The aim of this study is to describe and understand the reasons to why people choose to become foster parents. By using the theory of action we wanted to investigate their intentions rather than their motives. The questions we wanted to answer where: How do the foster parents describe their reasons for becoming a foster home? What reasons do they give fore keeping on being foster parents? How do they comprehend their task and the fulfilling of it? The study was performed by utilizing qualitative interviews with five foster parents, four women and one man. In the analysis we used the theory of action as a theoretical perspective.

The aim of this study is to describe and understand the reasons to why people choose to become foster parents. By using the theory of action we wanted to investigate their intentions rather than their motives. The questions we wanted to answer where: How do the foster parents describe their reasons for becoming a foster home? What reasons do they give fore keeping on being foster parents? How do they comprehend their task and the fulfilling of it? The study was performed by utilizing qualitative interviews with five foster parents, four women and one man. In the analysis we used the theory of action as a theoretical perspective.

no abstract available.

The town square is an important public space and is often described as the city´s living room. By creating a lively city center a sense of security is developed among the citizens which makes them wanting to use the town square regardless the time of the day. One important meeting point in Gävle is the centrally located Stortorget, sited between Drottninggatan and Nygatan. The town square went through an extensive renovation followed by both positive and negative reactions among the City´s inhabitants.  The aim with the study was to investigate the main walking paths and meeting points as a planning support to Gävle Municipality in their work with a new city plan. By studying the pedestrian movement patterns at Stortorget, Nygatan and Drottninggatan, the main walking paths and meeting points during all hours of the day was obtained.

In 1996, the Swedish government deregulated the Swedish electricity market. As a consequence of the deregulation, Swedish customers could start to freely choose between different electricity companies. Different enterprises have tried various strategies in order to shape their image to attract new customers; often focusing on an image revolving around price and environmental friendliness.The purpose of this essay has been to analyze customers? relations to the electricity market. In order to analyze customers? relations a quantitative study has been conducted; focusing on customer satisfaction and customer commitment.

For systems with multicore processors contention for shared resources is a problem that occurs when several memory-intensive processes are executed in parallel within the same memory domain. This contention has a direct influence on the performance of the system and is a complex problem that has been recognized for a long time. An attractive and actively studied way to minimize this problem is by using a process scheduler adapted to allocate processor cores in a way such that contention for shared resources is minimized.With the introduction of multicore NUMA-systems (Non-Uniform Memory Access) the situation has become even more complex. In these systems the access time for processor cores to different memory domains vary depending on factors such as distance and load. Thus, the process scheduler also has to consider where the memory of each process is placed to minimize the distance and balance the load on each memory domain.This report presents a user-level process scheduler for a NUMA-system based on the multicore processor Tilera TILEPro64.

The purpose of this study is to present a comparative analysis of seven literature anthologies for the Upper Secondary School, from 1968-2004, to investigate how much space Esaias Tegnér is getting and how many and which of his works that is presented in these anthologies.The study is set against the hypothesis that Tegnér is getting a reduced space in the anthologies because of his connection to Romantic nationalism, which after World War II has been associated to the themes and ideology of the National Socialism. In view of this I have asked myself if Tegnér is getting a reduced space in the literature anthologies for the Upper Secondary School. My study shows that this is the case.One can also see clear trends in a subjective approach towards the author. In the anthologies where Tegnér have had a strong prominent role, he is retaining his position even in later editions. Over the entire period of 1968-2004 he is getting a less prominent role, although he is generally presented as the greatest poet of his time.I have also examined the discussion of Tegnér during that period to see if you can find any connection between the discussion about Tegnér and the change his work gets in the literature anthologies.

This essay will discuss the Roman God Janus, as a figure of speech, in four different texts written by Publius Ovidius Naso, Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon and Elijah Fenton. The Janus figure could also illustrate the relationship between the past, the present and the future, because of the attributes of looking back and forward, in both space and time, that Janus was said to possess. Reinhard Koselleck's ideas of space of experience and horizon of expectation will be used as an analytical approach, thus creating a dual purpose for this essay. On one hand to understand texts about Janus, which implies an understanding of the changes over time associated with the history of ideas of Janus, and on the other the past's importance in relation to the future, which includes an understanding of Janus via Koselleck's thesis about the change in relationship between experience and expectation.The question formulations are as follows: How has the Janus motive changed over time in the researched texts? How can the literary use of Janus show the changed relationship between the space of experience and the horizon of expectation, and in a wider context between the past and the future? Janus has gone from being a physical presence, as the arcs of the Forum Romanum in ancient Rome, to becoming a tool for authors, one that spans many literary rooms.

?Syftet med detta kandidatexamensarbete var att undersöka hur utformningen av gångpassager på spårväg påverkar olycksrisken för fotgängare. En inventering av faktorer som påverkar planeringen av gångpassager, skyddsanordningar och statistik har gjorts för att skapa en överblick över utformningen av gångpassager på spårväg.För att bedöma hur trafiksäkra olika typer av utformningar är, har fallstudier utförts i Stockholm, Göteborg och Norrköping där fotgängarna som passerade på gångpassagerna studerades. Under fallstudierna noterades allvarliga konflikter mellan fotgängare och spårvagnar samt riskfyllda beteenden från fotgängarnas sida.I studien påvisas att det finns ett samband mellan utformningen av en gångpassage och olycksrisken. Det verkade dock inte vara så att det fanns typutformningar som alltid är mer trafiksäkra än andra utformningar.De faktorer som också visade sig ha inverkan på risken att en olycka inträffar var sikten, vilken typ av plats det är, trafiksituationen i övrigt och uppmärksamheten hos fotgängarna.

In this thesis my purpose is to study the mechanisms and discourses that are the foundations for identification processes, in a contemporary society characterised by increased mobility. By means of a fictitious life history, I relate to this problem constantly through the work. At the beginning of the essay I discuss the traditional, western, philosophical view of the self and its surroundings, which eventually leads me to focus on the theories of the sociology of knowledge. From this perspective I choose to examine globalisation processes and mobility, to create an understanding of how these two, changes the circumstances for the individual identification. In my concluding argument I stress that all research or all studies concerning identification processes must take into account that these identifications always take place with regard to time/place which also means, that it takes place both in real space and in imaginary space.

Arbetets syfte är att undersöka och diskutera om fysisk utformning kan bidra till eller förebygga segregation, samt att jämföra olika principer för att minska rumslig uppdelning och ge ökade möjligheter till social interaktion. Fokus är hur stadens struktur och utformning bidrar till, eller försvårar, att människor befinner sig på samma offentliga platser samtidigt, vilket skapar möjlighet att se och blir sedd av andra människor. Att se och bli sedd av andra människor är något som flera forskare lyfter som viktigt för att bli ömsesidigt medvetna om varandras existens, och minska uppdelning i ?vi? och ?dem?. I arbetet undersöks Nedre Norrby i Borås med hjälp av space syntaxverktyg och Gehls kvalitetskriterier.

"The choreography of fear" is a discourse-analysis study which focus at how young men speaks about fear, threat and violence in the public everyday life. The study adopts socialcontructionism as theoretical approach and also uses theories about gender, hegemony masculinity, fear as a social constructed phenomenon and moral-panic. The study is based on qualitative interview whit young men in age 18-30 and the method is mainly discourse-psychology. The section of Analysis discuss subjects as what and whom the young men consider to be a threat and which areas in the public space they consider to be dangerous and how they choose to handle the menace. The Analysis also focuses on how the informants speak about fear, how they define fear and what they consider arouse fear..

Den tekniska utvecklingen driver fram allt mer avancerade datorsystem. Samtidigt ställs allt större krav på stabilitet och flexibilitet i de operativsystem som ska användas på dessa system. De senaste årtiondena har micro kernel arkitekturen varit föremål för intensiv forskning och det finns idag ett flertal operativsystem på marknaden som använder denna arkitektur. Traditionella monolitiska operativsystem är relativt resurskrävande system som ofta anklagats för att sakna struktur. Micro kernel baserade system är en lösning på detta problem där man bantat ner kernel till så lite som ett tiotal kilobyte och flyttar ut tjänster som normalt ligger i kernel till user space.

Dagens städer är byggda och formade med en stor ojämnlikhet i hur utrymmet fördelas mellan olika fordon och transportslag. Parkeringar längs med vägar fungerar endast som förråd åt bilar. Gator har blivit transportsträckor utan någon riktig identitet.Hur kan vi återta och omprogrammera en del av dessa parkeringar? Fokus ligger på hur man genom små förändringar på flera olika platser kan ta tillvara på de lokala krafter som finns och samtidigt skapa en levande och dynamisk stad.Syftet är att skapa en grogrund för en stadsutveckling på en gräsrotsnivå och som sedan kan påverka i vilken riktning våra städer utvecklas och förändras. Målet är att omdefiniera det publika rum mellan stadens byggnader, som idag till stor del upptas av motorfordon, till att bli något nytt och berikande åt staden som helhet..

The purpose of this essay is to further the understanding of contemporary management theory by conducting an analogy-study of the source to many of the terms today used in knowledge-intensive companies. The way a football club deals with knowledge work differs from how a conventional company deals with it. However, many of the terms, such as teamwork and coaching, are shared by the two types of organization. By using the analogy-method we hope to create a wider understanding for the shared concepts. We have used a hermeneutic perspective throughout the essay, which first and foremost means that we focus on understanding and explaining social phenomenons.