The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate how diversity takes shape in children?s picture books published in Sweden. Twelve picture books, which touch the aspect of diversity in the categories of gender, ages, culture, nation, ethnicities, language, class, sexuality and functional disorder, were chosen from the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs catalogue for youth and children?s books 2006. They have been analysed with the conception of ikonotext and with the theory of Pierre Macherey?s image in the mirror, of how literature reflects the reality of society.

This thesis deals with the concept of soft balancing, traditionally defined as the diplomatic means of restraining a dominant state's ability to exercise its military power. As the dominant power in today's unipolar system, the United States, and other states? behaviour towards it, is the focus of analysis. The aim of this thesis is to explore the possibilities of developing the concept of soft balancing so as to include strategies to restrain also the political and economic capabilities of a dominant power. The thesis also considers the possibilities of soft balancing that small states ? to a large extent overlooked in existing theories on the subject - can possess.As a state with policies that aim to reduce the U.S.

Since the 9/11-attacks several nations have been confronted with a new international threat, its nature traces back to the political- and religious- radical movements of the 20th century Cold War. Ever since, various states have been under threat by terrorist organizations around the world due to mainly participating in worldwide counter-terrorist interventions created by western alliances. In Sweden, amongst other countries, the state took security-precautions that would imply total control of information throughout the territorial borders. The assigned proposition was accepted by the Swedish parliament in June 18th 2008, after this date wild spread criticism was still in effect ever since the Swedish government first publicly announced the proposition in May 8th 2007. This study emphasizes on understanding why the Swedish government chose to present this proposition to parliament, in order to complete this task the study will present the motives and the alleged threats that were the core of the proposition and its value-maximizing goal of creating a new surface for Swedish homeland security.

The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge about the representation of fiction authors who have written in languages other than Swedish in educational school books within the Swedish subject. This is done in relation to the school's promotion of cultural diversity, a globalized world and to the Swedish curriculum. The study is a combination of a qualitative and a quantitative analysis that takes its starting point in six educational books for the courses Swedish 1 and 2. The analysis shows that all study materials include a broad representation of authorships from Europe and the USA. The selection of authors from other parts of the world is, however, limited.

Background and problem: The importance of banks was clearly shown during the last financial crises, when the crises that started in the banking sector spread to the rest of the world. This is one of the reasons that this thesis is focused on banks in particular, one other reason is that a lot of previous studies has chosen to exclude banks because of the fact that their balance sheet differ from non-financial companies. This thesis is a beginning in filling in the gap that exists in the knowledge of banks capital structure. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to prove that it is possible to explain the capital structure in banks and that differences in the capital structure of the banks in Great Britain, Sweden and the United states of America exists. Method: The fact that our study is partly a replication of two earlier studies made a deductive approach most appropriate.

The term Temporary places could be used to describe a wide range of shapes, functions and not least different time sets . In this thesis, however, the intention of temporality should be seen as the main definition regarding this subject. This thesis is based on a literature study and the aim is to explore temporary places, their values and their functions. Furthermore, the purpose is also to highlight temporary places as a method to be used by urban planners, in order to create more flexibility in the city planning of today. The thesis describes the underlying factors and conditions creating an increased interest in flexible planning. Furthermore, a number of tactics and applications are presented, all drawn from current research on the topic.

The conflict over Western Sahara is primarily a conflict over sovereignty, with Morocco on one side claiming territorial rights, and the Polisario Front on the other side claiming popular sovereignty. The conflict has till this day not been resolved and is in a dire need of a solution. In order to determine which solution is the most appropriate, an understanding of all the complex aspects of the conflict is required. In this context, the study aims to examine the conflict in a globalized setting by analyzing how the American news agency AP News portrays the conflict. The US media conglomerate was specifically chosen due to its dominance over international information flows.

Debate over Intellectual Property Rights ?IPRs? particularly patent and copyrights is mainly on forward-looking industries in computer software. As part of a trade deal reached in 1994, the member nations of the World Trade Organisation must adhere to a global agreement known as TRIPS, for the Trade- Related Aspect of Intellectual Property Rights.This study is to analyse the ethical conception of Intellectual Property Rights and in particular its implications on the developing countries in relation to TRIPS. The approach will be to analyse a broad philosophical theories of property to see if there is any justification for a software program to be treated as private property and also argue base on John Rawls two principles of justice in relation to TRIPS Agreement. Some reflections will be put on the use of open-source software by less developing countries.From the study it was asserted that, strong IPRs protection would hinder technological transfer and indigenous learning activities in the early stage of industrialisation when learning takes place through reverse engineering.

Structuring education so that students can discover connections between schoolwork and their everyday lives is a crucial task for a teacher. This is especially true in today?s school system that seeks to foster a spirit of lifelong learning, since educational motivation depends on being able to connect to the tasks at hand. In a system where these connections are not present, students will be motivated only by institutional mechanisms such as test results and grades. This leads to them using a number of techniques for ?optimizing the system? by getting maximal results for minimal effort. This essay looks at two pedagogical movements that aim to decrease the gap between schoolwork and students? reality.

Background: As a part of a national health control program, Statens VeterinärmedicinskaAnstalt performs diagnostics to screen flocks for certain pathogens causing high mortality,morbidity and/or serious economical losses. There are several viruses in the programincluding IBDV (infectious bursal disease virus), IBV (infectious bronchitis virus) and NDV(Newcastle disease virus). Method: 96 serum samples were collected from different poultryflocks in Sweden and analyzed by ELISA, which are currently used in the health controlprogram as well as by a commercial prototype of a multiplex immunoassay manufactured byLuminex Corp., which is currently under evaluation at the United States Department ofAgriculture USDA. This 4-plex assay detects antibodies for the three above-mentionedviruses as well as antibodies of avian reovirus. In the context of this study the ELISAs run inroutine diagnostics as well as a REO ELISA were used as the standard for comparison.Result: The antibody concentration in serum from vaccinated chickens was high while theantibody concentration level in serum from not vaccinated chickens was low.

AbstractThe purpose of this paper was to examine preschool teacher?s thoughts about using Manual Signs as Alternative and Augmentative Communication as an aid for children in/with communication disabilities. The method I?ve used in the survey is qualitative interview.The three interviewed preschool teachers use Manual Signs foremost for those children who have a poorly developed spoken language. Manual Signs are used as a complement to the spoken language and the preschool teachers use it to increase the children?s power of concentration.

The purpose is to explore and describe norms and values concerning emotions and emotional expression inSweden and Greece from an emotionsociological perspective. Do emotional regimes on a national level existand if they do, how do they differ? To answer this question qualitative interviews have been conducted withnine Greek/Swedes, men and women of different ages, who have lived in both countries and who speak bothlanguages. A quantitative survey study, employing a survey previously used in a Swedish study about emotions,has also been undertaken. Previous studies have shown that emotional regimes do differ historically and acrosscultures, but no study so far has focused on the differences between examples of North European and SouthEuropean cultures.The theoretical framework consists mainly of Hochschild´s theories about feeling/display rules and emotionwork, but the analysis also draws on Collin´s theory of interaction ritual chains and on Sociology of Emotionsmore broadly.The results suggest that different national regimes can be distinguished primarily in terms of display rules andin the skills of emotional alternations.

Syfte: Att kartlägga samt analysera förändringar inom ekonomistyrningsområdet avseende controllerns roll, arbetsområde och styrmedel i svensk praktik Metod: En webb-baserad enkät skickades ut till 1000 controller i Sverige. Enkäten var utformad som en replikat från studien av Scapens et al (2002). Kvantitativa och statistiska metoder användes vid bearbetning av materialet Teoretiska perspektiv: Vi utgår ifrån att externa strukturella processer, s.k. förändringsdrivare, utvecklade av Lukka och Granlund (1998), som genom ekonomiska, normativa och tvingande tryck, samt efterliknelseprocesser, skapar homogeniserande praktiker i controllerns arbete. Slutsats:Några signifikanta skillnader mellan service- och industrisektorn i Sverige avseende controllerrollen, arbetsområdet och styrmedel kunde inte verifieras.

This master thesis is a study of a new electronic library reference service-project called Speak instantly to a librarian and the purpose of the thesis is to investigate a new electronic reference service and how the librarians who work with it experience it. This should be seen from an informational society point of view. The study is conducted from two questions: - What needs do the libraries have and how do they argue for the project and the chat-reference service Speak instantly to a librarian? - How do the librarians experience the personal work situation in the new reference service, and its use of chat technology? Together with interviews of a selected group of librarians from the public libraries of Göteborg, Malmö, Nacka and Stockholm, this thesis includes aspects such as the theory of the informational society by Manuel Castells, as well as literary studies of the history of library reference, the development of electronic reference service and the virtual library, and the background and the beginning of the studied project Speak instantly to a librarian. The thesis also contains an overlook of other similar library projects in the United States of America.

The agricultural plantingmachines are used just a few weeks every year. That means that the supply of service and spare parts have to be good to make the timeliness costs low at the agricultural hard working periods. The machines wear down successivly when they are used. The wear is harder on some parts than the others on a machine. Spare parts can be dicided into consumables.