Background: Diabetes mellitus is one of today's major public health problems, affecting up to 347 million people worldwide. Several studies have shown a correlation between hearing loss and diabetes mellitus. However, it is still unclear whether this correlation differs between type 1-diabetes and type 2-diabetes.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is any difference in prevalence of hearing loss in type 1-diabetics versus type 2-diabetics.Method: A meta-analysis was performed based on ten studies that were identified through the database PubMed and through manual searching of references. Odds ratios for the risk of developing hearing loss were calculated in each study. Pooled odds ratios were calculated using a random effects model.Results: Pooled odds ratios indicates that both type 1-diabetics and type 2-diabetics are more likely to develope hearing loss compared to non-diabetic controls.

A speech-based material that early can assess a child's hearing is needed to provide an indication of a hearing impaired child's language development. Being able to identify and discriminate between different sounds is a requirement for interpreting speech. Hearing assessments that examine speech perception can therefore, unlike, for example, pure tone audiometry, examine a hearing impaired child's perceptual language skills and provide a basis for intervention.The purpose of this work is to evaluate a new auditory material on 3-year-old children. The auditory material is based on the Ling-6-sounds and the main question was which of the sounds in the test were adequate for test of discrimination. Furthermore, it was investigated how the test works with children aged 3:0?3:11 years and how age and gender affect the result.Twenty-four children aged 3:0?3:11 years were tested using a computer based test.

Denna rapport har jämfört olika path tracking-algoritmer för att se vilken som presterar bäst för spelagenter som färdas i konstant hastighet. Tre vanliga path tracking algoritmer som ofta används inom robotik har valts ut för undersökningen, Follow The Carrot, Pure Pursuit och Vector Pursuit. Algoritmerna har implementerats i C# och simuleringarna har genomförts i Unity 4.0. Path tracking-algoritmerna har testats på ett antal olika vägar för att se hur de lyckas följa vägen. Av simuleringarna så visar det sig att Pure Pursuit och Vector Pursuit presterade likvärdigt för spelagenter i konstant hastighet samt att de presterade bättre än Follow The Carrot..

The EU has decided that it should be possible for consumers to get information about the origin of the electricity they buy. Therefore, there is a need to examine different systems for electricity disclosure. In this thesis two ways of disclosure have been studied:? Certificate system. A certificate system involves two parallel markets, one for trading electrical energy and one for trading certificates of origin.? Separated Markets.

Many dogs in Sweden are put up for adoption at the Swedish buy- and sales site?Blocket?. This because in Sweden, rescue shelters mostly takes in dogs that have been confiscated by the police. The aim of this study was to investigate what kind of dogs that are put up for adoption and why owners put their dog up for adoption and also compare the results with those from other countries. 800 dog advertisements from ?Blocket? were collected in the study between January 31st and April 10th 2012.

The aim of this paper has been to examine to what extent it has been possible for Patricia Crampton, translator of Ronia, the Robber?s Daughter, to capture and cling to the very personal style in which Astrid Lindgren writes. I also wanted to find out if any adaptations of the text were made and, if any, how they have affected the tone of the book. To fulfil this purpose a thorough comparison of the original text and the translation has been made. The first chapter consists of an introduction presenting the background to my choice of topic and giving a short presentation of Astrid Lindgren and her career as an author.

Poly, to live in several loving and intimate relationships at the same time, is one alternative to the mono norm. In Sweden polygamy is illegal yet in recent years poly has slowly started to enter the hetero normative political agenda and raise debate in the media. But what does poly mean, and how do those who identify with this type of relationship describe it in contrast to mono? The theoretical framework is based on a structural viewpoint of the changes in the organisation of the family and the growing de-traditionalism of society. Amongst other I use a Foucauldian perspective to explain the structural shift (yet not replacement) between an Alliance pattern and a Sexuality pattern.

A challenge faced by marketers is to make their products stand out in today's cluttered marketplace. Recently, a new approach to attract attention has been observed - brands communicating their products by making fun of other brands. This way of parodying a competitor, or even an unrelated brand, is a risky but potentially effective way to increase attention. Brand parodies walk a fine line between being humorous and clever, or coming off as offensive. Furthermore, parodying another trademark poses legal considerations.

Birch is the dominant deciduous tree species in Sweden but only 16 % is found in pure birch stands. The majority of the birch (51 %) is to be found in conifer dominated stands. Swedish forest land comprises approximately of 23 % mixed stands and one problem is that for mixed stands there are few management recommendations. The underlying aim of this thesis was to study the management of mixed forest stands of spruce and birch to achieve good timber quality of birch. The study was based on a literature study and measurement in a field experiment launched in 1998 by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

As the volumes are entering the world of computer graphics the pure volume visualisation becomes a more important tool in for example research and medical applications. But the advance in haptics --- force feedback from the computer --- is behind. In volume haptics no equal to the proxy method so popular in surface haptics has yet emerged. Some implementations of volume haptics even use surfaces as intermediate representations so that surface haptics can be used.The intention of this work was to create natural feeling haptic feedback from volumetric density data using pure volume haptics. The haptic algorithm would be implemented in Reachin API for the Reachin Desktop Display, together with other parts to build up a usable volume visualisation environment.To achieve the feeling of stiffness and friction dependent on tissue type, a proxy based method was developed.

The first aim of this study is to discuss and try to understand the relationship between the holy andethics, and more specifically how it can be understood, which is the critical question that I haveformulated, in Giorgio Agamben?s and Emmanuel Levinas? philosophies. The second, moreconstructive aim is to discuss whether the holy can be understood as something good or problematicin relation to the society.Rooted in philosophy of religion and ethics, I have first tried to discuss how the holy has beenunderstood in the philosophy of phenomenology and in the texts of Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade andEspen Dahl. The holy has in the history been understood as something central in religions, and hasalso not been connected to the idea of ethics. Recently it has also been critized ? by Dahl ? for notbeing so pure as first thought of.In Levinas texts the holy has been understood as something differentiated through his distiction,in the Talmudic reading ?Desacralization and Disenchantment?, between the holy, which can beseen as something pure, and the sacred which can been seen as something impure and a form ofdegenerated holiness.

In this diploma work the approach of determining the required amount of reinforcement in slabs exposed to pure tension is processed, on behalf of Ramböll Uppsala. It is a well-known problem in the industry that there are uncertainties in the determining of the amount of crack reinforcement, especially for structures exposed to pure tension. Cracking caused during the time of dehydration in concrete slabs is the most common defect according to statistics made by CBI[1], which provides numbers as high as 35 % of all the defects caused on slabs are generated by cracks. Comparisons between Sweden's former national standard BBK 04, Building Regulations for concrete structures due to restrained forces of shrinkage, and the current European standard Eurocode 2 are carried out through theoretical studies and concludes with several examples of calculations. Rigorous calculations of both standards, BBK 04 and Eurocode 2 with application of the national annex in Sweden and Denmark are performed.

In this diploma work the approach of determining the required amount of reinforcement in slabs exposed to pure tension is processed, on behalf of Ramböll Uppsala. It is a well-known problem in the industry that there are uncertainties in the determining of the amount of crack reinforcement, especially for structures exposed to pure tension. Cracking caused during the time of dehydration in concrete slabs is the most common defect according to statistics made by CBI[1], which provides numbers as high as 35 % of all the defects caused on slabs are generated by cracks. Comparisons between Sweden's former national standard BBK 04, Building Regulations for concrete structures due to restrained forces of shrinkage, and the current European standard Eurocode 2 are carried out through theoretical studies and concludes with several examples of calculations. Rigorous calculations of both standards, BBK 04 and Eurocode 2 with application of the national annex in Sweden and Denmark are performed.

The paper contains comment, clarification and criticism, even constructive criticism, of some theses that have been put forward by Laurence Bonjour in his In Defense of Pure Reason.It presents a concept of experience that deals with the relation between cognizer and object of experience that has a great similarity to that of Bonjour. Through analysis it is shown that the concept of a priori entails that Bonjour has two concepts of a priori, a narrow and a broad one. The narrow one is, in my own words: According to moderate rationalism a proposition p is a priori justified if and only if you apprehend that p must be true in every possible world. This doesn?t mean that Bonjour doesn?t believe in an epistemological, metaphysical and semantic realm.

Tomo Hugglink (TOMO Skog) is an innovation for harvest and transport of biofuels. The system consists of a truck, a chipping unit and crane mounted on a link and a wood chip trailer. The system works in such a way that the chipping unit is disconnected and placed on the site and wood chips are loaded directly into the wood chip trailer.The aim of this study was:- To examine the performance of the TOMO Hugglink system under different conditions such as the size, placement and quality of the pile.- To calculate the cost per raw ton for two vehicle combinations at different transport distances and to examine the effect of a reduction in set-up time and an increase in load weight.- To identify possible improvements with the TOMO Hugglink system.A time study was conducted within the thesis work to make it possible to determine production and time consumption. In the subsequent economic analysis the cost per tone at different transport distances was calculated for two different lorry concepts. Furthermore the effect of a reduction in set-up time and an increase in load weight was calculated.Under current conditions the utilization of the chipper is low and only 29 % of the total system time is occupied by chipping.