This work derives from the question ?What is a beautiful road??. The question is being discussed in interviews with two employees at the Swedish National Road Administration and two former members of the ?Council of environment and beauty? at the Swedish National Road Administration. The interviews are summarized in my own discussion about the concept of ?Beautiful roads?.

In Sweden there is a long ongoing discussion about computer and cellphone usage during lectures in school. The discussion has mainly covered elementary school up to college students, but this topic is at least as relevant for university students. Today cellphones are so advanced; you can do everything with one that you previously only could do with a computer, the difference is that everyone is carrying one with them all the time. This study shows how concentration during lectures is affected by the cellphone accessibility and usage. With this study we want to find out how university students perceive cellphone usage affects their own concentration during lectures.

Taiwan's recent democratization seem to have rallied a wider support of the notion of a national identity amongst its citizens which in the year 2000 led to the election of the pro-independence party DPP and President Chen Shui-bian. Meanwhile, China insists on the "one country, two systems" formula, regarding Taiwan as merely a Chinese province, and continues to fight any Taiwanese initiative towards sovereignty. Through a narrative perspective, this essay analyzes the self-conscious national identity-building quest embarked upon by DPP and President Chen Shui-bian. The analysis consists of three parts. Firstly, a text-analysis of President Chen Shui-bian's speeches is conducted to examine in what way he enforces and legitimizes the identity-building-process through narratives.

This report describes the initial work intended for updating the car sharing service Roadmate. Roadmate is one of the services received by the car rental company Hertz First Rent a Car. The goal was to present the client with design- and structure proposals for a car sharing service that includes high usability and at the same time remains aesthetically pleasing.The work is based on an initial study with data collection, mapping the target user group and its needs. Subsequent structural and design proposals for Roadmates company carpooling service are based on the facts surrounding the target group's needs. The result are well developed and tested design sketches with accompanying visual identity and sitemaps that can be the basis for the further work on the development of the service..

The aim in this project was to spread play in the city and acrossgenerations. My way of approaching this challenge was to explore theborderland between playground equipment and street furniture. Thisopened up many possibilities to afford play in places where playgroundequipment often is excluded.The goal was to create one, or more, furniture with play value. The targetgroup was all vivasious people spending time in the public outdoorspace. Through user studies, a lot of serious playing and a lot of testing,the project resulted in a bench called Rollin´.

During the last few years the countries in the African continent have experienced an enormous increase in female politicians on a national level. Rwanda is even the country with the highest number of female politicians in its parliament in the world. Despite this development in Africa, the quantitative research on women's political representation in the world has not yet paid attention to the situation there. Some of the surveys that have been done have even excluded countries that do not fit the homogeneous pattern ? which is precisely the problem with African countries ? for it to be possible to explain the situation with existing theories.The intention of this paper is therefore to, with all of the 53 African countries included in the study, examine whether the already existing explanatory factors regarding women's political representation also can be applied to an African context to explain the situation there.

This report evaluates various methods that can be used to position a smartphone running the Android platform, without the use of any special hardware or infrastructure and in conditions where GPS is unavailable or unreliable; such as indoors. Furthermore, it covers the implementation of such a system with the use of a deterministic fingerprinting method that is reasonably device independent, a method which involves measuring a series of reference points, called fingerprints, in an area and using those to locate the user.The project was carried on behalf of Sigma, a Swedish software consulting company..

The most predominant method for forest harvesting in Sweden is the cut-to-length method based on two-machines, a harvester that fells trees and cut them in a predefined length, and a forwarder which transports logs to a landing area for further transport to a processing facility. New machine solutions have to be much gentler to the ground than today?s machines. To be able to develop a forestry machine that preserves the terrain requires a proper understanding of the interaction between tire and soil.The goal of the project is to contribute to the existing knowledge of forest machine tire-soil interaction and to develop a tire-soil model that enables dynamic simulations of forest machines operating in rough terrain. The modeling has especially been focused on the interaction between tires and soft ground.A comparison of theoretical data of different WES-based terrain interaction models and a comparison test data from a full scale field test is presented.

This degree project is on 15 university points which correspond to 10 weeks full time studies. The work has been carried out during autumn term 2007 and spring term 2008. This degree project has been carried out with the cooperation of Etac Supply Center AB who is located in Anderstorp.It?s been Etac interest to develop a solution which helps the user of the wheelchair over obstacles. My task has been to develop a concept that solves the problem according to the requirement specification.In the rapport the reader can follow the development from an idea to a finished concept.

For almost a century the debate about women as ordained servants in the Church of Sweden has raged on and on. The decision to open up the priesthood for both genders in 1958 was a milestone in the women?s liberation movement as well as it marks an important time in the church history. The debate has mainly been about how to interpret scripture, who has the right to do so, and so on. Feminist theology has become one way in recent decades to paint a wider and more nuanced picture of history and how to interpret the texts often used to repress women.This essay surveys some of the steps towards that decision, as well as it paints a rough picture of what leadership among women in the church could involve before ordination became an option.

Purpose: To examine the hearing environment for tattoo artists regarding occupational noiseand to see whether tattoo artists are exposed to hazardous noise according to Swedish WorkEnvironment Authority regulations. Method: Using a dosimeter we measured a total ofseven sessions of approximately one hour on seven different subjects, located on five studiosin Gothenburg. As a complement we did also hand out surveys based on twelve questions toexamine habits, experienced sound environment and to see if there were any hearing relatedpatterns. Results:. Sound level measurements showed that the lower exposure action valueLpAeq,8h 80 dB(A) in one case was reached if applied to the average working time of sixhours.

The retail industry is complex and when it comes to the in-store environment conventional marketing tools seldom find their way. The impacts of in-store atmospherics on customers and the psychological impact the store environment has on their decision-making are rather remarkable. An in-store atmospheric that often is used in order to affect customers is music, in fact it is one of the in-store elements that has been investigated more carefully. Nevertheless, in spite several studies on music and its impact as an in-store atmospheric on customers, it is not yet obvious what applies. To bring some clarity on the subject this study is aspiring to explain what applies when it comes to playing music in grocery stores.

No other object is in our constant possession such as the mobile phone. The smartphone has been transformed into a worldwide forum for information-rich exchanges between individuals and companies, by which this rapid access to the smartphone has created and continues to create opportunities in terms of communication. Many researchers of today undertake the challenge of studying the smartphone's role as a marketing channel, and the role of the channel is now undoubtedly central in marketing. However, as the importance of marketing communication increases and despite the fact that survey methods are exceedingly dependent on a channel to fulfill its purpose, namely carry out questionnaires, there has been surprisingly little attention to the study of the channel's role and importance when carrying out surveys. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the choice of a communication channel affects the survey outcome and, if so, further investigate how survey methods differ in terms of consumers' attitude and also their perception of their privacy.

This thesis was performed at SverigeGrepen AB. SverigeGrepen is a company that hasone product on the market; a manure fork that is designed to be used for mucking inshavings or peat. The aim of this thesis was to develop a new manure fork that isadapted to be used in straw.The development started with a pilot study where experience of mucking wascollected to be able to understand what and why certain characteristics are importantfor the function and use of the manure fork.A basic concept was developed where the main function was fulfilled, which meantthat a separation between dung and straw could be performed in a way that wasbeneficial for the user.The work resulted in four concepts of how a manure fork could be used in the strawthat can be designed and constructed. The conclusion that the work gave was that allconcepts met the main requirements required by a manure fork to use in straw.However, concept four provides a good visual impression, while its benefits areassumed to be important qualities..

Bitcoin is a digital currency that is used by people all around the world. The goal of this paper is to give an idea about how much trust there is in bitcoin among its users. This paper has used an online survey aimed at bitcoinusers and a content analysis to collect data about this trust.The conclusions show that there seems to be some trust in bitcoin as a technology and this is based on that the users have a good understanding about how bitcoin works. They also share their knowledge about bitcoin to people around them. The trust between people in the bitcoin network on the contrary doesn?t seem as high because certain technological properties hurt this trust.