This thesis deals with the concept of Soft balancing, traditionally defined as the diplomatic means of restraining a dominant state's ability to exercise its military power. As the dominant power in today's unipolar system, the United States, and other states? behaviour towards it, is the focus of analysis. The aim of this thesis is to explore the possibilities of developing the concept of Soft balancing so as to include strategies to restrain also the political and economic capabilities of a dominant power. The thesis also considers the possibilities of Soft balancing that small states ? to a large extent overlooked in existing theories on the subject - can possess.As a state with policies that aim to reduce the U.S.

This Degree Project is carried through in association with Fototext in Guthenburg. The firmsees benefits using?Soft Proof? technology for both economic and time-saving. The reasonfor ?Soft Proofing? for internal/ external production is to estimate and controll documentswithout using digital or chemical printing output.The different technical solutions to ?Soft Proof?, knowledges and facts aboutColorManagement together with PDF-workflow is going to pattern for a correct succesfull?Soft Proofing? on the monitor.Acrobat 5 in association with Photoshop 6 are effectively used in ?Soft Proofing? technic.The advance and capacity of the graphical softwares which are explained in this reporthelps the users to begin to experiment with ?Soft Proof?.

The aim with the literature study was to describe how persons with dementia and health care workers in the geriatric care experiences soft massage and to describe the derived effects for persons with dementia. Scientific articles were sampled from the databases: Medline (Pub Med), Cinahl and Psyc INFO. The main results of the study are presented in three parts: how persons with dementia experiences soft massage, health care workers experiences of giving soft massage and the health care workers descriptions on derived effects on persons with dementia. The results showed that persons with dementia experienced a positive reaction to soft massage and the health care workers did no longer feel helpless in their care service towards persons with dementia. The studies showed that soft massage decreased agitation, wandering, pain and sleeplessness.

During spring 2012, six students at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm carried out agroup project in the field of mechatronics as part of the thesis for the bachelor degree. The resultwas a robot with active balancing and the purpose of this report is to describe the development,manufacturing and problems that arose during the project. The finished robot has two wheelsmounted in line with each other, like a bicycle. Measurement data from an accelerometer and agyroscope are used together in a complementary filter for determining the angle from the verticalplane. For balancing, a PID controller was used to control the rotation of a reaction wheel, whenaccelerating causes a straightening torque.

According to many scholars America's soft power is in decline, a power resource whose importance has been increasing in world politics. This makes it interesting to examine if there is a difference between how Democratic and Republican administrations wield their soft power.This thesis is a hypothesis-testing study and the purpose is to test the hypothesis that Democratic administrations, to a greater extent than Republican, can create, utilize and defend soft power. My thesis is based on Joseph Nye's theory of soft power and the focus of this study is the aspects of the foreign policy resources. In order to measure this concept I have made my own operationalization where five different indicators serve as my guidance. I use the method of least likely-cases to select and motivate the administrations being tested, which gives me a comparative study of the Democratic administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton and the Republican administration of George H.

The question of whether there is soft law in international law has been as much the subject of contemporary debate as whether or not there is private legal authority in the international society. The legal boundaries seem to be blurred by the process of globalisation and the recent shift in international law. The traditional definition of international law has been outdated as new forms of treaties has introduced new subject of law to the judicial arena. At the same time a supplementary map of law has been added to the cartography of international law, soft law. These correlating processes have comprehensive political and legal consequences at both the international and national levels.

The thesis investigates how two of the world?s most powerful international actors, the US and the EU want to promote democracy and human rights. The aim is to compare how the US and the EU work in order to support a democratic development in the world. In order to fulfill the purpose of the thesis a qualitative text analysis was used. Since the aim is to compare the US and the EU I believe this method is beneficial.

This research explains and describes the role music notations may play in an unconventional way. The aim of this research is to show that by balancing composition, interpretation and improvisation, the performer(s) could produce or open the door to a reservoir of new sounds, which could emerge through a composer?s awareness of the need to balance these elements. That act of balancing depends on the musician?s interpretation through their interaction with the music notation, with their action process on the instrument and each other.

A future expansion of wind power in the Nordic power system makes the balancing for the transmission system operator Svenska Kraftnät (SvK) more complicated. Up to the hour of delivery the balance responsible parties? (BRP) makes prognoses and plans, for consumption and production, to help maintain the balance in the electrical grid. How well this is accomplished is affected by the setup of the market design. Therefore SvK has proposed the following possible changes in market design: Increase the imbalance costsIntensify the regulation of imbalancesIncrease the temporal resolution on the different marketsPresent the prices for balancing power in real-timeModify the balancing market to simplify auction of consumption bidsA mapping over the BRPs? processes within planning and trading on the day-ahead, intra-day, and the balancing market has been performed in this thesis.

Wind power is expanding rapidly in Sweden. Increasing amounts of wind power sets higher requirements on balancing power and grid expansions and would affect the whole Swedish electricity system. The aim of this report is to examine the factors affecting the wind power expansion in Sweden. How many wind power plants projects will obtain building permissions and what costs and revenues can be expected? How much balancing power will be required and does a changing geographical distribution of the wind power plants reduce the need of balancing power?A survey of the county board?s official applications has been made and out of all the applications, corresponding to 80 TWh produced per year, about half of the applications are expected to obtain a permit with a major portion of them located in the north of Sweden.Especially older wind power plants, deriving revenue from Nord pool, find themselves today in a complicated financial situation.

Researchers today anticipate that in the near future, the majority of the owners of a smartphone will use it as a wallet, i.e. for contactless payment. The technology that enables contactless payment today is ?Near Field Communication? (NFC), which is increasingly embedded in smartphones. Applications like mobile payment between a phone and a terminal use NFC.

Denna rapport ingår som den avslutande delen av ett examensarbete på civilingenjörsprogrammet inom maskinteknik, vid Luleå tekniska universitet. Examensarbetet har utförts på uppdrag av Norma Precision AB och behandlar ett problem som internt benämns Soft brass. Soft brass är ett materialtillstånd som innebär att materialets sträckgräns är för låg. Detta medför att tändhatten lossnar vid avfyrning. Uppgiften bestod i att ge förslag på materialval och bearbetningsförfarande för patronhylsor, så att tillräcklig sträckgräns på färdiga hylsor kan uppnås.

Soft rubber flooring have gained in popularity over the last years. Rubber flooring al-lows cow to move more freely without slipping and improves claw and leg health. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of a stepwise introduktion of soft flooring on cow`s placement in cow houses with robotic milking. A case study was carried out in a herd in northern Sweden with 41 cows. Observations were made every 15 minutes between 09.00 and 16.00 concering cow placement in cu-bicles, in cubicle alley, in feeding alley and in feeding alley with the head through feed-ing gate. One observation period was carried out per flooring alternativ: 1) all concrete slatted floor, 2) rubber slatted floor in feeding alley and concrete slatted floor in cubicle alley and 3) rubber slatted floors in feeding alley and solid rubber floors in cubicle alley. The study showed that 6 %-units fewer cows lay in the cubicles when the feeding alley surface was slatted rubber.

This Master thesis discusses the development of a virtual human soft tissue object for use in exercise applications of various medical procedures.The soft tissue object to be developed shall look like, feel like and behave as living human tissue. It shall give the user a realistic feeling of weight, softness and roughness, and shall behave in a correct way for exercise purposes. The soft tissue model is to be used in a three dimensional stereo graphic environment with haptic feedback. A prototype for practicing the procedure of inserting a catheter is built. The prototype is used to evaluate the potential of the virtual environment for medical exercise applications, and to assess the realism and usability of the soft tissue object.

To conclude this year?s introductory course in Mechatronics the students, in groups of 6,constructed a prototype based on the technical requirements established by the course teachers.This year they consisted of the following: two wheels only, active balancing, remote controlledand able to stop when crossing a pre-determined marker on the ground. The project lasted for 7weeks and the result is a working prototype and this report.The report reviews the chosen solution, subsystems and the finished prototype as well assuggestions for improvements, discussion and analysis.The prototype constructed embodied most of the group?s earlier individual technical specialtiesand consists of the following: a flywheel for balancing, ultrasound for angle measurement, areflective photomicrosensor to detect the marker and Bluetooth for the hand control..