The main purpose of this essay is to investigate if Latvia´s pattern of trade has become more similar to the mature market economies, after Latvia´s independence 1991.Today, the intra-industry trade (IIT) dominates the trade of mature market economies. One of the pioneers of intra-industrial trade is Paul Krugman, who was the first to emphasize the importance "of scale and consumers' desire for variety" in explaining the basis for modern commerce. Customers get more variety and usually cheaper goods when the market gets bigger. I mainly use the modern trade theories to explain the trade pattern in Latvia. To measure how Latvia has developed its intra-industry trade, and thereby is approaching the mature market economies´ trade pattern, I use the Grubel-Lloyd index (GL-index).

This essay discusses the Nordic region Bohuslän the decade after it became "Swedish" in 1658, during what I call the region's "transition period". The wide cause of the study is to show how the traditional understanding of this state shift (and of state shifts in general) need to be problemized and understood in the light of the state conditions of Early Modern Europe. By examine court protocols from the local-court of Orust and Tjörn (one of five local courts in contemporary Bohuslän) and the local noble's writings to the Swedish parliament, a tricky mixture of references to different territories gets observed and analyzed.To approach the difficult identity problems, I have assistance in Peter Sahlins' conclusions from his study of the French-Spanish borderland during the same period. Especially helpful are his identity schemes by which he (inspired by the Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth) supposes that each identity originates from a counter-identity. This study ends up in an attempt to reconstruct the landscape of identities and counter-identities found in the sources, according to professor Sahlins' schemes.

This paper set out to investigate how teachers of Swedish in Sweden implement the grammar objectives of the curriculum in their teaching, through interviewing six teachers. It has been important to compare their methods to modern research of grammar teaching and teaching in general. They have been asked a series of questions to answer whether or not they use grammar terminology as mediating tools, if they intergrate dialogue among students in grammar teaching and to what extent the teachers? knowledge of and attitude towards grammar influence their teaching methods. The results show that grammar is used as mediating tools primarily when it comes to feedback on pupils? texts, though not to a great extent; dialogue between pupils is rare when it comes to grammar teaching; and the teachers? grammar knowledge and attitude affect the teaching methods, primarily in the sense that seeing value in grammar knowledge increases the teacher?s desire to develop new methods for grammar teaching..

En modern grafikprocessor är oerhört kraftfull och har en prestanda som potentiellt sett är många gånger högre än för en modern mikroprocessor. I takt med att grafikprocessorn blivit alltmer programmerbar har det blivit möjligt att använda den för beräkningstunga tillämpningar utanför dess normala användningsområde. Inom det här arbetet utreds vilka möjligheter och begränsningar som uppstår vid användandet av grafikprocessorer för generell programmering. Arbetet inriktas främst mot signal- och bildbehandlingstillämpningar men mycket av principerna är tillämpliga även inom andra områden.Ett ramverk för bildbehandling implementeras och några algoritmer inom bildanalys realiseras och utvärderas, bland annat stereoseende och beräkning av optiskt flöde. Resultaten visar på att vissa tillämpningar kan uppvisa en avsevärd prestandaökning i en grafikprocessor jämfört med i en mikroprocessor men att andra tillämpningar kan vara ineffektiva eller mycket svåra att implementera..

Public participation is a key aspect in the planning of Swedish municipalities. It is probably the most important tool of them all in the planning towards a sustainable future within the cities and the municipalities as a whole. Participation from the public can take on several different forms. In this paper I focus to research and discuss in and around the usage of a web-based 3D platform called City Planner. The tool allows the user (the public) to view the municipalities planning in a fairly new (but quickly growing) environment.

Alice Lyttkens (1897-1991) was a very popular author in Sweden during several decades in the middle of the twentieth century. She was most famous for her historical novels. During her first period as a novelist in the 1930s, however, she wrote contemporary fiction, reflecting the situation of contemporary Women. The traditional view of the two sexes as ?complementary? permeated the interwar period.

The purpose with this essay is to get a deeper insight into why there is a lack of male educators in Swedish preschools. I also want to know which role the male educators have in comparison to the female educators. This essay builds on four questions, which covers:The cause of the lack of males in Swedish preschoolsIf there are any gender bound expectations on male educators in the Swedish preschoolsWhat the woman educators perceive about the roles of the male educators in the Swedish preschoolsHow the male educator experience his own work in a workplace dominated by womenThe method I have used is a qualitative interview study in which I have interviewed four male educators and two woman educators from three different preschools. The result of this study shows that male educators gave different reasons to why there is a lack of male educators in Swedish childcare. According to the male educators the reason for this situation is that there is a worry to be seen as a feminine person, get singled out as a pedophile and that the childcare sector has low status.

I dagens samhälle är det ofta viktigt att kunna använda datorer och internet för att göra olika vardagssysslor såsom hålla kontakten med släkt och vänner, kontakta myndigheter, utföra bankärenden och boka resor. Fortfarande finns det dock många som saknar kunskaperna att använda en dator, en grupp som är överrepresenterade bland dessa är pensionärerna.Det finns många olika operativsystem och vissa lämpar sig antagligen bättre än andra om man är över 65 år och saknar tidigare datorkunskaper. I denna rapport undersöks huruvida det klassiska skrivbordsgränssnittet i Windows är bättre eller sämre än det nya gränssnittet Modern UI som återfinns i Windows 8 och Windows RT. I studien ingick fem par pensionärer i åldrarna 71-87 som utvärderades med hjälp av samupptäckarmetoden.Resultatet av studien visar att inget av de två undersökta systemen är optimalt för denna kategori av användare men att många av de nyheter som introducerades i Modern UI såsom levande paneler underlättade testpersonernas interaktion med datorn..

 The purpose of this case study was to view if there were any differences and similarities between Swedish and American female leaders, with focus on the Swedish female leaders. We also wanted to find out if the American female leaders had problem whit the classcelling.Our case study is a quality method, because we wanted to reach the dep't that quality methods can reach. We interviewed four Swedish female leaders and tried to get in touch whit American female leaders but whit out any success. So instead we analyzed already existing research about the American female leadership. Our result showed that there were some differences between the two countries; in the same time we also found similarities. The classcelling tends to exist more in Sweden than in the US.   .

The aim of this two-year masters thesis is to look for the Swedish public library´s core business, using theories about competence. The approach is qualitative. It is done by studying the Unesco Public Library Manifesto, the Swedish library legislation, the education in library and information science, two important Swedish library related journals and by asking public librarians about their work and point of view regarding competence.The research shows mainly two sides of the core competence of public librarians: information technology competence and literature knowledge. The conclusion is that the two meet in the idea of mass education, which could therefore be called the Swedish public library´s core business..

Uppsatsens syfte är att ur ett socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv undersöka framställningen av moderskap i föräldratidningar. Studien är kopplad till teorier om senmodernitet och använder sig av en diskursanalytisk ansats för att studera förekomsten av samhhälleligt existerande diskurser i materialet. Huvudfrågeställningen är: -Vilka diskurser kring moderskap framkommer i föräldratidningar? Denna besvaras med hjälp av tre delfrågeställningar:- Hur framställs relationen mellan mamman och barnet? Vad fokuserar tidningarna på i relationen?- Hur framställs mammor uppfatta moderskapet och hur beskrivs moderskapet?- Hur framställs mammans relation med omvärlden?Tidningarna som utgör uppsatsens empiri är Vi föräldrar, Föräldrar och barn samt Mama. Materialet har lästs med delfrågeställningarna som utgångspunkt och sedan delats in i analysteman i vilka olika aspekter av moderskapet diskuteras.

One could argue that the most discussed topic in finance is whether or not it is possible to ?beat the market?. Even though many people claim to do this, there is little evidence to support the idea that one can consistently beat the market over a long period of time. There are indeed several examples of investors who have managed to outperform the market consistently for a long time, but the efforts of these individuals or institutions could by many be considered to be pure luck.One of the many strategies that have been evaluated by several researchers and is said to generate a risk adjusted return greater than that of the market, is one based on the P/E-effect. This strategy is based on the financial ratio P/E ? price divided by earnings ? and used by constructing portfolios consisting of stocks with low P/E ratios.

Swedes and Swedish Culture are controversial political subjects in Sweden. The definitions for Swedish culture are very vague and what is the answer to the question: Who can be called Swedes? It has been debated in Sweden more since Swedish Democrats crossed the four percent threshold necessary for representation in the Swedish parliament. Swedes or Swedish culture on a large internet forum with 2 million visitors per week called Flashback forum is material for this thesis.Flashback forum has currently more than 50 million posts published and has more than 970 000 users. Flashback forum is more and more often mentioned in Swedish media.

Air tightness in new buildings has been discussed for several decades. But the knowledge in the subject is low. With tougher requirements from the Swedish government about energy consumption for a new building required competences how these shall be met. It's not only the thick mess of insulation that are important, it's also the air tightness. This report is about air leakage in Swedish houses.

The prevention of age discrimination in Sweden did not have any solvent grounds until directive 2000/78/EG was implemented into Swedish law. Today age discrimination has been banned for just over two years. This ground of discrimination has, compared to other existing grounds of discrimination in Swedish law, a lot more opportunities to make exceptions from. Given the fact that the exemption rules are vague, it is difficult to determine whether the protection against age discrimination is in fact a protection at all. The purpose of this essay is to describe what the law regarding age discrimination means.