This thesis is a study of spatial practice and literary depictions of homes in novels by Elsie Johansson, Kerstin Thorvall and Kristina Sandberg. The theoretical perspective is based on Henri Lefebvre´s view on social space, and on the concept of spatial practice. Research questions are: What homes are depicted? How does spatial practice function in the texts? How does the depictedspatial practice relate to norms and ideals?The novels, published 1993-2014, depict an interesting period in Swedish history (cirka 1920-1970) when politics and society at large was deeply involved in reshaping the homes and lives of Swedish citizens. The aim was to turn the citizens into new, healthy and rational parts of the new and rational society.

The thesis presents an optimally designed kinematic structure for a new 6-DOF haptic devicebased on TAU configuration. The configuration of the TAU-2 proposed by Suleman Khan andKjell Andersson [1] was modified and its mobility was verified by using Grübler criterion tohave a 6 DOF. Analytical kinematic models for the inverse and forward kinematics weredeveloped for the haptic TAU configuration to determine a set of optimal design parameters.Kinematic performance indices such as volume of the workspace, kinematic isotropy and payload index, were defined based on the singular values of the Jacobian matrix. The Jacobianmatrix was scaled to homogenize the physical units. The Jacobian matrix dependent on theposition and orientation of the end-effector gives local isotropy and pay load index, so globaldesign indices were defined, which represent the performance of the mechanism in the wholeworkspace.

It is important that companies knows how to handle a complaint when they receive one from a customer. This information could the company take care of and use when they develop new services. Furthermore a good complain handling leads to satisfied and loyal customers which increases the revenue for the company. We have examined how SAS handle their internal information process and if this process affects the information and in that case how. The study is performed with a qualitative method, based on deep interviews.

The aim of this essay is to investigate the function and development of non-player characters (NPC) in the TV/computer game Dragon Age: Origins. The NPCs are analysed in order to see if their development is affected by the player character?s (PC) background and interactions. The game?s ethics is also investigated by studying how the NPCs treat the PC and what significance they give to his background and actions.The results show that the NPCs are affected by the PC?s interactions, and furthermore, that they are round characters, which is unusual in TV/computer games.

The purpose of this thesis is to systematically describe and map how authorities define the school library and its function based on the current policy documents for the Swedish upper secondary school. The study is guided by the following questions: ? What dimensions does the school library have according to the explicit definitions, descriptions and requirements? ? What implicit arguments, references and unspoken assumptions about the school library and its role, function and significance can be derived? The study is delimited to the national policy documents, which have been divided into two groups ? structural and teaching focused ? corresponding to the two questions above. Further delimitations have been made to avoid noise and to manage a manual content analysis. Each question required its own analysis tool.

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate how women who have incurred ACL injury for more than 10 years ago, feel that the injury affects them today.Method: A qualitative semi-structured interview survey with five women who 10- 28 years ago incurred the anterior cruciate ligament injuries when playing handball or soccer has been performed. The study has been inspired by a phenomenological concept of science, mainly by life-world concept. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.Main result: Some informants have experienced severe loss of physical ability in both daily living situations and in training, while others did not appreciably felt impacted in daily living and experienced great opportunities for physical activity. Limitations which emerged were restrictions in movement, joint stiffness, pain, swelling, and crepitations that led to the loss of physical ability. One respondent had been diagnosed with advanced osteoarthritis.

Gothenburg municipality has a lot of natural water. This paper enhances the function and importance of water in the city. It also deals with the problems of sewage water and flooding. Gothenburg has reached an advanced stage of water planning. By developing a Waterplan, the municipality highlight that water has an important position in the urban planning.

When planning new wind farms, the cost for the internal electrical grid is estimated to account for 8-9 % of the total investment cost. On top of that, the cost for accumulated reduced income over several years (due to electrical losses), has to be added. The economic lifespan is relatively long (about 20 years) which means that an error in the loss calculation could lead to a bad decision basis. The accumulated reduced incomes due to electrical losses can be higher than the initial investment cost for the internal electrical grid.Today, Statkraft Sweden is using a template number when estimating the electrical losses in a wind farm. The actual losses are probably lower than the template number which could lead to an unnecessary high loss cost when planning a new wind farm.The aim of this M.Sc.

Aqeri has since the past year a new profile with name and logotype, which has createda need for an updated visual product identity. The company is a leading developer,producer and distributer of IT products suitable for extreme environments in industry,defense and vehicles. This new profile with the different segments has together with aproduct identity from two companies resulted in that they have no clear designidentity on their products. From this background the aim of this research is todetermine how a development of a design identity is done to implement it to Aqeri.The design identity can be defined as a product?s identity visualized through its formor appearance which defines what the product is.

The aim of this thesis is to define digital library, and to investigate a relation between the construction of a digital library and user needs. The main questions to be answered are: 1 What criteria was used when constructing a digital library, particularly concerning issues like purpose, function, design, supply, services, resources and future development of the digital library? 2 How do the digital library system designers and system builders criteria correspond with those of postgraduate researchers? And what factors affect the use? A digital library is an enterprise that gives access to information stored digitally and directly available on the net. The crucial is that the enterprise has a control over collection of information and responsibility to make it available to a defined group of users. In order to investigate the relation between the construction of the digital library and user needs, I have interviewed five key people involved with the work with the digital library and twenty postgraduate researchers from the Gothenburg University.

The subject of this study was to research whether or not different forms of employment contracts had any effect on self reported health. Whether or not any difference between these forms could be explained through the use of employee health care was also a given point of interest. To achieve this, data from the national Swedish institute of health (FHI) was used, with 6465 of the 12 166 that participated in the study. Logistic regression was the primary statistical method.Initial Chi2-analyzation found no significant difference between the two main employment forms present in Sweden. However, when the variables age, sex and level of education were held constant through logistic regression, a difference of odds at 22% between the two employment forms could be identified.

The award-winning Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgård achieved great success with his latest book, Min kamp. Both commercially and critically, the novel was praised for its seemingly successful attempt to transcend the boundary between fiction and real life. Focusing on the auto-fictional narrator?s struggle to balance his daily life with his ever so demanding aesthetic ambitions, the novel gives high-detail descriptions of the most basic day-to-day chores, intimately mixed with philosophical reflections on topics such as painting, literature and postmodern civilisation.This essay proposes an alternative perspective on the realism of the novel. Instead of relying on a correspondence theoretical view, which highlights the level of correspondence of a particular representation with reality, I seek, inspired by Martin Heidegger?s thoughts on works of art, to trace a poetics which sees the verity in a work of art as the ?unconcealment? of the world, or the coming-to-being of objects.

This master thesis deals with the differences in the design of the environmental scanning between different kinds of organisations, as well as the demands and regulations etc. in the respective environments that influence the environmental scanning. The content of the environmental scanning and the organisation of the function are outside the scope of this study. Two organisations that do not have an organised function but are scanning their environment were chosen for the investigation. A model for conducting the environmental scanning developed by Frankelius is used to analyse the practice of environmental scanning.

Spitz nevus was first described by Sophie Spitz in 1948 as juvenile melanoma. The lesion is a benign melanocytic tumor, which consists of epiteloid- and spindelshaped cells. Histological is spitz nevus difficult to distinguish from malign melanomas and spitzoid melanomas. Loss of symmetry, loss of maturation in the deep component, nuclear polymorphism and hyper chromatic nucleus are features which can be found in melanomas. Some of these features are often seen in spitz nevus.

The Swedish government has declared the year of 2006 a special Year ofMulitculture. This has inspired me to look for similarities and differences allover the world, especially the use of rug carpets.During travelling to Indonesia and a visit to the sister of the Sultan ofYogyakarta, I experienced a pleasant moment drinking chilled lemonade. Wewere all sitting on carpets on the floor. To sit on, and get together around acarpet, is an excellent function which we don?t do in the western world.