Today evidence exist that environmental chemicals deteriorate male sperm quality and that testicular cancer is increasing. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical with estrogenic effects used in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastic and are found in, for instance, plastic boxes, feeding bottles and food containers. Much of the research on how men's reproductive ability is influenced are performed on rats. This review article complies how male rat reproduction is affected by BPA as a model for humans. Studies have investigated how sperm are affected, hormonal changes during reproduction and how reactive oxygen species (ROS) affects sperm.

Background and problem:Theory and literature in the field of board recruitment are limited. The theory and literature that existed focused primarily on the recruitment of senior management and CEO. It was identified that no one had examined the factors that influence the recruitment of board members. The underlying factors might cause the board recruitment is not done from a purely efficiency perspective and therefore it is of interest to be examined.Purpose:The purpose of this thesis is to examine and give an insight into the underlying factors affecting the choice of new directors in large Swedish companies.Method:The thesis has had a deductive approach and been based on existing theory and literature to explain the factors that affect board recruitment. The study was quantitative and the sample consisted of all the major Swedish listed companies.Results and conclusions:The survey indicated that board members ethnicity and number of other board assignments were factors that influenced the board recruitment.

Libraries are often associated with positive values such as democracy and equal rights. The contents of the literature on offer should therefore be of great interest to the librarian, the supplier of said literature. The topic of this Master?s thesis is the popular literary genre known as chick lit. The purpose is to investigate the love theme in Swedish chick lit, and how it relates to Anthony Giddens? theory on love in late modernity.

The aim of this paper is to describe, visualise- and analyse media’s discursive representations of female politicians in Swedish printed media. The focus of the analysis is to show if, and how these images can be understood and interpreted in terms of a socially constructed gender stereotyped suborder. The paper takes it's theoretical and methodological departure in the discourse analysis, which is combined with feminist political theory. Feminist political theory is concretised in the use of what Yvonne Hirdman calls the "gender system" which arranges the sexes into their respective genders and is based upon two rules/principles/logics: 1) the rule of distinctive separation, and 2) the male norm. Closely related to the aim of the paper lies also the critical theoretic assumption that people has to be aware of their own part in the production and reproduction of the discourse in order to change make a change.

The purpose of this study is to identify and make attitudes among social workers towards homosexual and bisexual people visible, examine how these attitudes relate to their actions in their professional role and how these attitudes and actions can be understood by theories of heteronormativity and power. The study is a cross-sectional quantitative survey in the form of a questionnaire completed by social workers. The result shows that there are two groups among the social workers. One larger group that reproduces a norm of acceptance toward homosexual and bisexual people and one smaller that reproduces a heterosexual norm. This reproduction of heteronormativity increases the risk for homosexual and bisexual people to be made invisible and treated more negatively in contact with social workers, which in turn can lead to worse health among the clients..

Knowledge is of great importance for organizations and it is seen as an important competitive advantage to effectively preserve knowledge within an organisation. The upcoming retirement of employees born in the 1940s poses a threat because it is believed to result in a knowledge drain. The problem of preserving knowledge within the organization lies in the fact that it is partly tacit, and therefore not possible to write down or communicate in words. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how tacit knowledge is created in the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the implications thereof. We examine the following research questions: Of what significance is the creation and reproduction of tacit knowledge for the Swedish Foreign Ministry? Which factors influence the creation and reproduction of tacit knowledge and why? A case study of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs has been conducted.

The purpose of this essay is to identify how the drug user is portrayed in motion pictures. My main questions are: How is the drug use described? How is the male and female drug user depicted? How may the movies contribute to the construction, reproduction and change of gender? The method I use in my research is a qualitative, selective discourse- analysis of a number of movies prominently portraying drug use. A gender perspective is also applied on this paper.The main result of the study is that I have found that the great majority of the analyzed films portray drug use as means for something else. Drug use is often portrayed in the beginning as heavenly but changes to be depicted as problematic.

The gap between practise and theory is often described in negative words in teachers? professional lives. Learning study is a model for teachers´ professional development where a theoretical framework is used to enhance practice. The theoretical framework used by teachers in learning study is variation theory. In this study the research object is variation theory and the aim is to present how variation theory becomes a guiding principle to understand teaching and learning processes.

This master thesis concerns whether Swedish non-financial listed firms act in accordance with the optimal capital structure theory and/or pecking order theory. The examined period is 1998-2004 and we discover that Swedish companies neither follow optimal capital structure theory nor pecking order theory. From our results we conclude that there exists no single point of the capital structure which is optimal. Rather it seems as if the optimal point lies in-between an interval from 0 to the industry average, where firms tend to be indifferent to their debt-ratios. Our results show that Swedish companies prefer internal financing followed by equity and as last choice debt issuance..

In the year of 2002 a new council regulation on community designs was implemented. In the beginning of the essay the legal situtation before the implementation is investigated and part of the purpose is to evaluate if it constitutes a solution to the problems with protection of fashion designs that existed then. Because fashion designs more or less were excluded from protection during the period before the implementation the fashion business developed a habit of unauthorized reproduction. This attitude among the market players is a central point of the essay. The essay starts off with a review of the earlier lack of possibilities regarding the protection of fashion designs.

This text concerns itself with war, the just war theory, and the application of that doctrine on the ?war on terrorism?. I present different views on the theory's place in the discourse, its relevance for unconventional wars followed by the analyses of above mentioned empirical situation.Particular interest is given the criteria concerning proportionality, both ad bellum and in bello, due to in part its difficult nature, and the attention it has received from others. This paper asks the question: Is the just war theory adequate for analysis of modern war?There are few alternatives.

Our aim with this study is to investigate whether or not Utbildningsradions - which is a public broadcasting agency - educational programmes reproduce the existing gender patterns of the female and male genders. We have chosen to analyse two educational programmes, Home Farm Twins and Rena rama forntiden.We use a social constructionist theory regarding the construction and reproduction of gender and the method we have chosen to use is a qualitative content analysis to study the educational programmes.Our conclusion is that in the case of Home Farm Twins, it reproduces the current stereotypes that exist in society. Rena rama forntiden on the other hand does not, the program has got a clear gender perspective in regards to its content. Though it can be said that in some ways it does not reflect upon the gender patterns that exist in society today, to a satisfactionary extent.Utbildningsradion does not achieve its policy concerning Home Farm Twins, but on the other hand it shows that in the case of Rena rama forntiden they do own up to the standards regarding cultural diversity and creative aim..

This thesis examines how a jury on an artistic education adopts next year's students to a BA program at an art school. My intention is to explore how we established artists who are involved in education as professors, teachers (or students) in art education affects who will be released to the exclusive educational path as an art school represents our work in the admissions jury. My ambition is to create an awareness of what it might mean for the reproduction of the artist..

Syftet med denna kvalitativa intervjustudie var att med hjälp av sociologiska teorier undersöka orsakerna till att maskrosbarn trots en destruktiv uppväxtmiljö kan utvecklas till socialt fungerande människor. Maskrosbarnen i denna studie har vuxit upp med missbruk och/eller psykisk sjukdom hos föräldrar i barndomen. Data samlades in via semistrukturerade intervjuer med fyra olika teman: det sociala arvet, skola och arbete, socialt nätverk samt hälsa och välmående. Vilket vi sedan analyserade med hjälp av de teoretiska tolkningsramarna, Antonovskys teori KASAM och Bourdieus teori om Klassreproduktion. Resultaten visade att förekomsten av trygghetspersoner i barndomen samt möjligheten att uppleva en annan familjedynamik och miljö än deras egen hemmiljö har påverkat dem positivt.

Surrogacy is an arrangement in which a woman carries, delivers, and then relinquishes a baby to commissioning parents. The arrangement challenges traditional norms and definitions of reproduction, pregnancy and motherhood, and at the same time raises difficult ethical, philosophical and social questions. There is currently an ongoing debate in Sweden, where all forms of surrogacy is illegal. The debate is polemical and harsh, with advocates arguing that surrogacy is defensible on the basis of individual rights and women's right to choose over their own bodies, and those in opposition are convinced on an intersectional basis that women are being used and exposed on the market of surrogacy.The purpose of this study is to investigate the debate on surrogacy in the Swedish context. Using qualitative text analysis, the study aims to increase understanding about the debate over surrogacy by analyzing texts published in Swedish press during 2010-2013.