Background: The health of children and youth has decreased the last two decades. The Swedish government has decided to back a national plan for parenting support. The municipality of Tjörn is a part of national parental support project to identify the need and to improve the parental support in the municipality. Purpose: The purpose with this study was to identify experience and need of parental support among fathers with more than one child on Tjörn. Method: Five individual qualitative interviews were conducted with the fathers.

Barley is one of the most important cereals cultivated in the Nordic countries. Climate change brings warmer and moisture climate which favors fungal diseases. In the cropland barley can be seriously infested with hard fungus attack. Since it is important that the yield bears a high quality it is of great importance to find varieties more resistant to attacks.Pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins are stress proteins induced in the plant in response to infection and abiotic stress (van Loon, 1997). PRs are shown to have antimicrobial activity differing between bacteria, fungi and oomycetes (Tandrup Poulsen, 2001).

This study examined the factors influencing dairy farmers´ decisions to invest in automated milking systems (AMS). The problem studied involves uncertainty, information and complexity for dairy farmers in specific decision contexts. The frame of reference in the thesis combines contingency theory and decision theory and is used in a qualitative analysis of a set interview with dairy farmers who have recently bought an AMS and salespersons from Delaval, one of the AMS suppliers.The aim of this study is to develop an understanding of the decision making processes of dairy farmers, and in particular to identify which types of factors influence the outcome of an investment decision in the technological development of a farm.The study uses Thompsons` (1967) theory about the structure that organizations develop to handle the input of information. Thus, interest is focused on how a farm business structure handles information in the AMS decision, investigating the differences in information with Delaval?s "feed first principle" system and Lely?s "free cow traffic" system.The results of the qualitative interviews with the dairy farmers who bought an AMS show that there are three important factors that influence the outcome: employees, suppliers and the owner.

The question is who should govern and administrate a municipality owned urban forest? Should societies and the public be invited to participatory planning, who are the interested parties, could they be treated like a group and what are their opinions on administration and management? The study is carried out in a municipal owned forest Vitberget Skellefteå that is widely used by associations and individuals for recreation and training.This has led to several discussions in the local media about the management of the forest, especially in connection to harvesting. The work undertaken here has been to identify who has any interest in the management of the area. After identifying the interested parties, a selection of the societies, schools and pre-schools that actively uses the area as well as random individuals met in the area was interviewed. The questions asked can be divided into six main groups:? Communication with the municipality?s managers for the area? Interference from other activities? Views on forest management? Views on nature conservation? The uniqueness of Vitberget? Development opportunitiesThe crucial factors identified as being needed to succeed in managing an urban forest are long-term administration, information and communication.

Abstract The planning of landscapes and towns has changed from a top-to-bottom perspective, including a focus on common interests, towards an inclusion of dialogue between planners and inhabitants of the planning area. In the countryside areas there are many interests which could be incorporated in such a dialogue. Still, the landowners have the final right to make the decisions for his or her property. The purpose of this paper is to examine how a dialogue for countryside development works and could be working, what participators of such dialogues are thinking about their right to direct and transform the landscape, and which roles the planners may take in such a context. With this background in mind, I also look back into the history with the intention to understand the situation of today.

Designing temporary cities is a study of the design and physical planning of five temporary cities. The purpose was to discuss and note the important questions to be considered, when designing the outdoor environment in temporary cities to create as good an environment for the visitor as possible. The five cities I have chosen are among the most famous ones in Scandinavia, and they represent different kinds of temporary cities. This was a deliberate choice to achieve diverse research material, and with that a broad view of what the planning stage generally looks like. Study of the cities has been done through interviews with the people responsible for the design and/or physical planning of each city.

Sweden's school voucher reform has made the Swedish school system into one of the world's most liberalized. The debate concerning the ownership of Swedish schools is intense and the Swedish Minister of Education is open to restricting private equity owned companies from running schools. Interestingly, fewer calls are heard for restricting smaller profit-driven companies from owning schools. This essay aims to examine whether or not the quality of education provided by an individual school changes if it is acquired by a large private equity owned school group. This is done by conducting a comparative study on four independent schools recently acquired by AcadeMedia, Sweden's biggest private equity owned school group.

AbstractObstacles or opportunities? ? A study of the experience of collaboration of social welfare secretaries and school staff.The purpose of this study is to illustrate the importance of the work with children and youth through the joint efforts between different authorities. The study deals with the collaboration between the social services and schools in the Ludvika municipality. The objective of the study is to investigate how teaching personnel and headmasters in compulsory schools and the social welfare secretaries in Ludvika, experience the collaboration, and how this works. On the basis of the objective, we have formulated some relevant questions; To what degree are schools aware of the model of collaboration, which is the basis for collaboration within the municipality, and are there any differences in awareness between different categories of employees? Other questions deal with differences in how the social services and schools experience the collaboration, discrepancies between different schools in this regard and if the respondents? experience any obstacles and/or opportunities by the collaboration.Collaboration is, and has been, a pressing issue for a long time in the public debate.

The culture center studied has gone from being organized by enthusiasts and ideals, to being institutionalized with a educational association responsible for the management. The questions discussed are ? how this change affects the active people in the house and what consequences these changes make for the institution of the house and for the regular management..

Scana-Booforge is a Swedish company which specialize in heat treatment of various metal. The treatments take place in quenching ovens, where fans are used to circulate the hot air. The fans used today do not have a satisfactory lifespan. This thesis aims to develop a new design of the fans for the quenching ovens, and the goal is that the new fans will bring cost savings for Scana-Booforge.The design development process started with mapping out the environment in which the fans operate, and with analysis of the existing fan structure and damages, in order to establish the cause of failure and of short durability. The performance of the fan were also established at this stage.

Killingen is an area situated on an island called Resarö in the municipality of Vaxholm. The areais covered with forests with a varied topography and a mosaic of environments. The municipalitywants to keep the area unexploited, for recreational purposes but what are the natural values inthe forests? The survey concluded that a mosaic of nature types had high values and could behosts for vulnerable species.As part of the study, measures that will improve the quality of the paths and bathing areas for thelocal population was proposed as well as means to heighten or preserve the natural values in thearea..

In today's producing companies, there is a high demand on early integrated productdevelopment. One way to facilitate communication between departments and collaborationbetween people and thereby enable early sharing of product information within the companyis to use PLM, Product Lifecycle Management.The CAD environment at Scania is at the moment being upgraded from Catia v4 to Catiav5. In this stage it is important that also the interacting computer systems in Scania?s PLMenvironment are adjusted and in the future join the development. Scania has an idea of howthese systems will be developed as the transition from Catia v4 to Catia v5 is being carriedout.

Local cultural environment planning in Sweden often comes to rely on municipal heritage plans. These plans are meant to facilitate management of local cultural values, work as a tool for local planning and increase awareness of cultural environments for the public. In the last decades public participation in planning has become more and more of the ideal strategy, challenging the idea of cultural environment planning as an expert-led field. The idea of the field as one that implicates public participation as a strategy has been fortified in Sweden through national goals, government bills and conventions. Nevertheless the implementation of public participation in municipal heritage plans remains quite uncharted. The aim of this study is to explore public participation in regards to how municipal heritage plans are developed and the perception of public participation in cultural environment planning amongst professionals, comparing bigger and smaller municipalities.

GIS on the Internet is a rather new phenomenon, which has evolved from the need ofdistributed geographical data. It is also a powerful tool for presenting information on theInternet. This master thesis aim to create a web based GIS application with information onlime spreading and the situation concerning acidification in the county of Kronoberg, Sweden.The web based GIS application will be used by the county administrations in Kronoberg toinform the public and the municipal authorities of current counteracting acidification activity.This report includes documentation on acidifying processes and liming activities, which arepublicised together with the web based GIS application. The web based GIS application wascreated with ArcIMS, a new program in the ESRI family of GIS programs. The programincludes a guided structure, to development of everything from a map to a complete GISapplication, including mapservice and websites.

The number of LBOs in Sweden has increased during the last years and the current market trend is positive. MostLBOs involves private companies, but a few concerns public corporations on the national share market. In this thesis we will examine the conditions of a LBO of Cloetta Fazer AB. The purpose is to study existing conditions of Cloetta Fazer AB and to examine pros and cons with the deal. Based upon information presented in the frame of reference and in the empirical part, two cash flow valuations have been carried out.