Japan is the first industrialized country that is experiencing the threat of a rapidly declining and aging population. This has shifted the focus and the limelight is now on the matter that for a long time has been ignored. That is, the Japanese women?s situation in the society. This thesis seeks to point out the relevance of gender in the construction of leadership in order to get a deeper understanding of the Japanese women?s situation today.

AbstractKnowledge is today usually used as a way to compete in todays working life. It has become a fashionable concept and is used without a purpose. Both Plato and Aristotle used knowledge as a concept and Plato foremost acknowledged the theoretical aspect of knowledge and called it episteme. The practical aspect of knowledge was by Aristotle called techne. Today there are several concepts that describe the practical and theoretical aspect of knowledge.

This document is a summary of my work to create a project management system for a small firm working with computer graphics. The intention is to manage customers, projects, images and invoices in the easiest possible way. To make the system as flexible as possible a web-interface was chosen which makes it possible to access the system from any computer, making it independent of any particular operating system. The only requirement on the user environment is that the computer must have a connection to the Internet to be able to access the system. The different techniques that have been used to develop the project management system is primarily Ruby on Rails and a MySQL database.

Teaching preschool children about the environment. A comparative study of how two preschools work with environmental issues.My investigations are based on qualitative interviews and observations carried out at two preschools, one of which has a nature and environment profile while the other works in traditional ways with these questions. I sought to explore the ways in which pedagogues in each preschool raise environmental awareness and, more generally, awaken an interest in nature in the children. The consequences of methodological similarities and differences will be considered.This term paper concludes that the difference between an environmental profile preschool and a traditional preschool working on environmental awareness is not large. The knowledge gained by children in the latter preschool surpassed that gained in the former.

The objective of this thesis is to explore the prerequisites for children?s participation in the activities of the public library as expressed by six children?s librarians. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out to investigate how the librarians interpreted the concept of participation and viewed power issues between children and adults. Further, difficulties and possibilities experienced in working with children?s participation and manifestations of children?s participation in everyday library work were also investigated.

In this essay the authors have searched to get an understanding of howthe situation where for a person being handicapped and of sámi heritage in Swedenduring the 1800´s to the beginning of 1900´s. In this qualitative study, church booksand local governmental records from the time has been the sources for data. Findingsregarding sámi and disability first of all shows that the sámi didn´t produce any ownwritten records, this means we had to use records produced by Swedish authorities.These are the only records available from the time. Records that gave us theauthorities point of view. When working with historical documents it is the contextwere they were produced in and their implied readership that is of great importance.Using this method gives the possibility to tell the story by the perspective of theexposed, in our case sámi people with disabilities.

This thesis aims to analyse a time series containing the annual accumulation rate of minerogenic matter in the lake Kassjo?n. First there is a theoretical survey of some frequently used tools for the analysis of time series in the time domain and in the frequency domain. This survey is followed by a simulation study that illustrates how the theoretical tools work in practice. After this, the time series "toolbox" is used to analyse the time series from Kassjo?n (5701 data points).

During the winter 2011 Isaksson and Andersson did a time budget study on Nordens Ark?s Przewalskis horses during daytime when there were visitors and caretakers in the park. This time budget study was made during daytime and when there were no visitors or caretakers in the park. The horses where observed in the morning (5.30-6.30 am) and in the evening (5.45-6.45 pm) during four days. In addition to a time budget, the horses? positions in the enclosure were registered.

In an ever more competitive environment Sandvik Materials Technology,SMT, runs a large-scale program to improve their processes for product development.The purpose with the program is to increase the company?s profitability by increasingthe number of new products in their product portfolio. The strategies SMT is usingfor reaching their goals are to change the way they work with product development byreducing lead time and learning how to prioritize products with the highestprofitability. In the R & D Department the work of improvement pursue by adaptingLean R & D to their way of working. Lean R & D encourages working withcontinuous improvements and eliminating waste.The main purpose for this Master?s Thesis is to develop didactic support to make iteasier to implement Lean in SMT R & D department.

The aim of this study was to investigate nurse?s experience of working from the philosophy of palliative care in end of life at home. The study had a qualitative design. Semi-structured interviews were performed with nine nurses working in advanced palliative home care. The analysis of the material revealed four categories and two subcategories.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how the distance between real estate manager and the managed item influenced the real estate management process. The overall real estate management within Lantmännen Fastigheter AB was investigated to give suggestions on how to improve the quality of the real estate management within the company. To do this, questionnaires, interviews and observations was performed within the Lantmännen Fastigheter AB organization. Real estate managers answered questions about their role as real estate manager, maintenance planning, decision processes, leasing and strategies within the company.The analysis of the questionnaires, interviews and observations showed that the real estate managers wants to rearrange their spent working hours around on working tasks to spend more time on the tasks that brings income and spend less time on tasks that are unsatisfying and unnecessary. The analysis also shows in which areas the real estate managers want more support and education and that they mostly work with unplanned maintenance.

The aim with the present study was to investigate whether there is a difference between the course participants who find their way to the dog-school respective the Swedish Working Dog Association. The study have focused on four issues; why the course participants have chosen the dog-school respectively the Swedish Working Dog Association, why the participants bought their dog, if the participants are satisfied with their dogs and if it is more likely that they turn to the dog-school?s than to the Swedish Working Dog Association with their first dog? Course participants from two dog-schools and from two of the local clubs belonging to the Swedish Working Dog Association in Skaraborg, Sweden, answered a questionnaire. In total 85 answers were collected, including 60 from the course participants from Swedish Working Dog Associations and 25 from the dog school?s course.

This essay is about the history of the Swedish board game-industry from the 1970?s to today. The essay focuses on the companies in the business and how they change during this period and about the causes of this change. This essay aims both at accurately describing the development of the industry as well as asking the question of what influence factors from outside of the industry have upon the change during this period of time. The material used in this essay is mainly extracts from interviews with people who have been working in the industry during the period, as well as literature on the subject and product-catalogues from certain years in the time-frame.From this material I have outlined the basic history of the industry.

This study is grounded in an interest in the Swedish Upper Secondary Schools? role as an educator of democratic citizens, with a specific interest in the moral and cognitive development of Upper Secondary School students. Development in these two areas is treated as results of citizenship education.The purpose of the study is to examine moral and cognitive development of students in Upper Secondary School to see if there are any structural differences to be found between the Upper Secondary School programs that are vocationally oriented and the programs that are preparing for further studies on higher levels ? since these differences have been both theoretically and empirically implied. The study is based on an enhanced version of Lawrence Kohlberg?s stages of moral development (with teachers? evaluations of students? capacity as a reference point of the students? actual level of moral development) as well as on Kieran Egan?s theory of development through the use of cognitive tools (as seen in five different ?shapes of understanding?).

Ask any constructional worker and there is a high probability that this person knows a colleague with pain or other disorders caused by working with power tools.According to the Swedish Work Environment Authority 71 percent of the Swedish constructional workers is exposed to vibrations at least 25 percent of the working hours. Despite this, the number of reported occupational sicknesses caused by vibrations is as low as 1, 4 percent.JM Ltd. is one of the largest constructional companies in Sweden. Their main business is new housing and development of residential areas. God quality and low impact on the environment is a part of great importance in the company?s long-term goals.