The aim of my thesis is to unveil orientalistic powerstructures in the new national curriculum for religious studies in Swedish upper secondary schools. Western imperialism and modernistic ideals has formed the Swedish perception of what constitutes as Swedish, this perception also influences the Swedish religious understanding. This understanding is imbedded in the national curriculum for religious studies which enables a western hegemony to prevail..

Trettio kognitivt friska testpersoner (ålder M=31,9 år, utbildning M=16,3 år) testades med både WAIS-III (?Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - third edition?) och WAIS-III NI (?WAIS-III som neuropsykologiskt instrument?) för att undersöka eventuella skillnader i resultat mellan testen. Testpersonerna fick en signifikant ökning vid testning med WAIS-III NI jämfört med testning med WAIS-III på HIK (11,1), VIK (14,7), PIK (3,9), VF (11,4), POI (5,5), AMI (8,8), BK (1,6), LI (3,3), BL (0,6), AR (3,1), SR (1,1), IN (1,5) och FÖ (2,8). Det fanns en signifikant positiv korrelation mellan ålder och hur stor diskrepansen var mellan de olika versionerna för BL (r=0,379, p=0,039) och MA (r=0,413, p=0,023) samt en negativ korrelation mellan ålder och diskrepansen på FÖ (r=-0,422, p=0,020). Det fanns en signifikant negativ korrelation mellan utbildningsnivå och hur stor diskrepansen var mellan de olika versionerna av AR (r=-0,399, p=0,029)..

This bachelor?s thesis examines the tradition of half-timbered buildings in V?stra G?taland County as there is a current lack of research on this building category in this region. The lack of knowledge may lead to the loss of potential cultural heritage values if these buildings do not receive attention. Therefore, the study aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding of its role within the region. The goal is to expand and nuance the existing research on the Swedish building tradition, particularly in V?stra G?taland County and the general Swedish half-timbered tradition.

The object of this essay was, first, to study what advantages parliamentary members in the participating countries argue that their country gains when university students study abroad via ERASMUS, and, second, to study two factors that might affect what advantages that are emphasised by the parliamentary members in the participating countries. To achieve this object, two research questions were posed regarding what advantages of the ERASMUS Programme are mentioned in the parliamentary debate in three countries, United Kingdom, Sweden and Germany, and regarding whether the parliamentary debate is different between the countries as concerns what advantages are emphasised. Subsequently another two research questions were studied, regarding whether the countries? different positions in Europe and the existence of euroscepticism in these countries affect what advantages of the ERASMUS Programme are emphasised in the parliamentary debate. The study was carried out using argumentation analysis, in which the arguments for participation in the ERASMUS Programme presented in the parliamentary debates were compiled and grouped together according to whether they refer to economic and professional advantages or to cultural and social advantages.

This thesis deals with co-operation between municipalities viewed from the perspectiveof the small municipality. It poses two questions: How and why doessmall municipalities co-operate? and Which is the place of the small municipalityin a larger organization?. To examine this three Scanian municipalities have beenstudied and one Norwegian municipality is used to provide a perspective on theSwedish discussion.Four theoretical topics guide the thesis. Firstly the core values of municipalities;democracy, autonomy and efficiency.

Many sources point to the same conclusion; throughout the history the research sphere, mass media, governmental industry policies and public life in common have not paid the same attention to medium-sized companies as to small, new or large companies in Sweden. Yet, there are some researchers claiming the need for the medium-sized companies to grow, becoming tomorrow?s Swedish new large companies. Hence, the need for understanding the specific growth conditions of the medium-sized companies are definitely clear. This study aims firstly to identify whether there are specific requirements and obstacles for growth in connection to being a medium-sized company.

Our increasingly globalized world has contributed to that more Swedish companies has expanded their business to more distant areas. One of these Swedish companies that now stands before their first international expansion is the Swedish fast-food chain Max AB. Max has chosen to start their expansion in Saudi Arabia, a country far away from Sweden, not only in terms of geographical distance but also in cultural. The cultural differences that Max will encounter may affect the business and result in to various adaptations that must be done in order to establish successfully. The thesis investigates the existing circumstances for the fastfood business in Saudi Arabia and shows which adaptations international fast-food chains should or must do as a result of the cultural distances they encounter.

The purpose of this study was to analyze recent appropriations of works of art in advertising. Why was art infused into magazine advertisements, how were the works of art tampered with to achieve commercial goals, how well did they function together with the ad copy? What did these advertisements want? What did the artwork contribute to the commercial message? These were some of the questions asked in the study that involved a closer look at four appropriations: one based on a battle painting by the Swedish 1900th century artist Carl Wahlbom, with a commercial message printed on top;  one a collage including an 18th century portrait of Marie Antoinettte by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun; one advertisement was influenced by Dutch 1700th century still lifes, and, finally, one paraphrased Velázquez?s famous painting Las Meninas from 1655. Companies behind the advertisements featured a Swedish trade journal, a fashion exhibition in Paris, a shop for kitchen utensils in Stockholm, and an up-scale department store in Madrid.The ads, in different ways based on works of art, were evaluated as reasonably successful commercial messages. These ads, however, hardly qualified as works of art in their own right ? if that was the intention.

This thesis aims at exploring a national collaborative gateway-service, PictureAustralia, hosted at the National Library of Australia. This will be done by means of investigating some underlying principles for descriptive standards and conventions as of the library discourse which is the objective of bibliographic control and access. The reason to do this is to bring some main features of these principles into the context of a cross-institutional cooperation between libraries, galleries/museums and archives in a picture database service. The attention will lay on the objectives of what functions the system is designed to perform to give access, as defined by Elaine Svenonius in the Intellectual Foundations of Information Organization 2000, and how these objectives will affect this particular database-service collocating performance, which is a system- and logical approach. Though, this study will be done in an explorative and qualitative way, by a case-study, which is to examine some sample metadata records emanated from different institutions in this project.

This study is a part of a Swedish research and development project that is about heat-treated wood and is led by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Luleå University of Technology. Products that are heat-treated already exists on the market, foremost the Finnish brand ThermoWood®, bur the project group want to find out if it would be possible to start a Swedish production with somewhat different applications than what is common today. The heat-treated wood has many attributes that have changed in the heating process. It becomes more biologically durable, it gains stability in form and dimensions and it becomes darker and looses several unwanted extractives such as resin. Disadvantages that can be mentioned are that the wood becomes fragile and the strength properties changes. My main purpose with this study is to look into customer involvement in the early phase of product development. I also want to find out if the customers I interview think that the product is worth working with, which means start a Swedish production.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how teachers in Swedish schools abroad reason about their work developing the Swedish language as the students live in a non-Swedish speaking country although going to a Swedish school. Furthermore the study intends to examine the teachers' attitudes towards the impact the Swedish language has upon the school. Research questions:What thoughts do the teachers signify in reference to the language development of the students?How do the teachers reason about the role of the Swedish language in the school?In order to answer these questions, qualitative measures has been used in terms of observations and interviews. The study is based upon a social constructivist perspective with the idea that reality is socially constructed.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a social-psychological relevance in allowing animals to be involved in therapy work. I have examined if the animals may contribute to effects on human relationships between caregivers and patients, and if the animals can contribute to helping patients to achieve better well-being. Through previous research and a quantitative interview I have received answers to the following questions: How are animals used in the treatment work? How do animals affect the relationship between caregiver-patient? In what ways do animals in treatment affect relationships between people? How do the professionals who work with animals believe that animals can affects the patient? I have interviewed people working in different kinds of treatment work using animals. The areas examined include work with animals at youth care, police, disability care, elderly care and school.

After Sweden became a member of the European Union, EU, the debate regarding the Swedish participation in the EU?s currency co-operation, the European Monetary Union, EMU, has been intense. One of the biggest issues has been how our national economic politics will work within such a monetary union. What instrument will remain for the national economic politics within the EMU are highly uncertain. The question whether we will be able to affect our own economy or not has long been the essence in the Swedish debate.

I will write about product placement in film from a Swedish point of view. This entails writing about Swedish films with different types of product placements, not only how they are done but also discuss how they succeed from a sales perspective. In my earlier work I have written about the product placement of watches. In this thesis I focus on the film series about the Swedish agent Carl Hamilton, since here you can see how Swedish film has developed during the past 30 years with regard to product placements. Both world politics and the concrete placements are illustrated in a clear way.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate three search engines with regard to retrieval effectiveness of information specific to Swedish users. Coverage and the precision in result descriptions are also examined. The three selected search engines are Google, MSN Search and Svesök. 30 queries were tested against the search engines and the first 20 result descriptions and results were judged for relevancy. Relevancy was judged by a binary scale.