By reading three 21st century books am I trying to see how the female friendship is described in literature of our days. The books are Rebell med frusna fötter by Johanna Nilsson, Lutherska badet by Unni Drougge and I närheten av solen by Hanna Wallsten. They are all written by Swedish authors and taking place in Stockholm in the early years of 2000. I am doing a critical reading against the roles of ?heteronormativitet? as the word is described by Tiina Rosenberg and Fanny Ambjörnsson trying to see how the characters are following or breaking these roles.

The educational underachievement of children in foster care has been known for a long time. This study aimed to compile and analyze the current knowledge about interventions, intended to improve foster children?s school achievements. The method used was a systematically undertaken narrative review. Despite a comprehensive searching strategy, only ten relevant studies were found, indicating that little has been done to improve the educational outcomes for children in public care.

In the media richness of everyday life, the encounter with information graphics ishappening on a daily basis, whether we are aware or not. With the development andeasy access of technologies, new ways to create and display information graphics hasemerged. Among them, the animated information graphics, which in the few pastyears appears to have increased in popularity on video sharing websites such asVimeo and Youtube. In the genre of animated information graphics, there seems to bean inherent diversity regarding the design characteristics. In this study we exploredliterature and research on information graphics and related subjects.

This project report describes a supplement for character creation in a tabletop role-playing game ?Dragons and Demons." The purpose of this project is to improve the character creation for the players? trough the narrative elements such as character?s background story. The applied qualitative methods such as a test panel and a questionnaire were conducted for the evaluation of theories used during character creation and to get feedback on the supplement?s creative value for the players. The aim of the questionnaire was to see how the method for the character creation differs from the regular way of making a character for a tabletop role-playing game and if this idea improves user experience during the tabletop role-playing game.The results of the evaluation are based on answers from novice and experienced players, and conclude that the additional background story creates an insight into the character's past, which makes it easier for novice players to get quick started with character creation.

This thesis concerns partial discharges in stator windings and the possibility of analyzing data using statistical methods. Partial discharges, or PD, are a physical phenomenon in which discharges occur locally due to large electric fields. PD can occur in or adjacent to the insulation of stator windings and causes breakdown of the insulating materials. PD measurement can provide an idea of how widespread the PD activity is. A technique to measure and analyze PD that has become very popular over the last few decades is phase resolved PD patterns.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of joint venture announcements on stock prices behavior and simultaneously to test the German stock market (Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse) for efficiency. We tried not only to analyze the general impacts of a JV-announcement but also to look for differences in the market response to announcements of different types of joint ventures, namely: domestic, international, horizontal and vertical. Our expectations of efficient market were confirmed during our paper, which employed the technique of the standard event study. The calculation of abnormal returns which are the signals for market efficiency or inefficiency respectively were based on the market model, establishing linear relationship between the return on the market and the return on an individual security. The parameters of the model were obtained through regression analysis..

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine some pre-school teacher's and parent's perceptions about communication within the pre-school context and how this can be described in terms of conceptual dichotomy.The empirical investigation consists of a qualitative study, where data have been collected by interviewing two focus groups and one single parent.The main theoretical tools which the study uses as its premiss is Derridas' theory of hospitality and Habermas' theory of deliberative dialogues. The study also considers the conception of the intermediate domain as an arena for communication between parents and pre-school teachers, and further more the conception of stereotyping in social and cultural contexts.In order to explore these processes I have used the qualitative method of interpretation; Hermeneutic, also with a narrative approach to the analysis.The results and the analysis of the data show that the interviewed parent and pre-school teachers have a poor sense of knowing how much influence to give to each other. The parents were not satisfied with the level of open communication and how the pre-school teachers share information of the activities..

This essay examines on what kind of Muslim stereotypes exist in entertainment movies which are being produced in the West and particularly the United States. First, the focus will be on explaining the concept of stereotypes and Islamophobia and what role the media has in the movies' production of its contents. The incident at the World Trade Center will also be discussed briefly. By using semiotic and narrative analyses the essay investigates if a stereotyped image is being used about Muslims and how Muslim main characters that have the role of being protagonists, are visualized in entertainment movies. The material that is included in the empirical analysis consists of three selected movies.

With a hermeneutical method using narratology this thesis is interpreting the auteure Lars von Trier´s discussed movie Antichrist. On one hand within the limits of the hermeneutic Paul Riceours analysis of structure is used to reconstruct the narrative of the film out of the different part of discourses that I have construed in my first reading to find out a deeper comprehension of the relation between the characters and their relations to the different discourses. On the other hand the discourses which extracts out of His and Hers actions and statements are related to the clues that I´ve found out from interviews with von Trier regarding Antichrist where he, among other things, touches upon philosophical work of Friedrich Nietzsche and his own disregard about protestantism and religion. All in all this first phase of interpretation is termed the different horizons which I finally interprete and coalesce with my subjects comprehension on a metadiegetic and meta-metadiegetic level. By this a ?fusion of horizons? in the sense of Hans-Georg Gadamer can take place, which directly leads into the big scene of Relevations.

Literature describes what it is like to be a leader in the healthcare and what is looked upon as the most characteristic quality for female leadership. Women often use a leadership technique that motivates the employee and they allow themselves to develop a humanitarian leadership. The aim of this study was to describe female head nurses? experience of their leadership in healthcare. The collection of data has been carried out from interviews.

This study examines the experiences and perspectives of after-school program teachers through a qualitative research approach. The purpose is to deepen the understanding of their experiences within the after-school setting and how these insights might contribute to the development of this environment. Semi-structured and narrative interviews were used for data collection, allowing a flexible and open conversational format where participants could express both concrete opinions and implicit thoughts. Following Ahrne and Svensson's (2022) argument, which emphasizes the importance of qualitative interviews in capturing experiences of individuals active within specific social settings, this method is considered well-suited for the study?s purpose. The narrative interviews provided the interviewees with the freedom to describe their own experiences in detail, while the semi-structured interviews ensured a foundational structure and opportunities for follow-up questions.

This project was about the creation of a shorter computer animated film. Thegoal of the project was to explore a different technique of the visual outcomethat should not rely on photorealistic rendering and how to find new interestingways to use 3d-graphic for visuals. A big part of the project was also toincorporate music to create a chosen atmosphere and impact on the viewer butalso to help the story forward and questions such as; ?How can you create anexpression for the feeling you want to transmit?? were formulated. The scenewas built up in a 3d-application consisting of a house and surrounding garden,which within an character was animated to tell the plot.

Storytelling is a complex action that requires many linguistic and other cognitive abilities, like memory and attention. Resent research has shown a correlation between oral story retelling and picture arrangement among children with neurodevelopmental disorders. The present study analyzes if this correlation exists among a convenience sample of children from the general population. 77 children between 3:11 and 9:0 years old accomplished Bus Story Test and a picture arrangement task from WISC III. Significant correlations was found between picture arrangement and Bus Story Test?s subscores sentence length, subordinate clauses and information.

This paper investigates the possibilities to construct automatized portfolios based on optimizations strategies that could outperform comparable indexes. The study is based on time-series of Swedish stocks dating from 1986 to 2006. In the research four different portfolio optimization techniques were studied. These were: the Classical Markowitz Approach, Mean-Absolute-Deviation, Minimum-Regret and Conditional Value-at-Risk of which the three latter are based on generated scenarios. The behaviour of these models was studied for different choices of parameters such as backward time-horizon and targeted average return.

Our aim with this study has been to show the central factors that we consider have had animpact on public libraries in the "information society". We have studied two communities in the south of Sweden, Ronneby and Sölvesborg. These two communities have both started a development to the IT society, a society where information plays a great role, where the technique is the tool that supplies information.Ronneby community had early the aim to be the chief Swedish information center. A priority on information technology has therefore been obvious for them. Sölvesborg community has had another method and time schedule towards the IT society.We have been studying the documentation of aim and the strategy for IT development in different levels.