This master thesis is written at the Royal Institute of Technology during the spring and summer of 2008.The assignment was to investigate what factors on a broadband market determine how well it performsin terms of how many people have access to broadband. These are the factors that determine whetheror not a country or market will be able to achieve a high broadband penetration. The purpose of thisthesis was to establish a better understanding for what a market should look like or how a strugglingone can be complemented in order to succeed.As a foundation for this investigation, a group of benchmark countries were chosen and evaluated. Inaddition to this, a group of, developing MENA2-countries were chosen and evaluated. Finally, interviewswere performed with some of Sweden?s leading internet service providers, the regulatory agency andinfrastructure company, Skanova.Among the benchmark countries were Sweden, France, Canada, South Korea and Japan.

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the term attractiveness is interpreted in Swedish contemporary urban planning. The focus is to analyse how the term is discursively constructed and by this highlight the conceptions that exist around what makes a city attractive. We want to emphasize the importance of a deeper understanding of how attractiveness is used in urban planning and how the term is a part of the development of our cities. Given the use of attractiveness as a part of visionary goals for Malmö´s and other Swedish cities future development, our intention, therefore, is to enhance the understanding of what the use of attractiveness means in respect of the creation and construction of power relations in time and place. The framework of our analysis is based on the discourse theory approach and used as a way of understanding how urban ideals is discursively constructed.

This thesis tackles the subject concerning arguments as a conceptual basis forunderstanding the general strategy of the European Union Commission on issuesconcerning EU-harmonized environmental taxes, politically delicate and intergovernmentaldependent. The Commission's official proposals, communications and other relevant documents are subject to inquiry, where the theoretical bases are that harmonized environmental taxes in the EU is an issue conceived as supported by academic debate, and where the institutional arrangement in relation to an European-national dimension alongside the discursive context, allows meaningfulspace for arguments. The study makes a distinction between substantial (environmental cancerns in itself) and instrumental (other benefits, mostly economic ones) rationality as a foundation in various types of arguments.The study's main findings are that the Commission's official documents over the past 20 years, have been trying to keep a strong image of reason and knowledge based arguments for an EU-wide environmental tax reform. In particular, the types of arguments tend to appeal to the Member States by stressing the instrumental rationality in a European environmental tax reform, indicating the value of good arguments as a part of the Commission's main strategies. In sum, this may have further theoretical suggestions concerning questions of environmental and elimate change policies in a European context or other more general studies relying on theoretical assumptions of logics of argument, legitimacy or studies of motives behind action strategies in politically sensitive issues such as taxation at supranationallevel..

In the history of scientific visualization techniques there is a lack of social science practices and methodologies. The advent of modern computer graphics brought the use of visualizations into a whole new era, but even though the tools by which such modern visualizations are created become easier to access and use, the lack of social science researchers harvesting the benefits of such tools still remain. This ease of use, increase in power and accessibility plus the ever growing need within the natural sciences to augment the human senses has further complicated the relationship between scientific methodologies, validity, reliability and the use of visualization techniques. This relationship must be explored, demystified and understood in order to fully grasp the impact of visualization practices when incorporated into any given scientific method. Within the social sciences there is one example of a tradition that has since its conception carried within it a graphical notion and a visualization practice.

Large corporations have come to play a central role in today?s society. By analyzing how corporations describe their work with Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, my aim is to review how they view and relate to this role. CSR means that a corporation voluntarily takes a civic responsibility beyond that which is required by law. This can be in order to promote human rights, basic workers rights and a better environment, as well as fighting corruption.In order to get at the role played by CSR, I have studied texts dealing with the subject, which have been published on the internet by the five largest Swedish corporations.

Lately, more and more music festivals have emerged in Sweden. People?s desire and need to visit these events only seems to increase. Cultural tourism and music tourism has developed into a significant and important part of the experience industry and it employs more and more people within the tourism industry. The purpose of this paper is to investigate which effects this can have on the local community.

This essay examines if formative assessment causes any impact on upper secondary school students results in social science. Other questions asked are which group of students benefits most from formative assessment and if any connections can be found between the students result and their cognitive approach to learning, problem solving capability and attitude to school.Two classes from a school in Stockholm were chosen to participate in the study. The theoretical framework is mostly based on former research performed by Black and William (1998, 2003). Multiple methods were used, including an experiment with a parallel-group design with two groups, a survey and a problem solving test. Statistics is used to describe and analyze collected data.Both groups were taught during five lessons in the same field of knowledge with the same kind of teaching, apart from formative assessment.

Uppsala like many other Swedish cities is affected by heavy housing shortage, in terms of too few existing flats and residents within the city limits. Every semester thousands of new students are facing the same problems of finding themselves adequate accommodation. The waiting lists for flats and student-dorms are getting longer for each year, and the situation is just getting worse. Simultaneously, Uppsala?s ambition is to increase its population and expand as a Swedish metropolitan, according to the Swedish governmental environment goals. This paper investigates and analyses the possibilities of expanding a city?s population by building high-rise buildings.

To increase the understanding of how individuals total life situation affects their stress level and health has lately more frequently been discussed in different contexts. Furthermore, it is important to have knowledge of power structures that exist under given circumstances in a society to get an increased understanding of how to structure the health promoting work to get the highest possible benefits. People?s work life is essential to their health, since we spend a lot of time at work. The aim of this study was to find out which factors that relate to nursing staff?s health and stress level from a general perspective.

The horse was domesticated about 6000 years ago. Since then humans have used the horse for different purposes, such as work force and in sports. Horses are social, group living animals that spend around 16-17 hours a day on grazing. Horses are often kept stabled in single boxes with a limited feeding time. The forage usually contains grain-based concentrates and roughage.

From the customer?s perspective the only reason for a firm to exist is the value it creates. However, a problem within manufacturing companies is that of the total lead time, only a small part can be considered as value adding. It has further been discovered that when working with improvements businesses often sub-optimizes single processes instead of considering what benefits the entire company. Thus, when improving processes and activities it is important to have knowledge about and understand which factors that affect how the flow can be designed.Several studies have been performed with a wide perspective on process flows in order to obtain a more resource-efficient and value added flow.

Between 1965 and 1975 a major housing project was carried out in Sweden to resolve a major housing crisis, the so-called one million housing program (Swedish: miljonprogrammet). To raise the standards and create a more attractive housing in these areas is currently a very relevant topic in Sweden.Evidence-based design is the process of basing decisions of the built environment on credible research and studies to achieve the best possible outcome. This method is primarily used in the healthcare sector to improve quality of care and reduce costs by creating healthy environments.The possibility of refurbish apartment buildings from miljonprogrammet using evidence-based design has been studied by means of an extensive literature review and a closer examination of the residential area, Husby in Stockholm, which has been chosen to represent the miljonprogrammet in its entirety. Furthermore, the evidence-based research has been limited to seven fields; nature, noise, color, wayfinding, safe environment, daylight and thermal comfort which has been assessed to be applicable on housing. In order to obtain a comprehensive overview of the different fields, four different subjects were chosen to investigate further within each field; research and studies, laws and regulations, constructional aspect and Husby.

Despite the fact that mandatory financial auditing has been abolished for small private public companies in Sweden we still see this service being used by these firms. Earlier research, papers and published articles tend to focus on the abolishment of the mandatory audits seen from the accountant?s point of view. There has however been less emphasis on the fact that 85 percept of the companies relived from the mandatory audits still utilises this service. We think that we have found a new and until now unexplored angel on this subject, and the purpose of our study has been to explore what the Swedish bank officials and what the Swedish Tax Agency?s officials think that they have to gain from a mandatory financial audit.The scientific method used in the study is deduction due to the fact that existing theories has been used to form the hypothesis.

Background: Testosterone is the most important androgenic hormone in the male. Aging is closely associated with reduction of serum testosterone which can lead to reduced muscle mass, muscle strength, bone density, and depression. These symptoms may be counteracted by administration of testosterone. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of hormone replacement in men with age-related testosterone deficiency. Method: We performed a systematic review using Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT).

The Swedish oligopoly system that prevailed within the provision-industry has during the latest years subsided. The competition on the market has increased when new participants were given the opportunity to enter the Swedish market. Today the provision-industry is characterized by different foreign participants. Among these new participants one can find Lidl and Netto, who have entered the market enable to provide the Swedish people with an inexpensive range of products. In pace with the growing rivalry the benefits favor the consumers whom are being given several options to choose between.