The aim of this study has been to create an understanding for the situation of an often forgotten group in foster care, the carers? own children. Our main focus has been the experience this group has of foster care, their experience of participation in caring for the foster children and their possible need of support and help. Our chosen method has been qualitative interviews with six adult children of foster carers, two men and four women. The theory used in this study has been Sense of Coherence.Our interviewees gave mainly a positive description of being part of a foster family even though they could give examples of difficult situation and of loss.

According to FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) shall at least a mean of 10 trees per hectare including riparian zones and other areas with high biological values be left in final felling. In addition large clear areas should not be created and all retained trees with high environmental value shall be spared. To leave trees in final felling means a lower cutting volume and hence a lower income from the cutting, but it also means that the production in the next generation becomes less because of competition. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect retained trees have on the production in the new generation of forest, and to investigate if there is any way to lower this effect. The environmental care has also been estimated by the amount left in final felling.

In this thesis we focus on the issue of crowdfunding and especially how a project relates to and embraces its community. While a lot of related research focus on what makes people give, our research instead delve into whether a creator looks upon the sponsors as something more than just a financial resource. To manage this task we used a triangular perspective consisting of a case study, a questionnaire and a netnographic study. The goal was to gain the perspectives of creators, crowdfunding platforms and sponsors on how the communication between the community and the project works and can be improved.       The three crowdfunding platforms we reviewed (Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, Rockethub) all had fairly similar models on how to attract sponsors and make them involved in the project, while the questionnaire and netnographic study demonstrated how a community could contribute in different ways.

Today more effective computer programs are in use, regarding design of geotechnicalconstructions. There is a risk that the theoretical background of the computerprograms, its limitations and the signification of the choice of soil parameter isforgotten when the computer programs become more user-friendly.This Master thesis deals with simulation and analysis regarding three computerprograms, FEM-design, with the addition Raft, Plaxis and BE-slab. Comparisons aremade for settlement and maximum moment in a concrete-plate. FEM-design is a threedimensional FEM-program, foremost created for design engineers. Plaxis is a twodimensional FEM-program, intended for geotechnical engineers while BE-Slab is aBoundary elements program in two dimensions that is mainly used by designengineers.

Swedish students' knowledge of mathematics has deteriorated in recent years. Teaching of mathematics is therefore starting point in an ongoing discussion among researchers, school leaders, politicians, teachers and others, who all thinks they know best about how teaching should be designed to the greatest extent possible to raise students' proficiency levels in the subject. Teachers' practices have long been the focus of discussions and views on these differ. The purpose of this paper is therefore to study students 'conceptions of mathematics and mathematics teaching, with teachers' methods and tools of focus, in relation to previous research on the subject. The method used was a survey of students in secondary school and a textual analysis of previous studies on the subject.As revealed by the survey was that the textbook has a big advantage in mathematics education in Sweden today.Many students are not accustomed to working in a different way and thereforedoes not know either what the alternative approach entails.

We set out to compare two different categories of workers: the, so called, white- and blue collar workers. The studies aim was to measure if there were any observable differences between the two in means of optimism and sense of coherence. There are two tools created for measuring optimism and sense of coherence, the Life Orientation Test ? Revised (LOT-R) measures an individual?s level of optimism and Aaron Antonovsky devised a test for measuring an individual?s level of sense of coherence (SOC). Optimism is best explained like a way to measure anticipation, how an individual expect future events to fall out.

The bacterium Lactobacillus reuteri, which natural habitat is in the intestine of mammals and birds, uses glycerol as a substrate for production of the antimicrobial compound reuterin. Glycerol has been shown to decrease the number of Escherichia coli in human feces and it is believed to be due to in situ production of reuterin. E. coli belongs to the large family of Enterobacteriaceae, naturally occurring in the intestine, and pathogenic strains of E. coli have been shown to be one of several bacteria causing diarrhoea in calves.

The purpose of this study is to compare students (both male and female), from the Linnaeus University in Kalmar, about their perceptions with a particular focus on identity and self-esteem. In regards to the current societal problem concerning obesity and beauty ideals, this paper aimed to study the student?s opinions concerning health and diets in order to fully answer the purpose of the study. The theory used in this paper is in particular regards to identity and self-esteem. In order to answer the study questions, a qualitative approach was conducted in the form of various focus groups.

In this project an iPhone application for storing food and drink experiences was developed with focus on an easy interaction design. The already existing market of similar applications were studied and evaluated to extract their positive and negative features. Interviews with experts within the food and drink business where made in the pre study to get a good perception of how to divide and categorize the sections in the application. To optimize the usability, workshops with potential users with different technical experiences where continuously held during the development of the design.During the development two variants of development environments where evaluated. The final result of the application was developed in the environment that made the best impression and seemed to be the best alternative.The resulting product has a thought out design meant to be easy to understand, even for the first time users.

Violence in close relationships has for a long time been recognized as a major social problem. Many women who have left a violent and destructive relationship have been broken apart by their former partner. They find different strategies to regain their self-esteem and self- confidence. Selection of strategies may be consciously or unconsciously. Some women have chosen martial arts.The purpose of this study is to explore and learn more about women's experience of performing martial arts and their previous violent relationship.

The business world has been through an extreme transformation over the past decades, which have forced companies to look at themselves from a new point of view. Consumers have a complete new set of ways to gather information and are more motivated than ever to make sustainable consumption choices. This change of attitudes among consumers has made companies focus on other things than price versus quality. A whole new concept has been brought up to questioning: environmentalism. Consumers demand more organically produced products.

Purpose/Aim: The purpose of this essay is to analyze and discuss how MTV is affected by the development that takes place on the world?s media market. The aim is also to see how MTV?s target group?s image of the channel can give guidelines in how MTV should act in this new media era.Material/method: I have examined the development on the media market and then created a model consisting of relevant factors that could affect a TV-channel today. Those factors and the two factors image and profile are then applied on MTV.

Talented and committed employees are important resources for a company?s competitiveness. With the escalating competition for competent employees, a strong employer brand has come to play an increasingly important role as a means of attracting employees with a desirable profile. In this study, brand theory is applied to the results of a quantitative study of students? evaluation of an attractive employer, in order to identify the factors which explain why certain employers are perceived as more attractive than others.

Nuclear power plants existences have been well debated since the 70s (Swedish radiation safety authority, 2014). Accidents, risk and presence connected to nuclear power plants have been part of many studies around the world. Recent studies have shown a connection between prices of houses and the distance and presence of nuclear power plant in a surronding area of the house. This paper uses Hedonic price modelling to investigate the willingness to pay for an increased distance to the Swedish nuclear power plant, Forsmark. For the dependent variable selling price was used and the independent variables were number of rooms, living area, other area, lot size, selling year, building year and distance to Forsmark.

This thesis compares four relevance feedback methods. The Rocchio and Ide dec-hi algorithms for the vector space model and the binary independence model and Okapi BM25 within the probabilistic framework. This is done in a custom-made Information Retrieval system utilizing a collection containing 131 896 LA-Times articles which is part of the TREC ad-hoc collection. The methods are compared on two grounds, using only the relevance information from the 20 highest ranked documents from an initial search and also by using all available relevance information. Although a significant effect of choice of method could be found on the first ground, post-hoc analysis could not determine any statistically significant differences between the methods where Rocchio, Ide dec-hi and Okapi BM25 performed equivalent.