The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate the role of link collections in Swedish public libraries mediation of Internet resources. The study is focusing on the effects on the contents and the structure in the link collections when the target group is immigrant users. This is done through literature studies completed with an examination of two link collections containing multi-cultural and multi-lingual material and qualitative interviews with the two librarians who are in charge of the collections. The major questions raised in this study are: What function do the link collections have for the public libraries? What is the difference in working with traditional, printed material compared to the work with Internet resources? And how are the selection of Internet resources and the structure of the link collections affected when the collection is intended for immigrant users? The main results are that link collections in public libraries can give a concrete form to political guidelines.

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.

Problem statement and purpose:The purpose of this study was to analyze in what way first-time voters chose to take part of political information. The questions we aimed to answer was how first-time voters use media and other information channels for political purposes, what importance and trust the first-time voters give the different information channels and finally which indicators there is for that structural or individual factors affect the media consumption and political interest.Method and material:We did interviews with twelve 18 years old first-time voters from six different high school programs in Sundsvall, Sweden.Results:The study showed that the premier source of political information were traditional news media, in particular the debates on TV. It?s also in the debates the first-time voter?s trust the most. Even though the social medias are constantly present in their everyday life and even though the first-time voters believe the social medias have potential for engaging young people politically, the possibilities are only taken in advantage by people who are already politically interested.

Genom att testa tre olika analysmetoder, och med hjälp av aktuell litteratur, studeras utvecklingspotentialen i det peri-urbana landskapet. I gränszonen mellan det urbana och det rurala finns ett landskap som känns igen genom dess industrier, shoppingcentrum och stora vägar. I dessa områden förkommer s.k. ickeplatser, som kan hittas mellan olika bebyggelseenklaver, på rivningstomter eller på f.d. parkeringar.

In this thesis an explorative study was undertaken with the aim to study how a number of private care providers, as well as politicians and officials from councils in and around the Stockholm and Uppsala counties, think about the future of the Swedish elderly care from a property perspective, i.e. homes for the elderly. The analysis shows that there is a demand for capacity in 6 out of 16 municipalities, and that the property is an important part of this capacity, and the fulfillment of it. This was mainly due to the cost of capital, but also because of several other factors such as lack of land, a wish to guide the design, ideology, and in many cases a wish to use the property as an instrument of domination to control private health care providers.Also, the property was show to be connected to economic competition, to freedom of choice, and to quality. The problems related to the property in the market for elderly care still remains to be solved.

SammanfattningMed tanke på dagens marknad där allt större konkurrens finns gäller det att som företag ha en flexibilitet och lyhördhet som tillfredsställer kunden med rätt produkter, kvalitet och kvantitet. En låg leveransprecision kan orsaka problem i en verksamhets produktion, vilket innebär att företag bör kontinuerligt förbättra de interna processerna.Aros Quality Enclosure Systems AB (AQ AB), där projektet utfördes, är en del av koncernen Aros Quality Group. Företaget bearbetar plåtdetaljer och färdigställer produkter inom till exempel telekommunikation, bensinpumpar, kaffemaskiner och bankomater.Syftet med denna rapport är att presentera förbättringsförslag och rekommendationer som AQ AB kan genomföra för att förbättra den interna leveransprecisionen på den produkt som har studerats, den så kallade Ericsson-ram. För att uppnå syftet behövdes två frågeställningar besvaras, nämligen ?Vilka förbättringsområden i produktionen för Ericsson-ramar kan identifieras?? samt ?Vilka förbättringsförslag, utifrån de identifierade förbättringsområden, kan presenteras för företaget??.För att uppfylla detta syfte och svara på frågeställningarna har 14 besök på AQ AB i Vaggeryd gjorts.

Syftet med denna litteraturöversikt var att beskriva den hälsorelaterade livskvaliteten hos patienter med en implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD).  Studien genomfördes som en litteraturöversikt, där tolv vetenskapliga artiklar av kvantitativ karaktär analyserades och användes i studiens resultatdel.  Sökorden som användes var Defibrillators, Implantable, Quality of Life och health related. Inklusionskriterier var artiklar skrivna på engelska, peer-reviewed, publicerade från år 2000 och framåt samt deltagarna i dessa studier skulle vara 19 år eller äldre. I studien framkom det att ICD-patienter undvek specifika platser, objekt och fysiska aktiviteter relaterade till ICD:n. Också en oro över bilkörning framkom.  ICD-patienter utsätts för en förändring i livssituation och är i behov av stöd och individuell informationsgivning gällande deras medicintekniska anordning.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the interrogation transcripts of interviews with girls between the age of 11 and 16 who are alleged victims of sexual crimes. The examination is done from a gender perspective, by comparing six interrogations by male interrogators and eight interrogations by female interrogators. The study has used linguistic indicators relating to the interrogation methodological guidelines, in order to highlight how the interrogators give girls the opportunity and space to share their experience of the alleged sexual offense. Text material is categorized based on themes and analyzed in detail to find any gender-specific patterns of hearing leaders and if the girls are given space and opportunity for a free storytelling. The results show that in several themes, differences between the male and the female interrogators can be discerned.

The resting area is the most important place in the barn for the dairy cow, sometimes called the heart of the free stall system. Inadequate design of the lying area, and lack of or poor quality of bedding materials may reduce the hygiene of the stall. Poor management regarding the cleanliness of the resting area may lead to poor animal hygiene and increased bacterial growth. This in turn will lead to increased risk for environmental mastitis as well as impairing milk quality through contamination with spores. In this literature study the most commonly used bedding materials; straw, sawdust, wood shavings, clean sand, recycled sand, peat and recycled manure solids, are compared to one another with regards to their ability to resist bacterial growth. Effects of adding hydrated lime to bedding materials have also been studied. Most bacteria need humidity and prefer a quite high water activity to be able to grow.

This report was written by Lisa Bengtson and Hanna Paradis and describes the degree thesis "Environmental impacts of solid waste treatment in the Metropolitan Region, Santiago, Chile ? a comparison between current system and incineration with energy recovery". The purpose of this thesis was to investigate if incineration with energy recovery could be motivated through an environmental perspective as an alternative to landfilling of solid waste in Santiago, Chile. The study was performed with Life Cycle Analysis as a theoretical base. In Santiago, situated in the thirteenth region of Chile, Región Metropolitana, lives 6,5 million inhabitants. The major part of the solid waste produced in the region is landfilled on three different sanitary controlled landfills situated outside the city center.

The overall aim is to examine how the European Union Water Framework Directive has affected the local water management in the catchment Märstaån situated in the eastern part of the lake Mälaren river basin, Sweden. The first part of the study gives an historical overview of the area with focus on how the old agricultural landscape was handling the nutrient load from farming activities by means of different kinds of wetlands. By using the concept of the procedural landscape, introduced by Torsten Hägerstrand , together with historical maps with dates starting from the 17th century, the pre-modern landscape is analyzed.  The second part is an investigation, based on qualitative data, on how the different actors in the catchment area work together to secure the water quality for the Märstaån river. The analysis shows that the Märstaån catchment river systems are mostly unchanged in the rural areas.  The exception is the mainstream section of the Märstaån river running partly underground today and the Halmsjöbäcken river that is heavily affected by the Arlanda airport situated within the catchment area.

The aim of the thesis is to analyse and understand resolution, repeatability and reproducibility of the measurement system for package distance. The measurement system for package distance is already in use, no Gage R&R has been performed on the system and before spreading use of the system the quality of the system has to be understood and approved.

The purpose of this thesis was to describe what factors influence consumers? choice when buying probiotic products. Functional Foods have been predicted a bright future on the food market but so far the concept have not been embraced by the consumers. The reasons for this are many and not clearly understood. Positive health effects are what set a functional food product apart from traditional food stuffs of the same type.

Data warehouse system är något som har växt fram under 1990-talet och det har implementeras hos flera verksamheter. De källsystem som en verksamhet har kan integreras ihop med ett data warehouse system för att skapa en version av verkligheten och ta fram rapporter för beslutsunderlag. Med en version av verkligheten menas att det skapas en gemensam bild som visar hur verksamhetens dagliga arbete sker och utgör grundinformation för de framtagna analyserna från data warehouse systemet. Det blir därför väsenligt för verksamheten att de framtagna rapporterna håller en, enligt verksamheten, tillfredställande god datakvalitet. Detta leder till att datakvaliteten hos data warehouse systemet behöver hålla en tillräckligt hög kvalitetsnivå.

Background: The relationship between advanced age, presence of illness and impaired functioning is well known. A large proportion of the elderly population has an extensive need of care and service and therefore need help from municipal care. Aging is a transition in life and also affects the person's identity and self image, making the person particularly vulnerable and challenging everyday safety. It is therefore of importance to gain knowledge about which factors at individual and organizational level that support a person-centered nursing care for the elderly so that caring responsibilities and staffing of nursing personnel may be scheduled based on need. Aim: This study aimed at describing dependency and care needs of elderly persons living in ordinary housing, sheltered housing and nursing homes. Furthermore the study aimed at describing how the dependency was related to the staffing of non-licensed and licensed nursing staff in nursing homes. Method: A descriptive and analytical quantitative method was used in the study.