Fragmentation and reduction of forest area is a threat for many forest species and their habitat. Deficiencies in forest quality, such as lack of dead wood and old trees, are one explanation of the threat. The most important action to prevent the continued loss of forest types is to protect forest, but also to restore and to create areas that not previously had high nature values. Hence one of the key strategic roles for Fritid- och Naturkontoret, Uppsala municipality, is to monitor biodiversity in the context of urban planning. The majority of the Uppsala municipality residents live in urban areas and most of them spend some of their spare time in natural areas in cities and their immediate surroundings. Exploitation in and around Uppsala is high, but it is important that there is enough nature close to houses to meet the residents? needs of recreation.

The international requirement of Swedish healthcare today is high and due to a good reputation and a long history of reliable methods through extended experience. For those Swedish companies within this business, the process of internationalization is often a attractive option.This study aims to describe, analyze and translate how minor Swedish companies within the care keeping section establish their business on the international market.The study is based upon a qualitative approach and is an empirical study carried out through semi-structured interviews.The result presented in the study shows that internationalization of companies within this business does often require a lot of time and money, is based upon establishments through networks and were learning-by-doing often is used as a strategic approach for the companies penetrating a new market.The study also accounts for major entry barriers, which declares for being to some part of political nature, but mostly of cultural nature.Differences in language and culture are shown in the study to be a major entry barrier and host-countries different cultural levels are very conclusive for the success of internationalization. .

Nature conservation issues are often complex and difficult to handle. Different actors andinterests are involved and it is generally agreed that constructive interaction is a crucialpart of dealing with these issues. According the theory which forms the basis of this thesis,conflict is defined as social interaction during which the actors trust in the interaction isdecreasing. Signs of conflict and diminished trust in the interaction are that these actorsmake attempts to change the situation and some of these attempts can lead to increasedconflict.The aim of this thesis is to describe the social interaction that takes place when peoplemove from conflict to dialogue. A qualitative case study of a nature conservation issue inÖstra Vätterbranterna, an area east of Lake Vättern, is presented.

The aim of this master thesis is to evaluate the performance of the content-based image retrieval system ImBrowse from a semantic point of view. Evaluation of retrieval performance is a problem in content-based image retrieval (CBIR). There are many different methods for measuring the performance of content-based image retrieval systems, but no common way for performing the evaluation. The main focus is on image retrieval regarding the extraction of the visual features in the image, from three semantic levels. The thesis tries to elucidate the semantic gap, which is the problem when the systems extraction of the visual features from the image and the user?s interpretation of that same information do not correspond.

Critique regarding religious practices has become more and more apparent in today's society.Sans magazine has become a voice in the Swedish debate regarding religions undertakings and have received opposition from various directions. As Sans magazine, issue no.1, is accused of being islamophobic, the critique is focused on the internal discourse within the atheist and agnostic society. As Sans issue no.2 came out, it did not focus on Islam or any of the abrahamic religions but instead it discussed New age and the nature of pseudoscience.I sought to evolve the didactic discource regarding ?truth? and ?reality? by finding if thediscourse within Sans is apparent and if so, what it is based upon. The analysis also focuses onthe terms used to describe new age and pseudoscience.

Syncore Technologies har tagit fram en digital telemetri mottagare som använder sig av USBperiferi anordning som ska kunna etablera oavbruten kommunikation mot sin värddator.Den tidigare designen av USB applikationen till digitala mottagaren är utvecklat av ett annatföretag. Problemet med den designen är att den kan stanna av under överföringen. Ett krav förden nya designen av USB gränssnittet är att den ska kunna etablera ett konstant data flödeutan att under en längre tid stanna av mitt under överföringen. Syftet med detta arbete är attordna en stabil överföring mellan mottagare och dator. Gruppen har valt att användanuvarande kretsuppsättning och utveckla egen mjukvara.

By using the cyborg as a structural tool to analyze certain aspects of human interaction with what can be perceived as landscape or landscape architectural elements, this thesis seeks to explore the concept of the cyborg landscape in order to place human practice in the context of postmodern ideas of the end of true nature. Ever since human kind has externalized evo-lution by using tools and extending the body with technological inventions, we have also taken our surroundings out of their natural trajectory. Everything we do that is conditioned by the use of technology is altering that which we perceive as nature and natural. Since we have been doing this for millennia we have of course also altered our surroundings by the influence of technology.This thesis uses three examples of landscape or landscape architectural elements that are conditioned by the integration of technology to explore this practice through a postmodern model of analysis based on the concept and basic premises of the cyborg, or the cybernetic organism. A cybernetic organism is in short an organism that has functioning technological parts integrated into its system.

We have investigated the visual representation of men and women in Aftonbladet?s weight site. We have made a calculation of how many of the women and the men who were portrayed smiling/ not smiling, active/passive, looking into the camera/looking away from the camera and from which camera angle the picture is taken. We also kept statistic on the gender representation of the authors of the articles.Our investigation shows that Aftonbladet?s weight site has a distinct overrepresentation of women on their pictures, but also in terms of the authors of the articles.

Upplands Väsby municipality has a vision that podcars in the future will become an effective alternative in public transport, with reduced car-dependency as a result. The system would also attract new inhabitants and businesses to the municipality.This report deals with various issues that podcar stations may face. Also, suggestions for possible track laying at the stations and station design are presented. Two areas are investigated. Eds allé which is a neighborhood that is planned for housing and where the station may be planned into the cityscape from the start.

Detta examensarbete är utfört i samarbete med System Andersson AB. Uppgiften var att undersöka huruvida det nuvarande verkstadssystemet, som i dagsläget är en Windowsapplikationen, skulle fungera som en webbapplikation. Webbapplikationen skulle bestå av ett antal begränsade funktioner som var instämpling/utstämpling, fungera som helskärm utan ramar från webbläsare, skapa rapporter samt fungera med pekskärm.Resultatet blev en väl fungerande webbapplikation där alla funktioner fungerar med undantag för skapandet av rapporter vilket inte stödes av utvecklingsverktyget.Rapporten ger den teoretiska bakgrunden och beskriver utvecklingen av webbapplikationen med bl.a. val av olika utvecklingsverktyg. Rapporten beskriver också hur webbapplikationen testats..

This thesis aims to examine the nature of the medial compartment regarding the reporting of problems in conjunction with suburbs. Previous research on discrimination in the media shows that people living in the suburbs considers suburbs being portrayed negatively in the media. They perceive that this has a negative effect on integration which in turn increases the risk of stigmatization. This study strives to contribute to the clarification of whether medias means of reporting around this area can help in the development of problems in suburbs by examining whether there is a reflection of actual political focus in the media or if media only plays a stigmatizing role. The research method used has been quantitative content analysis, making an overview of how much space is given to the different types of reporting. The thesis concludes that the reporting examined in this study did not appear to be of a structurally discriminatory nature, even if that type of reporting occurred.

Construction production always contains different disciplines whose priorities andinterests can be very diverse. Good communication and coordination are essential tominimize misunderstandings and achieve good quality in the end result. This makesplanning a central part of the production management. In a world where conditionscan change as often as daily, being well prepared increases the opportunities to stayflexible and decrease negative effects of the changes.This study has been done in association with Skanska Foundations district North inStockholm in order to investigate how visual planning can be used in the productionmanagement to optimize the coordination and the quality.The history of Lean started at Toyota, but the concept are now spread over theworld and are used wide outside of the car industry nowadays. What?s challengingabout Lean in foundation projects is to embrace a long-term perspective and invest insolutions that are profitable in the longer term, instead of solve problems by onlytreating the symptoms.A holistic perspective is crucial in order to truly understand Lean.

Image indexing research today is either conducted on a visual attribute level or on a higher semantic level, forming a semantic gap between the two. There is much to gain if research progress from the two fields is combined. Image retrieval using access points in both visual and semantic significations could improve retrieval and bridge the gap. In social media today, images are often the primary communication agent and the number of images on the web is increasing in an uncontrolled way. New and efficient ways to index and retrieve the images are needed.The purpose of this study is to examine if emotions could be a semantic access point for image retrieval and if folksonomy indexing is useful when searching for images that represent emotions.

Sammanfattning (English below) Jag har alltid tyckt om naturen och haft en föreställning om att all växtlighet som inte är tydligt anlagd, som en gräsmatta eller en rabatt, är något som naturen åstadkommit av sig själv. Mina ögon öppnades för alternativen när jag för första gången hörde begreppet ?naturlik plantering?. Det här arbetets syfte är att ta reda på hur lik naturen naturlika planteringar egentligen är, om de är planerat naturlika eller något som används som utfyllnad. Syftet är också att ge en indikation på vilken status den naturlika planteringen har. Arbetet består av tre delar. En historisk del som utforskar ursprunget till begreppet ?naturlik?.

The title of this thesis is ?Accessible Landscape - boardwalks in nature areas?. The main purpose of this thesis is to show how you can increase the accessibility for disabled people by constructing boardwalks in nature areas. The platform for the thesis is a study of litterature on boardwalks, accessibility and disabilities. After defining these terms I made three excursions to three different locations in the south of Sweden. During the excursions I evaluated the boardwalks situated in each of the areas through preferences such as the construction of the boardwalk, its design and the accessibility. After the excursions I interviewed managers of the areas I visited, and people working with disability questions in the municipalities where the excursions took place. To know how to make a boardwalk accessible you need to have knowledge about certain concepts, rules and recommendations. My thesis deals with aspects such as: *Accessibility *Disability *Rules and recommendations when building boardwalks *Real life - evaluation from the excursions and interviews with the managers The result shows that accessibility is a hot topic in Sweden and a lot of improvement is being done with fi nancial support from the European Union.