Clearcutting systems have been the dominating silvicultural approach during the last decades in the Nordic countries. While economically rational, it is also leading to a trivialisation of the flora and fauna, and may result in negative reactions of people in urban settings. As a consequence of this, and a more diversified view on which goods and services forests should deliver, there is an increasing interest in broadening the range of silvicultural methods that are used. The term continuous cover forestry (CCF) represents a suite of methods that have gained increasing interest in the Nordic countries. In CCF a considerable amount of the trees are left after harvest to favour values that require a continuity of tree-covered areas. There are thus hopes that this method will meet the needs for maintaining biodiversity and satisfy social and cultural values.

In this thesis, the conditions of using the maintenance method live work at the Swedish TSO, Svenska Kraftnät has been analyzed. The study is limited to only include live work on 220 and 400 kV. The live work method is a type of maintenance that can be done, on lines or stations, even though they are still energized. The purpose of this thesis has been to map the present live work situation at these levels in Sweden. The study is based mostly on interviews with people who have specific field competence with in live work but also with personnel at Svenska Kraftnät.

The Swedish state and educational system are secular, so to say they do not depend on the former protestant state church anymore. Many people in Sweden are also secular. Even so, in school teachers meet students with a religious faith. The purpose of this study is to examine how teachers without a religious belonging experience the encounter with religious students. The method used was semistructured interviews with five teachers in a upper secondary school in a multicultural suburb of Stockholm.

The purpose of this study is to find out which attitudes, norms and values exists about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) families in preschools. Based on five qualitative interviews with teachers that work at a LGBT-certified preschool and one that is active in their work with norm critical pedagogy. To be able to fulfil my purpose of this study I concentrated on why these teachers believed that it was of importance to counter society?s heteronormativity, to prevent discrimination and mistreatments towards children and their LGBT parents in preschool. I wanted to find out what the teachers thoughts were on the concept of what a family is and how the diversity of families is shown in the preschools material and pedagogy.When I analysed the results of my qualitative interviews I used queer theories that include heteronormativity and norm critical pedagogy.

The purpose of this study was to examine pedagogues? experience working with shy children and their opportunities for participation in preschool. An increasing number of children are registered in preschools today; this leading to larger groups of children and the chance for the individual child to practice its rights of having its voice heard are therefore becoming more difficult.The literature review will start with what the UNCRC and the pre-school curriculum, Lpfö 98, say about children?s participation and their right to have their voices heard. After that, shortly about the shy child, and then moving on to what is important in the work with children?s participation.

The effects of anthropogenic climate change are becoming more and more visible as being highlighted by scientists, politicians and media. The causes of droughts, floods, melting ice caps and rising sea levels can all partially be traced back to human activities. In this study, I examine where the future climate refugees of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands should go when inhabitants of these low lying island nations are forced to leave their disappearing territories due to sea level rise. By using a normative method of analysis i egentlig mening, arguments deriving from certain values will be presented to confront the problem. These values originate from Edward A.

Purpose: The purpose of the study reported in this thesis is to addto the knowledge concerning what public librarians do to meet theneeds of unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors, thereby helpingthem to develop and establish themselves in a new environment.What tasks, activities and tools do the librarians have at theirdisposal? What problems do they encounter? What values, normsand attitudes guide their work? Method: The thoughts andexperiences of six public librarians have been captured throughqualitative semi-structured interviews, the result of which has beenthematically analysed using notions of social capital and socialexclusion. Findings: Unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors facea number of challenges which the public library with its librarians,collections and various activities can assist in coping with byproviding the children with opportunities to increase their socialcapital and decrease the risk of social exclusion. Researchlimitations: It has for several reasons proven difficult to studyunaccompanied asylum-seeking children as a distinct group, whichis why this study also uses material that deals with refugees as awhole. A significant amount of the latter are undeniablyunaccompanied minors, an especially exposed and vulnerable typeof refugees.

Swedish municipals schools have been given an assignment to convey basic values to pupils. The assignment is to bring up the pupils through transmitting and developing a heritage such as values, traditions, language and knowledge. Together along with the lasting knowledge which constitutes the community frame of reference everybody needs. There by is the purpose of this study through a qualitative method to investigate how the schools assignment to create a community national identity of the pupils is interpreted by the teachers in introduction classes. Even how the teachers in this study response to ?Swedish? culture by presenting and educate the pupils in this.

The problem of separating a non-rectangular foreground image from a background image is a classical problem in image processing and analysis, known as matting or keying. A common example is a film frame where an actor is extracted from the background to later be placed on a different background. Compositing of these objects against a new background is one of the most common operations in the creation of visual effects. When the original background is of non-constant color the matting becomes an under determined problem, for which a unique solution cannot be found. This thesis describes a framework for computing mattes from images with backgrounds of non-constant color, using Bayesian statistics.

The biodiversity of the Swedish forest has degenerated since the beginning of the 19th century when fire suppression and large scale logging first occurred. Together with a changed land use, these actions today have had a negative influence on many forest dwelling species, due to gradual reduction of natural processes, successions and different structures from the forest ecosystem. The Swedish Forest Act, together with different environment certifications, have today encouraged private persons and forest companies, among them Holmen Skog, to work actively to improve nature conservation. The aim of this study was to, by field inventories of already existing nature values, literature studies, recommendations from scientific reports and ecological gap analysis as a basis, make a management plan, for a non-production area, to conserve or improve the prerequisites for biodiversity. ?Storskogsberget? is located in the coastal area of Västerbotten County, 35 km from the city of Umeå.

This study has been performed at a smaller high school and with its industry students, the high school is located in a small industrial community. The purpose of my study has been to find out what students think about their work with the project work, what they think has been positive and negative, how their motivation is influenced by the work on the project and if the work has been affected by factors outside the school world.The interviews have been carried out like normal conversation with open questions. The students who participated in the study comes from the school where I did my internship. The selection was done by asking all students from a specific course, those who were positive to participate are also the ones I have chosen to interview. My main study results, in summary, described as the students, once they were inside their work were positive to the project work and felt motivated in their work. Negative experiences, for the students which attend a practical program, has mainly been economic, as the school does not provide any financial support.

Measurement of plasma concentrations of natriuretic peptides have been suggested to be of diagnostic and prognostic value in canine cardiac disease. In several previous canine studies, however, a considerable overlap between investigated groups has been identified. A reliable natriuretic peptide test for use in clinical practice requires establishment of reference values for natriuretic peptides in healthy dogs and cut-off values for subclinical disease as well as for clinical signs of congestive heart failure. Numerous physiological, pathological and pharmacological factors, aside heart function, may influence concentration of natriuretic peptides. A potential effect of dog breed on natriuretic peptide concentration has been suggested but has, to our knowledge, not previously been specifically studied.

This is an essay with anticipations to bring out knowledge about organisational culture for the interested reader or explorer of culture in organisations. Focus positions on ingredients that can be understood as fabricating organisational culture. The essay is, for example, about values, norms, ethics peoples characteristics, that shapes an organisation. In this area of expertise there are numerous categories of scientists and disciplines that do research on this theme. Therefor it exists a rather various collection of definitions of what organisational culture is, or can be.

Background: Acquisitions are a well-known method for increasing company size and strength on the market. But to reach the targets set, more than just a positive economic calculation is required. An atmosphere that supports the company's integration is needed, for which it is of great importance for management to understand the underlying sets of values that exist in the organisation, and to take into consideration the way they might become an obstacle or a tool for a successful integration. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explain and understand how cultural change occurs and how it affects the employee, as a smaller company is bought and integrated into a larger organisation. Procedure: The analysis is based on theories on organisational culture and organisational change.

The passive house concept has been known for many years, but it is not yet verywell known in Sweden. The increased energy requirements places greaterdemands on our buildings and to meet these requirements, passive houses is agood option.Svenska Bostäder have built passive houses with good results and intend tocontinue design some of their new buildings as passive houses. This study ismeant to support Svenska Bostäder in their planning of new buildings byanalyze and compare the different frameworks and building shells of passivehouses.In the first chapters (1,2 and 3) we presents the conditions for passive housesand the differing objects we have examined more generally for the reader tobecome familiar with the concept and the objects.The subsequent chapter presents an analysis of each object partial based on thespecifications from FEBY and finally, in Chapter 5, you will find a table ofvalues where the objects are put into relation to each other and valued there by,together with a brief explanation for the table.This chapter also contains texts on the environment, design and futuredevelopment which all includes our own thoughts and reflections.Finally, the gist of the whole work and our conclusion is presented anddiscussed.On the whole, the work has been very enlightening for us and we hope that theconcept of passive houses have a wider impact in the future..