The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the meaning the reading group of the public library has to a number of users. To fulfill the aim the following three questions have been formulated: 1) What do a number of users expect from the reading group of the public library? 2) Which approach/attitude or approaches/attitudes do a number of users have to reading and to talking about reading? 3) How do a number of users experience the ongoing reading group?The research is founded on qualitative interviews with five users that take part in three different reading groups in public libraries. The theories that are used is the theory of three so called strategies - the pragmatic, the traditionalistic, the emancipatory ? and the theory of flow.

My aim is to find out about teachers? perceptions of methods concerning learning and assessment of oral proficiencies. My questions are: What perceptions are there among teachers concerning assessment of oral proficiencies? How do teachers describe their ways of promoting and assessing oral proficiency? In order to answer my questions and obtain data I have accomplished two focus groups interviews with seven language teachers. The result shows that teachers are concerned with several factors regarding assessment of oral proficiency.

The municipal forests of Sala cover an area of 6 000 hectares, starting in the vicinity of the city and reaching north. At the same time as residents make abundant use of the areas closest to the community for outdoor activities and recreational purposes, the forest is of great economic value and also worth protecting for environmental reasons. These conditions make forestry in periurban woods more complex than conventional forestry, why a good understanding of the needs and demands on the forest and silviculture program is required. The purpose of this study is to depict the usage of the forests owned by the municipality of Sala, to set forth the common view of the silviculture program implemented by the municipality and to chart the expectations the community has on the forests and forestry of the future in the municipality of Sala. The survey part of this paper consists of the interviews of thirteen individuals representing nine interest groups. As expected the views of these individuals varied widely but some results were expressed by more or less all of them.

Abstract The purpose of the study is to examine how children perceive the relation between play and sex and analyse it from a gender perspective. This by answering the questions: "Is the children?s choice of place, materials and company in play dependent on gender?" and "Is there a significant difference between the sexes and/or ages?" The study was done through twelve focusgroup interviews with three children in each group except two groups of two children in each. Eight boys and nine girls of six years old and nine boys and eight girls of nine years old were interviewed. Boys and girls were interviewed in separate groups and the questions were open ended and followed up.

Pain related behaviour in 1.5 year old colts was studied both prior to and following castration. The horses were filmed 24 h prior to surgery and 24 h postoperatively. Parameters, inactive and active behaviours, were recorded in terms of cumulative time observed. Both groups of horses were exercised three times and the gait quality was evaluated. Few differences were observed between the groups.

This master?s thesis was performed during the fall of 2006 at Cloetta Fazer AB in Ljungsbro. Cloetta Fazer is the market leader in Scandinavia of manufacturing confectionary and chocolates. The purpose of the project has been to identify causes that impact the quantity of waste in production as well as a cost/benefit analysis of the solutions that can reduce the problem of production waste.The work includes four production lines that are individually designed depending on what kind of product that are produced on the line. By using qualitative and quantitative methods such as focus groups, interviews and observations data has been collected.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to do a brand survey of Metro in Karlstad. The study will originate from the terms ?brand identity? and ?brand associations?, where the brand identity is the organization?s desired view of the brand, and the brand associations define the associations held by the consumers.Issues: What is Metro?s brand identity? What are the brand associsations of Metro in Karlstad? How well do the brand identity and the brand associations correspond?Theoretical framework: The study is done from the perspective of media and communication studies, where the theoretical terms are defined from literature regarding brands.Method: The study is carried out using a qualitative document analysis, interviews, and a quantitative survey. The document analysis was made on Metro?s own documents regarding values and target audience.

A study of how pseudoscience is used in modern science as a method for dividing people into groups depending on their extraction with focus on the book The Bell Curve written by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrstein..

Zambia is a country in Southern Africa where poverty is widespread and the traditional keeping of local poultry therefore plays a crucial role in improving nutrition. Meat and eggs from poultry are important sources of protein but also of income. Improving the poultry production is thereby a method to fight poverty. For poultry, the access to light is an important factor for both growth and egg production. In this paper, the focus is on the traditional village chickens used for both egg and meat production, how they are kept, their health and welfare and if the use of a solar lamp will influence their behaviour, growth and egg production. Three studies were conducted in Chibombo and Choma Districts in Zambia were 17 farmers were interviewed regarding the village chicken management of which six farmers participated in a solar lamp experiment.

Introduction: Each year 1200-1300 patients are diagnosed with head neck cancer. Treatment that involves radiotherapy can cause severe side effects for example trismus that affects quality of life.Purpose: To study health-related quality of life in patients who have undergone radiation treatment for head and neck cancer and participated in a intervention group who received training intended to prevent trismus or in a control group who received standard treatment.Method: This is a prospective study in which data is collected from 66 patients participating in a randomized study aiming to evaluate a training program to prevent trismus. Thirty three participated in the intervention group and thirty three in the control group. Both patient groups assessed health related quality of life (HRQOL) with EORTC QLQ C30 and QLQ-H&N35, at start and end of the radiation treatment, and at 3 and 6-months after completing radiation treatment.Results: There is no difference between the intervention and control groups regarding symptoms, functional status and global health, except for intake of nutritional supplements.  For both groups almost all scales measuring HRQOL deteriorated under the radiation treatment. However, 3 and 6 months after end of radiotherapy HRQOL had improved and had returned to the baseline values.

Students at the School of Engineering at Jönköping University have on behalf of the swimming organization ?Nässjö Sim och Livräddningssällskap? conducted research on how to monitor and evaluate swimmers and swimming groups in a simple and efficient manner with a focus on usability and user friendliness. Since no system existed that could meet these requirements, the client had a desire to tailor and develop such a system. The purpose of this work was to develop a system that would work as a tool to be used by coaches and swimmers alike and allow them to eventually follow the development of swimmers and swimming groups. The organization also wanted to have the ability to create tests and exams, both for land and water training, register these in the system and in a structured way know which swimmers took and passed these.For this thesis, the following questions functioned as a framework for progress.UsabilityHow to design a usable system and what is required?SystemWhat type of system is best suited to meet the client's requirements and preferences?Competition resultsHow can one retrieve all the competition results for swimmers of Nässjö SLS?DatabaseWhat type of database is best suited to easily share data with an external existing database?Usability has been the main focus throughout the project.

Bakgrund: Rottne industri a?r ett fo?retag som tillverkar skogsmaskiner, na?rmare besta?mt sko?rdare och skotare. En viktig del av fo?retagets strategi i dagsla?get grundar pa? att bedriva en genero?s reservdelsverksamhet ut mot kunder. Reservdelsverksamheten har vuxit och blivit en konkurrensfo?rdel fo?r Rottne industri.

This study examines the connection between social capital and urban and rural areas. The study divides the environments into two categories; metropolises and rural areas. Metropolises are defined as any of Swedens largest cities Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö. The study also examines if there is a difference between these groups in how high social trust they have to people living in the same areas as themselves versus people who live in other areas. The studie also focuses on the urbanization that the world is going through, where people move from rural areas into the cities for work and education.

Detta examensarbete är en del i ett utvecklingsarbete som sker för att förenkla arbetet vid prototypframtagning av reglersystem. Inbyggda system blir mer avancerade och komplexa och därmed ökar utvecklarens behov för att enkelt och snabbt komma igång med en första prototyp. Detta genom att testa, verifiera och felsöka direkt på prototypenheten utöver den traditionella kompilator- och debuggmiljön. Detta utvecklingsverktyg kallas On Target Prototyping (OTP).Ett av målen för detta examensarbete har varit att ta fram hårdvara och tillhörande mjukvara till detta utvecklingsverktyg. Kommunikationen mellan OTP plattformen och PC sköts med hjälp av USB och XCP on USB.

This thesis aims to explore the representations of musicians and soundscapes on the column of Trajan in Rome. While many different parts of the column have been explored thoroughly, the musicians are not such a part. As such, this thesis aims to explore this gap in research as well as explore how the soundscapes have been represented on the column. By sorting and grouping scenes with musicians into different groups, this thesis has been able to find patterns of representation such as musicians being represented in religious scenes more often than in military scenes and the fact that there seem to be some compositional overlap between the different groups in how the musicians are represented. Grounding the thesis in a theoretical approach that uses the presumed audience and their experiences as a guide for how to represent different scenes, it is argued that part of the reason for musicians being more present in religious scenes than in military ones is because the roman audience were more aware of the actual religious soundscapes.