In today?s modern society with high-speed connections covering the globe people are more than ever finding themselves gazing into the cold lights of the computer screen. On the other side a strange and exciting world yet to be explored awaits. Many are those who spend hour after hour running over green hills swimming in vast blue oceans in the lands of Azeroth, the playfield in the MMORPG game World of Warcraft. In media we often read and hear alarming reports on players stuck in this virtual world, ceasing to play a part in the real world.

Virtuella världar kan vara så mycket mer än bara spel vilket jag går igenom. Frågan är då vad mer är det och till vad kan de användas? Genom studier och genomgångar av vetenskapliga visar vart det virtuella användandet står idag och till vad virtuella världar kan användas. Jag försöker också ge svar på om det bör vidareutvecklas och användas mer. Det jag går in på är bland annat virtuella obduktioner.

In my study I have participated at the Fifth Dimension / Active Worlds site in Villa Gymnastiken in Ronneby, where I have worked both as an assistant to the project leader and as a researcher, but also as a participant together with the children. The children are working in a virtual world called Femtedim, created in a internet-based program named Active Worlds Education Universe. The Femtedim-world are bridging together two physical worlds in Ronneby and Copenhagen. My main focus is on an intervention that occurred in the 12th of March when the research-team in Copenhagen, which runs the project in Denmark, decided to create a new challenge for the children since some of them started to get bored. They added gravitation to the Femtedim-world, which lead to a few different reactions among the children.

In my study I have participated at the Fifth Dimension / Active Worlds site in Villa Gymnastiken in Ronneby, where I have worked both as an assistant to the project leader and as a researcher, but also as a participant together with the children. The children are working in a virtual world called Femtedim, created in a internet-based program named Active Worlds Education Universe. The Femtedim-world are bridging together two physical worlds in Ronneby and Copenhagen. My main focus is on an intervention that occurred in the 12th of March when the research-team in Copenhagen, which runs the project in Denmark, decided to create a new challenge for the children since some of them started to get bored. They added gravitation to the Femtedim-world, which lead to a few different reactions among the children. Most of the children didn´t like it and were very hostile towards the idea that they would not be able to fly around freely in the Femtedim-world.

Virtual Communities is an increasingly common phenomenon on the Internet. Most of the Virtual Communities are operated and maintained on a non-profit basis with a direction towards entertainment. However, as more state administrated and commercial services become web-based, we believe that the number of Virtual Communities with a community-based or commercial direction will increase in a near future. In this thesis, we describe our participation in, and studies of, a number of Virtual Communities with focus on the IRC-channel ?3dfxsweden?.

The technical achievements that have occurred in recent years have led to a greater use of the Internet around the world. Today, more and more people are using virtual communities, a place where communication occurs with people who have similar interest. Due to the option of being an anonymous user, the concept of trust plays a big part in how virtual communities are working. It is therefore of interest to investigate how trust develops between users in virtual communities. This report asks the following question:"How is trust formed between users at a virtual community?"A qualitative and netnographical study was conducted to answer the question above.

This project report shows the work around a mockup to a three-dimensional avatar-making application. An avatar-making application is a computer-based software program in which it is possible to create your own personal virtual character. The possibility to use three-dimensional avatars can in the future be essential for adding extra personal information or characteristics to social communication over the internet or over mobile phones. The problem of transforming a physical form and reconstruct it to a virtual basis has been an important problem to solve for many companies and software developers in the, for instance, virtual worlds area. Methods and ideas over making this transformation is the key throughout this project.

The purpose of this thesis was to study the importance of virtual communities for independent record companies. It also aims to examine how these companies use virtual communities in their marketing activities and how to gain competitive advantages by working with virtual communities. A case study based on interviews was conducted with managers from two independent record companies, Music Is My Girlfriend Recordings and B&B Records. Our study has shown that virtual communities are important for independent record companies as tools for finding and addressing the right target market. Useful information about the members of these communities can easily be gathered with the use of the various search options that are available.

Målet med detta projektet var att se hur långt vi kunde ta virtual reality med hjälp av moderna tekniker och ideer. Detta genom att kombinera traditionell virtual reality med en Head Mounted Display samt headtracking, sedan lägga till relativ positionering. Sammantaget skulle det ge en helt ny spelupplevelse med dig som spelare i centrum. Genom att titta på andra projekt ska vi undvika att göra om deras misstag. Sedan var vårat huvudmål att utvärdera människans reaktion på en virituell verklighet..

Målet med detta projektet var att se hur långt vi kunde ta virtual reality med hjälp av moderna tekniker och ideer. Detta genom att kombinera traditionell virtual reality med en Head Mounted Display samt headtracking, sedan lägga till relativ positionering. Sammantaget skulle det ge en helt ny spelupplevelse med dig som spelare i centrum. Genom att titta på andra projekt ska vi undvika att göra om deras misstag. Sedan var vårat huvudmål att utvärdera människans reaktion på en virtuell verklighet..

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine virtual reading groups, and which meaning the users perceive that the virtual reading groups offer. In addition, the study inquires which details can be improved to further amend the needs and wants among the users of virtual reading groups. Through these outlines, it is discussed how libraries and librarians can make use of virtual reading groups as a resource. The study is based upon qualitative interviews, consisting of asynchronous e-mail interviews with a total of sixteen members in two different virtual reading groups.

This essay concerns the fantastic and its position in narration. The fantastic's defintion is based on Martin Horstkotte's defintion in The Postmodern Fantastic and the essay focuses on the noncontextual aspects such as the clash between two incompatible fictional worlds and the absence created. Instead of the ordinary identification of the established fictional world with realism and our reality it is suggested that both of the colliding fictional worlds are fictive and that the established one not necessarily need to be realistic. Exampels on how the fantastic takes place on the syntagmatic level in a narration is drawn from the short story ?Samvetets fantasi? by Clas Livijn when analysed with Peter Brooks' closurebased narratology theory in Reading for the Plot.

Virtual Communities is an increasingly common phenomenon on the Internet. Most of the Virtual Communities are operated and maintained on a non-profit basis with a direction towards entertainment. However, as more state administrated and commercial services become web-based, we believe that the number of Virtual Communities with a community-based or commercial direction will increase in a near future. In this thesis, we describe our participation in, and studies of, a number of Virtual Communities with focus on the IRC-channel ?3dfxsweden?. On the basis of our experiences, we describe the social elements that form the foundation on which the Virtual Community rely on.

In this masters thesis we consider a method for experimental identification of the inertial parameters of an industrial robot, using measured torques and joint angles. A dynamic model of the first three joints of the robot has been identified.To achieve good identification results, it is important to carefully choose the trajectory for the experimental identification. A method to generate trajectories using two suggested design criteria has been used and evaluated using an ABB industrial robot, and one of them yields good identification results..

This essay concerns the fantastic and its position in narration. The fantastic's defintion is based on Martin Horstkotte's defintion in The Postmodern Fantastic and the essay focuses on the noncontextual aspects such as the clash between two incompatible fictional worlds and the absence created. Instead of the ordinary identification of the established fictional world with realism and our reality it is suggested that both of the colliding fictional worlds are fictive and that the established one not necessarily need to be realistic. Exampels on how the fantastic takes place on the syntagmatic level in a narration is drawn from the short story ?Samvetets fantasi? by Clas Livijn when analysed with Peter Brooks' closurebased narratology theory in Reading for the Plot.