Concrete floors have traditionally had no problems with annoying vibrations. However with the demand for larger spans the floors need to be made more slender with a higher degree of utilization and lower mass. Therefore new floors may have problems with vibration serviceability. This thesis studies the vibration characteristics of hollow core slabs. The analysis was made in the finite element program Ansys. The hollow core slab was subjected to a varying force simulating one person walking across the slab.

Textbooks are a very influential medium considering the fact that they often introduce students to information they have never read or heard about before, and as such they become very important in forming students? opinions on different matters. In this study I have taken a closer look at five textbooks in history that are currently being used in the Swedish upper secondary school. My aim has been to find out how East Asia is pictured and also how much space East Asian history is given in these textbooks with the postcolonial theory as theoretical basis. My study shows that East Asia is given very little space compared to Europe in these books, with an average of less than a twentieth of the number of pages that deal with European history.

Retrospective data from two stud farms, in this study named stud farm A and B, including 742 mares, was statistically analysed. Parameters included in the analysis were type of insemination, date of the first insemination, number of inseminations, the age of the mares, if the mares had a foal or not, foaling date, result of pregnancy examination (if it was done), twin pregnancy and treatments given to the mares. The pregnancy results and the treatments where compiled into a number of frequency tables in which the mares where arranged according to age, month of first insemination, foal or not and type of insemination. There was a significant difference in pregnancy result between the years at both stud farms (2001 better than 2002). At stud farm A, in year 2001, month (at start of insemination) significantly influenced the pregnancy result.

The main topic of this thesis is to evaluate the impact on the usability of web pages when using responsive web design, a concept for developing web pages whose design adapts to the screen size being used. This is done by creating a responsive prototype based on an existing web site. A number of usability tests are conducted on the two versions of the site in order to compare the time to complete the tests and to observe the behaviour of the test participants. The tests are conducted on desktop as well as on mobile devices with varying screen size.The number of test participants was relatively low, and so the quantitative result is not statistically valid. However, the conclusion is that the most effective combination is to use either of the sites on desktop format.

In May 1675, the local court in the northern Swedish parish of Nordingrå, which had approximately 1,000 inhabitants, held a preliminary investigation on 113 persons accused of witch-craft and superstition. For the majority of the 113, the main accusation was to have travelled to Blåkulla, a place where witches according to Swedish folklore participated in satanic festivities and rites led by the Devil himself. The preliminary investigation was held at the request of The Royal Witch-craft Commission. Nordingrå belonged to the province of Ångermanland, one of the Swedish provinces with the highest number of witch trials in the 1670s. The trials in Nordingrå have, more or less never been examined before, mainly due to the fact that no sentences or penalties were ever imposed.The purpose of this paper is to examine social relations and social conflicts in Nordingrå with the records from the witch trial 1675 as the primary source.

The aim of this paper is to spread some light over contract treatment from the perspective of the District Courts, Social Services and Probation Services, and understand the reason for local variation of the number of people sentenced to contractual treatment.Essential questions asked in this paper are; What advantages and disadvantages are known by the cooperating parties regarding contract treatment in comparison to prison? What parameters are considered when the cooperating parties decide upon contract treatment? What impact does the shared responsibility of cost have? What do the respondents think is the reason for the local variation?In order to answer the essential questions a qualitative and descriptive method has been used to highlight the main question of our study; What is the reason for the local variation in number of contract treatment sentences in Halmstad and Ystads district courts?The paper shows that the local variation between the Probation Services districts is dependent on the conditions to propose a contract treatment. In Halmstad it is not conditioned for the Probation Services to have a responsibility agreement with the Social Services to the same extent as for the Probation Services in Ystad..

Sweden is dependent on secure sea transport. Shorter disruption of imports of fuel and crude oil can be managed with an emergency stock, but a prolonged halt in imports creates problems. For industry, the vulnerability is greater. Fragmented production chains in combination with expenditure reductions in inventory causes a dependency on proper transport of intermediate goods in the manufacturing industry. A lengthy disruption thus involves disruption of production for both domestic consumption and for export goods containing imported parts.In order to secure shipping routes with a limited number of vessels, Mine Counter Measures (MCM) capacity is required, and according to the Armed Forces, developed with new sensors and autonomous vehicles.

Tussilago farfara, coltsfoot, is a troublesome perennial weed with deep lying rhizome, which can vegetatively generate new plants. The mechanical control of coltsfoot that is used today, "starvation", which consists of several cultivations of the soil, which fragmentises the rhizome. This results in production of new shoots, which leads to depletion of nutrient resources; as long the new plant is not allowed to establish. However, very little research has been done to investigate how the starving technique affects the regenerative ability of coltsfoot. The purpose of this experiment with coltsfoot was to investigate how fragmentation and burial depths affect the time of emergence, number of emerged shoots per rhizome fragment, number of shoots per node, and if the germination ability within nodes changes during the experiment.

The purpose of this study was to find an explanation for why Amnesty International in Sweden has seen an increasing number of members, while the number of participants at the national annual meeting has decreased.The method of the study was done with an inductive approach in which the problem has affected the choice of theory and empirical data. The empirical data has been collected through both qualitative and quantitative method in which the analysis was implemented with support by statistics and interviews.To strengthen the arguments in the paper, sociological theories on organizations are used and also theories about social movements.The conclusion of the study is that Amnesty International Sweden has undergone a transformation towards a decentralized organization because it is not longer relevant for people who are members to achieve the purpose of the organization to participate at the annual meeting. This because that these members accesses the recourses they want to achieve by working on a local level. The main conclusion of this study is that Amnesty has moved towards being an organization that to some extent are working as a social movement, where there is no longer any clear link between local work and the central board of Directors. .

The product "urinal funnel" for women has fascinated me for a long time. Not only because it solves a practical problem in a simple way, but also because it challenges our definitions of gender and behaviour. This report describes the process of making a new design for a funnel, taking material, ergonomics and construction in consideration. It also includes structuring a launching of the product in Sweden. It starts up with a large amount of information gathering, both by interviewing testgroup-perticipants, but also by researching and evaluating the range of existing funnels.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to evaluate three general query-based web search engines. The search engines chosen are Google, Yahoo! and Live Search. The topics, which where transformed into twenty queries, are based on real users? information needs, taken from an ask-a-question service.

AbstractConsider a ?uid being heated from below. The heating leads to an upward convectiveforce that is counteracted by the viscous forces of the ?uid. If the convectiveforce is large enough in comparison to the viscous forces the ?uid will be put in anunstable state.

Sisyla is a joint project between the counties of Skåne, Blekinge, Jönköping, Kronobergand Kalmar in Sweden. A geographic database has been built with the aim to study theservice situation of the area. The main purpose of this thesis is to find a method toinvestigate the quality of the Sisyla database and to apply it. The method is adjusted tothe standard ISO 19114. The agreement between the database and reality was studied ina test sample.

It is easy to see that oil has a big part in our economy, by looking at the repeated news from the media and at the stock market, where they follow the oil price very closely. Behavioral finance is about investors making small or big mistakes in the stock market. Behavioral finance describes the importance of understanding your own faults, as well as others investor?s faults. Behavioral finance emphases the importance of not assuming that the financial market is a flawless environment, but to understand the psychology behind investment decisions.

In 1999 the childbearing increased, which in combination with the closure of a number ofpreschools led to the shortage and reduced capacity in available places for youngchildren. The lack of places in preschools has led us to try to find a solution to theproblem and in order to solve the problem we have interviewed personnel of preschoolsin Halmstad. The persons we met were asked to list advantages and disadvantages oftheir preschool and also to come up with innovative solutions and new ideas of how todevelop a satisfactory preschool. This was the basis for us when we drew our drawingsand our main objective was to find a new template for the development of pre-fabricatedpreschools.When drawing a new and modern preschool a number of considerations have to be made,first of all the main objective for the children is play and playtime, a second objective issound reduction and laws about sound reduction. Another consideration is how toconstruct the building and which method to be used, for instance should industrialtechniques be considered and pros and cons be listed.The main disappointment amongst the preschool personnel was that they had noinfluence in the planning stage of the new development of the preschool.