The focus of this thesis is on what is considered to be a suitable foster home. For the study to be carried out an application had to be made to get access to the foster home assessments in a medium-sized municipality in Sweden. With the support of attachment theory and theory of standards different categories have been picked out and analyzed in foster home assessements that have been approved. The conclusion to what is considered to be a suitable foster home is a complex issue, as there are many factors that are interacting. Social workers seem to focus on the importance of a family?s ability to provide some kind of stability and security for a child who is considered to be placed within their home.

Pseudopregnancy is a condition that is estimated to affect 40 % of all female dogs. Common symptoms are decreased activity level, weight gain, mammary enlargement, milk production, nesting behavior, anorexia and maternal behavior. The symptoms are displayed during metoestrus. Prolactin is one of the causes behind pseudopregnancy, but the full process is not yet known. Due to the fact that the condition affects that many bitches and often is recurrent, it is relevant to examine how the condition affects the bitch?s behavior and performance.

Edsbyverken Office Furniture has over the past 100 years been producing delicate carpentry products, chairs and skiis, but more recently the focus has shifted to furniture for the modern office environment. With a wide selection of products and its characteristic neutral design, Edsbyverken has an extensive group of clients both in Sweden and internationally. The aim of my C level thesis project was to examine the materials Edsbyverken is currently using in order to develop new designs or product functions. Simultanesously, I also wanted to verify whether the method I developed for this project - to initially undertake a comprehensive study of the chosen materials and thereafter specialise on a certain product and target audience ? was effective and successful.

This study aim to investigate the conditions framing the professional development situation for physical education teachers (PE) in a small municipality in the south of Sweden. The Swedish National Agency for Education declare that "focus must be directed towards strengthening the teachers' profession", and that "schools need well-trained teachers and good teaching to help students achieve good results". The study focuses both the schools? contribution and the way in which the teachers take own initiative and are motivated to develop their professional skills. The investigation is all based on teachers' perspectives.

During the last decade millions of people have migrated to Europe. Parallel to this development, we see that many countries are becoming more hostile towards immigration. The success of radical right-wing parties (RHP) has been accredited to natives within the receiving countries turning to RHP to reduce their perceived threat from immigrants. Paradoxically, the RHP-support has also increased significantly among the immigrant population given the common assumption that immigrants are in solidarity with regards to shared experiences of immigration. In this dissertation, I argue for the importance of considering the increased RHP-support amongst immigrants, something that has been neglected in contemporary research.

The technical evolution has a great influence on the public libraries. Electronic media becomes more and more common. This Master´s thesis is based upon the Swedish Library law 9§ (SFS 1996:1596) which says: Public- and school libraries should pay special attention to children and teenagers by offering books, information technology and other media, adapted to their needs, to encourage development of language and stimulate reading. From this point of view we have examined why the children´s departments in public libraries offer CD-ROM games which are based upon characters from the literature, how they are used in the daily activity and how they can contribute to the development of the children´s department.We have made literary studies and empirical investigations including interviews, observation studies etc. The results from this studies shows that both young and adults appreciate the CD-ROM games.

This paper describes the rules of the Swedish unemployment insurance as regards the demands on the individual, the obligation posed on the individual based on these demands and the considerations taken by the law regarding the specific situation and personal circumstances of the individual. Special attention is paid to the demand to be available to the labour market and what is considered suitable employment from the viewpoint of geographical mobility. This paper treats ?Arbetslinjen? (Everyone able to work, thereby contributing to his/her own and others' support, shall have the opportunity to do so.), and the amendments of ALF, the law (1997:238) about unemployment insurance, that became active between 1/1 2007 and 1/1 2008, since many alterations were introduced in this period.The result illustrates the demands posed on the individual for him/her to be entitled to unemployment benefit, and the far-reaching demands posed on the unemployed for him/her to be considered available to the labour market from the viewpoint of geographical mobility. The result also shows some of the specific situations and personal circumstances of the individual taken into consideration, but since the amendments are as recent as 1.5 years, the list can not be considered complete, as practice is limited in this field.This paper also treats the Official Employment Agency's monitoring function of the unemployed's willingness to work, and the effect of the regulations not being followed as strictly as per the letter of the law by the Employment Agency officers, leading to insecurity regarding the rights of the individual..

The purpose of this essay is to see if villages or bigger settlement locations can be found in south-eastern Blekinge during the viking age. There have been many archaeological findings from this period in Blekinge, for example grave findings, ring-forts , old roads and ancient harbors. But no evidence of a village has been found yet. If south-eastern Blekinge is compared with the area surrounding Järrestad on Österlen in south-eastern Skåne and the area surrounding Sorte Muld on Bornholm, many likenesses can be seen. In this essay, the findings in Blekinge will be used as different components when the three areas are compared with each other.

International organizations are important actors on the stage of world politics, and how these actors securitize the climate change issue is of importance for how it will be tackled by actors on global and national levels. The purpose of this study is to contribute to research on climate security discourses and how climate change is defined as a security concern amongst different actors. This study, in contrast to previous research, focuses on systematically mapping the definitions made by different international organizations by asking: whose security is at stake; who is responsible for responding to the threat; how is the nature of the threat defined; and what responses are suggested? By analyzing material consisting of a variety of documents and statements from five international organizations, I aim to identify differences between these actors ? in how the climate change issue is conceptualized from a security perspective. The result of the study shows that only one of the organizations shows clear elements of the national/geopolitical security discourse, while all of the other actors primarily use the human security discourse.

The concept of sustainable development is a challenge that demands cooperation from all levels of society for it to be successful. The focus for this thesis is how politicians within the local councils understand the concept of sustainable development and how they implement it in political decision-making.The basis for the study is a questionnaire that was distributed to 303 local politicians in three municipalities of varying size in Southern Sweden. The study concentrates on departments within the local councils that are directly connected to the Swedish environmental law and the Swedish planning and construction law. One of the primary goals with the aforementioned laws is the achievement of sustainable development within one generation.The outcome of the study was that over half of the local politicians could correctly define sustainable development according to the World Commission on Environment and Development?s (WCED) definition.

In order to rescue a distressed submarine crew, the Swedish Navy is able to use a deep submergence rescue vehicle, DSRV. This mini submarine ascends, docks to the downed submarine and picks up the whole crew. The submarine rescue ship HMS Belos has a special crane located in the aft of the ship to lift the surfaced DSRV aboard, which then docks on to the on board pressure chambers located below deck. During inspections the aforementioned crane has shown to have problems with cracks in the structure, most of them located in the bolted joint between the top part of the crane and the two leg parts. A simulation of the forces acting on the structure in heavy sea condition was conducted; these values were then used as input values in a Finite Element Method, FEM, analysis of the joint.

The aim of this study was to acquire a greater understanding and knowledge about how care staff at houses with special services for people with intellectual disabilities think and work (handle situations) regarding sexuality. To achieve our goal we carried out nine semi structured interviews using an interview guide. These interviews took place in two different communities in southern Sweden. The theoretical perspectives that were used to analyze the result were Sense of Coherence, Scope of action and Normalization. The result showed that the staff considered sexuality a part of their work and a natural subject to talk about.

In this study environmental work in the Swedish hotel chain "Scandic" is investigated. Earlier studies point out sustainability and different environmental certificate programs as essential for the housing sector to contribute to sustainable tourism. The purpose and willingness to fulfill such a mission has been investigated by interviewing central actors in the hotel chain. The result shows that there is a desire to be part of environmental certificate programs mainly for the reason to be part of the system and not for the benefit of nature. Sustainable development is understood as being environmentally friendly. Different solutions to adapt and being more environmentally friendly is discussed.

When producing an interview report the researcher is put to the test of describing the qualitative interview method in terms of assumed orderly steps and procedures taken during the interview process, while at the same time account for a very social dynamic process. In practice, even the most carefully prepared scenario for a qualitative interview study probably does not correspond to the expectations made. What happens between the plans and the actual interview itself? This issue is investigated by contrasting the actual engagement of the participants in an interview project to how these relationships are accounted for in Master thesis from the Swedish School of Library- and Information Science in Borås. Theory and methodology from Actor Network Theory (ANT) have been applied into the area of qualitative interviews.

The first purpose of this thesis is to investigate if, how, and why the perceived collective identity in the town of Karlskrona has changed. Collective identities can due to their socially constructed nature change rapidly in light of new collective experiences. The reason for suspecting such a change in Karlskrona is the immense impact that the change in the global economy, according to Saskia Sassen, has on cities. By interviewing politicians and media representatives from Karlskrona the perceived identity is drawn. The second purpose of this thesis will then be to test if the identity as it is perceived by Karlskronas habitants differ from the one that town officials present through city marketing.