The Swedish rules for marrying in Sweden are different for swedish citizens and foreigners. A swedish citizen has to have permission from"Länsstyrelsen"to marry before the age of 18 but a foreigner may marry without permission at an age of 15, unless a higher age is required by the foreign law. The main question in this essay is if the swedish international law concerning the age of marriage is compatible with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and/or the Swedish Constitution. The comparison is based on mainly two questions: Primarily the Swedish international law is discussed concerning which marrying age is good for the child. Thereafter it is discussed whether it is discriminating to have different marrying ages for swedish and foreign citizens. The result is that 18 years is a suitable age for marrying after a comparison with other Swedish laws and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Different age limits for swedish and foreign citizens could not be considered to be discriminating according to the Swedish Constitution, but on the other hand it is discriminating according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Bounded rationality is the study of how human cognition with limited capacity is adapted to handle the complex information structures in the environment. This thesis argues that in order to understand the bounded rationality of decision processes, it is necessary to develop decision theories that are computational process models based upon basic cognitive and perceptual mechanisms. The main goal of this thesis is to show that models of perceptual categorization based on the storage of exemplars and retrieval of similar exemplars whenever a new object is encountered (D. L. Medin & M. M. Schaffer, 1978), can be an important contribution to theories of decision making. Study I proposed, PROBEX (PROBabilities from Exemplars), a model for inferences from generic knowledge. It is a “lazy” algorithm that presumes no pre-computed abstractions. In a computer simulation it was found to be a powerful decision strategy, and it was possible to fit the model to human data in a psychologically plausible way. Study II was a theoretical investigation that found that PROBEX was very robust in conditions where the decision maker has very little information, and that it worked well even under the worst circumstances. Study III empirically tested if humans can learn to use exemplar based or one reason decision making strategies (G. Gigerenzer, P. Todd, & the ABC Research Group, 1999) where it is appropriate in a two-alternative choice task. Experiment 1 used cue structure and presentation format as independent variables, and participants easily used one reason strategies if the decision task presented the information as normal text. The participants were only able to use exemplars if they were presented as short strings of letters. Experiment 2 failed to accelerate learning of exemplar use during the decision phase, by prior exposure to exemplars in a similar task. In conclusion, this thesis supports that there are at least two modes of decision making, which are boundedly rational if they are used in the appropriate context. Exemplar strategies may, contrary to study II, only be used late in learning, and the conditions for learning need to be investigated further.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was ratified by Sweden in 1990. Among its principles is devotion to the best interests of the child (article 3). This principle is hard to define, and it is difficult to find studies on how children express themselves about how the convention should be realized. The Swedish government wants local councils to introduce routines that follow the proposed rights. The Swedish school system is an important arena where UNCRC’s rights can be put into practice. This study’s purpose is to discover how the Swedish upper secondary schools follow article 3, using pupils’ description of what is best for them as a starting point. Two pupil focus-group interviews have been used to obtain this description, and the pupils views were divided into four main themes: Security, Reception, Studies and development and Influence. These were converted into questionniares for two schools. The result was analyzed using empowerment and SOC (sense of coherence) as theoretical perspectives. Some answers differed between the schools as to how the principle of article 3 is fulfilled. The majority of the pupils are happy with their schools, in spite of difficulties with structural conditions and that life at school isn’t always on the pupils’ conditions.

Urbanisation processes in developing countries are resulting in a rapidly increasing proportion of habitants living in urban slum areas. In the international development debate the lack of tenure security for slum dwellers in developing countries is considered to be an essentially important problem. Within the framework of the UN Millennium Development Programme the necessity of efforts towards increased tenure security for marginalised urban residents was agreed upon. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the overall progress towards improved living conditions for slum area residents is showing the least positive results. This paper investigates the occurrence of activities in the region which show an ambition of improving tenure security for people living in urban slum areas. It does so by examining cases submitted from African countries to the UN-HABITAT database of best international practices in the improvement of living conditions.

Kvalitetsmärkningen Naturens Bästa arbetar för att marknadsföra upplevelser som inte är bra enbart för turisten utan även för miljön och omgivningen. Idag blir vi som konsumenter mer och mer medvetna och måna om vår miljö och den värld vi lever i. Således borde en kvalitetsmärkning som Naturens Bästa kunna vägleda oss till att finna arrangemang inom turismen som hjälper oss att välja arrangörer som verkligen lever upp till de krav vi ställer. Problemet som finns är dock att denna kvalitetsmärkning inte syns i den gemensamma marknadsföringen av destinationer i nuläget. Utifrån detta är syftet med uppsatsen att undersöka varför kvalitetsmärkningen Naturens Bästa inte har någon framskjutande roll i marknadsföringen av destinationer. Vi har använt oss av en kvalitativ insamlingsmetod i form av personliga intervjuer i vår undersökning för att få fram varför kvalitetsmärkningen inte syns i marknadsföringen. Intervjuerna genomfördes med respondenter från turistbyrån i Västerås, Västmanlands kommuner och landsting samt turistbyrån i Skinnskatteberg. Den teori uppsatsen bygger på är turism och marknadsföring, destinationsmarknadsföring och kvalitetsmärkning. Utifrån denna teori har intervjufrågorna utformats och den insamlade primärdatan sedan analyserats. Med utgångspunkt i den genomförda analysen framkom det att Naturens Bästa inte har någon framskjuten roll i marknadsföringen av destinationer till stor del på grund av att kunskapen om kvalitetsmärkningen är dålig ute bland turistorganisationerna. Detta beror enligt vår mening på brist av information. Ytterligare en anledning är att det finns en ovilja att använda märkningen i broschyrerna. / The quality label Natures Best is committed to market experiences that are not only good for the tourist, but also for the environment.  Consumers today become more and more aware of their surrounding and the world we live in. Therefore, a quality label like Natures Best should be able to guide us to find arrangements within tourism that helps us choose arrangers that really lives up to the demands we have. The problem recognized, is that this quality label is not visible in the common marketing of destinations today. From this point of view, the purpose with this thesis is to investigate why the quality label Natures Best does not have a prominent role in the marketing of destinations.  In our examination of why the quality labeling does not have a prominent role, we have used a qualitative method of collection in the form of personal interviews. The interviews were carried out with respondents from the tourist bureau in Västerås, “Västmanlands kommuner och landsting” and the tourist bureau in Skinnskatteberg. The theory which the thesis is based upon is tourism and marketing, destination marketing and quality labeling. The questions for the interviews and the analysis of the primary data have been formed based on this theory. With a starting point in the conducted analyze, it emerged that Natures Best does not have a prominent role in the marketing of destinations because there is a poor knowledge about the quality label among the organizations. According to us, this is due to a lack of information. Another reason is that it exist a reluctance to use the label in the brochures.

PURPOSE: To describe 1) smoking cessation (SC) interventions by Family Practice Nurses (FPN) during prenatal visits, and 2) the predictors and barriers of FPN-provided SC counselling for pregnant women. DESIGN: Non-experimental, descriptive, correlational design. Onetime, cross-sectional questionnaire using a previously validated questionnaire, modified and converted to electronic format. METHODS: Descriptive and multivariable analysis. Predictors investigated included nurses’ age, beliefs about their role in SC, self-efficacy to provide effective counselling, SC training, and interest in updating SC knowledge. PARTICIPANTS: Eighty-nine members of the Ontario Family Practice Nurses’ interest group (18% response rate) working in primary care settings across Ontario. RESULTS: Nearly one quarter (21.5%) of respondents never offer SC counselling to pregnant women. Nurses with higher levels of self-efficacy were more likely to provide SC counselling. Nurses are less likely to provide concrete assistance in the quitting process or arrange follow-up. The most commonly cited barriers included lack of time and cost of medication. CONCLUSIONS: FPNs are not consistently providing evidence-based SC interventions for pregnant women. Training to enhance self-efficacy may increase the frequency, efficiency and quality of FPN-provided SC interventions.

There is a lot of research work being performed on indexing the Web. More and more sophisticated Web crawlers are been designed to search and index the Web faster. But all these traditional crawlers crawl only the part of Web we call “Surface Web”. They are unable to crawl the hidden portion of the Web. These traditional crawlers retrieve contents only from surface Web pages which are just a set of Web pages linked by some hyperlinks and ignoring the hidden information. Hence, they ignore tremendous amount of information hidden behind these search forms in Web pages. Most of the published research has been done to detect such searchable forms and make a systematic search over these forms. Our approach here will be based on a Web crawler that analyzes search forms and fills tem with appropriate content to retrieve maximum relevant information from the database.

La numérisation 3D telle que pratiquée aujourd'hui repose essentiellement sur les connaissances de l'opérateur qui la réalise. La qualité des résultats reste très sensible à la procédure utilisée et par conséquent aux compétences de l'opérateur. Ainsi, la numérisation manuelle est très coûteuse en ressources humaines et matérielles et son résultat dépend fortement du niveau de technicité de l'opérateur. Les solutions de numérisation les plus avancées en milieu industriel sont basées sur une approche d'apprentissage nécessitant une adaptation manuelle pour chaque pièce. Ces systèmes sont donc semi-automatiques compte tenu de l'importance de la contribution humaine pour la planification des vues.Mon projet de thèse se focalise sur la définition d'un procédé de numérisation 3D automatique et intelligente. Ce procédé est présenté sous forme d'une séquence de processus qui sont la planification de vues, la planification de trajectoires, l'acquisition et les post-traitements des données acquises. L'originalité de notre démarche de numérisation est qu'elle est générique parce qu'elle n'est pas liée aux outils et méthodes utilisés pour la réalisation des tâches liées à chaque processus. Nous avons également développé trois méthodes de planification de vues pour la numérisation d'objets sans connaissance a priori de leurs formes. Ces méthodes garantissent une indépendance des résultats par rapport au savoir-faire de l'opérateur. L'originalité de ces approches est qu'elles sont applicables à tous types de scanners. Nous avons implanté ces méthodes sur une cellule de numérisation robotisée. Nos approches assurent une reconstruction progressive et intelligente d'un large panel d'objets de différentes classes de complexité en déplaçant efficacement le scanner

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Bas van Fraassen argues that inference to the best explanation (IBE) is a probabilistically incoherent rule (1989). Anyone following IBE is open to being Dutch booked. According to one of the most interesting and popular responses to van Fraassen’s argument, van Fraassen misrepresents IBE in probabilistic terms. With the proper probabilistic representation, it is claimed, IBE is not inconsistent with Bayesian rationality constraints. Building on the work of IBE’s proponents, I first propose a minimal account of what makes one explanation better than another. I then argue that, even on this minimal account, the alternative probabilistic model of IBE does not work, and hence fails to successfully respond to van Fraassen’s argument.