This is a study on the outcome of the Swedish Forest Agency´s mission to provide individual advice to private land owners about precommercial thinning. The study was conducted in Sala municipality and included forest owners that had received private individual advice from a Swedish Forest Agency consultant as well as forest owners that had not received individual advice. One of the central issues was to make comparisons between these two groups. The survey was carried out by telephone interviews combined with a smaller field study. The questions were designed to provide information about to what degree the forest owners had been affected by the advice and if there had been a change in the way in which precommercial thinning was performed. In terms of the amount of precommercial thinning that had been carried out, no statistically significant differences were found between the two groups.

We investigated a retirement home, where we looked at whether there are differences, disagreements or conflicts between teams who work day and night shifts. Our purpose was to examine the Heads of Unit and the employees perspectives on their perceived work situation, cooperation difficulties and why they emerged. We chose the general systems theory as our theoretical basis, which gave us the opportunity to highlight different parts that can affect the working climate and the cooperation of the working groups. The study also highlights the importance of structure, common goals, reporting and dialogue meetings. To understand the perceived work situation, we used methodological triangulation, using quantitative and qualitative methods (surveys, semi-structured interviews).

The gap between rich and poor is increasing. Economic inequality is widening on a global level but also in individual countries like the USA and Sweden. The consequences for individuals are great considering life chance, health, educational level and standard of living. The curriculum for social studies from 1994 as well as the curriculum coming in effect 2011 emphasize the importance of teaching social class as a tool to interpret development in Sweden as well as the world. Earlier studies have looked at how much and in what way textbooks discuss gender, sexuality and ethnicity but social class has been overlooked. This study examines if social class is described in textbooks written for high school. The study also analyzes in which way social class is described.

This study has its background in the debate about religion and the existence of God, which has been an ongoing issue throughout the Western cultural tradition. Today´s information society has been an impact on the increasing interest for this subject. The essay?s main task is to accomplish a rhetorical analysis of two books, Illusionen om Gud (2008) by atheist Richard Dawkins and Guds dödgrävare (2010) by Christian John Lennox, in order to investigate the authors? use of rhetorical strategies to influence their audience. The texts are studied using a qualitative approach with the theoretical basis of some well-defined rhetorical variables: ethical, logical and pathetic means of persuasion, propaganda, and the important factor that a message always is presented in a certain context in which the recipients both have their own values and subjects to general truths and common frames of reference.

The purpose of this essay is to explore how students in secondary school seek out and use information. More specifically, the essay examines how the search and use of information differs between students working in groups and students working independently. The essay draws on in-depth interviews with six students. Two different theories are used to analyse the transcripts from the interviews. The first theory consists of Carol Kuhlthau?s six different stages showing how the students? feelings, emotions and actions change during the information seeking process.

Introduction: Public health is based on the determinants of health. They mutually influence each other. Structural factors and life conditions contribute to health inequality both within and between countries. Health inequality can be seen between different social groups, which can be the cause of differences in living conditions, health behavior and disease vulnerability. One of the consequences of this is segregation which means that certain groups live apart, where this distribution can be connected to economic resources and/or ethnicity.

This diploma work has been carried out in collaboration with the building contractor Sh Bygg Fastighetsutveckling AB in Uppsala with the intention to investigate how the height of a building affects various energy aspects such as transmission losses, infiltration, and the specific energy usage. Three different reference objects have been studied. The reference objects have been simulated for four different heights in the calculation program VIP-Energy.The results show that an increase in floor number can lead to both advantages and disadvantages. As the number of floors increases, transmission losses per square meter floor area decreases. However, as the height of the building increases, the reduction rate decreases.

The aim of this thesis is to examine librarians' view on the knowledge and competence required at a small public library and how they look upon their education in retrospect. Library education in the 1970's and 1980's was mainly practical, a vocational training, but since 1995 the education results in an academic degree in Library & Information Science. Due to this, we focus on the ongoing generation shift in Swedish libraries as an aspect of knowledge and education. The empirical study is based on interviews with librarians working in minor public libraries. The informants form two groups, based on their education; ?old? ones and ?new? ones.

During the last decade a new technique in animal breeding has developed called genomic selection. It is based on estimations of the effect from genetic markers on traits that are calculated in a reference population. By genotyping individuals, genomic breeding values can then be estimated without phenotypic observations. The aim of this essay is to investigate the response of genomic selection on breeding schemes for dairy cattle. The accuracy of the genomic breeding values is affected by the proportion of observations included in the validation set and how often the equation for estimating breeding values is reevaluated.

Inventories of epiphytic lichens on Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) were conducted at three sites in east central Sweden: along the newly build motorway (Road E4), along the old road (Road 600) and in a reference site, to compare the effects of traffic pollution on lichen diversities. At each site, species richness, lichen mean sensitivity value (MK), air quality index of the forest stand/sample plot (LKI) and nitrogen impact value (N) were calculated and it was tested if there was any difference between the sites. Twenty-four species were observed in total, and Parmeliopsis ambigua and Hypogymnia physodes were the most common species at all sites. At Road E4, fewer lichen species were observed than at the other sites and this might be due to the impact of air pollution. The species richness at Road 600 was similar to that of the reference site, which might be explained by the improved air quality.

My curiosity concerning what pupils read and write during leisure time led me to gather information using a quantative method. The study's aim is to investigate which reading and writing habits they have during their time outside school. A comparison was done of pupils at school year level 3 and level 4 in two different schools with the intention of investigating the influence of social background on reading and writing habits. 137 pupils filled in survey forms and thereafter the MYSTAT statistic program was used to process the information. The results point towards that the pupils read story books both more often and for a longer time than any other type of literature and that they read them often or very seldom.

The purpose of this report is to investigate teachers views of whether pupils with Asperger Syndrome, autistic symptoms or ADHD shall go in ordinary classes or special groups. The study tells you about what difficulties these pupils often have, what adjustments they need in their schoolsituation and the positive and negative effects of joining a special group.A teacher for special needs, two teachers in special groups and two teachers in ordinary classes have been intervjued and earlier made researches have been studied.The conclusions of this study are that the decision of whether a pupil shall go in a normal class or a special group must be made individually. Most pupils who are capable to profit from the training in a normal class and pass their examination, shall go in a normal class. The greater part of the recommended adjustments are possible to do in a normal class. But it requires more resourses and teachers with better knowledges about theese handicaps..

The main aim of this master thesis was to see the process of an interactive online reference service from idea to final product. The reference service we have studied is developed and used by the Library of the National Institute for Working Life in Stockholm, Sweden and goes by the name phibi. Our goal was to review the whole realization process from the reasons why a service like this was created, how the service was introduced and implemented inside the organisation and finally what the result and consequences were for both the library staff and for the users of the service. Phibi is designed to be a tool that fosters communication between the library staff and the remote users where the users get the opportunity to be helped with their questions by the library staff although they are not physically present in the library. To understand the process we conducted a case study with 11 interviews of the library staff, the superior and the initiator to phibi.

This paper is finishing part of the two-year master programme in Industrial Engineering and Management.Initially there was an inquiry of studying the queue-times that Fläkt Woods uses when they break down internal working orders. These times were assumed to be too generalised and does not apply to the actual value of the queue-times which generates incorrect data and delivery delays. During the work of this paper it has been established that it is not the queue-times that is the biggest problem. The problem is the shop floor control and the lack of manufacturing the right products at the right time. Therefore an analysis of the production planning process was made to bring forward the real problems.

The dry period is usually 6-8 weeks and in this period the basis of the performance in the following lactation is settled. In an average herd about 15% of the cows are dry (Marcussen & Krog Laursen, 2008). In many herd the dry cows are set aside, that means setting aside 15% of your herd, at the time when they are preparing for their next lactation. The recommendation for number of groups differs depending on country traditions or reasons for grouping. If you look at recommendation for feeding, some companies selling feeding equipment advocates one group throughout the dry period, but the number differs from one to three.