This essay deals with the same task that utilitarians have tried to solve for a long time, what is happiness? In the eighteenth-century utilitarians suggested that happiness should be the base for social political decisions. But the lack of definition disposed so that GDP became the measurement of happiness, which proved to be wrong when the unhappiness continued to increase. More than two hundred years later scientists came up with a new definition of happiness and new ways to measure it. And during the last decade economists have taken the discussion to a higher level.So once again we?re dealing with the same old issue, if happiness ought to be the base of social political decisions.

This master?s thesis was performed during the fall of 2006 at Cloetta Fazer AB in Ljungsbro. Cloetta Fazer is the market leader in Scandinavia of manufacturing confectionary and chocolates. The purpose of the project has been to identify causes that impact the quantity of waste in production as well as a cost/benefit analysis of the solutions that can reduce the problem of production waste.The work includes four production lines that are individually designed depending on what kind of product that are produced on the line. By using qualitative and quantitative methods such as focus groups, interviews and observations data has been collected.

Background: The lack of knowledge regarding preschool children's mental health prompted Uppsala University, in collaboration with Uppsala Kommun, to start a study in which children aged 3, 4, and 5 years are screened using the "Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire" (SDQ). This screening method has been introduced into the majority of Uppsala County child care centers (BVC), and the nurses' experience of working with this method is examined in this paper.Method: A qualitative approach with semi-structured questions was used to interview ten nurses who pioneered the SDQ Method. The interviews where recorded, transcribed and analyzed using content analysis.Results: Three themes and nine categories were identified from the interviews. The themes were: "Attitude and motivation are important when working with the form", "Clearer overall picture with preschool answer", and "A tool to identify difficulties". The results show that the nurses were satisfied with the form.

This master thesis was done for a company called BRUKS which is active in woodprocessing,bio-energy and bulk material handling industry. The idea for the master thesis wasto develop a new reclaiming method for silos where wood chips are being stored. A mediumsegment of between 1000 ? 5000 m3was defined as the segment with the most sales potential.Two different concepts were produced, one for new constructions and one for rebuildingalready existing silos.In the beginning of the master thesis a lot of time was spent on visiting different BRUKSoffices and customers to get an overview of the industry and the product. This informationwas the basis when the idea generating phase began.

Peat litter is a soft material with high absorbency. About hundred years ago many farmers in Sweden used peat litter to their dairy cows. After the World War II the use of peat litter decreased and the farmers used more straw. Nowadays (year 2007), when it is harder to find straw and sawdust to buy, peat litter is advancing again. The purpose with this study is to investigate peat as a litter to dairy cows.

Since a few years back television has been on a verge of an enormous digital change. Web-TV is now growing at an incredible rate and is said to completely change the way we consume TV. The purpose of this essay is to determine and gain an understanding of how representatives of the broadcast industry looks at the phenomenon of web-TV and especially the different kinds of online video services and how they believe this will affect the television. Methods used are qualitative interviews which we compared with previous studies on the subject and acknowledged communication theories. The respondents were people with good insight and understanding of the media and TV industry.

AHA is a Swedish abbreviation of "reveal threatened park and avenue trees" and is a method to assess the conservation value of individual trees, mainly in the park environments but also in natural stands. This method has previously only been practiced in southern Sweden (Sörensson 2008). To see if this method could provide satisfactory results in northern Sweden, I have studied it in areas around the Umeå River. This was done by studying the relationship between trees with different classifications of conservation value (as classed by the AHA method) and their content of species (species richness and abundance). Insects were collected using trunk window traps in a period of 13 weeks during the summer of 2014.

Nowadays Wireless LAN is playing a more and more important role in network systems. After 1999, in which the IEEE organization published its Wireless Local Network standard 802.11[1], many people saw the advantages of the standard but also the lack of support for multimedia streaming. A lot of research work has been done on the proposed IEEE 802.11e standard draft during the past 4 years. It is supposed to be able to fully support Quality of Service. The final version will be published early in 2004.

Fast pyrolysis is a method for converting biomass into three energy rich products: char, gas and bio-oil, where the latter is most interesting.  Pyrolysis is an endothermic process where biomass is heated in an anaerobic environment and, with the right operating conditions, up to 80 %wt bio-oil can be extracted. Key parameters for fast pyrolysis are: stable reactor temperature (~500°C), short residue time for gas in the reactor (<2 s) and a very high heating rate for the biomass. Today there are several different process solutions for fast pyrolysis, where fluidized beds and rotating cones are most developed. Bio-oil has compared to fossil oil: lower heating value, low pH and also polymerizes with time. Because of this upgrading is desirable for increasing competitiveness.

In this paper we investigate 67 Swedish buyouts in the manufacturing and retailing sector between the years 2004-2012. The purpose is to measure changes in a set of financial key ratios to see if private equity firms are able to improve performance in their portfolio companies compared to a peer group consisting of other firms within the same industries. Furthermore, we examine if there is a difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors. The key results are that the private equity owned firms have not outperformed their peers with respect to the chosen key ratios. We also conclude that there is no significant difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors..

Asset management in insurance companies differs from conventional asset management to the extent that respect has to be taken to both assets and the commitments the insurance company has towards its customers. A model that has proven to fit well regarding the matching of assets and liabilities is the Asset Liability Management Model (ALM model). In addition to the matching in the balance sheet, the ALM model can be used in a company's work with strategic portfolio allocation by applying it as a basis for analyzing investment strategies with expected risk and return. From this, the ALM model also becomes relevant for calculating key figures according to the legal framework Solvens II which includes laws and regulations regarding the demands on economical strength (solvens) of insurance companies.Hence, the goal of this masters thesis has been to, on behalf of Bliwa Livförsäkring, create an ALM model to support the asset management department of Bliwa in their work with defining a credible way of analyzing the future risk and return of Bliwa's asset portfolio and insurance undertakings.The ALM model generally consist of four submodels, the scenario model, the liability model, the asset model and the company model, where the scenario model often is named as the core of the ALM model. The course of action has been to develop these submodels individually, with focus on the scenario model.

The purpose of this study was to bibliometrically investigate and describe the research area called ?extrasolar planets?. The research questions were: Which authors were mostly cited within the area when the first authors (and their co-authors) were considered? Which authors were found in most co-occurrences? Did particular author collaborations emerge? To which institutions were most authors affiliated and did the size of the institution have an influence on whether an author was cited? What was the geographic distribution of authors and institutions and were there any patterns of collaboration?Did the image of dominating institutions and countries depend on the viewpoint?How applicable was Lotka?s law on the collected data? The data was collected from citation lists in documents from the database Arxiv.org. The documents were extracted by using the search term ?extrasolar planets?.

This thesis represents my individual final research in Societal Risk Management. The aim of the study is to research whether the method called Responsible Beverage Serving has had the desired effect of diminished alcohol-related violence in Karlstad City, after its implementation into the ordinary operational agenda for Karlstad district in the county of Wermland. According to the method, the alcohol-related damages as well as alcohol-related violence in a society can be reduced by refusing to serve minors and clients who are excessively intoxicated.In order to be able to reach the aim of the thesis, the subsequent questions must be answered;Has excessive drinking reduced in the bars and clubs in Karlstad City?Has it become more difficult for minors to be served alcohol in the bars and clubs in Karlstad City?Has the police reported amount of assaults outdoors diminished regarding the alcohol-related violence in Karlstad City?This research is an intervention study and uses a quasi-experimental design. The intervention itself is the method called Responsible Beverage Serving.

To guarantee the customers a job satisfactory executed Sydved has been certified by the ISO 14001 standard. One part of the certification is the standards of soil damages. The soil damages were over represented during 1999 and 2000. It was therefore a need to study the problem in order to see what could be done to reduces these damages. A filed study was carried out on 21 subjectively selected stands from the following five districts: Vänersborg, Falköping, Borås, Jönköping and Åseda. As the study is a descriptive study of the soil damages, their character and extension, only stands were tracks were reported were considered.

Background: Basic hygiene is an important measure to prevent healthcare associated infections, save patients? lives, and reduce economic costs for health care. Healthcare associated infections are a threat to patient safety. In community care persons who are the care takers are a risk group and nurses must make sure that basic hygiene procedures are followed.Method: Literature studies with descriptive design, article search in databases Cinahl and PubMed. The results found are based on twelve chosen articles.Aim: To describe factors related to adherence to basic hygiene and how nurses in community care can help to improve compliance with these procedures.Results: In the nursing staff and leadership in health care interest in and the understanding of basic hygiene is described as being of most importance.