During the last decade a new technique in animal breeding has developed called genomic selection. It is based on estimations of the effect from genetic markers on traits that are calculated in a reference population. By genotyping individuals, genomic breeding values can then be estimated without phenotypic observations. The aim of this essay is to investigate the response of genomic selection on breeding schemes for dairy cattle. The accuracy of the genomic breeding values is affected by the proportion of observations included in the validation set and how often the equation for estimating breeding values is reevaluated.

According to international and national literacy studies (PISA, PIRLS) Swedish boys are inferior to Swedish girls when it comes to reading. There can be numerous reasons to that statement. One is that Swedish teachers require more knowledge about communication as an important component in literacy. In spite of this shortcoming, Swedish girls manage to gain sufficient literacy. Why is that? The aim of this survey was to examine if there were any differences between girls and boys regarding communication skills when they begin in school.The main questions taken in account were:Which differences and/or similarities in communication skills are discernible between boys and girls this particular preschool?How do boys and girls communicate with each other in different room contexts on this particular preschool?           To be able to answer the questions, I adopted observations and audio recordings from children aged five.

This Master´s thesis aims to aquire knowledge about volunteers attitude toward work. It emphasis is on the differences between volunteers and non volunteers. There are four research questions used in order to fulfill the aim in a scientific manner. The essay aims to get in depth knowledge regarding whether or not the respondents feel that they have gained advantages in work life due to the fact that they are involved in volunteer work. One of the pivotal questions is if there is a possibility to see a pattern that binds together the reasons for volunteer work and the attitude toward work.

The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of women who have been abused by their partners. The study also examines how violence takes shape in a relationship. Based on a qualitative text analysis of three autobiographies and one novel, we have obtained the material for this study. The three selected autobiographies are; "I have not told you everything" by Jessie Andersson, "The nightmare" by Maria Dahlén and "It would be a pleasure to kill you" by Magdalena Graaf and the novel "Hidden" by Liza Marklund. To gain a better understanding of this topic, we have used the following theories; the process of normalization of violence, gender and masculinity.

According to international and national literacy studies (PISA, PIRLS) Swedish boys are inferior to Swedish girls when it comes to reading. There can be numerous reasons to that statement. One is that Swedish teachers require more knowledge about communication as an important component in literacy. In spite of this shortcoming, Swedish girls manage to gain sufficient literacy. Why is that? The aim of this survey was to examine if there were any differences between girls and boys regarding communication skills when they begin in school.The main questions taken in account were:Which differences and/or similarities in communication skills are discernible between boys and girls this particular preschool?How do boys and girls communicate with each other in different room contexts on this particular preschool?           To be able to answer the questions, I adopted observations and audio recordings from children aged five.

This master?s thesis deals with integrating simulations using Agilents Electronic Design Automation tool ADS with customized Matlab scripts, for solving complex analog and digital radio architectures. In particular, it addresses predistortion, realized in the digital domain, of power amplifiers, modeled in the analog domain. The former is implemented in Matlab while the latter is implemented in ADS. Two versions of integrating the two systems have been tested: 1) Iterative approach on sample basis and 2) Scheduled batch solution by matrix inversion.

Studies in the recent years have showed that the preschool playground is important for both the physical and emotional development of children. The Botkyrka local government has decided to improve their preschool playgrounds in order to take advantage of these studies. The administration of childcare and education in Botkyrka is arranging a network between the different preschools where they work together to improve their outdoor environments. The network is arranging workshops and seminars where people from the different preschools can come and gain inspiration for improvements of their own preschools. The administration of properties has created a document where they describe the changes that are supposed to be made to the different outdoor environments. Through the administration of properties and the person who is responsible for the outdoor environments I was introduced to their work with the preschool playgrounds.

The amendment of a law which is expected to come may well have a significant impact on the Swedish real-estate broke market. The law change will probably have an effect in the number of ways real-estate brokers will compete as a result of the increasing variety of services offered. In order to gain competitive advantages brokers must be at the forefront in the development regarding the changing market. To do so requires that the company chooses an appropriate range of peripheral services that are profitable. The problem is to choose the ?right? services to convey. The purpose of this paper is to describe the services that are in demand for transmission and how the agents can work to meet the demand of this new market.

Bipolar disorder is a severe, affective illness which causes a person to alternate between episodes of pathologically elevated mood (mania) and depression ? in between these episodes the mood is normal. The length and intervals between the episodes are highly variable among the ill, as are the severity which is divided into two major subgroups: bipolar I and II. Bipolar I disorder is the most severe because of the patient?s inability to realize that he or she is currently in a manic phase, in the case of bipolar II disorder, the patient is aware that he or she has an abnormally raised mood, a state which is called hypomanic state instead of manic.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept that is growing increasingly important, with more and more companies acknowledging that they have an obligation to the environment in which they operate. We were interested in inquiring into why companies chose to do so, even though there are no laws that condition them to engage in CSR. One answer to this might be that companies use CSR as a way to distinguish themselves from the competition as well as to gain trust and goodwill from the stakeholders. When it comes to Corporate Social Responsibility, the question is no longer whether or not companies should engage in it, but how they can gain competitive advantage by doing so. This study aims at providing a framework for possible ways of integrating CSR and branding, as well as different strategies for CSR-communication. We also tried to define how, and why, consumers respond to CSR-initiatives.

The purpose of this essay is to develop knowledge about how learning among employees is perceived to occur practically in a pre-school unit seen as a learning organization. From an employee perspective the intention was to gain an understanding of how they perceive the organization regarding employee learning in the workplace when it comes to in which contexts and what conditions that enable collaborative learning. Because learning organization is mostly a vision from a management perspective thereby it should in this case mostly be viewed as the context in which the employees work in.The essay is based on a qualitative research approach with eight semi-structured interviews. It was based on hermeneutics as method of analysis with the intention to gain an understanding of the employees' subjective perception. It is a case study on a selected pre-school unit in Stockholm.

The amendment of a law which is expected to come may well have a significant impact on the Swedish real-estate broke market. The law change will probably have an effect in the number of ways real-estate brokers will compete as a result of the increasing variety of services offered. In order to gain competitive advantages brokers must be at the forefront in the development regarding the changing market. To do so requires that the company chooses an appropriate range of peripheral services that are profitable. The problem is to choose the ?right? services to convey. The purpose of this paper is to describe the services that are in demand for transmission and how the agents can work to meet the demand of this new market.

During the 90s most companies organized and adopted routines for their environmental work. This work included for example eco-efficiency improvements and the introduction of environmental managing systems. At the UN conference in Rio in 1992 the concept Sustainable development was defined, but it was not until about the year of 2000 that companies in Sweden shifted their work from environmental management to sustainable management. A consequence of this is that they now have to focus on environmental aspect in conjunction with social and economic aspects.The purpose of this study is to gain understanding of what a change of focus to sustainable development means for companies. Has the environmental work suffered in the competition with social/economical aspects under the new sustainable focus? How will the new way of working affect the balance between environmental and social aspects? Changes were studied in five companies by analysing their annual-, environmental- and sustainability reports and through interviews of sustainable managers.

The public sector is a major purchaser of goods and services. By setting requirements for environmental and social considerations in public procurement, an authority has the possibility to use consumer power to influence the actors in a market. The purpose of this paper is to investigate public procurement of textile products in a municipality, in order to gain knowledge about factors that may be important for the use of environmental and social criteria. Håkan Hydén´s (professor in sociology of law) norm model was used as the basis of the analysis, where the conduct was investigated along three dimensions of the norm ? willingness, knowledge and system conditions ? in order to identify underlying factors that can influence the process.The results ? analyzed by using interviews and documents ? show that the procurer's willingness, motivation and knowledge are important factors in this context, as well as the political priority of the municipality.

The aim of this study was to learn how students in specialist nurse education with direction towards nurse anaesthetist experienced tutorial given during their specialist placement.  The chosen method of the study was qualitative interview with phenomenological approach. Twelve nurse anaesthetist students were interviewed about their experiences during their placement at operation wards. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed according to Giorgios (1985) analyze method. The result showed that the students considered that a well functioned tutorial was essential for a successful clinic placement. The tutorial considered as satisfactory if the student and the tutor managed to have good communication and a good relation with each other.