The purpose of this study was to investigate how preschool pedagogues in Stockholm and in Tornedalen speak about and relate to creative activities. By qualitative interviews in two geographically distant areas, one minority culture and one majority culture, I have collected information from six pedagogues, three in each area. Values in, and the significance of culture in creative activities have been the main focus. From this study I conclude that all pedagogues agreed upon the creative activity having an extensive role in the preschool work. The role of the individual pedagogue within the creative activity is multiple and dependent on where, when and how the activity is carried out.

In today?s IT world where software is constructed in a rapid pace, testing has become a crucial area to master when testing has to be done at a greater speed. To still be able to handle the demands of high quality software, companies have to spend more resources on testing and introduce test automation. By automating test cases the testers can gain time which they can spend on doing more complex testing and thereby increase the quality of the software.In this thesis we have helped Extenda AB, who delivers systems to retail companies, to introduce test automation in one of their customer specific projects. This has been done using their own in-house ?capture/replay? tool ECP (Extenda Cashier Player).We have also derived a process that explains how Extenda can introduce test automation on other customer projects.

The purpose of this degree project is to give an overview of the planning system of four Swedish forest companies. The involved companies are ATA TIMBER, SYDVED, BERGS SKOG and VIDA SKOG. The study is based on information from a literature study and by interviews with personals from the four companies. Each company is described to get a better insight of the companies work and what potential they have. The description of the planning process comes after that. The companies are described separate from each other and will be compared later in this essay.

Syfte: Var att öka förståelsen för upplevelsen av fatigue hos personer med MS och fatigues inverkan på livskvaliteten samt hur sjuksköterskan kan stödja och hjälpa personer med MS i vardagen.Metod: Litteraturstudie med deskriptiv design. Artiklarna (n=15) söktes fram i databaserna Medline via PubMed och Cinahl samt manuell sökning via referenslistor, sex stycken kvalitativa, åtta kvantitativa och en med en kombination av båda ansatser.Resultat: Det framkom att fatigue hos personer med MS var ett osynligt symtom som påverkade kroppen, led till begränsningar i vardagen, förvärrade andra symtom och led till sociala förändringar. Personer som led av fatigue hade lägre livskvalitet än den övriga befolkningen. Resultatet visade vilket stöd personer med MS önskade från sjuksköterskor. Personerna med MS hittade egna strategier för att hantera och lindra fatigue, ofta utan att ta hjälp av sjuksköterskor.Slutsats: Fatigue hos personer med MS var ett besvärligt symtom som påverkade deras vardag och sänkte deras livskvalitet.

Background: Sleep-disturbances in persons with Alzheimer´s disease are prevalent. They are characterized as increased frequency and duration of awakenings, decreased slow-wave sleep, REM-sleep and increase of day-time napping. Depression and lower quality of life are associated with sleep-disturbances. Altogether a significant source of stress for caregivers and an important factor in institutionalization. Non-pharmacological treatment alternatives are rare.Method: Single-case A-B-C design, with non-concurrent multiple baselines, a pilotstudy.Aim: To explore if an educational program on sleep, sleep disturbances and behavioural change directed towards caregivers improved sleep, depression and quality of life in persons with Alzheimer´s disease living at home.

The purpose of this study is to investigate a loyalty card and its relation to accompanying promotional benefits, and their linkages to grocery retail service loyalty. Also, the aim sets out to find relationships between demographic variables and proneness towards the promotional benefits, the loyalty card, and loyalty. A quantitative approach has been assumed and empirical data has been collected through the use of questionnaires. The data has been analyzed through descriptive statistics, correlations, and regression analysis. An operationalization used to measure satisfaction of the loyalty card and attitudinal loyalty is also presented.

The store manager can make great benefits of having an eye on how the staff works towards the customer, because the personnel is an important tool when competing with other stores. This paper is focusing on the part that relates to the staff in the store, which is one of the key tools in the competition for customers after the customer made it to the store. Many stores have guidelines which the staff should follow when they meet with customers. If the staff is too tightly controlled by these guidelines, customers can perceive the first encounter with the staff as artificial and as if the genuine friendliness does not exist. It is important that the staff looks at the individual customer and treat every customer in a personal way and that the staff can see the customer?s needs.

Biogas is increasingly used for fuel in for example vehicles and it´s produced in a biogas processconsisting of the steps of pretreatment, digestion and gas cleaning. The pretreatment is a method usedto increase the gas production and / or destroy pathogens. The digestion is the stage when anaerobicmicroorganisms convert bio-mass of a substrate to a raw gas containing about 65% of methane. Thegas cleaning is used to increase the methane content to about 97% so the gas can be used for motors invehicles. The biogas part of the Ekeby sewage plant in Eskilstuna is using multiple substrates.

The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the implications and dynamics behind consistency between individual resource allocation decisions and corporate strategy concept. The telecom industry, a high-velocity environment going through an extensive deregulation process, is put under the magnifying glass. Japanese telecom giant NTT Group is compared to its German counterpart Deutsche Telekom. Potential antecedent factors in the strategic decision-making process to consistency are studied. It is also examined whether there is a direct interplay between consistency and economic performance.

Forskare har under de senaste decennierna försökt finna förklaringar kring den finansiella gåta, känd som the forward premium puzzel, som har visat sig på valutamarknaden. Denna finansiella gåta har skapats då forskare sett statistiska avvikelserna från det öppna ränteparitetet (UIP) på valutamarknaden. UIP förutsätter att det inte ska finnas någon skillnad i avkastning mellan att hålla kapital i olika valutor, vilket empiriskt har visat sig inte stämmer. Detta misslyckande har tagits som bevis för att valutamarknaden är ineffektiv och att valutaspekulerare kan erhålla en överavkastning. Syftet med studien har varit att genom ett lönsamhetstest, med SEK som grundvaluta, undersöka huruvida valutamarknaden har varit effektiv under åren 1997-2012.Studien utgår från en deduktiv forskningsansats där den teoretiska grunden utgörs av den effektiva marknadshypotesen. Den kvantitativa forskningsmetoden bygger på uppgifter från Datastream om valutors utveckling mellan åren 1997-2012.Vår regression visade på att tio utav tolv valutapar återspeglade the forward premium puzzel.

Övervikt och fetma är ett snabbt växande folkhälsoproblem som medför ökad risk för psykosocialt lidande och många allvarliga sjukdomar. Särskilt oroande är att övervikt och fetma allt oftare drabbar barn och ungdomar. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om det finns ett samband mellan Body Mass Index (BMI) och Känsla Av SAMmanhang (KASAM) hos elever i skolår 9, samt att analysera kön och psykosociala faktorers (familje- och kamratrelationer) eventuella inverkan på relationen BMI och KASAM.Det statistiska materialet är hämtat från undersökningen ?Liv och hälsa - Ung 2004 Västmanland? där KASAM- skalan med 13 frågor används. Analysmetoden är en multipel regression.Resultaten indikerar svaga samband mellan variablerna.

The aim of the study is to examine what upper secondary school students think that they themselves and their school can do to create a peaceful society. The study combine qualitative and quantitative methods based on questionnaires distributed among 328 students in three high schools in Sweden. The survey is a combination of multiple choice and open questions. For the analysis of quantitative responses the computer program SPSS was used producing frequency tables and response rate schemes. To analyze the questionnaire's qualitative part a narrative analysis method was used.

The purpose with the paper is to theoretically investigate how sensory experience and positive affect in contact with outdoor environment can promote health by 1) develop a model of the sensory and emotional processes based on multiple code theory (Bucci, 1997) and 2) examine if this model can increase understanding of the processes that takes place in outdoor recreation, the way this is described in environmental psychology research and theory. The paper starts by introducing research and perspectives concerning outdoor recreation. Different theories of nature?s health promoting effects are described. These include the restoration theories of Roger Ulrich and Steven and Rachel Kaplan, theories more concerned with outdoor activities and a theory combining these two perspectives called instorative theory. After this sensory and emotional information processing is examined through the works of Wilma Bucci and Jean Ayres. Antionio Damasio?s theories of emotion and Daniel Stern?s concept of vitalityaffects are than introduced to extend this reasoning.

Today there are many technical solutionsfor the e-commerce industry, incombination with a change in behavior ofthe end user. The consumer of todaydemands more availability andconvenience.This Master?s thesis has examined thecritical aspects of e-commercecompanies, as well as how they candevelop their e-commerce to create valuefor the end user. The aim has been toidentify the more and less importantfactors of the e-commerce business, andto investigate the extent to which thesefactors are used in the e-commerceindustry. To answer these questions, aninteractive, online questionnairecustomized for e-commerce companies wasdeveloped.

New method for measuring road quality- A statisticalstudy of the relationship between road quality andsocioeconomic development A new tool with implications for road maintenance has the potential to yield statistical data for road quality in a large number of regions. This thesis investigates the possibility to develop a method, from this data, for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development.The thesis is essentially divided into two parts. Part one looks to qualitatively establish the link between socioeconomic development and road quality and the second part focuses on how to develop a method for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development. A method was devised using categorical data and a multinomial regression model. This method provides a comprehensive overview of the complex relationship between a variety of different variables.