This Masters thesis deals with query expansion in an online library catalogue. The aim of the study was to compare the retrieval effectiveness of four different query types when applied to the online library catalogue of the University College of Borås. The query types were: an initial query, the initial query with right hand truncation, the initial query expanded with synonyms and finally the initial query expanded with synonyms and right hand truncation. 24 topics were formulated, and four queries for each topic were constructed. The records retrieved by the searches were judged with regard to topicality, and were judged to be non-relevant, partially relevant or relevant.

On three occasions, in 1973, 1993 and 2005, Swedish parliament and government has resolved to integrate the, previously independent, foreign offices beloning to the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) with the Swedish embassies. The implemenation of the integrationreform has however been a lengthy process. This thesis adresses two main issues: how has the integrationreform been able to remain a viable recipe for organizational change over time and why has the integrationprocess taken so long? Lastly I assess the possibility for effective implementation following the decision 2005.Based on New Institutionalism I conducted an historical analysis of the integrationprocess to explore the conditions for reform. My results indicate that the integrationreform primarly suited the interests of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, making the Foreign Serivce more effective and clarifying the Ministry's responsibilty for Swedish development cooperation policy.

This master thesis investigates the possibilities of using GPS-information from trains to create a model of a railway system, register the routes of the the trains and predict how the trains will travel in the railway system.The thesis work was done at Icomera AB which is a company that specializes in internet connected vehicle solutions.We describe how the GPS-information is sent from the trains in the form of samples and investigate limitations and possibilities with the available information. About three million samples from 83 SJ-trains were analysed and the samples were filtered with the intent of removing erroneous information. We here found that about 30 % of the samples from the trains were unreliable.A solution for how the samples from the trains can be used to create a model of the railway system traveled by the trains is presented. We use a large set of historical samples and use cluster nodes and Hermite curves to generate a graph that represent the railway system with stations, nodes and the railway itself. A fully automatic solution is not presented since it did not fit into the time frame of the thesis; instead we created a simple tool which can be used to manually finish the model of the railway system.Furthermore, we describe how the railway system and the samples from the train can be used to register the routes the trains travel.

En bemanningsanställd har sin dagliga arbetsplats ute hos ett klientföretag, och inte hos sin arbetsgivare. Detta kan göra att kontakten med arbetsgivaren försvagas, vilket kan skapa speciella förutsättningar för organisationsriktad commitment och socialt stöd. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur det upplevs att vara anställd i en vikariepool hos ett bemanningsföretag, med fokus på organisationsriktad commitment och socialt stöd. Frågeställningarna som ligger till grund för undersökningen är hur respondenterna upplever, och vad som påverkar respondenternas upplevelser av organisationsriktad commitment, samt hur respondenterna upplever, och vad som påverkar respondenternas upplevelser av socialt stöd. För att besvara frågeställningarna genomfördes intervjuer med sju anställda i en vikariepool hos ett bemanningsföretag.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether Swedish, Internet-based travel agencies, acting on a consumer market are working towards creating added value for their customers. If that is the case, how and why do they use such a mode of operation.The theoretical framework was based on Grönroos´ ?Augmented service offering?, which treats added value as an addition to the core service. The services offered on five of the larger companies´ websites on the market were examined and 3 representatives of the five companies were interviewed.The study shows that 2 of the examined companies did not produce any added value, while 3 of the companies did produce added value for the customer. The added value was generated through packaging of core-, facilitating- and supporting services for the purpose of differentiating the company towards competitors and generating service fees..

Animal art is one of the more mystical aspects of Scandinavian Iron Age culture. It has foremost been regarded in the light of art and style history. Interpretation has also ? mainly from the 1990s and onwards ? been made through iconographic analysis. But the problem here is that iconography requires textual analogy, something that the Scandinavian Iron Age lacks.The purpose of this paper is to lift some of the ?mystical fog? that engulfs the scandinavian animal art, by developing a method for interpretation of pre-historic images that evades the flaws in the iconographic method.

Gruppolarisering innebär att bl.a. social jämförelse leder till att isolerade grupper med likasinnade genererar mer extrema åsikter. Gruppolarisering på internet kan vara ett oroväckande fenomen för den deliberativa demokratin. Istället för att människor med konkurrerande ståndpunkter utbyter idéer och tankar med varandra samlas de i isolerade diskussionsforum på internet där social jämförelse i värsta fall kan utmynna i hattal och terrorism. Med netnografisk metod studeras här politiska diskussioner online i två olika typer av forum, ett politiskt och ett icke politiskt.

The gaming market has become the fastest growing market for leisure and is one of the most popular forms of homeentertainment. This has generated a media debate about how people are affected by gaming and concernes how we are affected by the violence that may occur in games. Games proponents argues that gaming is the future of teaching and computer games are becoming a sustainable and popular instruction strategy. Some studies have long used computer games for educational purposes. By interviewing high school students in focus groups as qualitative research, I studied their attitudes towards computer games as a learning tool.

I enlighet med den trend som råder inom den tekniska utvecklingen i samhället i stort, introduceras nu ett sätt för bankers kunder att ha personliga rådgivningsmöten via Internet. Tidigare har sådana möten skett ansikte mot ansikte på det bankkontor som kunden tillhör. Det finns en rad fördelar med att tjänster sker online som exempelvis tideffektivitet, geografiskt oberoende och mer flexibelt i allmänhet. Den här kvalitativa studien handlar om en underökning kring hur personliga (finansiella) rådgivare upplever att arbeta med den här typen utav möten, närmare bestämt vilka faktorer som de anser viktiga när möten som skett ansikte mot ansikte kan komma att ske online. Studien innefattar ett induktivt tillvägagångssätt i syfte att ta reda på dessa faktorer samt att granska dem utifrån ramverket datorstött samarbete och synsättet kroppsbaserad kognition.

 The purpose of this thesis is to study the education of newly arrived 16-20 year old immigrants and how their education in the towns of Södertälje and Malmö matches up with national inquiry into the subject.The research questions in this thesis are as follow: What type of documents shape the work with newly arrived students? What's the preferred development surrounding the education of the newly arrived students nationally? What does the latest study, which is a proposed reform of the Gymnasium system, say about the education of newly arrived students?How does the local work connect with proposals of national investigations? Do the cities take responsibility for evaluating the education of newly arrived students? From arriving to graduating, what does the road to graduation look like for a newly arrived student? What is the curriculum of a newly arrived student?The methods used here are studies of investigations made primarily by Skolverket (The National Agency for Education) and Myndigheten för skolutveckling (The Agency for Development of Education), studies of local documents such as annual reports of quality and promotional material for programs at local Gymnasiums (High Schools), and interviews with local persons in charge of shaping the work with newly arrived immigrants.This thesis has not used theory as a foundation for structuring the analysis, but postmodern theory and the use of three dimensional power inspired the thesis.The conclusions made focuses on the future of the education for these teenagers at large and makes connections between the national investigations and the local work with immigration education.In order for these teenagers to be allowed to join the Swedish national Gymnasium, they need to learn Swedish, and integration seems to be an important part of learning Swedish quickly. .

AbstractIT can facilitate communication among individuals and connect people across geographical distances. On the contrary, citizens of the society who do not use communication technologies to some extent might feel excluded from the information society. As elderly citizens are already in a vulnerable position for the digital divide, communication technology becomes an important tool for interacting with friends and family. The social situation of elderly, 60 years of age and older, is a topic of current interest since they are the fastest growing age group in the world today. Further, social interaction becomes more important among elderly since it has a positive effect on well- being.

Den ökade betydelsen av att som företag ha ett starkt varumärke för att synas på marknaden har inneburit att det läggs ner allt mer tid och resurser på varumärkeshöjande aktiviteter inom företagen. Den växande virtuella världen och den ökade handeln på Internet har i kombination med vikten av ett starkt varumärke skapat en komplicerad situation. Vagabond är ett svenskt varumärkesproducerande skoföretag som har ställts inför de möjligheter och svårigheter som den ökade Internetanvändningen har inneburit. Expansionen genom försäljning via återförsäljare på Internet har inneburit att svårigheterna med att kontrollera hur varumärket framställs på olika sidor på Internet har ökat. Den totala skokonsumtionen har ökat de senaste åren och konkurrensen på skomarknaden har blivit stor, vilket bidrar till att vikten av att sticka ut blir allt större.Syftet med vår studie är att förklara hur det varumärkesproducerande företaget, i vårt fall Vagabond, arbetar med att framställa och bevara sitt varumärke och vidare hur de Internetbaserade återförsäljarna resonerar kring sina produkters varumärken.

The Swedish election year of 2010 has just begun and the political actors are mobilizing their communication efforts to win the votes of the public. The political campaigns of 2010 have the potential to be the first where a new channel for political communication has the potential to make a difference ? the social media. This paper aims to describe in what ways a Member of Parliament, Nina Larsson (FP), together with the PR-agency Hello Clarice are using social media to conduct political campaigning on the web. It also aims to study if the professional consultants of Hello Clarice have any influence over Nina Larsson?s political communication.The theoretical framework which is the base for this study are theories of an extended public sphere in the age of mediation.

By tradition, archival sciences has emerged in a context with defined information processes, with explicit information producers and custodians to which consumers make requests for the information. In this process, the archival science has developed methods and strategies to preserve authentic and reliable records and by that providing trustworthy information. In an online society, people are using the internet to get information for different purposes. Even though there is no legal obligation to guarantee the authenticity, it is of societal importance that the end users get trustworthy information. In this online context, open data is a trend that is growing fast over the world and it is interesting because its conditions raises many questions regarding authenticity.Since open data is free to reuse, link and combine with other information, and it is preferably in primary format it raises questions about how to maintain the integrity and identity of the information, which is the constituents of authenticity as it is used in this work.

This report includes common helminths, symtoms, routes of infection, diagnostic laboratory techniques and prophylactic methods to prevent infection. We have pointed out where there is a risk of zoonotic transmission and how to avoid contamination and infection. We have restricted the number of species to the most common helminths. Some of these helminths do not naturally occur in Sweden (yet) but are nevertheless of current interest when we travel across borders with our horses, dogs and cats. The diagnostic part of our report tells about different techniques to find an occurance of helminths in samples of faeces, blood, urine or saliva from a horse, dog or cat. We also write about some recommendations on treating parasitic infections and the development of anthelmintic resistant helminths that originates from incorrect use of anthelmintic drugs .