Throughout the years there has been rise to extensive debate in the media and in the research world about the Swedish Democrats being labeled as a populist radical right-winged party or even leaning towards a centrist position with authoritarian values. With a general election coming up soon this year the aim of this study is with the help of a two-dimensional approach, combining the traditional left/right dimension and the GAL-TAL dimension, to find out where the SD place themselves on the political spectrum. The left/right dimension focuses on socioeconomic interests – the relationship between the state and the market while GAL-TAN considers socio-cultural issues such as independence and the degree of individual freedom. By conducting a qualitative content analysis and an ideal-type analysis in this study, several statements from the party's manifestos from the year 2010, 2014 and 2018 have been analyzed to find out where the party can be placed on the political spectrum. The study shows that the SD can be placed on the two-dimensional scale, where the party combines elements of TAN, some libertarian elements (GAL), where SD positions itself as a centrist-right party in some issues of the economic dimension. In addition, results show that social conservatism has been a prominent ideology in the SD:s manifestos over the years. / <p>2018-06-07.</p>

This study is about the two largest and longest existing parties in Sweden, The Social Democrats, and The Moderate Party. These two parties have two different classical ideologies as their foundation which are socialism and conservatism. The question is then, have these political parties deviated from their classical ideological background? Moreover, if the parties’ positions are compared with the new scale GAL-TAN, are they more similar or dissimilar compared to when comparing the ideologies? The essay will present an explanation on what the new scale GAL-TAN is and then discuss the scale compared to the ideologies. The conclusion is that when the two parties are compared with their ideology, The Moderate Party has deviated the most from conservatism. The Social Party still follows socialism but with a modern adaptation. However, The Moderate Party has more in common with socialism than the Socialist Party has with conservatism. Moreover, the two parties’ position on the GAL-TAN-scale is very close but, The Moderate Party’s position is stronger because they focus more on individualism.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate to which extent two Swedish political parties, founded in the early 1900s, represents changes in public opinion. The question of issue to be answered is to which extent the Social Democrats and the Moderates represents their former voters´ opinions. The question of issue will be investigated throughout a comparison of party politics and public opinion in 2014 and 2018, the years Sweden had parliamentary elections. The analysis was performed by applying the GAL-TAN and left-right division on these data. The results shows how there has been a change in politics between these years among both the parties and voters. The change in public opinion is reflected in party politics in areas such as immigration and law and order but there are parts of politics that is considered irrelevant for how the voters choose to vote. The Social Democrats and Moderates are capable of representing changes in public opinion to some extent.

Topology optimization has seen rapid developments in its field with algorithms getting better and faster all the time. These new algorithms help reduce the lead time from concept development to a finished product. Simulation and post-processing of geometry are one of the major developmental costs. Post-processing of this geometry also takes up a lot of time and is dependent on the quality of the geometry output from the solver to make the product ready for rapid prototyping or final production. The work done in this thesis deals with the post-processing of the results obtained from topology optimization algorithms which output the result as a 2D image. A suitable methodology is discussed where this image is processed and converted into a CAD geometry all while minimizing deviation in geometry, compliance and volume fraction. Further on, a validation of the designs is performed to measure the extracted geometry's deviation from the post-processed result. The workflow is coded using MATLAB and uses an image-based post-processing approach. The proposed workflow is tested on several numerical examples to assess the performance, limitations and numerical instabilities. The code written for the entire workflow is included as an appendix and can be downloaded from the website:https://github.com/M87K452b/postprocessing-topopt.

This thesis deals with the nature of the Left-Right scale. Theories and ideas about the Left-Right scale have been tested by a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods. The research questions are, in short, firstly if voters’ preferences on political issues, where economic issues are tested in this specific thesis, can consistently explain voters’ Left-Right self-placement, secondly if this level of explanation can vary depending on changes in national political discourse, and finally if a high level of correlation between issue and Left-Right self-placement facilitates the matching process of parties and voters of similar ideological conviction. A regression is run on data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study, data which consists of survey questions about attitudes towards economic preferences and self-placement on the Left-Right scale. The selection is restricted to old democracies, as there is some discrepancy between new and old democracies with regards to the capacity of the electorate to relate to the Left-Right scale. The independent variable in this regression is attitudes toward different economic issues, while the dependent variable is self-placement on the Left-Right scale. The first question is answered by the regression, which is if preferences regarding issues can explain self-placement on the Left-Right scale. The answer that is given is that there is indeed a consistent relationship between preferences on economic issues and self-placement on the Left-Right scale, over time. Albeit it is higher for some countries, like Scandinavia, and lower for other countries, like Japan and Ireland. The two remaining questions are answered by case studies, selected through the method of least likely and most likely cases. These are Netherlands, Sweden, Japan and France. In essence, these cases show that the Left-Right scale is indeed flexible, and can adapt to the current political discourse, and that a high relationship between preferences on political issues and self-placement on the Left-Right scale facilitates the matching of voters and parties of similar ideological conviction.

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This paper introduces the results of a project initiated by Cantho University (CTU) on the introduction of micro-credits for addressing the environmental pollution in Vietnam’s craft villages. At Tan Phu Dong, a traditional rice powder production village in Sa Dec, Dong Thap, all wastes from domestic and production activities and animal husbandry were freely disposed into open water sources. This practice led to a negative impact on the local environment. With the financial support provided by the Bread for the World (BfdW), a micro-credit program was initiated in which farmers could borrow money to construct a biogas plant to treat animal husbandry and domestic wastes. In addition, the staff transferred biogas plant construction technology to the local masons and organized training courses on biogas plant operation and maintenance and biogas usage for the farmers and the local officials. 61 farmers borrowed money from the program to construct their biogas plants, followed by more than 250 farmers that constructed their biogas plants by their own finance after realizing the positive benefits of biogas plants. As result, the environmental pollution issue was solved step-by-step, thereby helping enhance the living conditions of the local community. / Bài báo này trình bày biện pháp sử dụng nguồn quỹ tín dụng nhỏ để các hộ dân cải thiện tình trạng ô nhiễm môi trường ở các làng nghề Việt Nam. Tại làng nghề làm bột Tân Phú Đông - Sa Đéc - Đồng Tháp, các loại chất thải sinh hoạt, chất thải sản xuất và chăn nuôi xả thải bừa bãi đã gây ô nhiễm môi trường nghiêm trọng. Với kinh phí tài trợ từ tổ chức Bánh mỳ cho thế giới (BfdW), các cán bộ trường Đại học Cần Thơ đã tổ chức cho người dân luân phiên vay vốn để xây dựng hầm ủ khí sinh học xử lý chất thải chăn nuôi và chất thải sinh hoạt. Bên cạnh đó còn tổ chức các lớp tập huấn chuyển giao công nghệ xây hầm ủ khí sinh học cho thợ xây địa phương, hướng dẫn vận hành và bảo dưỡng hầm ủ cho người dân và cán bộ địa phương. Thông qua nguồn vốn vay của dự án, có 61 hộ dân đã xây dựng hầm ủ khí sinh học và trên 250 hộ dân khác đã tự đầu tư xây dựng khi thấy được lợi ích của hầm ủ. Nhờ đó tình trạng ô nhiễm môi trường từng bước được giải quyết góp phần cải thiện điều kiện sống của người dân tại địa phương.

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