Inbreeding has become a problem in some horse breeds. Studies show that it may lead to inbreeding depression which affects e.g. reproduction traits. In the wild there are mechanisms that make horses avoid mating with close relatives. When selection is done by humans this mechanism is removed and intensive breeding for a few traits, for example good racing results, can become a problem.

The purpose of this essay is to look upon the gender structure in Sweden, during the late Middle Ages. Mainly I focus on how the church viewed men and women, since the material of my research, the miracle stories of three saints, was found credible and was written down by churchmen. The saints, whose miracles I have studied, are Birgitta Birgersdotter and Katarina Ulfsdotter of Vadstena and Niklas Hermansson of Linköping. These miracles have earlier been studied by the historian Anders Fröjmark, who has noticed that there are fewer heeled women than men figuring in the miracles. Because of this, Fröjmark draws the conclusion that women were less able to leave their homes and travel as pilgrims to the holy sites of the saints.

This paper aims to describe how religion teachers in Swedish schools teach concerning questions about life issues and popular culture. To research the teachers' didactic approach to these issues, didactics has been defined with three educational questions: what, how and why. The essay focuses on teachers' effective implementation of teaching on life issues and popular culture, which we used a theory of offering meaningfulness describing what subject matter that may be imparted to the students. An offer of meaningfulness can be pursued and can be made visible in the context of what and how performs the teaching and also in the context where the teacher planned the teaching elements. The method that the paper has used is the interviews of four different active religious educators in Stockholm and Uppsala area.

Since the 9/11-attacks several nations have been confronted with a new international threat, its nature traces back to the political- and religious- radical movements of the 20th century Cold War. Ever since, various states have been under threat by terrorist organizations around the world due to mainly participating in worldwide counter-terrorist interventions created by western alliances. In Sweden, amongst other countries, the state took security-precautions that would imply total control of information throughout the territorial borders. The assigned proposition was accepted by the Swedish parliament in June 18th 2008, after this date wild spread criticism was still in effect ever since the Swedish government first publicly announced the proposition in May 8th 2007. This study emphasizes on understanding why the Swedish government chose to present this proposition to parliament, in order to complete this task the study will present the motives and the alleged threats that were the core of the proposition and its value-maximizing goal of creating a new surface for Swedish homeland security.

The rates for teenage conception and motherhood in the UK are according to recent research, the highest in Wester Europe. The ongoing debate concerning these teenage pregnancies and teenage motherhood has therefore become political in a wide range. The government?s goal is to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies until the end of 2010 to prevent social exclusion among vulnerable young women. However, there is controversy in other research that describes teenage pregnancies more likely to be a result of social exclusion than its cause.The purpose of this study is to examine how young mothers in a borough of London, from their own point of view, experience their situation, their difficulties and possibilities in present and in future.

Since 2003 Saudi Arabia is under attack from domestic Al Qaida-cells which, by random shootings of westerners and bombings of compounds and official state buildings, is trying to challenge the stability of the royal regime. According to Al Qaida, the Royal family is attacked because of their friendly relations to the US and for not implementing Islam in the Saudi society as profound as they ought to. Political analyst finds it obvious that the Islamic Al Qaida-cells by terrorism is trying to erode the stability in the kingdom.An important foundation for stability for any government is legitimacy. The aim of this thesis is to examine the royal legitimacy strategy in the state bureaucracy of Saudi Arabia. The question at issue is: how has the royal family constructed the civil, military and religious bureaucracies to maintain and promote stability and legitimacy?The thesis focuses on the on three different units within these three bureaucracies and it surveys the way they are staffed and organized to strengthen and maintain legitimacy for the royal family.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate mindfulness as a New Age phenomenon in the modern western society. Since a religious phenomenon does not exist in a vacuum, but is dependent on its historical and cultural context, my aim is to give a broad depiction of mindfulness and New Age in its wider context, the historical background and the societal implications of common values, themes and concepts that are frequent in the literature, how mindfulness is presented by the authors of popular literature and also how it is presented in science. In order to bring forward a deeper understanding of New Age and mindfulness? role in the modern western society, my intention is to see how the authors of mindfulness claim validity of their doctrines in the discourse. Mindfulness attracts a wide range of perpetrators and is used in many areas in the society today.

The purpose of this study is to examine if Muslims and Jezidier from the Middle East experience changes in them self when they live in Sweden and how they feel about apply for work in the Swedish labour market. The study uses the individualistic - collectivistic dimension to describe the differences between the Swedish culture and the participants home culture. A phenomenological, theoretical and methodological approach has been followed, with self-reports as the instrument for data collection. The information where analysed through the softwares MCA - Minerva and Sphinx-Lexica. The analyses show many different outcomes.

Within this essay a study is made of an LGBTQ-orientated Christian service in Stockholm called Queer Service. The following questions seek to be answered: What reasons does an individual set for his/hers participation in Queer Service? Which aspects of a queer service highlight the participants as important to them?As a method to answer these questions, the author has observed a number of queer church services in autumn of 2012. Moreover communication within the group of the assembly on the social media page Facebook has been followed and five individuals from the Queer Service congregation have been interviewed. As a background to the study, the European religious climate seen from Grace Davies eyes is depicted.  The reader also learns of how the Swedish church has handled questions about homosexuality and bisexuality and what liberation theology is.

Abstract In order to make the modern agriculture less dependent on non-renewable external inputs, it has to rely more on ecosystem services. The agricultural system produce not only food, fiber and fuel, it also generates other ecosystem services such as e.g. photosynthesis, recycling of nutrients, influencing local microclimate, pollination, biological control and detoxification of noxious chemicals. This study is an attempt to get a better understanding about the interaction among different ecosystem services and different habitats capacity to generate them. An evaluation of eight different methods is done. The ecosystem services studied are the ability to absorb solar energy, biomass production, botanical diversity, decomposition and natural predation of aphids.

What does the Swedish church Västerås stand for today according to the employees and how do they want to profile themselves to the target group? What image and what expectations does the target group have of the Swedish church Västerås? How can the Swedish church Västerås communicate uniform, with the intent to create mutual value with the target group?The purpose of the study is to make recommendations to the Swedish church Västerås for their prospective communication plan by examining their profile and target group's image and expectations of the organization. The study also aims to examine how the Swedish church Västerås can communicate their brand uniform.The study applies a qualitative research with deductive approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with a sample of the employees and focus groups with a sample of the target group.Better match between profile and image means that SkVs employees better understand the organization and can communicate more uniform which leads to a stronger brand identity. If SkV understands what is relevant for their target group, they can reduce the total cost of customer delivered value and thus increase the total value.

In the years between 2012 and 2014, Burma has been shaken by waves of violence against Muslims which has resulted in destroyed mosques and shops, at least 140 000 displaced and 200 killed persons. The person who is said to lay behind this violence is the Burmese Theravada monk Ashin Wirathu. Being the founder and leader of the radical Buddhist movement 969, he has been accused of indirectly motivating violence against Muslims and has been portrayed with titles such as ?The face of buddhist terror?. This essay investigates the relation between Wirathu and the anti-Muslim violence by applying the method of content analysis on a speech of him.

By examine cremated remains from graves dated to late Iron Age I wanted to find out what sorts of animals were placed in the graves. But also to see if the animal sacrifices had any connection to the Old Norse religion. The osteological material that were analysed were from both cremated humans and animals and had been dated to Viking Age. The material is from burial ground 59 at Laxare, Boge parish on Gotland. In addition to the human remains, the material contains bones from horse, cattle, sheep/goat, pig, dog, cat, bear, birds and fish.

AbstractSweden has over the past years grown into a multicultural society which has caused that people with numerous variances of religion and cultures have to interact. This essay will be based on several primary school teacher?s experiences with immigrant families. The purpose of this essay is finding out how they are introduced and integrated in Swedish primary schools by the teachers.I?ve interviewed six primary teachers that shared what they?ve experienced with immigrant families.

This two year master thesis examines the Swedish prison library's history during cell prison era.The investigation extends from the mid-1800s well into the 1900s. The purpose is to investigate theprison library by using a power concepts influenced by Michel Foucault. The questions revolvearound the ideas that formed the basis for the prison library and how the prison library was organizedin practice. Three types of sources are used to answer the essay questions and illustrate its pro -blems. Firstly, annual reports concerning the swedish prison system.