This pre-study investigates the possibility of U-value measurements through an acoustic method. A hypothesis about an acoustic model built on acoustic theories combined with U-value theories is presented to answer the questions: ? Can U-value theory be combined with acoustic theories? ? Can the coefficient of heat be affirmed trough an acoustic measurement? The idea for this dissertation begun with a logical idea in mathematical similarity, between the coefficient of heat transmission units and sound intensity units. The U-value theory is based on assumptions such as initial resistance for inner walls and initial resistance for outer walls. The resistance in the material is interpreted through sound intensity theory. The argument is built upon mass law theory, which means if the frequency or thickness of the material layer doubles it implies an increase of sound reduction by 6 dB.

Juvenile criminality has been widely discussed in the public debate. But what is there to do about a phenomenon like juvenile criminality in Sweden. Many studies have shown the potential of lowering juvenile criminality if different actors would collaborate. This research aims to explore preventive work and cooperation between different actors working with youth in risk of crime in Angered, with a focus on Hjällbo and Hammarkullen. The study is based on social and situational theory.

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to investigate the role of the public library when the local government in the municipality arranges distance education at university level. The thesis has two main areas of questioning and these are goals and resources. In the study it is examined if the local goals have changed during the period 2000 until 2005, due to the development of distance education. It is investigated if change actually has occurred and if it has, in what way the goals have changed. It is also examined if and how the goals correspond with the work that is being performed in the public library.

This thesis intends to examine the role of the city, Dublin, in the Irish economic growth during the 1990s. It is a case study where Dublin is compared with current theories on post modern cities as growth machines and increasingly prominent actors in the global context. The study has an interdisciplinary approach but focuses on political science issues such as power distribution, global-local governance and local political organisation. It is a theory driven study that also intends to add aspects to the understanding of the cities of our time. I argue that Dublin has faced a lot of changes during the last decades in accordance with the post modern city.

The following essay aims at the interplay between regional och municipal growth work, and theway cultural heritage is used in growth work strategies. The main issue has been whether theregional strategies are followed up in the municipal strategies, which has been investigated bymeans of question which impact the region?s strategies has at the local level.The essay draws upon an instrumental perspective on cultural heritage and cultural environment,here defined as instruments in the national development and growth efforts. Three publicationsthat highlights potential roles of cultural heritage and cultural environment to act as instrumentsin the regional and municipal development and growth efforts has thereby been selected astheoretical models. These roles has further been summarized in a tabular form as a schematicdivision of main themes with sub-categories, used as a framework for deciphering the regionaland municipal strategies.A content analysis of available strategies at both regional and local levels have been used as amethod for investigating the issue, where the role of cultural heritage and cultural environment(as defined in the schematic table) has guided the reading.

Allocation of funds to public libraries is uneven and this study will try to explain the reasons and clarify why the allocations of funds are distributed like they are and what calculations influenced the financial apportionment. This master thesis accounts for allocation in seven public libraries in Uppsala. The study shows that one reason for uneven allocations is demographic. Another reason is that the library has come into a good or bad circle. There are no models for allocation of funds to public libraries in Uppsala, thats why their allocations are given after a percentage increase of earlier years allocations, and that leads to a good or bad circle.

A great fire seized a suburb in a small town in Sweden in the autumn of 2011. Parts of a shopping mall were burnt to the ground by youngsters. Due to the suburb's earlier problems, the event was a tough ethical dilemma for the town's journalists.The purpose of this thesis was to study and examine the local newspapers ethical treatment of this event. How do they motivate their decisions on what to publish and what not to publish? How do the articles treat ethical dilemmas? What do the journalists think about ethical journalism?This study is based on a survey of the articles published about the fire in the two local newspapers seven days after the fire.

This report discusses the development of an autonomous system that can travel a distance of atleast 30 meters on two wheels. The system, the robot, detects black lines and stops if one isdetected. A remote control can be used to start and stop the robot. The robot is constructed ofmainly steel with smaller, more detailed, parts in plastic. A significant amout of time has beenused to enable the robot to balance on its own.

Obesity is a growing global health problem among both humans and cats with the risk of several medical conditions as a result. This can be detected and prevented by body condition assessment methods in order to visualize and detect possible or potential weight problems in cats.To achieve the best results, owner and cat should be introduced to this as soon as possible in their contact with veterinary care.Purina Body Condition System and Walthams Feline Body Mass Index are both morphometric assessment methods that are quick, relatively cheap and simple to perform. 20 cats with owners and a veterinary nurse student participated in a study to compare pet owners and a veterinary nurse student's assessment of the Purina Body Condition System and WALTHAM's Feline Body Mass Index. The body condition assessment methods were compared with each other, and it was investigated which method was preferred, the body condition distribution among the studied cats and if long-haired cats' body condition was more often misjudged. Results of the study showed a significant difference between pet owners and the veterinary nurse student's assessment of Purina BCS with a difference in median of 1.

When SKL (Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Science) gets images to analyse, the task often is to identify a person or an object. In that work it?s important to find features. Unfortunately images from camera surveillances often contain a lot of noise, so details can be hard to discern.A simple method to improve an image from a sequence is to compute the mean of some of the images. However, the part of interest in the image has to be in the same position in all images.

AbstractDuring the last five years there has been a considerable immigration from the Netherlands to Värmland in Sweden. INVA, Invest in Värmland, wanted to highlight this phenomenon and therefore contacted Karlstad University to make a survey about how extensive the immigration is and what consequences it brings for the business life and municipalities in Värmland. We were luckily chosen to perform this research and the main focus in this study has been the following questions:? Why do the Dutchmen choose to buy their house in Värmland?? What are the main reasons for leaving the Netherlands?? What consequences does the immigration cause for the business life in Värmland?? How do the Dutchmen experience the contact with Swedish authorities?To answer the questions we designed a questionnaire that was sent to 200 Dutch house purchasers. The ambition was to survey all the Dutch house purchasers in Värmland, but with the time constrains and the municipalities having problem to find complete data, we limited the survey to 200 households.

This Master?s thesis is one of two parts of a combined project called Sustainable development around the Lake Victoria, the purpose of which is to investigate the importance of local anchoring and active participation in the work towards sustainable development. The present study aims to investigate whether men and women are empowered by the participatory rural appraisal (PRA) process promoted in their villages by the VI Agroforestry Project Masaka/Rakai. The study is primarily based on interviews with farmers within the project area and brings up a local perspective on the concepts sustainable development, active participation and empowerment. The study shows that to improve the farmers? livelihood and to create a sustainable development in the community, the farmers have to be actively involved in, and in control of, the process.

This work is a part of the project ?Våtmarker i odlingslandskapet ? uppföljning av miljömålen? (Wetlands in arable land ? following-up of the environmental goals). The main objective with this project is to study nitrogen and phosphorus retention in a constructed wetland by using mass balance calculations. Continuous measurements of nutrients and water flow through the inlet and the outlet of the wetland are made. However, substantial amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus were assumed to reach the wetland with a drain-pipe transporting wastewater from nearby houses (10 persons).

Care and solicitude about Swedish documentary heritage has varied substantially throughout the years. The main purpose of this essay has been to investigate what efforts have been made to preserve rare book collections at public libraries. These cultural policies have been studied from both a national as well as local perspective. What we have tried to explore can be condensed into three questions: What national initiatives have been taken in the past century to preserve the municipal documentary heritage?What initiatives have been taken in the past century to preserve thedocumentary heritage of what is presently the municipality of Jönköping? What value do rare book collections at public libraries represent? The results indicate few national efforts were initially made to preserve rare book collections in the timeframe we studied.

This essay deals with the question of lines of development within the politics in the rural municipality of Nyed 1950-1962. The aim is to explore how local politics and policies were handled from two perspectives. Firstly the issue of conflict and consensus or majority rule and consensus. Here Arend Lijphard's theory of majority and consensus provides a theoretical base for the essay. Secondly the aim is to explore the actions of the local politicians with regards to leisure time policies to find out whether or not they ideologically belonged to the concept of ?folkhemmets kommun? by Ulla Ekström von Essen.The source material for this essay has been the minutes from the two major bodies of local politics in Nyed, kommunalfullmäktige and kommunalnämnden.