In a globalized world, competitiveness is based on the high IP (intellectual property) of our export products and innovations are therefore important for new companies to establish and develop. It´s not enough to just have big international companies but it is also necessary to invest in new companies that can be competitive in the future. By helping entrepreneurs with innovation support in the early stages, new technology-based businesses are established and developed. The purpose of this paper was to examine how innovation support in the early stages affects the establishment and development of new technology-based companies. Furthermore, we investigated how this will affect Sweden's international competitiveness.

In this thesis a number of energy saving methods for a multiplier on algorithmic level are investigated. For the investigation a multiplier is constructed in VHDL, after which the circuit's performance is investigated. A number of techniques for reduced power consumption are introduced in the circuit and are then evaluated. The conclusions are that all investigated methods, pipelining, interleaving and voltage scaling, should be maximally made use of in order to minimize the power consumption..

The aim of this master thesis is to study if the websites of the Swedish public libraries are accessible to all people. According to the library law all people must have access to the public libraries and their information services. Today, when the Internet is one of the largest sources of information, it is important that all people, including those with different kind of disabilities, children, elderly, immigrants and people with old technical equipment, have access to the public libraries websites.We have in this study considered the graphic user interface, the language, the structure and the navigation possibilities at ten public library websites. We have from a checklist of our own, based upon the opinion of different experts such as Jacob Nielsen and Tommy Sundström, investigated the websites.The main finding of our study is that the websites are generally accessible even thou we found a lack of accessible for immigrants. Most of the websites had some pages in English, but none hade all pages in this language.

Linux is a growing operating system in embedded systems. Today, Linux is not only in heavy servers but also in cell phones, PDAs, cameras and other devices running on battery power. While current technology is more energy efficient, more and more technologies are implemented into a single unit resulting in an overall increase of power consumption.Low power consumption is an increasingly important feature of a system today. Lower power consumption means lower costs, less environmental impact, and longer life for applications that runs on batteries.This work compiles methods to reduce power consumption of Linux systems. The work includes examining whether the available opportunities are platform-specific or of a more general nature.

The release of green house gases and the environmental impacts humans have on the environment are huge and might cause irreversible changes to our earth. Meat is considered to have large impacts on the environment, especially beef meat and therefore there have lately been considerable discussions on the sustainable level of meat consumption and production. The main goal with this thesis is to study sustainable meat production and meat consumption in the county of Dalarna in Sweden. Indicators for sustainable meat production and meat consumption were developed and applied on three cases. Interviews were carried out with a municipality in the region that represents the consumer and three beef farmers that represents the producers.

The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge of dental erosion and the consumption habits of soft drinks among secondary school students. Differences between the sexes should also be investigated. The study consisted of 102 students, 60 women and 42 men, in the eleventh grade from a school in the south of Sweden. A questionnaire with 25 questions, divided in two parts with focus on knowledge respective consumption pattern and behaviour, was handed out and collected by the authors. The data showed that more than 50% of the participants had knowledge about dental erosion.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the accessibility in public libraries for persons with dyslexia and visually impaired persons. In order to do this, library services, information and attitudes have been studied. Data have been collected through interviews and studies of documents, in particular guidelines for library service to disabled persons. The theoretical starting point of the analysis is Professor Michael Bucklands different aspects of access to information. He discusses six types of barriers that must be overcome if access is to be achieved.

In this paper the authors aim to examine the effects on consumers using different strategies in a campaign within social marketing. A model by Evans et al (1996) has been used in order to see the different steps in which advertising catches the viewers? attention and eventually leads to action or purchasing. However, in the case of this thesis, the intention of the chosen campaign is to change the consumers? attitudes and behavior towards alcohol.

Public WiFi networks is one of the dominant technologies for users to get public internet access. The problem is that the networks are designed for accessability rather than security ? a problem users seldom are aware of. Users who carelessly access WiFi networks may reveal sensitive information which, among other things, can lead to an identity theft. Previous research suggests that users must be educated and informed about the risks they incur, but not how this should be done.

The hospital in Varberg has a somewhat outmoded solution regarding the state of preparedness in its water sustentation. Today?s solution is both cause to a number of mishaps and high energy consumption.The report is initiated by looking into the present situation to get an insight to the problem.Today?s media depletion is measured and analyzed.Furthermore, it also looks into some earlier performed studies. These studies are followed up in order to see if measures have been taken.The report presents a number of arrangements which should be taken, amongst those a minor re-build of the current solution and a number of arrangements which leads to decreased water consumption..

The Swedish building stock accounts for nearly 40 percent of the total energyconsumption in the country. Properties built today are likely to last for 100 years orlonger. This places high demands on long-term and smart energy solutions that willkeep the future Swedish building stock energy consumption at low levels. This thesishas focused on examining how the energy performance of buildings is affected bydifferent choices of window types in different cardinal directions. The objective wasto obtain a basis for recommendations on how window properties can be optimizedfor different types of buildings and orientations.

One of the main goals in this study is to investigate how young children's identity formation and social relationships are depicted by today's consumer society.  In order to reach the goals of the study I also concentrated myself on questions regarding the reflection of symbolic aspects consumption in younger children's interaction and preschool-teachers' ideas about how and in what ways children's consumption patterns are created and developed nowadays. In order to answer the presented research questions I used the theoretical arguments of researchers in the field of pedagogy Gert Biesta in connection with the ideas and concepts of the consumer society characteristics developed by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.The thesis' methodological approach consists of a combination of semi-structured interviews with teachers and observations of children's interaction, which contributed to a systematic investigation of the thesis' problem area and served as a tool for obtaining answers to the research questions.The results demonstrate that consumption occupies a lot of space in young children's lives, which means that it greatly affects their social relationships today. Both consumption and knowledge of the known brands prove to be the child's path to the desired community on the one hand, and the children's way to the consumer world on the other (hand), which in turn points to an obvious dependence between children's consumption and their social relationships.The results also show that there is a tension between the perception of identity formation as preschool-policy-document on the one hand and the attitude of the identity prescribed by consumer society norms and regulations on the other..

?CSR and political consumption ? a study of Nike?s and Puma?s CSR-reports?The purpose of this dissertation is to examine if political consumption has influenced multinational corporations to improve their Corporate Social Responsibility reports and policies more, than a company who has not been a target for political consumption.This dissertation is a content analysis of Nike?s and Puma?s first (Nike 2001, Puma 2001) and latest (Nike 2007/09, Puma 2007/08) CSR- reports. Archie Carroll?s model of Corporate Social Responsibility is used as theoretical framework in this study. The model is used to focus on four areas within CSR; economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic.

This is a report founded on a project by Atlas Copco called NYSTAB.  The application Nystab is a calculation program that can calculate the stability of the rockdrill-rigs made by Atlas Copco. The original version of Nystab is stored in a database from 1997 and the code is made in an old version of Visual Basic. My assignment was to develop the application in to a newer programming environment and make it last better in the upcoming years. The software I decided to use to accomplish this project is C# .NET in Visual Studio and Microsoft Access 2010. All the code is written in C# with some insertions from ADO.NET which helped me to easier connect the code with the database.The coding part was split into two pieces; the first was to develop the application scale done with Windows Forms, the second was to write the code for calculations in the application.

The purpose of this research was to examine what motivates and influences an individual to invest in a project or company through equity-based crowdfunding. The intention was therefore to identify internal and external motivation factors and examine how external social factors such as the Internet, other individuals? investment decisions and interaction in social groups affect an individual when he or she invests through equity-based crowdfunding. The results showed that both internal and external motivation factors are important components of an investment through equity-based crowdfunding. External motivators proved to be for example yields and helping entrepreneurs.