This study focus on how physical and virtual meeting places may promote collaboration between firms and academia for the development of innovations. A case study was conducted on a meeting place that aims to support collaboration for the development of innovations in eHealth between different actors in the Linnaeus region. Data was collected through 6 interviews, whereas 3 with scientists and 3 with entrepreneurs. The data was analyzed based on a theoretical framework based on different perspectives on collaboration and networks, meetings and interaction and, physical and virtual meeting places.The results show that the purpose for collaboration is to be included in a network with other actors in the same area, gain increased knowledge of the subject area and to acquire new external contacts. Furthermore, in order to support collaboration, physical meeting places have to organize effective and interesting meetings.

Many jobs in rural areas have historically been linked to the agricultural sector. The restructuring that has been implemented in agriculture has resulted in a significant reduction in the number of jobs in rural areas. A consequence of this is that many people have moved to cities to earn a living. To maintain a living countryside in Sweden, it is therefore essential to create alternative livehoods in rural areas. An industry that can have a major impact in the future is rural tourism.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the points of view of three groups of actors about their local learning center and its collaboration with the library. By interviewing groups of actors from the municipal sector, the library staff and students, I aim to investigate their associations of the learning centre, what kind of services it should offer, and how they understand the role of the library staff in specific collaboration between the public library and the adult education administration. The study design is based on Gunnar Grepperud?s and Terje Thomsen?s three missions for a local learning centre; the mission of a broker, a meeting place and a motivator. I also use Carol Kuhlthau?s levels of mediation as an approach to investigate how the actors want the library staff to work in relation to the centre.

En möbel som har ett tydligt program, en tydlig funktion kan vara begränsande. I min metod har jag utgått ifrån en möbel och förbisett dess program för att vidga mitt sökfa?lt när jag har gjort om den. Jag har sett begreppen funktion, upplevd funktion och materiell funktion som värden som går att höja eller sänka. Möbelns nätverk av komponenter har tillåtits bli instabilt för en stund, för att sedan se till helheten och göra nätverket stabilt åter igen - programmet får komma tillbaka men med en ny gestaltning..

Children with Reading and Writing Difficulties and Their Language and Cognitive AbilitiesA Comparison with Children with a Cochlear ImplantAbstractThe aim of this study was to examine the cognitive abilities that are important for reading in children with reading disabilities, children with a cochlear implantation and typically developed children. 64 children aged 10-12 years participated in the study. To answer the question at issue we used the following tests: Block Design from WISC III, PPVT III, TOWRE, SL 40 and a few chosen tests out of the SIPS battery. On tests of the lexical access children with reading disabilities performed at the same level as hearing children, while the children with a cochlear implant performed significantly lower. Test of the phonological and complex working memory showed that children with reading disabilities performed significantly higher than children with a cochlear implant, but at the same time lower than typically developed children on the test of phonological working memory.

The European Union is seen as democratic, and one of the criteria for a democratic decision process is that it must be fully transparent for the citizens. That is the only way for them to make their own decisions about political issues, and it is only possible as long as the citizens have access to relevant and reliable information. However, this is not always the case within the European Union, since it is often difficult to get a hold of different documents of the institutions, and since the civil servants to a great extent are forbidden to give away any information..

This report contains a risk analysis of transportation of dangerous goods in Kalmar. The analysis is based on quantitative data and an evaluation of the risks based on both the probability of occurring accidents as well as the consequences of those. The risks are presented as both individual and societal risks..

Billions of children, women and men lack access to safe water supplies, whichputs the affected in both social as well as economic despair. This paper willpresent some of the conclusions leading Non Governmental Organisations suchas the UN has presented recently concerning the terms of sustainability. Much ofit is true and important, but nothing can be done without extended cooperationbetween nations worldwide to find arguments that prevent short-term thinkingand economic wealth on the behalf of future sustainability.With a growing population and an increased competition for fresh water, theworld will soon face a severe shortage of good quality water for irrigation. This isbecause the distributions rarely match the demand, neither in Australia nor inAfrica. Important to notice is the major factor that the degradation of theenvironment is not one country?s problem to solve.

This study was carried out in the purpose of investigating the factors in the electronicmedical records system in Procapita that contributes to utility for the users and the factorsthat prevents the experience of utility for the users. The study was done within KalmarCounty and its employees within the field elderly care. The problem that we brought upwas that the elderly part of the population is growing quite rapidly whilst the gap betweensupply and demand on nurses and physiotherapists is increasing. This creates a problem ofits own in regards to how we are going to care for the elderly when there?s not enoughstaff for it.

The aim of this thesis is to study the situation of minorities in Slovakia before and after the EU-membership and if EU has played a role in the situation. Also the criteria for becoming a member and other treaties regarding protection of minorities between European institutions and the accession/member states are studied. With the help of i.e. literature, relevant internet pages and yearly studies of EU, the conclusion has been made that Slovakia has made an immense change in the state?s legislation when it comes to minorities and their fundamental rights, but that changes need to be made in attitudes as well.

MSB stands for Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. It?s a government organization that deals with emergencies and crises. MSB has developed a software package where the newest software version is called RIB 2012. The package includes the program RIB Karta.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how today?s consumer society can be understood from ananalysis of the phenomenon Every Day Carry (EDC). The aim is thus to problematize the daily useof the artifacts that surrounds us and investigate how these can be understood as networks of humanand non-human actors, aswell as identity- and meaning-making practices in today?s consumersociety.The theoretical and methodical framework is built upon an eclectic variety of consumptiontheories,Michel Callon?s, John Law?s and Bruno Latour?s work on Actor-Network-Theory,Discourse analysis inspired by Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and anethnographic methodology specifically adapted for online research. The empirical material consistsof photographs and commentaries from two EDC blogs aswell as commentaries regarding EDCfrom a commentary field on Youtube.com.

Nature conservation agreement (NCA) is a way to voluntarily protect and manage nature for limited time-periods. The agreement is settled between the government and a landowner. All public authorities can represent the government but it is only the Swedish Forest Administration who does that regularly (because it is the only authority with economic resources for that purpose). Therefore, NCAs are almost only used to protect forested nature. The government agencies have experienced NCAs for about ten years and it is now time to examine how they are applied in the forests. This study is based on a computerized questionnaire to the persons responsible for the LEKO-projekt.

The aim with this study is to through a research summary review experiences of growth and theparents caring ability among children who has grown up with parents having intellectual disabilites,and by empirical data illustrate how these persons today describe their childhood, their parentscaring ability and other cicumstances that have affected the growth. The results from the researchsummary are then to be compared with the results from the empirical data in purpose to reviewsimilarities and discrepancies.The study has a qualitative approach and it is based on foundings from earlier research andinterviews with four women whos mothers have intellectual disabilities.In the existing research of this issue there is a clear dichotomy between whether the researchershave focused on either the children or the parents. In both perspectives there are differentconceptions about whether a person with intellectual disabilities have the capacity to care for andraise a child, as there is about how the parents intellectual disaparment affects the child.The womens stories of the childhood are obviously unique, but they also have many experiencesin common, both among themselves as with what has been found in research. Children of parentswith intellectual disabilities have been classified as a risk group, wich has been shown by reversedroles for child and parent, lack of attachment to the parents and by insufficient care. Despite thedifficulties that the women have faced, they describe many parts of their lives in positive termstoday.There seems to be other influences in addition to the parents intellectual capacity that affect theesechildrens outcomes.

After emergencies involving chemical spills it is of great importance that correct measures are taken with short notice, both for the security of people and in order to minimize future environmental consequences. The RIB-unit at the Swedish Rescue Services Agency initiated this study, the aim of which is to propose changes to the existing chemical transport calculation tool: Chemical Spill 3.4, included in RIB - Integrated Decision Support for Civil Protection, so that it can be used for decision support as well as in preventive work. A rough estimation of chemical transport in the subsurface is considered being of great importance when making decisions during emergency response operations.The proposition presented in this report is a non site specific chemical transport model which is designed to give a rough estimation of NAPL flow in homogenous isotropic soil shortly after an instantaneous release. The model can be used at two levels; both in situations without access to information on subsurface properties, and with more accuracy in situations with knowledge of the included parameters. For that reason the user can choose among predefined alternatives or assign the parameters a numeric value to increase the quality of the model output.