The secessionist conflict in Transdniestrian region of the Republic of Moldova have led to more than a decade of political dialogueon finding a peaceful solution to conflict resolution, proving that the current format of negotiations is inefficient. The increased interest of the EU in the resolution of this conflict is caused by prospective inclusion of Romania in the EU, placing the Transdniestrian conflict at EU periphery, where confrontation is contrary to the all-European orientation at stability and integration. Presumably the involvement of the EU could lead to finding a political solution to the Transdniestrian conflict. Thus, the purpose of this research is to explore how EU involvement in the Transdniestrian conflict could lead to its prospective resolution. The results of this research, in form of conclusions and recommendations, depict that a more active involvement of the EU in Transdniestrian conflict resolution, as consulter and mediator, make it feasible to find a solution to the long-lasting disputes in the Republic of Moldova.

<p>This research examines the effectiveness of these dispute resolution mechanisms in environmental disputes and what improvements should be made in order to make those mechanisms suitable for these types of disputes.</p>

I den här uppsatsen ville jag ta reda på hur potentiella bostadssäljare i område Alfa skulle välja fastighetsmäklare och denna fråga besvarades genom en personlig enkätundersökning. Genom studien har jag ökat kännedomen om framtida bostadssäljares behov och förväntningar på fastighetsförmedlingstjänsten i Alfa och fått idéer på hur fastighetsförmedlingsföretag skulle kunna utforma sina erbjudanden så att de passar framtida bostadssäljares behov och förväntningar. / In this paper I wanted to find out how potential real estate sellers in the area Alfa would select real estate agents and this question was answered through a personal questionnaire. Via the study I have increased the knowledge about future real estate sellers needs and expectations considering real estate mediation within the area of Alfa and gained ideas about how real estate agencies would be able to design their offers so they fit future real estate sellers needs and expectations.

The child who starts school soon becomes aware that it is important to learn to read and write. When it is educated in written literacy, pictures are used in reading textbooks and other school materials. The child is also asked to draw and talk about pictures in other contexts. Against this background, the aim of the study is to investigate the importance of pictures for children’s learning to read and write. The aim includes a description and analysis of the existing reading and writing discourse. The study problemises relational aspects of school practice, research and teacher education. This problemisation visualises a need for both a change and a development of the field of reading and writing. The thesis starts with a knowledge survey of the field of reading and writing. The survey provides the basis of a text study in which 11 Swedish theses, published between 1996 and 2003, are discussed and related to report materials published by The Swedish National Agency for School Improvement and the Board of Education. The text study is followed by an analysis of pictures, where the empirical material consists both of pictures taken from reading textbooks and reading diagnoses and pictures produced by children. The total result shows that there is consensus about the importance of different methods being applied through balanced reading programmes. At the same time it seems as if the field includes two discourses, a reading and a writing discourse. The dominant reading discourse is characterised by a strong emphasis on the teacher’s competence in terms of being able to see, create progression, arrange in order, settle up and correct for the purpose of providing good preconditions for learning. Pictures are given here a clearly subordinate role. As for the writing discourse, there is a clear shift from the teacher to the child as a meaning carrying and meaning creating subject. To some extent pictures are then recognised as a complementary form of mediation in connection with writing. In the reading discourse it is clear that pictures are traditionally used as illustrations of texts for the purpose of proficiency training. In that case pictures are given a complex role. On the one hand they are criticised for being ambiguous. This ambiguity can lead the child away from effective decoding. On the other hand it is presupposed, paradoxically enough, that there is a one-to-one relationship between picture and text. In contrast, children themselves seem to be able to apply a well-integrated use of picture and text where the intention is superordinate to the convention. The picture-text relation is then expansive: through the child’s involvement the interplay between words and pictures is functional and creates meaning. The thesis shows that a widened text concept, and consideration for the forms of production and presentation that characterise our culture, may yield knowledge contributing to developing the field of reading and writing. In order for this development to be possible, a complementary description of what characterises the respective discourse is required. In this description the concepts of communication and language, society and context and understanding and action function as an active intertriad for handling the teaching of reading and writing not as two separate fields but as a broadened, and at the same genuinely inclusive, field of knowledge.

Abstract Title: The struggle of “The war of the sexes”- A discoursetheoretical analysis of Dokument Inifrån’s review of extreme feminism (Kampen om Könskriget – En diskursteoretisk analys av meningsskapande kring Dokument Inifråns granskning av extremfeminismen) Number of pages: 40 Author: Anna Osterling Tutor: Amelie Hössjer Course: Media and Communication Studies D Period: March – May 2006 University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University Purpose/Aim: To analyse the debate in Dagens Nyheter from May 2005-June 2005 concerning the documentaries “The war of the sexes” and to use discourse theory to reflect upon how the texts create different thruths and discources. A second purpose is to analyse how the texts create identities and groups, mainly concerning feminism. A third purpose is to relate the creation of meaning to structures of power and genderrelations. Material/Method: The material consists of 57 texts from Dagens Nyheter published during the chosen period, all relating to the documentaries. The method is textual analysis with a discoursetheoretical persective and analysis of societal structures and power using theories from Foucault, Conell and Säljö. Main results: There are several discourses struggling to create mening around “The war of the sexes” of which some are greatly antagonistic towards each other. Some claim that the documentaries are truthful, some that they are a lie. Others wish to place them in a greater societal context to articulate their meaning, drawing attention to genderrelations, power and the problems of infotainment. There is also a struggle between discourses concerning the feminist identity and definitions of the group feminists. Relating these struggles to structures of power shows how persons and discourses have unequal access to creating meaning and that the masculine hegemony may have affected the stereotypical feminism being (re)produced in some of the texts. Keywords: Mediadebate, power, discourse, genderrelations, feminism and mediation.

With the constant proliferation of information systems around the globe, the need for decentralized and scalable data sharing mechanisms has become a major factor of integration in a wide range of applications. Literature on information integration across autonomous entities has tacitly assumed that the data of each party can be revealed and shared to other parties. A lot of research, concerning the management of heterogeneous sources and database integration, has been proposed, for example based on centralized or distributed mediators that control access to data managed by different parties. On the other hand, real life data sharing scenarios in many application domains like healthcare, e-commerce market, e-government show that data integration and sharing are often hampered by legitimate and widespread data privacy and security concerns. Thus, protecting the individual data may be a prerequisite for organizations to share their data in open environments such as Internet. Work undertaken in this thesis aims to ensure security and privacy requirements of software systems, which take the form of web services, using query rewriting principles. The user query (SPARQL query) is rewritten in such a way that only authorized data are returned with respect to some confidentiality and privacy preferences policy. Moreover, the rewriting algorithm is instrumented by an access control model (OrBAC) for confidentiality constraints and a privacy-aware model (PrivOrBAC) for privacy constraints. A secure and privacy-preserving execution model for data services is then defined. Our model exploits the services¿ semantics to allow service providers to enforce locally their privacy and security policies without changing the implementation of their data services i.e., data services are considered as black boxes. We integrate our model to the architecture of Axis 2.0 and evaluate its efficiency in the healthcare application domain.

The term ‘knowledge mobilization intermediary’ (KMI) is used to describe third party organizations whose role between research producers and users is a catalyst for knowledge mobilization (KM) - targeted, systematic efforts to increase connections between research, policy and practice in public services. This study analyzes 44 Canadian KMIs in education exploring types (governmental, not-for-profit, for profit, and membership), organizational features (mission, scope, target audience, size, resources, membership composition) and processes (message, strategies, functions, dissemination mechanisms). This study maps the landscape of research mediation in education and reports on these findings using a multiple-paper format. The introductory chapter sets the stage for the papers by providing the background of the study and introducing the concept of knowledge mobilization. The first conceptual paper provides a typology of KMIs and a framework of knowledge brokering characteristics with seven elements (mission, resources, staff roles, political affiliation, autonomy, message, and linkages). The second paper reports on an approach to measuring and comparing KM efforts of diverse organizations using a common matrix of elements arising from the research utilization literature: KM strategies (products, events and networks) and KM indicators as they relate to strategies (different types, ease of use, accessibility, focus of audience and so on). The third paper outlines what KMIs exist in Canada, their organizational features, and reports on their activities, ultimately providing a typology of brokering strategies utilized in research mediation and a framework of eight major brokering functions used to increase research use and its impact: awareness, accessibility, engagement, capacity building, implementation support, facilitating linkages and partnerships, policy influence and organizational development. The fourth paper presents empirical findings of online practices of KMIs such as blogging and microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, multimedia, share buttons on websites, and RSS feeds. Overall, use of social media is not pervasive and, when it is used, the content is often not research-based. The concluding chapter synthesizes the findings in relation to each research question, summarizes the implications arising from each paper, and makes recommendations for research producers, users and intermediaries across public service sectors.

The Internet’s popularity as a health resource (also referred to as e-health) for patients is impacting the doctor-patient relationship and health care overall. Many patients now tend to look on the Internet for the information they seek in order to avoid the hassle of going to the doctor. It is important to investigate how the doctors themselves feel about this impact and see what factors influence their behaviors toward patients with regards to e-health. This study used mediation behavior theory and the theory of reasoned action to assess the relationship between doctors’ beliefs/attitudes and their subjective norms about e-health and their mediation behavior toward patients. Results revealed that many factors, including perceived benefits of the effects of e-health, perceived concerns about possible negative effects, evaluations, positive experiences with patients and social norms indeed affect the type of mediation behavior doctors perform with patients when discussing e-health.

To better understand the impact of task conflict in work teams, an incremental, multi-level model is developed, which distinguishes individual-level perceptions of conflict from more overt group-level manifestations of conflict. Task conflict is conceptualized as being detrimental for teams only to the extent that it positively predicts relationship conflict. The positive relationship between task conflict and relationship conflict is referred to as conflict spillover. The composition of team members’ underlying beliefs concerning the functional value of task conflict (referred to as conflict values) is examined as a moderator of conflict spillover. It is proposed that perceptual conflict spillover is smaller among team members who hold positive conflict values, and that manifest conflict spillover is smaller among teams composed primarily of members who hold positive conflict values. Hypotheses were tested in a longitudinal study of 59 student teams (294 individuals). At the team level, the diversity of team members’ conflict values was found to moderate manifest conflict spillover, such that the association between task and relationship conflict was significantly positive for teams composed of members who held more diverse conflict values. For teams composed of members who had less diverse conflict values, there was no significant association between manifest task conflict and manifest relationship conflict. As a result of these significant differences in conflict spillover, manifest task conflict indirectly and negatively predicted the task performance and viability of teams containing more diverse conflict values, but did not significantly impact the effectiveness of teams with less diverse conflict values. At the individual level, the significant positive association between perceived task conflict and perceived relationship conflict was not moderated by individual conflict values. However, because of this perceptual conflict spillover, task conflict perceptions also indirectly and negatively predicted team members’ personal willingness to continue working in the team. Results of this dissertation highlight important differences in the ways that conflict operates at the individual and group levels. Having identified the diversity of conflict values as a moderator of manifest conflict spillover, this dissertation outlines areas for further academic and practical knowledge development concerning the prevention of dysfunctional team dynamics.

The term ‘knowledge mobilization intermediary’ (KMI) is used to describe third party organizations whose role between research producers and users is a catalyst for knowledge mobilization (KM) - targeted, systematic efforts to increase connections between research, policy and practice in public services. This study analyzes 44 Canadian KMIs in education exploring types (governmental, not-for-profit, for profit, and membership), organizational features (mission, scope, target audience, size, resources, membership composition) and processes (message, strategies, functions, dissemination mechanisms). This study maps the landscape of research mediation in education and reports on these findings using a multiple-paper format. The introductory chapter sets the stage for the papers by providing the background of the study and introducing the concept of knowledge mobilization. The first conceptual paper provides a typology of KMIs and a framework of knowledge brokering characteristics with seven elements (mission, resources, staff roles, political affiliation, autonomy, message, and linkages). The second paper reports on an approach to measuring and comparing KM efforts of diverse organizations using a common matrix of elements arising from the research utilization literature: KM strategies (products, events and networks) and KM indicators as they relate to strategies (different types, ease of use, accessibility, focus of audience and so on). The third paper outlines what KMIs exist in Canada, their organizational features, and reports on their activities, ultimately providing a typology of brokering strategies utilized in research mediation and a framework of eight major brokering functions used to increase research use and its impact: awareness, accessibility, engagement, capacity building, implementation support, facilitating linkages and partnerships, policy influence and organizational development. The fourth paper presents empirical findings of online practices of KMIs such as blogging and microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, multimedia, share buttons on websites, and RSS feeds. Overall, use of social media is not pervasive and, when it is used, the content is often not research-based. The concluding chapter synthesizes the findings in relation to each research question, summarizes the implications arising from each paper, and makes recommendations for research producers, users and intermediaries across public service sectors.