This project report shows the work around a mockup to a three-dimensional avatar-making application. An avatar-making application is a computer-based software program in which it is possible to create your own personal virtual character. The possibility to use three-dimensional avatars can in the future be essential for adding extra personal information or characteristics to social communication over the internet or over mobile phones. The problem of transforming a physical form and reconstruct it to a virtual basis has been an important problem to solve for many companies and software developers in the, for instance, virtual worlds area. Methods and ideas over making this transformation is the key throughout this project.

Recent papers and bills from the Swedish Government deal with the possibilities  of giving all Swedish citizens the possibility of their own creative actlvities in the cultural sector. This work is about where such actlvities shall be placed in order to make them obtainable  for all. As an example of creative work this work takes computer-based music-making. At the public library in Odense, Denmark there is a weil functioning sound workshop where the public gets the opportunity of making music with some assistance from the staff. This work shows  that also in Sweden  the public libraries are the most suitable  institutions  for placing studies for computer-based music-making  for the public depending  on the public libraries'  traditions in adult education.

After the tsunami disaster in December 2004 many arguments were heared that one oft the major reasons behind the poor Swedish effort connected to the evacuation and health care of the Swedish citizens in Thailand right after the incident is the Swedish model with independent government authorities. By comparing the constitution, the political decision making tradition by the ministers and the handling of the catastrophe in the tree Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway and Finland, plus analysing the behaviour of the Swedish foreign and prime minister from a rational choose inspired individual decision making theory the research shows that there is no proof that a constitutional change in Sweden into the traditional model with government authorities controlled by the ministers alone would led to a more effective crisis handling by the government due to crises concerning Swedish citizens out states. Although the research shows that the constitution and the tradition of decision making in the government provides the basic condition of the ministers individual rational decision making.

The invisible entrepreneurship is a study of owners of businesses with foreign heritage. It describes the unexplored relationship between ethnicity and class within this group of entrepreneurs.The result of the study is a model which I have found to be suitable to use when depicting the relationship between the ethnic profile and class. The model indicates that the importance of ethnicity decreases as both the owner of, and the business reach a more prominent class. The method of collecting data has been interviews with owners of businesses and Grounded theory has been used to analyse this data. Theories on ethnicity, owners of businesses with foreign heritage, and class in relation to ethnicity have been discussed on the basis of social constructivism.

The underlying purpose of this study is to see whether a library focused solely on providing literature in other languages than Swedish serves as a unifying, integrating force, or as an agent for division and exclusion. The study focuses on the International Library in Stockholm. The authors have created a profile of the visitors of the selected library, concerning their characteristics, their library habits and their perceptions of the International library. This profile has then been compared with the staff?s perception of the visitors as a group.

Managers operating within the dynamic society of today are said to rely on intuition when effective and quick decisions are to be made. This skill or phenomenon has aroused an interest within the academic world of management whom has explored intuition, its relation to decision making and its influencing factors, especially in the private sector. Intuitive decision making is however not isolated solely to this sector but also involved in decision making associated to the public sector. Therefore, the aim of the thesis is to investigate whether managers at the hospital Akademiska in Uppsala involve intuition in decision making and to what extent the factors time, amount of information, individual experience and decision complexity influence the intuition.The theoretical framework includes academic research regarding how intuition and rationality affect decisions, the concept of intuition and factors influencing the intuitiveness of decision making. Furthermore the theoretical discussion explores intuition connected to leadership, negative aspects of intuitive decisions and a comparison between different factors that separates public and private sector in terms of decision making.

The saw blade producer, Håkansson Sågblad AB, patented in the U.S. a new blade profiledesigned specially to cut fish and meat. The most important advantage of that blade is that its teethare not set, therefore the material lost when cutting is really smaller. The special geometry of thatprofile made that nobody had found a proper way to produce it before.The goal of the outlined work is to develop a machine to produce these new blades in afeasible way.The research approach of the project can roughly be divided into three phases:1.- Invention and development of a proper distribution of blades to produce a big amount ofthem at the same time.2.- Research of the best production process to produce the blades.3.- Main design of the machine to produce the blades.In the Thesis these three points are carefully developed and studied in the form of the startpoint of a really bigger project. Some tests had been done in order to prove all the analytical ideasand the results obtained had been satisfactory enough to give Håkansson the start point of a bigbusiness.

The main purpose of this master thesis is to identify guidelines for a sustainable production that can provide useful information concerning the establishment of a biodiesel production. These guidelines concern the surrounding production environment, such as infrastructures and industries.The thesis is based on theoretical grounds surrounding industrial symbiosis, biodiesel production and how sustainable development should be designed. A study of an already established producer in a similar business area has been used to provide a picture of similar projects. The thesis has with the supervisor's consent focused on the production conditions that are affected by location.The production conditions selected are heating, raw material market, residual and sustainable profile. These are then evaluated through an Excel-based sensitivity analysis.

During the last decades major changes has occurred at the financial markets, meaning an increasing supply and a greater variation of financial instruments. The saving habits of the Swedish people have gone from traditional bank deposits to investments in equities, funds and bonds. All this together with the great rise in the stock market at the late 90?s has brought words like risk and return up-to-date, and is the background to the development of a new law concerning financial advising which come into force the 1th of July 2004. The contents of the thesis can be described as three bricks, representing the survey questions.

Allanblackia is a genus of trees that grows in the rainforests of West, Central and Eastern Africa. Its big fruits contain seeds very rich in oil which has been used by local communities for cooking and making soaps. The native stands are threatened by overexploitation and the demand for the oil is much greater than the supply. Domestication programs, aiming at introducing the trees to small holder agroforestry systems, have been started for some of the species. The main aim of this study was to investigate the soil requirements of Allanblackia stuhlmannii in terms of chemical and physical parameters, as revealed by the soil conditions in native stands. Another aim was to see if these varied along an altitudinal transect.

Bakgrunden för denna studie är problematiken kring beslutsfattande. Tidigare forskning visar att en individ dagligen fattar en mängd medvetna och omedvetna beslut. Dessa beslut faller sig olika utefter vilka erfarenheter, preferenser och känslor individen har och hur detta påverkar individen vid köp av dyra sällanköpsvaror. Syftet med studien är att identifiera faktorer och personlighetstyper som influerar köparens beslut gällande dyra sällanköpsvaror..

The purpose of this study is to contribute knowledge on how pedagogues use play as a way to expose children to the English language. I chose the qualitative method of interviews to conduct my study. The objects of study were four English speaking pedagogues at a preschool with English in their profile. This profile was a major factor when choosing where to carry out the study, as not every preschool in Sweden offers English.The interviews were conducted in English, as all four pedagogues were native English speakers and I did not want a possible language barrier to influence the results. The questions were composed with play as a focal point and a way to expose the children to English.My findings showed that play is an important tool for children to take part of and learn English.

Motion är viktigt för vår hälsa, men många som börjar motionera slutar inom en snar framtid (Fallon, Hausenblas, & Nigg, 2005). Det är därför viktigt att utveckla strategier som motiverar människor till träning. Visualisering är en teknik som visats ha en motivationshöjande effekt hos motionärer. Kim och Giacobbi (2009) menar dock att det finns ett behov av att skilja på innehåll, syfte och effekter inom motionsvisualiseringen och att ett nytt mätinstrument därför behövs. Syftena med studien var därför att: (1) utveckla och testa mätinstrumentet the Individual Profile of Imagery Experiences in Exercise (IPIEE; Weibull & Johnsson 2010), samt att (2) studera motionärers frivilliga och spontana visualiseringsupplevelser.

Sweden is currently a country in which a large amount of children?s time has changed to be spent within institutions, for small children these institutions are preschools. These are places where notions are created regarding what children are, what?s good for children, what?s normal and desirable regarding children. The purpose of this study has been to decipher what?s considered desirable and what notions or ideas regarding children are prevalent in preschools with an I Ur och Skur profile.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate to what extent municipalities in Sweden use democratic innovations to include citizens in the decision making process. Along there are three research questions:? What different forms of democracy innovations are Swedish municipalities applying in order to increase the civic participation between elections and what forms are dominant?? What potential influence in decision-making are citizens getting through these democratic innovations based on the results?? Based on the results ? in what ways is the democracy innovations used in municipalities challenging representative democracy? The method used to fulfill the purpose and answer the research questions is a web survey including 287 of 290 (in total) municipal websites. The theoretic framework includes a model which is called ?Smith?s ladder of participation? and is influenced by the research of Graham Smith and Sherry Arnstein.