Social work as an traditional aid is an area that provides welfare services financed from public funds, which is one of the methods of microloans. Microloans have since the mid-1970s has become an increasingly common tool in the fight against poverty. Instead of purely assistance is now offered microloans from more banks and other institutions, as well as NGOs (non governmental organization). This paper aims to study whether and how microcredit can contribute to the empowerment of women in Bangladesh and India. This study is based on a qualitative text analysis, and has hence been based on a number of reports and articles. The paper examines, from a radical feminist perspective how microcredit can fight and eliminate poverty, and how empowerment can help women in developing countries to become independent and liberated. The introduction of micro-loan is considered to have positive effects on women's empowerment in the short term. But it is, however, the longer term effects that are considered to have the greatest positive impact on society's unequal structures.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate what information needs arise from the interest in music, which sources are preferred, how this information is sought and what part does the public library play in providing music materials. Brenda Dervin`s Sense-Making theory is what serves as a theoretic framework for this study. A qualitative approach was undertaken in the investigation and nine interviews were conducted with people interested in music. Findings indicate that different ways of acquiring information are used depending on the situation in which the information is needed and also what kinds of music people prefer. The main findings of this study suggest that people interested in music are keen to constantly discover new music to perform or listen to.

Processing information in complex everyday life recruites different abilities than limited storage capacity. Working memory, the central executive and inhibition are constructs that have been used to describe this ability of adaptation. This paper investigates the connection between working memory capacity and performances in tasks closely associated to real life situations, i. e. verbal fluency tasks.

The so called democratic deficit and the lack of legitimacy have been at the core of the EU-debate in the last decades. Low turnouts in the elections for the European parliament and disapproval in the ratification processes of the latest changes of the treaties are examples of the citizens lack of confidence for the EU and continuous integration. In Nice 2000 the heads of the member states governments agreed to try to improve the democratic legitimacy in the EU and initiated a public debate aiming at proposals for changes in the decision making processes in the EU. In July 2001 the commission published a white paper with their view. A fundamental presumption in discourse theory is that language and language usage not just is a way to deliver information about ideas and behaviours.

The aim with this paper is to elucidate the current situation of the Swedish glulam market. This thesis paper will also consider prospects for the future and analyse the relationship between customer and producer and what makes a specific supplier attractive to their customer. The companies that are included in the paper are: Martinsons Group AB, Moelven Töreboda AB and Setra Group AB, Långshyttan. These three companies are the members of the organi¬sation Svenskt Limträ AB and produce the largest part of glulam in Sweden. Together they produce 140 000 ? 150 000 m3 a year. The study is based on interviews with all three producers and a customer survey, where I have interviewed five customer to each producer.

This paper aims to, through a literature review, examine how to best design and adapt calf huts to meet the calf's physiological requirements and reduce the infection pressure for enteric and respiratory diseases. It illuminates how the calf relates to different temperatures and climate, which temperature control mechanisms it uses and its ability to perform these regulations, as well as providing a summary of the past decades´ research on the calf huts housing system. These two theory chapters, along with a concluding discussion, provide a better understanding of how to, especially in temperate climates, design the most suitable calf hut, which cater to the calf's both thermal comfort and physical health. The literature suggests that the calf's own temperature control works well to counteract the temperature outside the desired range, and that one of the most important factors rather is ventilation of a calf hut, which reduces moisture and pathogens. The conclusion of this paper is mainly that there is not an obvious way to place and construct a calf hutch and that most design principles contribute to both positive and negative effects simultaneously.

1.1 billion people are today living without sustainable access to improved water. The debate over the water sector has been dominated by the discussion over whether public or private actors are the most competent to manage it. In this paper the arguments pro and contra the two positions are presented to try to overview the debate and to try to find new ways to approach the question of the people living without clean water. By examining possible alternatives towards the discussion of public and private actors, it might result in some new approaches on how to move closer towards a solution. One alternative is local, small- scale projects which focus on the situation of the targetgroup in most need.

Title: Jaunty Vaasa-lads and lazy boys ? a study of masculinity and patriotism in the Civil Guard in Vaasa in relation to the Finnish Civil War of 1918.This paper deals with the subject of expressions of masculinity in relation to patriotism and nationalism as a part of the mobilisation of the so called white side in the Finnish Civil War of 1918. With regards to how this was expressed in the local Civil Guard in the town of Vaasa. The focus   lies on the construction of an ideal masculinity within this specific Civil Guard as expressed            in the Guards own documents of different varieties, during the events in the spring of 1918 and at the one year anniversary of its outbreak. The study is first and foremost based on Joan W.

Domestic weekly magazines in Sweden are characterized by an emphasis on practical editorial material such as cooking recipes and knitting patterns, and also contain a comparatively large share of reader material. This makes it possible to study the readers through texts produced by themselves. The aim of this study of columns of readers' tips on domestic work is to analyze how readers embody a specific femininity centered around the woman as responsible for the home, in the sense of everyday maintenance as well as aesthetic development. The author defines this femininity as "home maker". The theoretical framework for the analysis is the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu, and Jonathan Potter's and Margaret Wetherell's model of interpretive repertoire is also used where modality is discussed.

This paper investigates the methods used by teachers when teaching elementary mathematics to children with Swedish as their second language. The original mathematical terminology derives from Latin, Greek and Arabic, this terminology is not of great importance in this paper, the everyday language spoken in elementary classes when teaching mathematical concepts and calculations to younger children is. The use of everyday language is an advantage for children with Swedish as their second language as mathematical problems presented in a more plain language is easier to comprehend and solve than problems in mere numerals. Special teachers in home language classes often have the task of clarifying the mathematical concepts, introduced to the children during mathematical lessons, in the pupils first acquired language. A qualitative method was used in this study.

The authors of this thesis have studied the handling of personal information in various kinds of organizations, because the perception is that the knowledge in this area is weak relative to the weight of the subject.The purpose of this paper has been partly to shed light on how knowledge of this area in the organizations that we have visited during the study but also to answer questions about handling, knowledge and security, and identification of individuals in different systems. What kind of problems the processing of these data creates and why these problems occur.In the beginning of our study we understood the importance of using the correct identifier and therefore chose also to examine what the various identifiers used by the organizations and why they chose these particular identifiers.In the qualitative analysis, Datainspektionen´s general rules and advice has been used as a basis together with the laws applicable to the organizations to get a good picture of how management of personal information is in these organizations.What we have found in this paper is that knowledge about how personal data is handled and what laws and rules are saying is very much dependent on how central the information is to these organization's activities. The police use so many different types of records for their organization to function well and they have very good knowledge of laws and regulations. In contrast, schools that do not handle as much of personal data themselves nor have the same knowledge among staff and do not have enough resources to cope with keeping the same knowledge base as the police. This is something that applies to all types of handling, depending on how important the information is for the organization, the better the security and knowledge in handling the data is..

Although textbooks are scientifically proven that they are important and central to the school curriculum one should think critically about the content in textbooks - is it really compatible with the curriculum of following the textbook tradition? As a teacher there are different ways to reflect on which textbook to choose. It is important to compare several textbooks with each other and be aware that a textbook should follow the curriculum. A teacher examines many sections/topics in the textbooks, but in this paper only one section will be reviewed among four different textbooks. The section to be compared, in the paper, is the interwar period.

This essay deals with the subject of communication through Facebook. In this survey we studied 100 youths from Karlstad and their communication habits and behavior patterns on Facebook. The social network site Facebook has since its start in 2004 made a mark in modern communication. Today in 2010 the site has more than 500 million users. This paper wants to study what happens to other types of communication.

The aim of this paper was to illuminate the effect of mentalizationbased psychotherapy. The patients in the survey group were interviewed before and after treatment with regard to specific symptoms of borderline personality disorder and symptoms of other personality disorders with the semi structured interviews ZAN-BPD and SCID-II. Open interview questions that were worked up in a qualitative manner were as well put to the patients that had received the treatment program. A focus group interview with the staff working with the concept within the frame of the MBT-team of Psychiatry southwest in Stockholm was also carried out. The result shows on a group level between the pre and post measuring a reduction of specific borderline symptoms like impulsivity and cognitive symptoms.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the special services for immigrants which are offered by Swedish libraries on their different levels regional, local and school as well as immigrants experiences of the library services and how these services and experiences conduct themselves to the development of the harmonic multicultural society. The methods used were interpreting reflexive interviews with immigrants and librarians. The guiding theory in this study was a three-phase model by Gillis Herlitz according to which a newcomer goes through three stages in an adaptation period. Phase 1 is a positive honeymoon phase, that later is replaced by phase 2, a critical disappointment period, which then ideally should be resolved in phase 3, where the individual reaches a balancing stage of cultural adaptation. The results of my observations indicate that the performances of the different libraries seem to operate in a way that corresponds to the different phases in this model.