This thesis is focused on what impact stall confinement has on a horse?s mental and physical welfare. It was of great interest to get a gathered picture of how Swedish horseowners had experienced having their horses in stall confinement. A survey study was conducted to achieve this. The survey included twelve questions which for example investigated the horses? age at the time of stall confinement, the length of stall confinement and their sexes.

The aim of this thesis is to make a comparison between solitary graves and graves in grave fields from the Roman Iron Age on Gotland, Sweden. Differences in burial customs, morphology, dating, gender, age, grave-goods and social status are compared between 19 solitary graves and graves in three different grave fields in different parts of Gotland. An attempt is made to explain these differences and to discuss which functions the solitary graves had. Discussions about whether it is possible to distinguish social status and gender with the help of grave-goods are also made in connection to the determination of status and sex..

This study was performed to examine whether horses that are kept alone in smallpaddocks are less likely to suffer injuries, compared to horses kept in biggerenclosures with the company of other horses, or not. In not yet published researchmaterial from 2005, risk factors associated with ?accidental injuries? versus ?wearand tear injuries? (represented by trauma injury and fetlock inflammationrespectively), were compared. That material, based on the results of 507 returnedquestionnaires from owners of horses in a Swedish insurance company, includedquestions about paddock/pasture confinement. The results from those questionswere then analyzed in this study in a so called case-control study, in which thegroups with trauma and fetlock inflammation were compared to a healthy controlgroup.The results show that the risk of fetlock inflammation is greater in a smallconfinement, OR for inflammation in a small paddock is 2,2 (95% KI 1,2-3,9)compared to a bigger paddock.

Syftet med studien är att se hur Kriminalvårdens säkerhetsavdelningar kallade Fenixavdelningarna legitimeras, genom att göra en kritisk diskursanalys av synen på fångarna som placeras där. Vi gör det för att skapa en förståelse för de diskursiva processer som påverkar den kriminalpolitiska utvecklingen. Avsikten var att se till diskursen om de Fenixplacerade i ett dialektiskt förhållande till de institutioner som upprätthåller en särskiljning av fångarna inom fängelsesystemet. Studien är genomförd utifrån en kvalitativ ansats med Faircloughs metod av kritisk diskursanalys utifrån ett socialkonstruktivistiskt förhållningssätt. Den teoretiska ram som används är bland annat Foucaults teorier om den disciplinära makten, Goffmans om stigmatisering samt Maslows psykologiska teorier.

Forming teacher teams is currently the standard way of organizing teachers in Swedish Compulsory Schools. This is the result of a process that started in the 1970s.Traditionally the culture of teaching has been one of isolation. Once the door to the classroom is shut, what happens behind the door is up to the teacher to decide. Over the past thirty years a lot of time has been dedicated to making fundamental changes in the way teachers interact with their colleagues. Today the idea of teachers forming teams is generally accepted but still the core of a Swedish teacher?s job is that of a lone worker.

En återkommande debatt rörande kriminalvården är hur man ska kombinera de två grundprinciperna i fängelserna: vård och straff. Om isolering är ett straff i straffet, hur ser då vården ut i anslutning till denna? Få eller inga andra former av frihetsberövande skapar så mycket psykologiskt trauma, med så många symptom på psykisk sjukdom, som isolering gör.I studien undersöktes vilka effekter ofrivillig isolering, under minst två månader, hade på den psykiska och fysiska hälsan, samt vilket stöd tidigare fängelseintagna fått under och efter sin tid av isolering. Dessutom undersöktes vilket stöd den intagne själv hade önskat att få.Resultatet bygger på semistrukturerade intervjuer med tidigare fängelseintagna som ofrivilligt blivit isolerade. Resultatet analyserades med hjälp av tidigare forskning och begreppen ångest, depression, avsaknad av social interaktion samt sociala band till andra.Två av tre respondenter visade tecken på att isoleringen påverkat deras psykiska hälsa mycket negativt.

Forming teacher teams is currently the standard way of organizing teachers in Swedish Compulsory Schools. This is the result of a process that started in the 1970s.Traditionally the culture of teaching has been one of isolation. Once the door to the classroom is shut, what happens behind the door is up to the teacher to decide. Over the past thirty years a lot of time has been dedicated to making fundamental changes in the way teachers interact with their colleagues. Today the idea of teachers forming teams is generally accepted but still the core of a Swedish teacher?s job is that of a lone worker.

The aim of this study has been to highlight how school social workers experience their discretion, and furthermore how they feel about working in a context mainly dedicated to teachers. The study is executed with a qualitative research method where ten interviews with school social workers, in eight schools in the area of Stockholm have been conducted. The theoretical framework used to analyze the results was discretion, street-level bureaucracy and human service organizations.The main findings of this study imply that the most important ambition of the social work that was conducted in the schools was to help the students reach their knowledge goals. The assignment is, however, not clearly defined, which has lead to school social workers defining the mission and goals themselves. They all have wide discretion and great possibilities to decide how to execute their work, but how they use the freedom that was given seems to vary among them.

Forming teacher teams is currently the standard way of organizing teachers in Swedish Compulsory Schools. This is the result of a process that started in the 1970s.Traditionally the culture of teaching has been one of isolation. Once the door to the classroom is shut, what happens behind the door is up to the teacher to decide. Over the past thirty years a lot of time has been dedicated to making fundamental changes in the way teachers interact with their colleagues. Today the idea of teachers forming teams is generally accepted but still the core of a Swedish teacher?s job is that of a lone worker.

When performing studies that test the reactions of horses in different situations, important information may be available about the horse?s reactivity level. With information from these tests, accidents and dangerous situations may be prevented. When the behaviours from tests are compared with race performance it may be possible to evaluate if some behaviours are more desirable at the race track than others. The aim of this study was to see if behavioural responses correlated with physiological parameters (heart rate, cortisol), the trainer?s opinions and actual race performance.

The domesticated rabbit stems from the European Wild rabbit and researchers have found that they share most of the characteristics and behaviors of their wild ancestor. They form mating groups in which strong hierarchic orders are formed and they are known for their ability to dig warrens which serve as one of the most important resources for this species. Although research has been performed to increase the welfare of rabbits kept in laboratory settings little is known about the housing, behavior and welfare of the pet rabbit. Among the research that has been performed within the area results have shown that the animals are kept in small solitary cages and that although many rabbits are purchased mainly for the children many animals cannot be handled by children due to display of aggression. Another conclusion drawn is that the animals are kept in ways that differs greatly from their natural environment.

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this thesis has been to increase the knowledge about the life situation for next of kin who are caring for the elderly and mentally disabled. Also, the impact of ?supportive actions? on the quality of life for the next of kin has been assessed. This study tried to answer the following questions:? How do next of kin perceive their every day life.? Do supportive actions lead to a better situation in your every day life.? Do supportive actions raise the quality of life for next of kinTo answer the questions above a qualitative method was used.

In using a qualitative method have I interviewed six women and six men taking care of their wives respectively husbands suffering from physical disease, disfunction or demental disease. The purpose was to find out whether male and female caretakers were differently influenced in their situation, relationship and in their partners, when they became caretakers of their spouse, depending on what the partner suffered from.The results showed that, when a husband or wife was hit by disease or disfunction, the caretaker was influenced both in the partners situation, the relationship and the role towards the partner. The couple still lived in a close relationship and could communicate. For the carers spouse suffered from a demental disease, there was no communication as before or possibility to remember. The carers also felt the loss of community, nearness and sympathy.

Fish-head pendants are one of the characteristic Gotlandic Late Iron Age artefacts. This object has been rather neglected and mainly considered as an insignificant embellishment, normally worn as a neck-collar and seen as an artefact include in the typical Gotlandic set of female jewellery.The fact that the fish-head pendant has a very long life span, which stretches from grave-finds in the Early Vendel Age to hoards in Viking Age as well as secondary usage as brooches in the Early Middle Ages, makes the artefact an excellent starting point for discussions on social practices and change through material culture. It's shown in this study that, contrary to previous beliefs, the normal usages for fish-head pendants is as solitary pendants and not as neck-collars. Neck-collars is shown to have an intricate relation to inhumations for young individuals, whereas solitary pendants are found in cremation deposits for adult individuals, something that relates to a fixed social practice mainly in the period 700-900 AD and that develops from the cremation funeral practice. This particular social practice relates to aspects of attraction and protection and continues in to the 10th century outside of funeral structures, which is shown by the composition of hoard-finds from the 10th century, but is totally absent when the pendants is given a secondary usage as brooches in the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12th century.

Nanotechnology, one of the most interesting sciences today will no doubt have an enourmous impact on tomorrow's society and industry. One of the most interesting nanomaterial that has been discovered is the semiconductor quantum dot (QD). This material shows interesting novel properties such as a size-dependent band gap, which is an effect caused by the quantum confinement effect in all three dimensions. Due to this phenomenon the absorption spectrum can be tuned to the desired value by adjusting the size of the QD.This thesis aims to investigate how the solvent ratio of H2O/Ethanol affects the optical and structural properties of copper sulfide QDs manufactured in a chemical synthesis way using modern microwave heating. The process of manufacturing QDs using chemical synthesis often involve a capping-agent to prevent the QDs from agglomerate into bigger structures.