In this paper discourse analysis on the Ethiopian National Action Program (NAP) to combat desertification is made. The aim is to describe how the overall image/picture of desertification, its causes, and effects and of possible solutions are presented in the NAP. The result of this analysis shows that the main cause of desertification is human activities mainly due to the poorly developed socio-economic situation in the dryland areas. It is indicated that an excessive dependency of the rural population on the natural resources, particularly land, is the major cause of land degradation and this deterioration of land is said to have been caused by the rapid population growth, overgrazing, forest clearing as well as past government and institutional failures. In addition it is indicated that the effect of desertification usually involves ecological changes that sap land of its ability to sustain agriculture and human habitation, therefore the most serious threat to human welfare.

This c-level essay examines how deaf and hearing impaired individuals use smartphones to live and communicate in a ?hearing world?. The main target is to find some understanding of the struggles of this population and smartphones have made it easier to adapt to the hearing worlds? demands with the applications that follow. To acquire the information for this essay, representatives from both the deaf and hearing impaired communities were interviewed.

The price trend on rapeseed the latest years has led to an increasing interest to grow the crop among many farmers in Sweden. The price trend has resulted in more than a doubling of the oilseed area since the early 2000s. For many farmers it is an advantage to increase cultivation of rapeseed because of the high proportion of cereals in the crop rotation on many farms, but it is not just benefits. The risk of the fields being infected by clubroot increases within frequent rapeseed cultivation and it often leads to subtantial economic losses. Clubroot is caused by Plasmodiophora brassicae that is a soilborne pathogen in genus Protozoa and its resting spores can be found in the soil for up to 18 years.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how teachers use computer based assessment in their work and what user barriers they experience while working with computer based assessments. The result of the thesis is meant to provide an understanding of which factors affect the use of computer based assessments and how a company who provide computer based assessments applications can increase the rate of use amongst teachers.To investigate this, the author examined a company in Sweden who provide a computer based assessment application for both universities and high schools. The study was carried out at two different schools, a university and a high school, both located in Stockholm. In total nine teachers were interviewed. The author also conducted observations at the company whose computer based assessment application was examined.The author?s findings suggest that a lack of functions within the application and lack of costumer support from the company all negatively impacted the teacher?s use of the application.

Heavy duty vehicles often have problems with traction during the winter periods. For vehicles that can lift tag axles it is possible to increase the normal force on the driven axle by lifting one or more tag axles, this will then increase the propulsive force of friction. This however increases wear on both road and vehicle. A possibility to reduce the wear while achieving nearly equivalent traction compared to lifted tag axles is to allow the vehicle to regulate the normal force by lowering the pressure in the air suspension associated with the tag axles or by the lifting of these axles. The vehicle would then by itself be able to set just the right amount of normal force on the drive wheels to avoid unnecessarily high normal forces while maintaining sufficient traction.The purpose of the report is to find out which parameters affect heavy duty vehicles when driving on slippery slopes and how traction can be improved.

This essay includes the planning and designing of a house as well as writing a rapport about howto increase fire safety in small buildings.More than 6000 homes burn in Sweden every year (Brandskyddsföreningen, 2012c). Thedevastation and the costs are usually very high. This report examines possible measures to reduceboth personal injuries and economic losses resulting from house fires in small buildings.Swedishbuilding regulationsplay a major role when it comes to constructional fire safety. However therequirements inSwedish building regulations are very low for small buildings and this is anargument for raising the requirements.The report shows and describes possible methods to build safer with regards to fire in terms ofmaterials and different building structures. Major focus has been on fire cells but other solutionsare also examined and described.

This work is about silage contaminated with slugs (Arion lusitanicus). The hypothesis was: Do slugs affect the nutritional value and hygiene quality of silage? During the winter season 2007/2008 silages were discarded in big amounts due to the contamination of slugs. Both the Swedish Farmer Association (LRF) and the National Veterinary Institute (SVA) received phone calls from farmers and animal owners about contaminated silage. The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and SVA decided to initiate this project as a master thesis.

The aim of this study is to investigate which management control mechanisms evolve in companies that receive funding from Venture Capital companies and why the management control systems evolve in the way that they do. A case study was performed on three Swedish high technology companies, that all received funding from Venture Capital companies for the first time in 2006. Merchant?s framework, defining all management control mechanisms as either, results control, action control or personnel control, was used to structure the study. Results show that the companies that received Venture Capital all increased the use of management control mechanisms within results control, action control and personnel control.

This study aims to investigate possible correlations between cognitive functions and self perceived psychological wellbeing, possible correlations between cognitive functions and degree of mindfulness and possible correlations between degree of mindfulness and self perceived psychological wellbeing. 18 patients diagnosed with ICD-10 taking part in a transdiagnostical cognitive behavioural group therapy participated in the study. The study measures relevant variables before and after a group therapy. Of the 18 patients participating, only 11 were able to be tested on both occasions due to time limit. The following tests are used: Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, Wechsler Adult Inventory Scale-III, Trail Making Test, Controlled Oral Word Association Test, Colour Word Test, Beck's Anxiety Inventory, Beck's Depression Inventory, Quality of Life Inventory and Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills.

The purpose of this study is to compare different ways to teach mathematics in the school's lower age groups, and to examine whether certain practices increase students' desire and motivation to learn the subject. The questions used to determine the purpose is the following: What vision has the students in the class at maths? How does the teaching of mathematics in the class look like?What vision has the students in the class at working with different approaches in education?Does the traditional approach  and the options that I am examining meet the steering documents requirements?  The essay is organized as a qualitative study. The study was conducted in an elementary school in Sweden, third grade. The methods used included interviews with students and observations in the classroom.

Examensarbetet på 20p behandlade främst sittergonomi och stolsutformning för förarstolar till lastbilar. Arbetet utfördes på plats hos Scania CV AB:s ergonomigrupp i Södertälje. Syftet med arbetet har varit att ?ta fram en förarstol som är anpassad till förarens behov, arbetssituation och fysiska förutsättningar? vilket visade sig vara ett brett område. Målen i projektet har varit att, identifiera viktiga aspekter för att anpassa stolar till en vid förarpopulation.

Background: The regulation of banks is increasing in order to stabilize the financial market. Despite this increase in regulation, financial crises still continue to occur. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is gradually increasing the capital requirements for banks, yet the increase in capital requirements doesn?t seem to solve the problem. This raises the question: how does capital regulation affect banks? Purpose: The purpose of this study is, primarily to illustrate the effects that capital regulation has on risk and efficiency on banks within the European Union, but secondary also study the relationship between risk, efficiency and capital regulation.Method: To achieve the purpose of this study, a deductive approach has been used, where the problem is assumed to be due to an agency problem.

Train travel has increased in Sweden, and future increase of train transports putdemands on the already vastly exploited railroad net. The increased need of capacitycan be seen in the ongoing and planned expansions of the railway track. One part ofthe railroad infrastructure which is affected by an increase of travellers is the design ofthe station platform. Since the platform is the place where the traveller meets thetrain, dangerous situations can occur in this environment. A number of studies focuson single safety risks, albeit there is no research to show the full picture of safety inthe platform environment.This study aims to treat and put together a compilation of risks for the traveller in theplatform environment in the form of a checklist, which can be used as support inplanning and design of a safer platform environment for existing or planned platforms.The thesis has, through case studies of five ongoing projects within the NationalRailroad Administration (Banverket), interviews with train company personnel andinternational railroad administrators, identified and treated safety (and security) risksin the platform environment.The conclusion of the study is that the relations between the traveller, the physicalplatform environment and the project organisation are important to explore andexploit when designing effective safety measures.

The purpose of this study was to investigate different relations between the damages of falls and background variables as well as the relation between the falls and the weather condition to later be able to use this report to expand the knowledge among workers at VTI about the pedestrian fall injuries. All of the fall injuries in the data that this study is based on have occurred in Sweden during the time period between January 2003 and December 2011.To be able to answer the questions that this report is based on several statistical methods are used. The statistical methods that have been used during the making of this report are multiple linear regression, binary logistic regression, correlation analysis, association analysis and descriptive statistics as well as visual analysis.The results of the study show that women around menopause age have a tendency to get a big increase in the amount of injuries compared to men of the same age. The study also suggests that men on average tend to have a lower level of injury compared to women.Age also seems to affect both the amount of injuries and the level of injury negatively. The study suggests that the most likely reason for this is both that the intake of ?Fall Risk Increasing Medicine?, which is medicine that increases the drowsiness, is higher among older individuals as well as lower estrogen levels among older women and lower amount of testosterone among older men, which causes a loss of bone density in both sexes.The weather seems to have a strong effect on how many injuries occur but also a noticeable effect on the scale of the injury.

The internet has fundamentally changed the way people communicate. With all the information that we are sharing over the internet, and the ways which companies want to use our information, the importance of keeping our private information secure has increased. This thesis aims to discover what attitudes internet users have against privacy on the internet, and what ? if anything ? they are doing to protect their personal privacy.We distributed an online survey to internet users in the Stockholm area, and conducted three interviews with persons in our target population. The results of these studies show that people in general are very aware of privacy concerns on the internet, but that their attitudes toward how important personal privacy on the internet is, differ somewhat..