development is often pictured as containing of three interlinked dimensions- namely environmental, economic and social. ?Social sustainability? is a vague concept that is often thought of as highly context-dependent. This thesis sets out to investigate the meaning of ?social sustainability? in a given context.