ABSTRACT Parental support is needed because it promotes a positive development in children, because parents ask for it and because it has positive effects on the public economy. Those responsible in Sweden for Child health care have shown an increased interest in supporting parenthood. Aim: The overall purpose of this study was to investigate what kind of support parents today desire from child health care. An additional purpose was to investigate if they feel their needs and wishes are met. Method: The study has a descriptive and qualitative design. The selection was eight parents of children under eighteen months of age: four mothers and four fathers. None of the participants were couples. Data collection was performed with semi structured interviews. Collected data were analyzed according to qualitative content analyses. Results: Two themes appeared: desired support – the child in focus and organisation – no place for fathers. Seven categories emerged: expectations before the child was born – the health of the child in focus and someone to call, expectations today – the health of the child and support in parenthood, seeking support from others than the Child health care, accessibility is important, continuity creates safety, the purpose of parent education group satisfactory & home visits – from ambivalent to positive experience. The study shows that the informants wants that Child health care focuses on the growth and development of the child, supports parents in their new role as parents and is accessible if the parents have questions. The informants were to great extent content with the support from the child health centre. Conclusion: According to parents wishes Child health care should focus on the child and it’s health along with strengthening the parents in their new role. The accessibility must improve to make the child health care centre a place even for fathers. Key words Child health centre, parents, support, desire, expectations.

The treatment that women get from health care staff can influence the experience of the abortion and how women manage to coping the experience emotionally. The aim of this study was to illuminate women’s experiences in connection with an abortion. The findings show that the women’s social situation led them to the decision of abortion. When the women had the pregnancy confirmed many felt unreality. Several women experienced the situation as a crisis. After the abortion most of the women experienced relief, but also guilt towards the abortion. Some knew that they had made the right decision, while others felt regret. Most of the women experienced that the nursing staff treated them well, but some women experienced that the staff was negative, insensitive and ignoring. Most of the women was satisfied with the total support from significant others. To make a satisfying nursing care possible for each woman who seeks abortion, more research is needed about women’s experiences of nursing staff’s treatment.

Introduction: The term Business Intelligence arose in the mid-1990s and is a growing share of the IT market. The need of Business Intelligence emerges from an increasing competition and a constantly changing and more complex business climate. Problem discussion: There are only few examples of research dealing with data-driven decision processes. How data are incorporated in decision making processes is crucial for the future use of decision support systems. The literature stress that managers must use more analytics and rationality to make better and more appropriate decisions. However, previously studies have indicated that intuition still plays a major role in decision making, even in organizations using Business Intelligence. With this background the following research question is presented: To what extent are Business Intelligence systems used to support decisions in organizations? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe and observe Business Intelligence from a decision making perspective. Method: The primary source of data is personal interviews and one observation study, which implies a qualitative method. The respondents are an organization in the start-up phase, IT-consultants and suppliers and current Business Intelligence users. An abductive approach is applied, and the analyses of data is done simultaneously as the examination of literature and previously made studies. Findings: The system is mainly used for producing reports and as a provider of information. More information and more detailed information are accessible due to the Business Intelligence system. The information itself is valued highly, it is assumed that if the decision maker has enough of information, an appropriate decision will be made. Intuition is still frequently used among the users, yet the Business Intelligence system can to some extent neutralize the user. This is due to that the system is used to confirm and follow up the intuition.

Tidigare forskning har visat att kvinnor uppsöker professionell hjälp oftare än män, detta sägs bero på att kvinnor har lättare att erkänna sig själva som svaga. Syftet var att undersöka om det fanns någon skillnad i hur män och kvinnor bedömde en kollegas arbetsrelaterade stress samt om kollegans kön påverkade bedömningen. Ett urval på 108 yrkesarbetande män och kvinnor från två sektorer valdes ut, deltagarna läste tre vinjetter om en stressad man eller kvinna vars hälsa gradvis försämras på grund av ökad arbetsbelastning. En flervägs mixed ANOVA gjordes med bedömningen av målpersonens arbetsbörda, ohälsa och hjälpbehov som beroendevariabler. Resultaten visade att män uppfattade en kvinnlig kollegas ohälsa och hjälpbehov som större än en manlig kollegas. Kvinnor gjorde ingen skillnad på manliga eller kvinnliga kollegor. Män och kvinnor uppfattade det motsatta könets arbetsbörda som större än det egna. Kvinnliga eller manliga kollegor kan vara avgörande för när individen blir erbjuden hjälp.

Support provision is a personal and important element of daily life for many people with disabilities. The study examines the ways in which organizational mandates and philosophies shape interactions between people with disabilities and support providers at two unique organizations: a L’Arche community for people with intellectual disabilities and a Independent Living Resource Centre. The project is framed with the social model of disability, the work of Titchkosky (2003) and human geography. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, including a scenario component, with administrators at each location, people with disabilities using the services and support providers. The findings demonstrate that both organizations have strongly articulated philosophies that the participants are familiar with. The L’Arche model creates an environment that determines certain ways of interacting and while the IL participants amend the philosophy to reflect the daily reality of support provision. / October 2007

Although there is a growing body of research in the area of adolescent pregnancy and parenting, relatively little research has addressed the psychological effects of pregnancy on the adolescent. A descriptive correlational study was utilized to examine levels of depressive symptomatology, self-esteem, perceived social support from family and friends, and the relationship among these variables in the pregnant adolescent. A second purpose of the study was to describe characteristics of the pregnant adolescent (age, race or ethnicity and educational level). The theoretical framework for this study was derived from The Conceptual Model of Support During Adolescent Pregnancy. Participants for the study were recruited from two school programs for pregnant adolescents, a physicians office, and a clinic. A convenience sample of 90 single pregnant teens between the ages of 13 to 18 participated in the study. The teens completed a demographic form and four questionnaires: the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Perceived Social Support from Family Scale, and the Perceived Social Support from Friends Scale. Demographic data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was computed to determine the significance between the depression scores and each of the demographic variables. The relationship between the adolescent's total depression score and self-esteem, perceived family support, and perceived peer support were determined by computing Pearson product-moment correlations. Regression analyses were conducted to determine the best linear model to explain the variance in the total depression scores and the combination of the independent variables (self-esteem, perceived social support from family, and perceived social support from friends) in the pregnant adolescent. Thirteen (14%) of the adolescents exceeded the cutoff score of 77. The regression analysis of the RADS-2 score on the predictor variables (self-esteem, perceived support from family, and perceived support from friends) accounts for 56.9% of variance in depression of adolescents during pregnancy. The adolescents in this study who experienced increased self-esteem and perceived support from family and friends had decreased scores on the RADS-2 scale. Increased self-esteem or feelings of self-worth was the most significant variable in this study as a predictor of depressive symptomatology.

With an increasing amount of attention being paid to maternal mental health and the knowledge that maternal depression has the potential to adversely affect the breastfeeding relationship, the demand for appropriate breastfeeding support for mothers struggling with postpartum depression is on the rise. Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, the objective of this thesis research was to explore the lived experience of breastfeeding in women with postpartum depression to enhance understanding of what it means for these women to feel supported by registered nurses. After obtaining ethical and operational approval, recruitment began in September 2011 via the Saskatoon Postpartum Depression Support Program, a community wellness program offered by the Saskatoon Health Region. The researcher conducted in-depth, conversation-style interviews with five postpartum mothers. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and were analyzed according to emerging themes. The lived experience of breastfeeding with postpartum depression presented itself across interviews as overarching patterns, which are expressed by the following four themes: making the decision to breastfeed and having great expectations; learning the moves and wanting reassurance (establishing the breastfeeding relationship); breastfeeding in the dark (maintaining the breastfeeding relationship while trying to manage the symptoms of depression); keeping it under wraps and waiting it out (the issue of support). The mothers in this study valued the breastfeeding relationship when it went well; however, breastfeeding difficulties intensified symptoms of depression. Mothers who made the decision to breastfeed their infants needed ongoing support from healthcare professionals and loved ones to continue to breastfeed when faced with the debilitating symptoms of postpartum depression. This research concluded that women need increased anticipatory guidance to be prepared for the demands of motherhood. Women who are at risk for postpartum depression need appropriate treatment throughout the perinatal period and beyond. To these ends nurses must enhance their role as breastfeeding and postpartum depression educators across an extended perinatal period. Nurses should work along with other healthcare providers (midwives, social workers, physicians) to assess the effectiveness and appropriateness of prenatal classes as they are currently offered. Increased emphasis should be focused on newborn feeding and care for mother and baby postnatally in conjunction with prenatal preparation for birth itself. The issue of professional nursing support for breastfeeding must be explored from a sociopolitical context in order to determine if nurses have the cultural and institutional support they need to provide responsive care to mothers and babies. Enhanced support for breastfeeding certification among frontline staff is recommended. It is also recommended that staffing guidelines to decrease nurse-to-client ratios be implemented in order to give nurses the time needed to support mothers as they work through breastfeeding challenges (especially those mothers at risk for postpartum depression). Further, nurses need to enhance efforts to engage mothers and their families in a participatory manner so that knowledge gleaned results in responsive interventions.

Face detection is a preprocessing step for face recognition algorithms. It is the localization of face/faces in an image or image sequence. Once the face(s) are localized, other computer vision algorithms such as face recognition, image compression, camera auto focusing etc are applied. Because of the multiple usage areas, there are many research efforts in face processing. Face detection is a challenging computer vision problem because of lighting conditions, a high degree of variability in size, shape, background, color, etc. To build fully automated systems, robust and efficient face detection algorithms are required. Numerous techniques have been developed to detect faces in a single image; in this project we have used a classification-based face detection method using Gabor filter features. We have designed five frequencies corresponding to eight orientations channels for extracting facial features from local images. The feature vector based on Gabor filter is used as the input of the face/non-face classifier, which is a Support Vector Machine (SVM) on a reduced feature subspace extracted by using principal component analysis (PCA). Experimental results show promising performance especially on single face images where 78% accuracy is achieved with 0 false acceptances.

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is a system that builds a safe, effective and integrated transportation environment based on advanced technologies. Road signs detection and recognition is an important part of ITS, which offer ways to collect the real time traffic data for processing at a central facility.This project is to implement a road sign recognition model based on AI and image analysis technologies, which applies a machine learning method, Support Vector Machines, to recognize road signs. We focus on recognizing seven categories of road sign shapes and five categories of speed limit signs. Two kinds of features, binary image and Zernike moments, are used for representing the data to the SVM for training and test. We compared and analyzed the performances of SVM recognition model using different features and different kernels. Moreover, the performances using different recognition models, SVM and Fuzzy ARTMAP, are observed.

Sammanfattning Syftet med studien var att beskriva hur stomiopererade personer upplever stöd och informa­tion, relaterat till skötseln av stomin. Studien hade en kvalitativ ansats med beskrivande design. Tio personer med stomi från två hälsocentraler i Mellansverige deltog i studien. Data samlades in via intervjuer med semi­strukturerade frågor och analyserades med kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultatet redovisades utifrån temat Att vara självständig men inte oberoende och sex kategorier: Att få information som är individuellt anpassad, Att personer i omgivningen kan och känner till, Att ha tillgång till kompetent personal, Att inte få veta eller förstå, Att känna ensamhet samt Att känna sig osäker. Temat beskrev att personer med stomi strävade efter att bli självständiga i sin egenvård av stomin men att de samtidigt hade behov av omtanke, kunskap och förståelse i sin nära omgivning. Individuellt anpassad information var av stor betydelse och det uppskat­tades att bli bemött som en medmänniska av kompetent och tillgänglig personal. Några hade stöd av familj och vänner medan andra kände sig väldigt ensamma. Ibland var det svårt att förstå informationen och det ledde till svårigheter. Den första tiden i hemmet kände sig samt­liga väldigt osäkra att utföra sin egenvård av stomin och stödet och informationen upplevdes bris­tande. Kontinuerligt stöd, information och uppföljning i hemmet skulle underlätta tillvaron och rehabiliteringen för personer med stomi