This study aims to deepen the understanding of how belonging and community is created in one of the aesir faith communities in Sweden. The study examines the aesir faith communities ability to develop the community members religious identity as well as their understanding of the importance of cultural heritage and how it affects the members in their practices of their aesir faith. The main argument in this study is that cultural heritage creates a sense of community that makes the members want to stay and develop their religious identity together with the other members of the aesir faith community. I have used cultural heritage, symbols and rituals, belonging, community and religious identity as concepts in order to answer my research questions. The methods used in this study are participant observation during the group's public activities, as well as interviews with the members of the aesir faith community in order to confirm the analysis I made during the participant observation.

The objective of this work was to evaluate and implement a number of energy saving functions for a specific embedded system. The functions were then grouped into a number of energy levels with known properties in terms of functionality, energy consumption, and transition time between the levels.The embedded system consisted of an AT91 ARM9 processor, GSM/GPRS modem, display, Ethernet and other peripheral units. Some energy saving methods that were considered were suspend to RAM, suspend to disk, frequency scaling, and methods for saving energy in the modem, Ethernet, USB and display backlight. The functions were grouped into levels and an interface was specified for controlling the energy level.It proved possible to get known properties within the defined energy levels, even though the paritioning of functions into these levels proved to be sub-optimal in a typical application usage scenario because it was designed for mainly energy consumption, not usage.The final result is a number of energy saving functions grouped into levels, which are controllable via an application interface. Each of the levels have a known energy consumption in both loaded and un-loaded mode..

The purpose of this study is to examine how different religious traditions are portrayed in teaching materials based on news reports. The main question concerns the way in which religious practices and holidays are described and in which contexts religion is presented. The method includes a both quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The study concludes that certain religious practices are presented in a way that describes the practitioners as more faithful and homogenous than others. This was especially prominent among Muslims and to a certain extent Hindus.

The objective of this work was to evaluate and implement a number of energy saving functions for a specific embedded system. The functions were then grouped into a number of energy levels with known properties in terms of functionality, energy consumption, and transition time between the levels.The embedded system consisted of an AT91 ARM9 processor, GSM/GPRS modem, display, Ethernet and other peripheral units. Some energy saving methods that were considered were suspend to RAM, suspend to disk, frequency scaling, and methods for saving energy in the modem, Ethernet, USB and display backlight. The functions were grouped into levels and an interface was specified for controlling the energy level.It proved possible to get known properties within the defined energy levels, even though the paritioning of functions into these levels proved to be sub-optimal in a typical application usage scenario because it was designed for mainly energy consumption, not usage.The final result is a number of energy saving functions grouped into levels, which are controllable via an application interface. Each of the levels have a known energy consumption in both loaded and un-loaded mode..

This report is an attempt to clarify how religious and non-religious views-of-life [livsåskådningar] are created through the collaboration and opposition of religious and scientific elements/ideas. This with the hope of reaching a fruitful result related to the solution of world-view related conflicts, such as the ones existing between science and religion, on an individual and societal level.This is accomplished with the help of two assertions: (1) Mankind has a need to explain its existence and surroundings. (2) Religion and science has their origins in the same seed and aim to serve the same purpose, or function. Together these two assertions lay the theoretical foundations of this report which implies that all humans have an innate need of sustaining a stable world-view.The result of this report is that a final solution to world-view related conflicts are beyond reach as our mental and physical nature limits us. However there are strategies for minimizing world-view related conflicts effect on society..

In this thesis I have done a discourse analysis of the documentary movie A Jihad for Love. A Jihad for Love came out 2007 and is directed by Parvez Sharma. The documentary movie is about homosexual Muslims and their jihad, struggle, for love and to be accepted in a world where they are barely recognized as a group. My aim of the thesis was to see how the movie portrays the persons who are in the film and their relationship to Islam and who gets access to the religion. I have also analyzed if Islam can be used to strengthen the sexual identity or if it works in the opposite way.

This thesis aims to explore the representations of musicians and soundscapes on the column of Trajan in Rome. While many different parts of the column have been explored thoroughly, the musicians are not such a part. As such, this thesis aims to explore this gap in research as well as explore how the soundscapes have been represented on the column. By sorting and grouping scenes with musicians into different groups, this thesis has been able to find patterns of representation such as musicians being represented in religious scenes more often than in military scenes and the fact that there seem to be some compositional overlap between the different groups in how the musicians are represented. Grounding the thesis in a theoretical approach that uses the presumed audience and their experiences as a guide for how to represent different scenes, it is argued that part of the reason for musicians being more present in religious scenes than in military ones is because the roman audience were more aware of the actual religious soundscapes.

I wanted to focus this essay on the operative?s perspective of running religious organizations in the city of Karlstad and to see positive and negative aspects of their day-to-day life working with their organization, following up with a comparison of the difference and the similarities between those groups. After delimitating which groups I was going to examine, I implemented a qualitative study of four people, from two different religious groups, whom I performed interviews with. My method of performing these interviews and understanding the perspective of the informants, I had a semi structured interview guide along with a recent study that was opting for similar conclusions, only in a different county and with different input perspective. The result of my study showed a difference in establishment of their region but with a lot of similarities in problems with their religious and structural premises.

The previous research in the field of new religious movements has mostly focused on the spectacular parts where phenomena such as ?brainwashing? and the ?charismatic leader? have attracted both media and the scientific studies of religion. Professor Liselotte Frisks has done several enquiries about sects and new religious movements in Sweden. One of her main conclusions is that the relation between these new religious movements and the rest of society has changed; a relation that used to be characterized by conflicts and tension is now becoming more open as both parts are changing.This study does not focus on the spectacular parts. Instead I have studied something more common and general.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether cannabis use can affect cognitive functions. The method that was chosen to answer the purpose of the study was a general literature review. Article search occurred in the databases PsycINFO and PubMed. Nine articles were selected based on the study?s inclusion criteria.

Faith is a phenomenon that engages the individual into emotional, social and daily manners.Religion tends to engage the individual in different levels in the daily life. In the church communion, there is a belief to the traditional and the repeteated behaviour. This shared group is strength by ceremonies and rituals and people in this collective somehow experience another type of reality. This study has a social - psychological perspective and the purpose is to study people?s know-how of faith and why they seek religion in today´s secularized society.

In this textual analysis I have examined the book Att följa Jesus by Ulf Ekman and information from Word of Life's official website. The aim of this study is to see how a religious leader is shaping the identity of the groups members after a certain pattern that differs from the surrounding, secular society. The research focus  of this essay includes several aspects:  how a culture is formed in a religious minority in contrast to the prevailing cultural context; how the material can be explained by Paul Pruyser?s theory on the psychological worlds; how what Ulf Ekman writes about distinguishing themselves from the environment differs from how other religious minority groups distinguish their identity;  and,  how the psychological world, expected behavior, and context of Word of Life can be structured by Valerie DeMarinis? model of assessment. I have placed Word of Life in a realistic illusionistic world developed from Paul Pruyser?s theory of psychological worlds.

This report is an attempt to clarify how religious and non-religious views-of-life [livsåskådningar] are created through the collaboration and opposition of religious and scientific elements/ideas. This with the hope of reaching a fruitful result related to the solution of world-view related conflicts, such as the ones existing between science and religion, on an individual and societal level.This is accomplished with the help of two assertions: (1) Mankind has a need to explain its existence and surroundings. (2) Religion and science has their origins in the same seed and aim to serve the same purpose, or function. Together these two assertions lay the theoretical foundations of this report which implies that all humans have an innate need of sustaining a stable world-view.The result of this report is that a final solution to world-view related conflicts are beyond reach as our mental and physical nature limits us. However there are strategies for minimizing world-view related conflicts effect on society..

In the late 20th century the Soviet Union collapsed and the eastern European countries were freed from the communist Russian oppression. However, during the Soviet period Marxism was a recurring life stance in the Swedish textbooks for religious education in the gymnasieskola. Today the Soviet Union has collapsed, but the Marxist philosophy has had a huge effect on both single individuals and the modern society as a whole. Nonetheless, the Marxist life stance is nowadays often being replaced by other non- religious life stances in the textbooks of religious education.Therefore, this analysis is a hermeneutic study of the presentation of the Marxist life stance in textbooks for Swedish religious education. The purpose of the paper is to investigate how these textbooks portray the Marxist life stance, and to prove that the societal context and the individual author have an immense effect in the portrayal of both religions and life stances in religious education.

The objective of this work was to evaluate and implement a number of energy saving functions for a specific embedded system. The functions were then grouped into a number of energy levels with known properties in terms of functionality, energy consumption, and transition time between the levels.The embedded system consisted of an AT91 ARM9 processor, GSM/GPRS modem, display, Ethernet and other peripheral units. Some energy saving methods that were considered were suspend to RAM, suspend to disk, frequency scaling, and methods for saving energy in the modem, Ethernet, USB and display backlight. The functions were grouped into levels and an interface was specified for controlling the energy level.It proved possible to get known properties within the defined energy levels, even though the paritioning of functions into these levels proved to be sub-optimal in a typical application usage scenario because it was designed for mainly energy consumption, not usage.The final result is a number of energy saving functions grouped into levels, which are controllable via an application interface. Each of the levels have a known energy consumption in both loaded and un-loaded mode..