I have in this thesis looked at the reasons for why boys, in upper school classes, read so little fiction. Several surveys show that boys in their teenage years stop reading fiction. If they read fiction it is only as a school assignment and not as leisure. There has been research done in boys attitude towards literature, but there hasn?t been any research done asking them about why they don?t read fictionI have interviewed a group of boys about their reasons, and attitude, for why they don?t choose to read fiction on their spare time after school.

This study aims to examine how adolescents with diabetes describe and value their experience of participating in a support group and how they describe the issues of being a teenager with diabetes. This is a qualitative study and we have interviewed three young women who have been participating in a support group. The results of the interviews were analyzed through a phenomenological method and then compared to earlier research and interpreted through symbolic interactionism and Erikson's development-theory, which were our theories of choice. Our findings support earlier research when stating that support groups are important and necessary for adolescents with chronic illnesses. Our interviewees stated that they think that one of the most important benefits of support groups is to meet other people in their situation; same age and same chronic illness..

Today it?s common that companies and organizations are facing several challenges and problems when it comes to making their IT-environment more efficient. Some of these are the management of user?s computers and file security. Comput-er users are often tied to their personal computer due to personal programs and files.

The saw blade producer, Håkansson Sågblad AB, patented in the U.S. a new blade profiledesigned specially to cut fish and meat. The most important advantage of that blade is that its teethare not set, therefore the material lost when cutting is really smaller. The special geometry of thatprofile made that nobody had found a proper way to produce it before.The goal of the outlined work is to develop a machine to produce these new blades in afeasible way.The research approach of the project can roughly be divided into three phases:1.- Invention and development of a proper distribution of blades to produce a big amount ofthem at the same time.2.- Research of the best production process to produce the blades.3.- Main design of the machine to produce the blades.In the Thesis these three points are carefully developed and studied in the form of the startpoint of a really bigger project. Some tests had been done in order to prove all the analytical ideasand the results obtained had been satisfactory enough to give Håkansson the start point of a bigbusiness.

The purpose of this bachelor?s thesis is to examine how students at Högskolan i Borås experience the web-scale discovery service Summon, based on the theoretical model of ?The Five Dimensions of Usability?, defined by Whitney Quesenbery. The study aims to answer the following research questions: How do the students execute search assignments in the Summon interface? How intuitive and easy to navigate is the system from a user perspective? What are the students? opinions about Summon, regarding usability?Five students with varying information seeking skills are asked to perform search assignments during controlled observation, followed by semi-structured interviews. Our findings are presented in the context of previous research and show correspondence with the results of related studies.

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the quality of the social network in regard to young adults, with psychological disorders, and their possibilities to be open about their disease. In addition the study aimed at identifying possible causes to perceived difficulties by young adults to talk about their disease. Method: The survey was a quantitative study with descriptive design. The data was collected using a study-specific questionnaire on a clinic for young adults with psychological disorders, between 18 and 25 years of age. Out of 123 potential participants 79 (64 %) answered the questionnaire, of which two were excluded because they did not see themselves as suffering from mental illness. Results: The results showed that the participants of the study stated that they had a social network and the majority (90%, n=69) considered they had someone to talk to about their disease, but most of them wanted to be more open about their illness.However, the majority had some form of difficulty to talk about their disease with their social network. The most common specified causes were to feel ashamed of their disease and that the mentally ill persons did not think they would be properly understood.Almost the half of the participant experienced that they had some form of difficulty to be open about their mental disorder in front of health professionals and the most common specified causes was that the participant did not thought that they would be properly  understood  or that they did not felt confidence before the health professionals. Conclusion: Young adults with psychological disease have difficulty to be open about their disease, partly because of stigma.

Genusfrågor är ett aktuellt ämne som leder till engagemang och väcker stor uppmärksamhet såväl i Sverige som internationellt. Ämnet diskuteras även till stor del inom svensk polis där arbete med jämställdhet pågår på vid front. Utifrån våra kontakter med olika polismyndigheter tycker vi att vi kan ana vissa tendenser som tyder på att kvinnliga och manliga poliser lever kvar i gamla traditionella könsroller då det gäller val av yrkesinriktning. Syftet med denna rapport blev därför att ur ett genusperspektiv undersöka om dagens polisstudenter faller in i ett liknande mönster. Tidigare studier pekar på liknande observationer som förstärker att manliga och kvinnliga poliser ofta tilldelas olika roller ute på myndigheterna och i samhället.

Abstrakt I detta arbete undersöks hur konceptet lek går att applicera på digitala spel och hur man presenterar ett fiktivt universum och de regler som definierar det universumet. Syftet med denna undersökning är att öka kvaliteten på digitala spel för spelare genom att öka förståelsen för hur sådana regler introduceras. Frågeställningen som ämnas att besvaras är ?hur kan man introducera realistiska, semi-realistiska och fiktiva regler i ett spel??. Undersökningen baseras delvis på analyser kring varför vissa introduktioner av regler ofta accepteras och andra inte, dels på utvärdering av en gestaltning och dels på tidigare forskning.

Institutional repositories are now being created to manage, preserve, and maintain the digital assets and intellectual output of a university. The incentives to change the process of scholarly communication have also begun serving as a strong motivator. There are problems to consider and questions to be solved when dealing with electronic publishing and the implementation of institutional repositories. At present time no summary exists regarding the activities of scholarly electronic publishing at Swedish universities and university colleges.This Master's thesis aims to describe the current situation regarding electronic publishing and the development of institutional repositories at Swedish universities and university colleges. To investigate the situation, a questionnaire was sent out to 38 academic libraries since they are normally responsible for the electronic publishing within institutions of higher education.

This essay is about the origin, planning and establishment of the European Space Research Organisation's (ESRO) sounding rocket base Esrange outside Kiruna in Northern Sweden. Three main questions are examined. First I show there were not just scientific and technical but also political, economical as well as military reasons to build a European rocket base. Second, I scrutinize the reasons to choose Northern Sweden as the location for the rocket base. As it turns out, the main reasons were the favourable location of Northern Sweden within the aurora oval zone, the proximity of the Kiruna Geophysical Observatory, and the possibility to use a large, although not quite uninhabited, area where the launched rockets could crash.

?The new labour party? A study of the labor-market policy ideas of the Moderata samlingspartiet and their ideological change?Thesis in Political Science (C-level) at Karlstad University byJenny Ljung, Fall 2006Tutor: Susan MartonThe labour-market policy of the Swedish Moderaterna may have undergone changes in the liberal ideology. During the election the year 1991 Moderaterna focused upon questions that concerned the economic growth and the free market. In the election at year 2006 Moderaterna appointed themselves as ?the new labour party? and were called social liberals by several critiques.

This thesis primarily includes a study on whether companies can develop a mathematical activity that supports students' motivation in mathematics. The work was done together with Midroc Electro, a company that pays attention to the difficulty of recruiting and therefore was interested in investigating how the business world would be able to contribute.The thesis can be divided into three stages. The first part comprised by a exploration into research on student motivation regarding mathematics as well as numerous interviews with engineers to see how the research findings did fit with Midroc Electros reality. In these studies it became clear that the student who aims for a profession whose education or work requires math belongs to the group of students who primarily manage their studies in mathematics, that is, those that have the greatest motivation to work hard and complete their studies.Research information and interviews were compared and resulted in the thesis second part, Midroc Challenge. An activity where students primarily came to learn about the engineering profession and secondly how mathematics can be used in the engineering profession.

Recent research in classrooms has often had its focus on the pupil, the individual, and not on the different groups of students that exist. In a classroom there are normally several different groupings, each one having its own personal attitude towards the current lesson. If there had been more research we would find it easier to understand why pupils sometimes behave the way they do.The purpose of this essay is to analyze how pupils` social relations create groupings. Furthermore I intend to investigate how and why pupils show their belonging to a certain group.The two questions of the essay are:1. How pupils? social relations appear in a classroom?2.

Many of the schools premises are neglected and the physical environment has not been prioritised. Instead the focus is set on scientific learning methods and pedagogic. The need for an environmental shift has not got an essential place in the governing documents for schools, although the focus on school premises should be suited to the purpose of the activity and for the pupils needs. Today the interest and the need of research within the physical environment is evermore increasing. The Swedish Work Environment Authority, present in their activityplan for 2006, that the schools premises and equipment is not adjusting to today?s activity and it is in bad condition that can lead to work-related injuries.The purpose of this essay is to bring to light a different pedagogic train of thought around the surrounding environments importance, for students learning and to compare these with our study of a selection of classrooms and what the teachers to these classrooms consider about the environments importance.

Social games have become a digital phenomenon over the last few years, affecting a lot of peoples everyday life. This paper focuses on how social games can affect workplace relationships. Through qualitative interviews I investigate how people who play with their colleagues experience the social games and their influence on the social interaction in the workplace. 10 interviews were carried out with people from four different organizations. The findings from these interviews were then put in relation to previous research and existing theories concerning workplace relationships and social games.