Visitor Centers were first established at various national parks in North America. Most Visitor Centers were built in the ten-year period following 1952. The purpose of the Visitor Centers was to welcome visitors and enhance their experience of the national parks. Today there are Visitor Centers all around the world, connected to different places or attractions. Many of the Visitor Centers that exist today, especially those in the national parks in North America, were built during the information society.

This master thesis summarizes contemporary theories on secularization processes in the Western world, and compares these with the example of Sweden, which by many scholars is considered to be the most secularized country in the Western world.I do this by dividing the most influential theorists in five different groups. In each group I explain how the theorists formulate and motivate their positions. These groups are:1) The secularization paradigm, where secularization always accompanies modernization. (Therorists: Steve Bruce and Peter Berger (in the 1960s)2) The paradigm basically accepted, but revised to depend on existential security, rather than modernisation as such. (Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart)3) Religion returned in the public sphere.

Title: Improvisation ? a pedagogical perspective. This investigation studies how church musicians and pianists describe the use of improvisation in their teaching. The research questions focus on the relationship between improvisation and interpretation, the aim how to use improvisation and how this could be realized. To get the answer of these questions, I have interviewed two organists and two pianists, all excellent in their profession.

This thesis studies settlement continuity on Gotland between approximately AD 200 and AD 1700. The method used is to calculate correlation between the geographical distribution of all known Iron Age stone-wall-houses (on Gotland known as "kämpagravar") and all farms included in the detailed taxation maps from approximately 1700. The number of remaining house foundations is between 1800 and 1900. A model to estimate the number of removed foundations is presented. It is based on the assumption that the settlement density was proportional to land use around 1700, and that the rate of removal is related to the current land use.

Flooding events are no longer rare, floods occur all over the world. Accordingly, it is vital for the society and different authorities to work with flood mapping. To meet the goal of Uppsala kommun to map the risks of floods in Uppsala län, a map of the different areas around Funboån which are inside the area of risk for flooding have been developed.In the work, cross sections and the water flow have been measured. Moreover, an echo-sounding have been carried out in Funboån to map the bottom topography. From the bottom map and laser scanned data covering the study area, a terrain model was created.

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze laws that completely prohibit abortion through a legal philosophical perspective. To demonstrate that abortion blanket bans cannot be seen as legally legitimate, the author has completed a literature study where she uses Robert Alexy?s ?Concept of Law? to analyze abortion laws both in general, and in Nicaragua in particular.Based upon Alexy?s ?Concept of Law? the author has identified three relevant key elements ? social efficacy, the argument from injustice and correctness of content - which she uses in her analysis. In order to apply these three elements on the total abortion ban, she then uses four different analysis tools - feminist theory, Human Rights, deontology analysis and right analysis. This has enabled a thorough analysis of the total ban on abortion that has demonstrates that such laws cannot be considered legitimate.By highlighting the human rights violations the law entails, one can conclude that the law has a social impact.

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze laws that completely prohibit abortion through a legal philosophical perspective. To demonstrate that abortion blanket bans cannot be seen as legally legitimate, the author has completed a literature study where she uses Robert Alexy?s ?Concept of Law? to analyze abortion laws both in general, and in Nicaragua in particular.Based upon Alexy?s ?Concept of Law? the author has identified three relevant key elements ? social efficacy, the argument from injustice and correctness of content - which she uses in her analysis. In order to apply these three elements on the total abortion ban, she then uses four different analysis tools - feminist theory, Human Rights, deontology analysis and right analysis. This has enabled a thorough analysis of the total ban on abortion that has demonstrates that such laws cannot be considered legitimate.By highlighting the human rights violations the law entails, one can conclude that the law has a social impact.

Herbivore impact on the Swedish forest has under a long time been a common subject of debate. There are many different opinions depending on what direction the forest owner has with his/her forest. Populations of moose and roe deer have increased significantly in Sweden during the last decades. The purpose of this study is to get a full picture of the herbivore impact on the regeneration areas. The field work was done once a year for seven years (1999?2005).

Research regarding the maintenance of the Sami language shows that the Swedish society has a big influence on the development of the Sami identity and also the maintenance of the Sami language. The assimilation of the Sami language and the traditional Sami religion was forced mainly by the Swedish education form and the Swedish church. In modern times many different forms of Sami identities have been developed due to the scattering of the Sami people, and also because of the urbanization of the Swedish society. The Sami nature religion is still alive in the Sami group, thanks to the mythological stories told and preserved by their oral  tradition. The purpose of this assignment was to make research of how the Sami identity is being presented in three current Swedish books.

With the help of large amount of archive material I have examined how Gustavsberg in Värmdö were affected by the great labor migration in Gustavsberg porcelain factory during the period 1869-1924. I have chosen to investigate how the municipality dealt with the poverty relief issue out of the labour immigration perspective. To my surprise I found out that Värmdö was not responsible for Gustavsberg in the poverty issue. The workers belonged to the factory, which had a relatively well-developed system of poverty relief in place. This is not to say that the workers received any support from the factory to any great extent.

The aim of this study is to examine the media coverage of gender-neutral marriage from an intersectional perspective ? with particular regard to gender, sexual orientation and religion. By focusing on the spokespeople who appears in the articles we have made an attempt to answer questions regarding who was heard in the debate on gender-neutral marriage and how the homosexual couples are portrayed in relation to the above criteria.The collected material consists of 89 articles, published in 2009, in Swedish newspapers which have been analysed by using quantitative content analysis. Ten articles have also been selected for a critical discourse analysis based on Norman Fairclough?s approach.

By using pollen analysis, 14C-dating and historical sources, I studied the history of vegetation and land use at an abandoned forest settlement near the Lade summer farms in the parish of Mora, Dalama. The aim of this paper is to investigate the agricultural establishment and development, the effects of this on forest vegetation, and the origin and development of summer farming. The analysis of pollen in a peat core revealed that a settlement was established at Lade around 1000 AD. Cereal cultivation, hay-making on the mire and extensive forest grazing were intro-duced as a complete agricultural system. Pollen analysis and the presence of ancient fields suggests that cultivation took place on permanent fields. Barley was the main crop, but rye and hops/hemp were also grown at the settlement.

Although women have had access to colleges and universities in Sweden for quite some timeand the share of women at the undergraduate level has been high for many years (40% by thelate 1950:s, nowadays women are a majority at that level), still the share of women professorsis low. This paper will study some researchers? view on how a professor should be, and alsohow they relate themselves to that ideal. The method used is qualitative interviews, whichhave then been analysed by discourse analysis. The paper also contains a discussion on thehistory of the universities from the Middle Ages and forward, to show how the impact of thathistorical legacy affects universities today.Eight respondents were interviewed, four women and four men.

Syfte med uppsatsen har varit att underso?ka fa?rgens och gestikens pa?verkan pa? altarska?pets iscensa?ttning av bera?ttelserna och da?rmed a?ven budskapet. Uppsatsen har ett bildsemiotiskt perspektiv som en utga?ngspunkt. Materialet fo?r underso?kningen a?r ett flandriskt altarska?p fra?n Ska?nela kyrka som finns idag i Uppsala domkyrka.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att bättre förstå om och i så fall på vilket sätt kyrkans ledning tänker sig att deras personliga tro hade betydelse när de fattade beslut för utformningen av S:ta Claras verksamhet. Fyra beslutsområden har studerats. Två handlade om bön och två om val av plats för det utåtriktade sociala arbetet. Studien har genomförts utifrån elva kvalitativa intervjuer med individer som deltagit i beslutsfattandet inom de undersökta beslutsområdena. Resultaten från intervjuerna har analyserats med hjälp av en handlingsteori och två teoretiska resonemang.