Drawing from the theoretical foundations of the ?critical theory? of the Frankfurt School and the media ethnographic ?cultural studies? approach of the british Birmingham School, this study attempts to sketch out a media theoretical overview of the contemporary state of media culture. Using the term convergence culture as the foundation, this study offers a theoretical background to the two contemporary streams that are the significant and distinct tendencies of convergence culture: intermedial convergence, its contemporary state and historical tendencies that can be traced back using the past media theoretical approach of the Frankfurt School, and cultural convergence, its contemporary state and historical tendencies, which lineage in a media theoretical context can be traced back to the british ethographic ?cultural studies? field. Using contemporary drama serials to identify and pinpoint these two stream, this study shows how intermedial convergence expresses itself today through media conglomeration in terms of branding, product placement and marketing as the result of the ?completed? convergence between screen culture and popular music as the current defining state of commodity culture.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to investigate children?s access to specific children?s activities at Swedish public libraries 2005. The thesis is based on literature studies and qualitative interviews with children?s librarians, library directors and local politicians at two demographically different libraries in Gothenburg.The sub questions are: What measures exist to promote children?s access to public libraries and children?s activities when it comes to: law and other political statements: different efforts on the state level and different efforts on the municipal level in the direct activity with children at public libraries? What driving forces and needs justify activities for children at public libraries? How will the responsible persons judge that the efforts are sufficient? The result of the study shows that children?s access to library activity has increased in the last couple of years due to reorganization, economic savings with closing down of library affiliates and because libraries have given priority to other things, like IT and new media. Children?s librarians have got new assignments and less time for children?s activity.The conclusion of our investigation is that children?s librarians are ambitious in their work, but unfortunately don?t give children?s library activity adequate resources.

The number of data centers and their capacity is increasing throughout the world. Theenergy used in these data centers and the emissions from the use are increasing at thesame rate. The total use of energy will double from 2008 to 2011 based on the trends indata centers use. Research in this area says that the emissions from data centers willhave surpassed the level of airline traffic in 2020. The index used today to compare howefficient a data center is, called PUE, is lacking some information.

The purpose with this study was to systematically examine scientific studies of audiologic group rehabilitation. The definition of audiological rehabilitation was explored, different variables that influence the result and how the outcome measures should be done and its relationship with the goals of audiologic rehabilitation. The method used was a literature study. Pubmed and Cinahl were used for the search of literature. Some articles were searched from scientific studies reference lists and also advice from the supervisor.The result from the different studies shows that the effect of rehabilitation varies as there are many aspects that have an affect on the outcome measure.

For Swedish companies to compete with low wage countries, developments in theproduction industry moved towards streamlining the entire company. One of themost effective ways for a company to streamline their operations is to review theirproduction. All companies have processes in their production that add no value tothe product. In order to compete, they must be eliminated.The purpose of this report is to reduce work in process (WIP) in the flow ofbashus at Volvo Powertrain in Köping. The aim is also to try to find reasons whyVolvo Powertrain feel that they have problems with the storage principle First in-First Out (FIFO).To meet the objective, empirical studies were conducted at the company whilethe literature in the area was studied.

Within the last year many companies have proactively started to communicate their flaws and weaknesses, believing that this will lead to they being perceived as more personal and human. Dominos Pizza is one of many examples of a company using this practice as a strategic tool for communication. However, the problem concerning the above arises as we found that there was a very limited amount of research defining the effects of communicating flaws, where the company's both dispatcher and initiator. Our study aims to fill the gap between this growing trend and the limited research explaining the communication effects. The study was carried out as an experiment where a total of 420 respondents participated.

During the Swedish banking crisis in the early 1990?s, the government paid out 65 billion Swedish kronor to save Swedish banks from bankruptcy. In the process, two banks left the private sector to be taken over by the state. This thesis builds on a study from 1998 in seeking to quantify the financial end result for the Swedish government from the subsidies. Taking a cash flow approach and accounting for the time difference, it starts with the money paid out during the years of crisis and subtracts the money that has since been returned to the government by successful management of the relinquished assets.

Attitudes towards violence were assessed using both implicit (The Single Category Implicit Association Test; Karpinski & Steinman, 2006) and explicit measurements (a Feeling Thermometer). A group of criminals showed more positive explicit and implicit attitudes towards violence than a group of non-criminals. In addition, The Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992) revealed significant differences in aggression between the groups; criminals' mean scores were higher on all four subscales (physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility). Furthermore, significant correlations were found between all the measures, including the implicit and explicit attitude measures. The findings support the validity of the SC-IAT as an implicit measure of violent attitudes.

Energy supply in Sweden year 2011 amounted to 577 TWh. The final energy consumption for industrial, residential and service was 379 TWh. Sweden has energy policy goals to reduce energy use in buildings. One of these goals is to reduce the energy use by 20 % in 2020 compared to the year 1995. An important step to achieve this goal is to target energy efficiency measures in existing buildings.

The North-American sociologist Michael Lipsky has characterized social workers as street-level bureaucrats with a substantial discretion in the relationship between the welfare state and its citizens. Within Lipsky´s theoretical framework social workers appear as a powerful group that socializes the citizens to uphold certain expectations towards the welfare state and its (re)distributional programs. From this point of view, it is important to learn more about social workers and the attitudes they express towards the welfare state. The aim of this study is to analyze how the welfare-political attitudes of future social workers are affected by their social background (e.g. class background and ancestral homeland).

Approximately 400 people in Sweden die each year by lung cancer caused by radon gas. Authorities have in recent years invested big resources and organized campaigns to encourage people to take action against high occurrence of radon in residences. With low frequency of applications for radon allowances as the main measure, a lot interprets on a very low commitment. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the reasons for the low commitment among people. The study is based on a questionnaire survey sent to 444 house owners in Uppsala.

The Swedish group contribution rules entails that group contribution is only allowed when the parent company owns more than 90 percent in a company. To be able to deduct group contribution some conditions has to be fulfilled. One condition is that the receiver of the contribution shall not be a resident of a foreign state. The question that arises is whether group contribution with deductibility is consistent with the non-discrimination clause. In some group contribution situations several tax conventions can be applicable.

I have conducted a study and examined the significance and extent of bullying. I will also examine whether any students in grade eight have been victims of bullying during the past year and where bullying was carried out in school X. The second objective is to explore what students think about the concept of "taunting". I have used various theories of researchers to get an understanding of what bullying is, where it occurs, causes, and suggestions for measures. To get an answer on the purpose and issue a quantitative method was used in the form of a survey. Target group for the survey consisted of students from grade eight schools in X which is located in a suburb of Stockholm. Two classes of grade eight in School X carried out the survey during the same day.Results showed that bullying occurs at X school, but that the proportion of boys has been more subjected to bullying than girls. The majority of the students in the both classes believed that most cases of bullying occur in school hallways, playground and cafeteria. It may be one reason why school X does not have guards or other members of staff. The majority of students also considered in the survey that the concept of "taunting" is to call each other by words of ?genitalia". I think that the use of foul language has become common in today's schools.  .

This thesis is an attempt to understand how the traditional female gender identity is constructed and what kind of structures that are maintaining it. I also study how this identity is reflected in young women's conception of themselves and in their views upon whether they should sign in to the military service or not.The theoretical framework that I use mainly consists of theories about gender construction, male dominance and the woman's role in the nation-state.The purpose of using this theoretical approach is to illustrate that the traditional female gender identity consists of characteristics that are in opposition to the male ones. The woman should be weaker, less aggressive and more caretaking than men- in sum she is defined as the Other. The structures that constructs this identity is the male dominance, also known as the gender system and the patriarchy.This traditional female gender identity and citizenship role that historically has been allotted to women in the nation-state is still today very vivant in Sweden and is reflected in the fact that the military service is optional for women. Certain parts of this identity is also reflected in the young women that I interview, in their sense of probably not fitting in to the military service, because of their sex and the characteristics discussed above, that are associated with it..

The purpose of this thesis work is to evaluate how the physical behaviour of a pipe bend is affected by the pipe bending procedure. Effects such as initial ovalization, thinning, thickening and plastic hardening from the bending procedure are examined and the mechanical properties of pipe bends containing these effects are investigated.This has been evaluated by creating a detailed Finite Element model of a pipe that is being bent. Then the differences compared to a bent tube in a virgin state, so called Elbow elements and an analytical in-house program have been evaluated. The virgin state refers to a model of a pipe that is bent from the beginning, thus having a homogeneous thickness and not containing any plastic hardening. The Elbow element is a calculationally cheap element, specially developed for accurate calculations of pipe bends in an initially virgin state.The goal with the thesis work is to get a better picture of what happens to a pipe as it is being bent, how this affects the mechanical properties and to evaluate the possibility to develop an easy method for taking these effects into account when using the Elbow element.This report describes the layout of the work and how the detailed FE-model has been constructed.