The project concerns a predevelopment work for Scania AB, a leading manufacturer of heavytrucks, and was performed as a master thesis work for the program Design and ProductDevelopment at KTH. The purpose of this work was to examine how the work situation of truckdrivers, especially long-haulage drivers, can be improved with respect to prolonged sedentaryoccupation. Mental fatigue and under-stimulation due to low cognitive load during long drivescan be major risk factors for traffic accidents. Physical strain injuries to both the skeleton andmuscles are common for this working group and minimal opportunity for daily exercise alsoincreases the risk of developing blood clots in the legs, which can have serious consequences forthe driver's health.An extensive background study, both theoretical and exploratory, was performed to identify thedrivers' concerns and comfort needs. Various treatments such as massage and active sitting wereinvestigated and existing products within the area studied.

AbstractThe purpose of this theses is to compare three different political groups, The IRA, The Baader-Meinhof group and the Al Qaida, who have all used terroristic methods to achieve their separate goals.By finding out about their history, goals, structures and methods I have made a comparison to see what joins them, what separates them, what originated the birth of their movements and how they can or could proceed with their violent actions to the point that they had actual impact on international politics.It has all been done through a litteraturebased study.My focuse has been on Al Qaida since it's is the only one of the three who is still active today and who, through its cellstructure, represents a new form of global terrorism that may have great influence on the structural patterns of other political groups and criminal organizations in the future.Key words:Al QaidaBaader-MeinhofIRATerrorismCellstructure.

The purpose of this study was to find out how swedish newspapers writes about Lettland during 2005-2009, who gets to speak in media, which key words being used, and if the news articles content changes over the years. As a basis for my discussion I?ve used Stuart Hall's theories for representation and language. In the same litterature, Hall presents theories for stereotypes and power from different researchers which I have studied for this study. I?ve also used Van Ginnekens theory about who may be heard in media.

The aim of this thesis is to examine discourses about the user category young people in two well-established Swedish library journals between the years 2005 and 2010.The empirical material consists of 65 texts derived from the library journals Biblioteksbladet and Bibliotek i samhälle. By using discourse theory and methodology I discover several different ways in which young people are categorized in the library context. As a complementary theory I have analyzed the material from an intersectional perspective. The result shows that young people most of the times are defined by adults. Several characteristics such as creativity, interest in modern technology, messiness and need for support are repeated in the descriptions of the young, suggesting that there is clear idea of how young people are.

The purpose of this degree project is to obtain a greater understanding of how the support for abused immigrant women is designed and if these measures respond to the women?s own wishes and needs. I also want to investigate the possible advantages and disadvantages, there are under the social ser­vi­ces and voluntary organizations (NGOs) and women themselves when it comes to spe­cific sup­port measures for immigrant women. On which basis have these support measures been designed and what experience or research starting points are based on? To what extent do they answer to women?s needs according to the staff, and to the women's own view?The study is based on qualitative data consisting of five interviews and one case report of an abused woman.

Analysis of the piece Pygmalion in set at the Gothenburg City Theatrefrom a gender perspective with the purpose to investigate which genders that arepresented and how the piece relates to the heterosexual norm. The method consists inthe analysis and discussion of how the pieces portrays females and males (with focuson feminine and masculine coded expression and presentation of desire) and whatconsequences it brings. This based on various method books of norm-breaking designwork for Aesthetic staff, and a theory based on Judith Butler's research. Primarymaterial consists in a piece analysis of Pygmalion, from a spectator's perspective.Main Results: The designing is consciously working with a set of norm-breakinggender expression, particularly female genders. The set translates socially criticalviews against patriarchal hierarchies.

The aim of this study is to through six interviews, with six experienced, social workers?, in three cities, understand how the child?s position in the Swedish child protective services? enquiries has change, and the factors behind it. The aim is also to compare if the social workers? view of the child?s position in the enquire has change accordingly to Socialstyrelsens intentions of BBIC. The theoretical approaches that was used is the new institutionalism, the Shier?s pathways to participation and the term discretion.

The purpose of this BA-thesis was to learn the differences in news broadcasts between one public service radio channel and two commercial radio channels. To do this we used a quantitative analysis method to examine the content of the news broadcasts and then we conducted in-depth interviews with several people working with the different radio channels using a qualitative research interview method to learn their views on news and news broadcasting.We measured the differences between the channels in six areas: subject, headline, news presentation, gender, advertising and sources.Our two main theories were normative theory and media logic.The results found that there were several major differences between the public service radio channel and the two commercial radio channels. Apart from several important differences in the six measured categories we also found that the sound and tone in the public service radio channel was very different from the two commercial radio channels.We also found the public service radio channels news broadcasts to be more serious than the two commercials ones?..

The aim of the study was to illustrate how care managers reflect and act in regards to self-determination and integrity when caring for residents over 65 years old who have a dementia diagnosis. Our main questions dealt with how care managers handle the right to self-determination and integrity when a person has dementia, to which extent the care managers listen to the person with dementia and how the care managers look upon the residents with dementia?s ability of self-determination. To find the answers to our questions, we interviewed ten care managers within the elderly care in Gothenburg, Sweden. We used qualitative interviews based on a semi-structured interview guide.

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.

The subject of this thesis is the application of Support Vector Machines on two totally different applications, facial expressions recognition and remote sensing.The basic idea of kernel algorithms is to transpose input data in a higher dimensional space, the feature space, in which linear operations on the data can be processed more easily. These operations in the feature space can be expressed in terms of input data thanks to the kernel functions. Support Vector Machines is a classifier using this kernel method by computing, in the feature space and on basis of examples of the different classes, hyperplanes that separate the classes. The hyperplanes in the feature space correspond to non linear surfaces in the input space.Concerning facial expressions, the aim is to train and test a classifier able to recognise, on basis of some pictures of faces, which emotion (among these six ones: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sad, and surprise) that is expressed by the person in the picture. In this application, each picture has to be seen has a point in an N-dimensional space where N is the number of pixels in the image.The second application is the detection of camouflage nets hidden in vegetation using a hyperspectral image taken by an aircraft.

This essay aims to investigate how Swedish Public Libraries market their activities in video games for youths. It also highlights how the library, on the basis of the unique opportunities of the video game medium, can develop this marketing to build a relationship with youths. The empiric evidence is based on a survey of answers given by 30 librarians responsible for video game collections, and qualitative telephone interviews with three of them. The essay?s theoretical framework is based on Philip Kotler and his co-authors? marketing theory which consists of five stages: Marketing research, segmentation, marketing mix, implementation and development.

In this study, we looked at how balanced the various christian denominations in Sweden were raised in the news, on the basis of the requirement for balanced reporting. To measure the balance, we utilized Harcup and O'Neill?s news values and studied to what degree these values occurs in association with news articles that address the various denominations. The following denominations were selected for this study; Word of Life, the Pentecostal Church, Jehovah's witnesses, the Catholic Church, the Salvation Army and the Swedish Church. These denominations were then studied on the basis of news values in four of Sweden?s largest news organisations, in terms of audience numbers.

The purpose of this paper has been to highlight how three different highschool textbooks portrays Christianity and Islam. The aim of the paper has been to higlight and pinpoint how the three different textbooks uses different angles and perspectives on recontextualization; which ergo in turn creates a different field of transferred knowledge from each individual textbook.The paper uses an applied model of Bernstein?s theory of recontexualization, and from it derives two analytical tools to process and make an analysis of the textbooks transferred knowledge. The first analytical methodical tool of Bernstein?s theory is positioning, which is used in the paper to highlight what the different textbooks value and evaluate different kinds of knowledge of Christianity and Islam.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the use of social media by the Swedish Police for democratic purposes. The idea of citizen empowerment is closely related to the development of new communication technologies such as social media. Yet many studies indicate that governmental institutions rarely make use of the assumed potentials of social media.In this study, the democratic potential of social media is derived from Habermas normative concept of deliberative participation. Operational definitions emphasize discursive equality, interactive reciprocity and external impact. The analytical framework is combined with qualitative text analysis to highlight the conditions of interaction between representatives of the Police and citizens.In conclusion: the democratic potential of social media, from a Habermasian point of view, is to a significant extent neglected at the expense of its strategic advantages.