Bakgrunden till vår uppsats var de tankar som vi hade kring tillgängligheten till nationalparker och skyddade områden. Nationalparker och skyddade områden ligger ofta på platser som inte är lättillgängliga. Som besökare till dessa områden behövs ofta egen bil eller båt för att ta sig dit. En del av planeringen vid upprättelserna av parkerna består av att säkra att de är tillgängliga.Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur de svenska nationalparkerna har gjorts tillgängliga för offentligheten, sedan upprättelsen av de första nationalparkerna i Sverige i 1909 och till Hamra Nationalpark utvidgades kraftigt i 2011. Vidare är syftet att belysa de olika etableringsdiskurserna.För att kunna undersöka detta har vi använt oss av litteraturstudier för att samla information om historiken kring nationalparkerna samt vad som tas upp i Sveriges nationalparksplan. Vi genomförde två intervjuer med informanter från Hamra Nationalpark och Fulufjället Nationalpark. Vi har använt dessa två nationalparker som fallstudier.Denna studie har visat att en stor utveckling har skett från hur man etablerade de första nationalparkerna i Sverige och hur framgångsmetoden är idag. Förr togs inte hänsyn till lokalbefolkningen, företagare med mera vid etableringen av en nationalpark. Idag ser det annorlunda ut, där en nationalpark inte etableras om majoriteten inte samtycker till det. Skyltningar, vandringsstigar med mera anpassas allt mer och mer efter besökarna. Det har skett en kraftig attitydförändring om hur det ses på användandet av parkerna och gränserna för detta ändras fortfarande. Idag arbetas det med nya föreskrifter för nationalparkerna i Sverige, där man vill tillåta kommersiell turism inne i parkerna, detta beräknas vara fastställt år 2014. / The background for this essay was the thoughts we had about the accessibility of national parks and protected areas. National parks and protected areas are often located in places that are not easy accessible. Visitors to these areas often need a car or even boat to get to them. Part of the planning process with the construction of the national parks consists of ensuring that they are accessible.The purpose of this essay is to investigate how the Swedish national parks have been made accessible to the public, since the construction of the first national parks in Sweden in 1909 and up to Hamra National Park was expanded significantly in 2011. Furthermore it aims to highlight the various establishment discourses.To investigate this we used the literature to gather information about the history of the national parks and also what is included in the plans for the national parks of Sweden. We conducted two interviews with key persons from Hamra National Park and Fulufjället National Park. We have used these two national parks as case studies.This study has shown that a significant development has taken place from how the first national parks in Sweden were established and how the method is today. Previously the opinion of local people, entrepreneurs and others was not taken in consideration in the establishment of a national park. Today things are different, where a national park will not established if the majority does not agree to it. Signboards, hiking trails and more are adapted even more to the different kind of visitors. There has been a significant change in attitude about how the use of the parks is possible and the limits of this are still changing. Today the national park government works with new regulations for national parks in Sweden, which will allow commercial tourism inside the parks. This is expected to be established during 2014.

This thesis explores the transportation-land use connection through an investigation of accessibility and residential property values. Accessibility, broadly defined as the ability for locations to interact (Hansen, 1959) is considered a key principle of urban economic theory. This project builds upon the recommendations and conclusions of the literature calling for simultaneous consideration of both the quantitative (measured) and qualitative (perceived) impacts of accessibility on residential property values. This thesis utilizes a two stage research methodology in order to investigate the influence of access to amenities on residential property values. First, accessibility is quantified via an accessibility calculation for sample properties from three study areas within the Greater Toronto Area. This calculated access value is then correlated to real property sales data in order to explore the association between access and value. Second, a survey of real estate professionals explores the influence of perception and behavioural characteristics of accessibility and amenities in the residential location decision making process. The quantitative results are statistically significant however, the association between value and access is weak and varying in direction. The qualitative results indicate consistently that homebuyers are willing to pay for access to the amenities that they value. The average value of this access premium is determined to be approximately $10,000 or 3.5% of the average price for a single-detached home in the GTA. Given the methodological challenges experienced in the quantitative measurement of access, the overall results suggest that access does in fact matter. This research contributes to the literature by considering the impact of perception and behavioural characteristics on accessibility. Further this project serves to inform the debate around transportation-land use interactions.

There has been an influx in the number of African people entering North America since the 1960's. Despite the fact that women who emigrate from Africa tend to be more highly educated compared to the rest of Canada's population, they are far more likely to be unemployed and low-income (Statistics Canada, 2007: 7). Economic security is linked to decision-making power in many aspects of a woman’s life, including personal safety and freedom of choice. The original research question investigated in this study was how do female African immigrants in the Region of Waterloo access the services they require to gain economic security? The intent of the study was to explore how the services in the Region of Waterloo are accessed by African immigrants with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. However, during the interview process the information collected extended beyond the initial research question. The analysis of the research answers three important questions. What are the various types of resources that women need to access in order to achieve economic self-sufficiency? How do they find out what these resources are? How can they acquire them? The qualitative research used in-depth interviews that were conducted with fifteen African women living in the Region of Waterloo. The analysis of the thesis emerged from the lived experiences of the participants following a feminist ethnographic approach. Women were given the opportunity to discuss their personal backgrounds and their reasons for leaving their countries of origin from their perspectives. The barriers to economic security after arriving in the region were analyzed with special attention to the unique barriers women face because of care-taking responsibilities. The impact of the loss of social support networks was explained. The use of government support services was discussed, leading into an analysis of the lack of information regarding support services. Participants identified that there is collective action of African immigrant women in non-profit organizations operating to fill the information gap. There are a number of important conclusions that can be drawn from this research. First, the women interviewed argued that they felt that it was the government’s responsibility to provide economic support services to new African immigrant families in order to help them become established. Second, although the government does have a number of programs designed to economically assist immigrants, they are not accessible nor do they reflect the needs of African immigrant women. Third, non-profit women’s organizations in the region are effective in providing information about available resources, and do take the needs of African women into consideration. Fourth, non-profit organizations in the region empower African women locally and help them to integrate into the community. Finally, participants asserted that non-profit organizations should be funded by the government in order to be able to provide sufficient economic support to community members. This research adds to the actions of local non-profit agencies and builds a needed step in bridging that gap between government and non-profit organizations by acknowledging the contribution of non-profit organizations.

This paper is concerned with the developed area of Kurdistan, the Iraqi Kurdistan, and this paper will try to underline the situation of persons with disabilities living standards in Kurdistan. The research problem concerned with this topic is, what is being done by the different actors who have the power to influence the living standards of persons with disabilities in the region of Kurdistan. The purpose and aims of this paper is to highlight the importance of these living standards for these persons and how they feel they are being treated by the society as whole, both from the society (the people around them), and also the government, authorities and organizations at place for aid and assistance to those people. The main course of this paper has been laid on interviews with official persons from government and associations in Kurdistan. On the authorities and similar side, Salah Yousif Mohammed, the directorate of Disabled Care Duhok has been interviewed, together with Nassrat Mohammed Salem, the director of ZheenHandi Capped Association, Wahid Saeed Chicho, the director of Little People of Kurdistan Association and Khabat Islam Muhamad, Dohuk Program Manager for the Voice of Older People (VOP). These interviews together with interviews with persons with disabilities have laid forward a comprehensive matter of facts at hand to study. Social Constructivism, Human Security and Disability have been chosen as theoretical framework of this paper to help for better understanding of the purpose of this paper. Both Social Constructivism and Human Security help to define and better understand the concept of Disability in Kurdistan. The Social Model of Disability in Sweden has also been included in Disability for better understanding of a successful example.

This thesis explores the transportation-land use connection through an investigation of accessibility and residential property values. Accessibility, broadly defined as the ability for locations to interact (Hansen, 1959) is considered a key principle of urban economic theory. This project builds upon the recommendations and conclusions of the literature calling for simultaneous consideration of both the quantitative (measured) and qualitative (perceived) impacts of accessibility on residential property values. This thesis utilizes a two stage research methodology in order to investigate the influence of access to amenities on residential property values. First, accessibility is quantified via an accessibility calculation for sample properties from three study areas within the Greater Toronto Area. This calculated access value is then correlated to real property sales data in order to explore the association between access and value. Second, a survey of real estate professionals explores the influence of perception and behavioural characteristics of accessibility and amenities in the residential location decision making process. The quantitative results are statistically significant however, the association between value and access is weak and varying in direction. The qualitative results indicate consistently that homebuyers are willing to pay for access to the amenities that they value. The average value of this access premium is determined to be approximately $10,000 or 3.5% of the average price for a single-detached home in the GTA. Given the methodological challenges experienced in the quantitative measurement of access, the overall results suggest that access does in fact matter. This research contributes to the literature by considering the impact of perception and behavioural characteristics on accessibility. Further this project serves to inform the debate around transportation-land use interactions.

There has been an influx in the number of African people entering North America since the 1960's. Despite the fact that women who emigrate from Africa tend to be more highly educated compared to the rest of Canada's population, they are far more likely to be unemployed and low-income (Statistics Canada, 2007: 7). Economic security is linked to decision-making power in many aspects of a woman’s life, including personal safety and freedom of choice. The original research question investigated in this study was how do female African immigrants in the Region of Waterloo access the services they require to gain economic security? The intent of the study was to explore how the services in the Region of Waterloo are accessed by African immigrants with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. However, during the interview process the information collected extended beyond the initial research question. The analysis of the research answers three important questions. What are the various types of resources that women need to access in order to achieve economic self-sufficiency? How do they find out what these resources are? How can they acquire them? The qualitative research used in-depth interviews that were conducted with fifteen African women living in the Region of Waterloo. The analysis of the thesis emerged from the lived experiences of the participants following a feminist ethnographic approach. Women were given the opportunity to discuss their personal backgrounds and their reasons for leaving their countries of origin from their perspectives. The barriers to economic security after arriving in the region were analyzed with special attention to the unique barriers women face because of care-taking responsibilities. The impact of the loss of social support networks was explained. The use of government support services was discussed, leading into an analysis of the lack of information regarding support services. Participants identified that there is collective action of African immigrant women in non-profit organizations operating to fill the information gap. There are a number of important conclusions that can be drawn from this research. First, the women interviewed argued that they felt that it was the government’s responsibility to provide economic support services to new African immigrant families in order to help them become established. Second, although the government does have a number of programs designed to economically assist immigrants, they are not accessible nor do they reflect the needs of African immigrant women. Third, non-profit women’s organizations in the region are effective in providing information about available resources, and do take the needs of African women into consideration. Fourth, non-profit organizations in the region empower African women locally and help them to integrate into the community. Finally, participants asserted that non-profit organizations should be funded by the government in order to be able to provide sufficient economic support to community members. This research adds to the actions of local non-profit agencies and builds a needed step in bridging that gap between government and non-profit organizations by acknowledging the contribution of non-profit organizations.

The presence of disability in the political sphere has increased with the enactment of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) in 2005. In 2008, implementation of the first standard focused on Customer Service began in accordance with the AODA. While this legislation was in its early phase, it was crucial to conduct research to understand the ways the legislation was being expressed in practical terms. Research makes it possible to point to areas of unmet promises between theoretical and practice application of the AODA so that it may attain its full potential. The purpose of this study was to conduct a narrative policy analysis during the implementation phase of the AODA to identify the parallel and divergent stories that arise from policy actors. Using an interpretive stance, this study was conducted with key people who played a role in implementing the AODA in the municipal recreation context. Participants included both persons responsible for implementing the AODA (i.e., city employees) and people with disabilities who have been directly affected by this policy. This narrative policy analysis sought to uncover the stories (stories that are repeatedly told), counter-stories (those that run counter to dominant stories), and non-stories (stories that are not present) (Roe, 1994). Three groups of narratives arose from this study. Narratives about creating and implementing the AODA included stories about clear steps to implementation, enforcement guidelines, and proactive steps to achieve accessibility. Counter-stories described a need for more specific details, explicit enforcement guidelines, and a “deal with things as they come up” course of action. Narratives about disability examined meanings of disability present in the AODA for people with and without disabilities. Additional narratives explored discrimination against people with disabilities, links between accessibility standards and the removal of barriers for people with disabilities. Issues of accessibility were further explored in the context of leisure and recreation. Analysis revealed the diversity in leisure experiences of people with disabilities, and the need to expand the definition of accessibility for better inclusion in municipal recreation. These narratives were then contrasted and combined to form a metanarrative (alternative to consensus) to recast issues surrounding the AODA in a new light. The metanarrative highlighted a gap between the theory of the AODA and its practical applications. In theory, a policy was needed to improve the inclusion of people with disabilities in community; however, in practice, the AODA might not have the desired impact due in part to the interplay of policy and disability issues. This study suggests that the AODA is much more than what is written on paper in that it has the power to transform our society. The full intent of the AODA will be difficult to achieve until more people are aware of the legislation, its impacts, and its importance.

Injection molding is widely used to manufacture plastic parts with good surface finish, dimensional stability and low cost. The common examples of parts manufactured by injection molding include toys, utensils, and casings of various electronic products. The process of mold design to generate these complex shapes is iterative and time consuming, and requires great expertise in the field. As a result, a significant amount of the final product cost can be attributed to the expenses incurred during the product’s design. After designing the mold segments, it is necessary to machine these segments with minimum cost using an efficient tool-path. The tool-path planning process also adds to the overall mold cost. The process of injection molding can be simplified and made to be more cost effective if the processes of mold design and tool-path generation can be automated. This work focuses on the automation of mold design from a given part design and the automation of tool-path generation for manufacturing mold segments. The hypothesis examined in this thesis is that the automatic identification of mold features can reduce the human efforts required to design molds. It is further hypothesised that the human effort required in many downstream processes such as mold component machining can also be reduced with algorithmic automation of otherwise time consuming decisions. Automatic design of dies and molds begins with the part design being provided as a solid model. The solid model of a part is a database of its geometry and topology. The automatic mold design process uses this database to identify an undercut-free parting direction, for recognition of mold features and identification of parting lines for a given parting direction, and for generation of entities such as parting surfaces, core, cavity and side-cores. The methods presented in this work are analytical in nature and work with the extended set of part topologies and geometries unlike those found in the literature. Moreover, the methods do not require discretizing the part geometry to design its mold segments, unlike those found in the literature that result in losing the part definition. Once the mold features are recognized and parting lines are defined, core, cavity and side-cores are generated. This work presents algorithms that recognize the entities in the part solid model that contribute to the design of the core, cavity and side-cores, extract the entities, and use them in the design of these elements. The developed algorithms are demonstrated on a variety of parts that cover a wide range of features. The work also presents a method for automatic tool-path generation that takes the designed core/cavity and produces a multi-stage tool-path to machine it from raw stock. The tool-path generation process begins by determining tool-path profiles and tool positions for the rough machining of the part in layers. Typically roughing is done with large aggressive tools to reduce the machining time; and roughing leaves uncut material. After generating a roughing tool-path for each layer, the machining is simulated and the areas left uncut are identified to generate a clean-up tool-path for smaller sized tools. The tool-path planning is demonstrated using a part having obstacles within the machining region. The simulated machining is presented in this work. This work extends the accessibility analysis by retaining the topology information and using it to recognize a larger domain of features including intersecting features, filling a void in the literature regarding a method that could recognize complex intersecting features during an automated mold design process. Using this information, a larger variety of new mold intersecting features are classified and recognized in this approach. The second major contribution of the work was to demonstrate that the downstream operations can also benefit from algorithmic decision making. This is shown by automatically generating roughing and clean-up tool-paths, while reducing the machining time by machining only those areas that have uncut material. The algorithm can handle cavities with obstacles in them. The methodology has been tested on a number of parts.

Syftet med denna C-uppsats var att undersöka hur skolpersonalen upplever det stöd som finns tillgängligt för eleverna på skolan. Studien genomfördes på en skola i Västsverige där tillvägagångssättet i studien var intervjuer med sex personer ur skolpersonalen. Deltagarna i undersökningen var sex personer med olika arbetsuppgifter på skolan där professionerna: skolsköterska, skolkurator och lärare innefattades. Metoden som användes var kvalitativ metod. Det finns väldigt få forskningsrapporter som belyser frågeställningar om elevhälsans tillgänglighet sett ur ett personalrelaterat perspektiv inom den kvalitativa forskningsmetoden. Inom kvantitativ forskningsmetod finns det något fler tillgängliga forskningsrapporter men de är fortfarande relativt få. Denna undersökning resulterade i sex stycken olika teman som beskriver hur och i vilken utsträckning skolpersonalen upplever att de finns tillgängliga för eleverna. I denna uppsats används till största del beteckningen elevhälsa, vilket innefattar det arbete som skolpersonalen utför för att eleverna ska må bra, såväl fysiskt som psykiskt och enligt existerande lagar och regler. Uppsatsen avslutas med en diskussionsdel där väsentliga delar och tankar om framtida arbete inom dessa frågor tas upp. / The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how school personnel experience available student support. The study was conducted at a school in western Sweden, using interviews with six participants from the school personnel. Participants in the study were six people with different professions at the school where the professions: school nurse, school curator and teachers were included. The method used was a qualitative method. There are very few research reports that highlight issues of availability of student health, from a personnel-related perspective with the qualitative research method. With quantitative research method, there are more available research reports but they are still relatively few. This study resulted in six different themes that describe how and to what extent school personnel feel that they are available to students. This essay for the most part used the term student health, which includes the work of school personnel involved for the students’ well-being, both physically and mentally, following existing laws and regulations. The essay concludes with a discussion on essential elements and ideas about future work with these issues.

&ldquo / New paradigm of disability&rdquo / relates not only to persons but also to the environment they are living in. Therefore recent studies concentrate on the dynamic interplay of the persons and the environment, rather than rather than studying them as separate entities. This approach has revealed that disabled people become handicapped when they face with barriers restricting or impeding their activities in daily life. Physical, cultural and social barriers have been undertaken by many countries after substantial debate. In the United Kingdom and Japan for instance, disability and accessibility issues have been tackled with reference to disabled people&rsquo / s demands and long-tem struggles against discriminatory implementations in the past. In these countries, whilst disability issue has been discussed, accessibility legislation including numerous measurements for implementation has been enacted and a considerable progress for removing barriers and providing accessibility in the built environment has been experienced through many institutional instruments. In Turkey, although there are now a lot of legislative measurements for accessibility, little progress is observed in recent years. Barriers in the built environment are still restricting, and even hindering full participation of disabled v people to social life. The problem of inaccessibility is seen related to practice rather than legislation or theoretical frameworks in Turkey. Since they are a part of the bureaucratic system having responsibility on the planning and designing of built environment, local agencies with their administrative and technical staff and organisation gain importance in terms of maintaining accessibility to the disabled. The study aims to provide information about attitudes of local agencies towards disability and accessibility in terms of practitioners rather than users. This study interrogates the knowledge level and outlooks of the related personnel and works of local agencies about disability and accessibility.