Hedge funds have the past few years become an increasingly popular investment alternative and in the last decade hedge fund assets managed have quadrupled to USD 2000 billion, a growth rate of around 25-30% per year. One explanation for this substantial increase is that hedge funds' minimum limits on capital invested has declined, which have made ??them available to retail investors. The recent turmoil in financial markets has also contributed to investors finding their way to hedge funds, whose goal is to generate stable returns regardless of how the market develops.Using Sharpe?s, Treynor?s and Jensen's performance measures, I have investigated whether hedge funds manage to generate higher risk-adjusted returns than traditional managed funds.

In today?s society computers are getting a much more important role. To get a computer to work as intended it has to be programmed. A computer program is written with programming languages. There is an abundance of programming languages available today and there are many differences and similarities between them. The different languages have their advantages and their disadvantages where some of them are intended for fast performance, some to be cheap on memory usage, and some are developed to be easy to program on. In our thesis we have chosen to compare four of todays most common languages, C, C++, Java and Python.

The purpose of this master thesis is to evaluate how internal vehicle information inScania buses and trucks can be used for evaluation of driver performance regardingfuel economy, vehicle wear, traffic safety, emissions and cargo damage. To someextent it was examined whether this information could be used for training the driverto a better driving style. In addition, a prototype for such a system was developed.By first defining what distinguishes a talented driver and how he/she differs from apoor driver, followed by a study of the internal vehicle communication, a system thatin real-time gathers and interprets vehicle data could be developed.The resulting system can with reasonably high reliability detect a number of trafficevents (such as braking, lane changing or hilltops). At each such event, the driver?sbehaviour can be evaluated.

Retiring from elite sport can be a difficult and disruptive process for an elite athlete. To improve the quality of the transition after retirement, elite athletes are recommended to have dual careers which mean they combine their sport with education to be prepared for a new career when they retire from elite sport. To help elite student-athletes with this combination, universities and sport organizations provide different kind of support. This study was conducted and aimed to investigate elite athletes? perceptions of support offered by a university in Sweden and the elite athletes? perceptions of combining top level sport and academic studies.

This thesis reports on the methodology and results of a study with one retailers 73 units to investigate factors of the store managers leadership that influence productivity performance in store. The study determine the impact of ten independent variables in terms of the store managers leadership on four performance measures: (3) three productivity measures: Sales Over Labor (SALOL), Sales Over Inventory (SALOI) and Sales Over Square-metre (SALOS) and (1) one profit measure: Contribution Income Over Square-metre (CIOS). The result shows that the leadership factors give no more explanation to the economic results after factors of local market condition and the store attributes are taking in to account. The store manager's leadership can though influence his or her decision-making in-store. The store manager's decision to staff the store more intense (higher service-intensity) can increase the level of contribution income over square metre in-store..

The purpose of this essay is to examine how theory and practice intertwines through theactivism of the feminist punk performance collective Pussy Riot. I have also focussed on the political tools with which the activism is performed. Within the academic context of gender studies, I believe there is a need for research that aims to reduce the gap between scholarly and activist feminism. The theoretical framework for the analysis in this essay consists of material feminist theory and postmodern theory. The empirical material is a diversified assemblage of images, court excerpts, newspaper columns, interviews, lyrics and videos.

Secondary schools have for decades debated whether they promote social reproduction which is considered to generate the homogeneous student compositions. The gap between the academic programs and vocational education programs is considered to increase. What in recent years has appeared in research is that the gap is increasing most tend to be in the specific academic program, particularly in science. This paper's intention is to describe the science program at a local level and the pupils who were admitted to the science program autumn 2009 on the basis of an educational sociological perspective. The survey consisted of a census in which all students were given the opportunity to answer a questionnaire.

The aim of this thesis is to model my artistic practice on an adaptation of Joseph Campbells monomyth and, using this model, investigate challenges of performativity in art (in public spaces). The overall themes are personal, aesthetic and ethical sovereignty and an uncompromising search for a deepening of the artistic practice. More than anything else it is a map and a story of an artist?s expansion out into an artistic field that is little developed in Sweden. It is my hope that this thesis, by using a thoroughly subjective tone, will contribute to the milieu of performative arts in Sweden as well as widen the ?how? regarding the making of a written thesis..

High-performance equine athletes have an energy requirement that often reaches twice the maintenance requirement. Horses are grazers and adapted to a grass diet, and diets high in grains and concentrates are associated with digestive upsets and behavioural disorders. It could therefore be of interest if the energy requirement of a high-performing horse could be met by forage. It is important that the forage have a high concentration of energy so that the horse is able to consume the whole amount of energy needed from the forage without exceeding the maximum voluntary intake. The purpose of this literature study was to investigate if the energy demand of a high-performance horse can be covered by forage produced under Northern Swedish climate conditions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and describe the variation in perceptions of demands and expectations of study performance among a group of students at an upper secondary school. The study is inspired by a phenomenographic approach in which variations in perceptions of a phenomenon are of importance. Twelve students at a science program participated and were interviewed in groups of four. The results show that among the students there are several different perceptions of the demands and expectations to perform they felt present in their lives. The most important result is that it is the students' own demands and expectations on their performance and study results that are seen as the most demanding..

This thesis aims at examining to what extent a few, algorithmically very easily extractable document features can be used to classify electronic documents according to genre. A set of experiments is therefore carried out, using only 11 such simple features in an attempt to classify 84 documents belonging to electronic academic journals into three manually identified genres: table of contents, article, and review. The 11 features are also divided into three sets, containing metrics of words and sentences; punctuation marks; and URL links, respectively. The performance when using these sets of features is then measured with regard to classification accuracy, using a k-NN classifier, four different values of k (1, 3, 5, 7), and both leave-one-out and 10-fold cross-validation. Best results are achieved when using all three feature sets (i.e.

Emotional intelligence (EQ) has been claimed to be the most critical factor in determining a person's success in life, both personal and professional. EQ highly affects academic and job performance, leadership, stress, and well-being but is still not widely accounted for in recruitment processes. During the last 20 years a large number of researchers have shown interest in the concept of emotional intelligence, but few have studied its practical implications and how EQ-tests are used as a selection tool in recruitment processes. To create an understanding of the motivation for using the test, as well as its role in recruitment decisions, qualitative interviews have been conducted with recruiters at companies in Stockholm, Sweden. All interviewed companies use the self-assessment test EQ:i 2.0.

During the milling of Sandvik Coromant?s world leading Drill with replaceable inserts,the CoroDrill880©, burrs appear around the milled surfaces. The burrs are removedusing different methods, one of which is deburring with special brushing machines thatare integrated into milling cells. The machines of the type Sinjet, use a Siemensguidance system. The deburring results are not satisfying and manual deburring isrequired afterwards.

The main purpose of this thesis is to discuss what exile writing is and who can be seen as an exile writer. If the word ?exile? is related to forced dislocation, like Paul Tabori and Sopia A. McClennen describes it, who can be viewed as an exile writer? Is Anders Olsson?s definition of an exile writer acceptable or not? Could the The Escape, a future story about exiled Northern Europeans in Myanmar, be classified as exile literature?Another purpose with this text is to describe how a story about exile can be made realistic and tangible to a reader who has not experienced exile.

ProblemPerformance management på individnivå innebär att styra individen utifrån individuella mål som förmedlar organisationens övergripande strategi till medarbetarna. För att förstärka styreffekterna av individuella mål kan en belöning kopplas till måluppfyllelsegrad. Effekten av ett bonussystem ställer stora krav på samarbete mellan chef och anställd då de tillsammans ska ställa upp realistiska mål som syftar till att utveckla den enskilde individen samtidigt som de bidrar till organisationens övergripande mål och resultat. Därmed är det viktigt att undersöka hur medarbetare och chefer påverkas av individuella mål kopplade till bonus och vilka effekter detta får inom företaget. Vilken effekt har målsättnings-, uppföljnings- och utvärderingsarbetet på styrning och motivation bland medarbetare och chefer?SyfteSyftet är att undersöka och öka förståelsen kring hur styrning och motivations-aspekter påverkas då performance management bryts ner till individnivå samt hur en belöningskoppling kan förstärka den eventuella styreffekten.MetodUndersökningen har genomförts i form av en fallstudie där intervjuer använts som främsta empiriinsamlingsmetod.