The southern part of Sweden, Skåne, is frequently exposed to storms causing great damage to Norway spruce (Picea abies L. Karst.) stands. A storm during the winter 1999/2000 raised the attention of the problem. A lot of forest owners got large areas of spruce stands wind thrown during this storm. Can naturally regenerated birch (Betula sp.) be an alternative on these wind-exposed sites? This was the main question I was facing when discussilig the problems with Esben Möller Madsen, Söderåsens forest district. The aim of this master thesis was to present an economic analysis of Norway spruce versus birch.

The background to this project came from my interest for letters and how to make a typeface. The result is the lowercase letters for this typeface, and the journey to learn the process of making it..

The purpose of this essay is mainly to study the reason behind students' visits to restaurants, and also their restaurant habits. The study also intends to find a possible difference in students dining habits among the different social classes; working class and middle class.  This study contains qualitative methods. The qualitative research method is in the shape of deep interviews with ten students from different social classes who?s registered at Södertörns  högskola. The results of this investigation show that the consumer society along with the respondent?s habitus and access to capital, has influenced and created their opinions and habits around eating out. This has also created the similarities and differences between them. Keywords:Habtitus, consumption, restaurant, social class, consumer society.

In the future the Swedish pension system will face major problems. With an increasing aging population combined with a decreasing share of working population the financing of the pension system is becoming a bigger problem than previously predicted. This means the individual himself will have a bigger responsibility to invest money for their future retirement. It has been shown that a large proportion of the people who invests for their future pension have neither the interest nor the time to actively invest their pension capital. To make it easier for those who invest for their retirement, some Swedish banks have created so-called generation funds.

The purpose of this study is to provide a description of how mathematics teachers in grades 3 choose to work with mathematics and how it affects of student performance in national tests. The categories I will use are outdoor education, textbooks, learning materials and problem solving. Laboratory materials can be everyday materials and educational materials in which pupils have an abstract understanding of the subject. This survey was conducted through interviews and observations. The survey was also conducted in relation to student performance in national math tests.

Abstract This essay has grown out of an interest for the subject of religion and religious education for upper secondary pupils in Sweden. Our society is characterized by cultural, religious and secular diversity, which also reflects in the classroom where individuals with different religious preferences share space and participate in discussions. One of my aims is that this essay can be a contribution for future studies in the religious field. Previous research has shown that Swedish pupils increasingly lose interest in the subject of religion (on a personal level but also more in general). There is a possibility that this picture might have changed since these studies where done, and that is what I want to investigate in this essay.

This masters thesis examines the reading environment during "booktalk", with special reference to a reading project in compulsory comprehensive and upper secondary schools in Stockholm. The main question is: What does the reading environment look like during booktalk? Three questions are asked: Which factors affect the reading environment? Which are the conditions concerning book selection and book availability? How do the librarians perform as enabling adults? Different groups of pupils, together with their teachers and the librarian, are studied during booktalks in five schools. The study uses a qualitative approach, which takes the form of open observations during 15 booktalks and one interview with the two librarians involved in the project and studies of literature. The theoretical framework is Aidan Chambers theory relating to reading environment and its effects upon the reading process.

Erosion in coastal areas is a common problem all around the world. The range of the problem depends on several factors, i.e. type of bed-rock and soil, wind and wave climate. Another factor is whether the area is of high interest, i.e. if the area is important for tourism and recreation, if there are houses and other buildings close to the shoreline or if it is a site of special scientific interest.

The purpose of the essay Multi criteria analysis of potential conflicts concerning land use planning - natural stone mining in Lysekil municipal is to study possibilities and limitations in GIS based multi criteria analysis as a tool for land use planning. How GIS based multi criteria analysis can be implemented to localize potential conflict areas between natural stone mining and other land use activities and what advantages and disadvantages the method holds are the main issues of this study. The essay studies these questions through a case study, concerning the geographical area of Lysekil municipal in western Sweden and problematizes the interest of natural stone mining in relation to other land use interests. A literature study was carried through, concerning multi criteria analysis and planning. After collecting and processing of data the multi criteria analysis could be implemented in the ArcGIS tool Weighted Sum.

Natura 2000 is part of the European Union: s framework to protect and preserve biological diversity. Natura 2000- areas are by the goverment appointed to areas of national interest for preserving nature. Also wind power stations are appointed as of national interest and the reason for this is the goverments goal to get energy from reneweble energysources. This essay describes when both these intrests conflict eachother when it comes to building wind power stations within Natura 2000- areas. The main focus of this essay is a casestudy of two cases from two different counties, Dalarna- and Norrbotten county, where applications have been made to build wind power stations within existing Natura 2000- ares, both cases have reached the court dealing with enviromental issues.

The aim of this thesis is to fill a knowledge gap regarding how online players use libraries, their attitude towards libraries and what they want out of future libraries. We see it as a problem that the library world of today does not have much knowledge about an audience that is so prevalent in society.The theory used in the thesis is Henrik Jochumsen, Casper Rasmussen Hvenegaard & Dorte Skot-Hansens model that divides libraries into four functions. The four functions are meetings, knowledge, inspiration and experiences. In the analysis we added a suggested fifth function, a digital space, giving the digital interaction and information needs of today´s society. The method was focus groups on online forums for gamers.

Social phobia is a fear which limits a person's capabilities in daily situations. The fear can be so strong that a person can distance themselves from all social situations, for example education, marriage, sports activities etc. The purpose of this study is to discover whether there are any correlations between social fear and choice of educational program, between social fear and sex, and between social fear and Internet use. Questionnaires were administered to 80 upper secondary pupils. Each questionnaire answer was assigned a certain score, which was then coded in SPSS, the highest scores corresponding to highest degrees of shyness.

The aim of this study was to identify what kind of masculinity is shown in 54 articles of the Swedish lifestyle magazine Magazine Café of 1993 and 2008, and in which way this masculinity may be different from eachother.The study included four magazine issues of each year with analysis focus on main articles and abolishment of reviews and press items.  The method was semiotic analysis with focus on manly characteristics and stereotypes. The result showed that the normative man pictured in Magazine Café in 1993 was a man?s-man interested in manly characteristic business as sports, outdoor adventures and women. Fifteen years later not much has changed. The manly characteristics are the same but they have been complemented with a man-by-man accepted and homosexually inspired vain..

The purpose of this study was to examine domestic adoptions in Sweden, and also compare the Swedish adoption system to the Canadian adoption system. I wanted to find out why there are so few domestic adoptions in Sweden, and how it has changed over the years. I also wanted to know why there is such a large difference between Sweden and Canada regarding adoptions.I interviewed five social workers to find out what attitudes the social services have regarding adoptions. My other questions were how the childs best interest is considered when a parent wants to place a child in an adoptivefamily, and which parents decide to place their child instead of keeping it.I found that the social services are reluctant to place children in adoptivefamilies because their main goal is to keep biological families intact. In Canada the social services goal is to provide the child with a safe and stable home.There is no longer any stigma surrounding single mothers and well developed welfaresystems enable most to keep their children.

The main purpose of this study was to examine own and social influence on perfectionismwith individual athletes. The participants (n= 96) of this study represented ten different sportsand their ages was between 15 and 44. An interview with four of the participant wasconducted. The instruments used for this study was the Positive and Negative PerfectionismScale (Terry-Short et al., 1995) and for the interviews questions was based on own and socialinfluence. The results showed that there was a relationship between positive perfectionismand own influence, negative perfectionism and own influence, negative perfectionism andsocial influence.