The thesis aims at, from a user perspective, examining how a group of industrial researchers understand the information seeking in their every day work. A qualitative method is employed. The empirical material consists of open-ended interviews with in all ten researchers. All of them work at the Swiss-Swedish Technology Company ABB's research laboratory in Västerås. The thesis is based on the opinion that the scientific knowledge production has become commercialised and that the scientific communication is going through certain changes.

Den situerade ansatsen inom artificiell intelligens har i tidigare experiment visat på stora möjligheter vid utvecklingen av enkla beteenden. Ansatsens framgångar är dock inte lika tydliga när det kommer till utvecklingen av mer komplexa beteenden som i högre grad påminner om de experiment som gjorts inom traditionell artificiell intelligens. I studien utvecklas en agent med ett ?Extended Sequential Cascaded Network? som kontrollarkitektur för att lösa en uppgift som kräver ett ?räkneliknande beteende?. Utvecklingen av nätverket grundas på en situerad syn på kognition, däribland att designern i så liten grad som möjligt skall styra utvecklingen.

The main focus with this study was to investigate if there was a difference in level ofeducation and self-rated health and if it could be explained by the amount of control,demands and social support at work. Theories used in this essay are education, health,and the job strain-model (control, demands and social support at work). We used analready done study by Folkhälsoinstitutet (2004) to examine these questions. Theanalysed sample consists of respondents 12 166 aged 18-84 years. The decline was39, 2 %.

The jetengines of today are growing in complexity. Reliability for aircraft engines are of extreme importance, mainly due to safety reasons but also economical ones. This master thesis deals with faultdiagnosis in the turbine section of RM12, the engine used in Saab/BAe's Gripen. Three different faults which can occur in the turbine section was studied. These faults are: clogged fuel nozzle, hole in outlet guide vane and sensor fault.

New forms of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become more influential in development contexts. The concept of ?The Digital Divide? points at a large division between rich and poor countries regarding access to ICTs. Critics say that the debate concerning this topic for far too long has focused mainly on the technology itself rather than social factors which impact social inclusion and development. Scholars agree that ICTs holds a tremendous potential, but how is this implemented in development contexts and how can it be used with more sensitivity towards local preconditions and social aspects?This paper aims to examine how ICTs are being used in the context of development within an India based organisation for women called SEWA (Self Employed Women?s Association).

Hearing is considered to be the most important sense for the communication between people. Several studies have shown that hearing loss can lead to deterioration in quality of life, reduced social activities, feelings of alienation and hence the increasing incidence of depression symptoms.An early audiological rehabilitation is a prerequisite for proper communication among people with hearing loss. Knowledge has been shown to be of great importance and structured learning and individually targeted approach can be expected to facilitate the audiological rehabilitation.The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of an educational effort for people with hearing loss where the effort was made in the distance within the audiological rehabilitation and was followed-up by professional phone support, through a randomized controlled study.The study group consisted of 69 hearing aid users who were randomized by an independent person into two groups, an intervention group and a control group. The intervention group (n = 33) had access to the book "When the sounds are weaker - on hearing and hearing aids". The group received weekly topic-based information related to the different chapters of the book, in five rounds.

The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze the geographical distribution of everyday criminality in the town of Borlänge during the year 2002 and to analyze which measures to be taken in the physical social planning to decrease this everyday criminality there. The term everyday criminality is here to be understood as those categories of crime that appear most frequently in the records of reports to the police every year. Here two kinds of crime have been in focus, thefts from cars and office burglary.In fulfilling this aim two main questions have been answered. The first one is how the everyday criminality was distributed geographically in the town of Borlänge during the year 2002. The second one is which measures to be taken in the physical social planning to decrease this everyday criminality in the town of Borlänge.In order to answer the first question a spatial autocorrelation analysis, Local Moran LISA has been used.

From a management point of view, enabling organizational creativity is often referred to as reducing immediate control, increasing autonomy and enhancing the access to slack resources. At the same time, the business environment of today is fiercer than it was only a decade ago, and this renders a quest for more efficient approaches to competitively run a business. This paper aims to examine creative industries and more specifically try to identify a set of elements that are common for successful companies. As this industry has not been subject to any considerable array of studies, this thesis seeks to establish a structure for how to take both organizational models and leadership theories into account when developing an understanding for the process, organization and leadership of the creative business. By studying six separate creative companies, our findings suggest that conventional theories on organizational creativity do not adequately account for all factors that contribute to these companies' creative success.

In this thesis we have examined Västra Götalandsregionens ways to lobby and network in the European Union. Our aim was to examine which kind of methods the region uses to lobby in a successful way in Brussels. We found that the region uses both formal and informal methods of lobbying to gain advantages in Brussels. We also wanted to locate various networks which the region is involved in to more easily have their interests satisfied. We found that they had a lot of different alliances and that it is necessary to be involved in different networks to have a chance to lobby the EU institutions.

The aim of this thesis is to study different aspects of the public libraries' investment in public access computers connected to the Internet. What level of accessibility can be found at the surveyed libraries concerning the number of computers open to the public, as well as chat and email services? What activities have been taking place with the computers in focus, and what have the goals of these activities been? Is there any control of content, and what aspects of the Internet are, if that is the case, subject to censorship. And how do the governmental policies relate to the surveyed libraries' intentions and activities regarding the Internet? In order to answer these questions, each main library in the 42 largest towns of Sweden was surveyed response rate: 100 %.

The number of wireless networks has increased rapidly among both home users and companies in just a few years. That has brought a lot of good things with it, for example the possibility to connect wireless equipment to the network or Internet from an arbitrary position within range of the accesspoint. But since the transmissions take place through the air some new security risks appear. It?s difficult to restrict the signals to a specific space and thereby a lot easier for unauthorized to eavesdrop or disturb the signals compared to a traditional wired network.

Scania provides a fleet management system for hauliers who want to control their fleets in anefficient way. The system includes an onboard computer with touch screen called ScaniaInteractor where the driver can access GPS navigation, order support, message service and otherfunctionalities. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a concept for logging the user interactionon the Interactor and analyze the result which enables further development and optimization ofthe interface.A demonstration application is designed, implemented and tested for the purpose of showing thepossibilities and difficulties with logging of interaction. The result shows that logging is quiteeasy to implement and that the amount of produced data is small and therefore not expensive totransfer via GPRS to a central server where searching and analysis can be done. On the otherhand, the biggest challenge lies in the analysis and interpretation of the logged data and to applyit to the development of the interface.

My intention with this paper was to investigate how the teachers in pre-school thinks about the physical environment in pre-school. Both the significance for the pedagogical activity and the children?s involvement in the design. I have done five interviews with pre-school teachers. The result shows that the pre-school teachers consider that the size of the premises and the availability to the material is important factors for children?s development and learning.

Many organizational changes have been accomplished in elder care since the 1980's and many of those have been influenced by market mechanisms. The purpose of this study is to examine how the implementation of these market mechanisms has affected three important aspects in the work situation for personnel. These aspects are, demand, control and support. To attain the purpose of this study, five qualitative interviews with home care personnel have been carried out. The interview material has been analyzed and structured with the help of Karasek and Theorells demand-control-support model.

In the pulp industry, digesters are used to disolve lignin in wood chips. The concentration of lignin is measured and is called the Kappa number. In this thesis, the question of whether an online Kappa sensor, taking samples from the mid-phase of the digester, is useful or not is analyzed. For the samples to be useful, there has to be a relationship between the measured Kappa at the mid- phase and the measured Kappa in the blowpipe at the bottom of the digester. An ARX model of the lower part of the digester has been estimated.