This report is a thesis work for a B.Sc. in Forestry exam at the School for Forest Engineers, SLU. The aim of the work was to compare fuel consumption during work in practical field conditions with a standardized method developed by Skogforsk (The Forestry Research Institute of Sweden), (Brunberg, 2005) for harvesters and forwarders from different manufacturers and of different sizes in order to promote the development of more fuel efficient machines. Two studies were carried out. - Statistics of fuel consumption were collected. - An inquiry was sent out in order to get more detailed information of different aspects influencing the fuel consumption. The studied machines were divided into two classes, large machines (> 150 kW), and average size machines (100 ? 150 kW), and of the manufacturer Timberjack and Valmet. Our results shows a 15 % lower fuel consumption for average size harvesters and an 8 % higher fuel consumption for large harvesters compared with Skogforsks model.

The purpose was to look into the pattern of consumption among middleage women. Our questions were how women experienced the need to consume, how they defined the expression of consumption and if there was a difference between "shopping" and "buying". The research has been done through eight qualitative interviews and searching in litterature, illuminating our questions.All women defined consumption as satisfying basic needs. According to them everything bought on a daily bases is consumption. More difficult to define was the experience of "need".

The aim of this study is, using the Swedish expression ?kulturtant? (cultured lady) as starting point, to understand how and why women consume the products of the culture industry more eagerly than men. The study is using the concepts put forward by Pierre Bourdieu; fields, capital and habitus. It is a qualitative study based on discussions in focus groups, interviews and material gathered through Google Alerts. In the literature this gap between the sexes with regard to the higher consumption on behalf of women has been referred to as the ?puzzle? of women´s cultural consumption.The empirical results show that the women in the study are well aware of what they want to gain by participating in cultural activities like reading, going to concerts, watching plays or going to the movies.

To have a tool that guides you when you work with a complex system can be helpful since the complexity of the work can be reduced. In this thesis I explore the possibilities to use a helper application whilst planning installations of access control systems. The purpose of the application is to provide support during the planning and at the same time make the user aware of the limitations that exist in the access control system ARX Access. By combining early user input and the theory of formativity, the result became an application written in Java..

The scope of this investigation is to decide how and to what extent the energy consumption of apassive house is affected by the users? knowledge and habits. To achieve this a literary study hasbeen made and as a complement the planning of a passive house was completed.The result of a primary study of the rules and regulations that effect passive houses in Swedenshows that the user?s influence on passive houses is a completely unregulated area. Even thoughthere is no regulation, a need for some general knowledge of the passive house concept has beenexpressed.To further investigate how the users? knowledge and habits affect the energy consumption and ifthere is a difference between different households? energy consumption , three main factors havebeen identified.

This research study constitutes a critical stand, which departure from the increase in welfare, and decrease in quality of life, and is further directed to the sphere of consumption. Contemporary consumers appear to seek for components to construct their self with through consumption, consumerism has become a sphere of life, and has consequently also become a victimizing force steering the identity and self construction of consumers. The alarm bells however are echoing in Western society, and consumers are experiencing dilemmas such as fragmentation, powerlessness, uncertainty and meaninglessness.In this respect we have presented spiritualism as an applicable path of escape or alternative to the scheme of the material oriented consumption sphere. We intend to broaden the scope of the interplay between spiritualism and consumerism in the act of yoga, and we have therefore been researching: what yoga is doing to consumers, and what consumers are doing to yoga. The study is based on an existential epistemology paradigm, which emphasis on the meaning of the yoga experience attained from the subjects of research; the yoga practitioners, and therefore we have carried out three focus group discussions.

An increased awareness about the global warming has created a demand for more information on how the climate is affected by different activities.This master thesis was initiated by Tricorona, a Swedish company that offers its customers analysis and calculation of their climate impact. Tricorona also supplies climate neutralisation with CERs, in accordance with the Kyoto protocol and controlled by the UN. This work demands updated emission factors for greenhouse gases. An emission factor gives information about the greenhouse gasintensity of a service or a product [kg CO2-eq./ functional unit].The purpose of this thesis is to examine how electricity, district heating, hotels, taxis, food and materials affect the climate and how emission factors for these areas can be calculated.This was done by reviewing and comparing different studies and by interviewing experts. The information was evaluated and recommendations on calculations and emission factors were made.The consumption of energy is the main source of greenhouse gas emissions for district heating, electricity, hotels, taxis and materials.

This thesis deals with tactics for information seeking in electronic databases. An important aspect is knowledge of the relative value of different subject access points. The method used here is literature studies. Nineteen empirical studies are described and analysed with the purpose to compare the relative value of different subject access points. The studies examined compare the relative value of subject access points in relation to each other or in relation to different scientific disciplines.

Several studies indicate that Swedish men consume more meat than women, more frequently appear in advertisements for meat and more often than women handle the grilling of meat. Production of meat is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse-gas emissions and thereby poses a challenge for ecological sustainability. Several Swedish politicians and authorities have argued that reduced meat consumption is necessary to prevent continued global climate change. To understand and change consumption patterns we need to understand the consumer. This essay uses textual analysis to examine how Swedish men through text and images in three cookbooks use preparation and consumption of meat to construct different masculinities.

When contemplating entering an alliance the rationale behind the decision should differdepending on the size of the companies involved as well as on other important factors. The importantfactors influencing the decision are related to the resource pooling potential of the alliance,the power structure along with the business network the companies are a part of. Theanalysis has shown proof of a need for cooperation if one wish to succeed in the telecommunicationindustry and it has also determined which resources that are deemed to be most important toget in touch with, for our study object, to facilitate its access to the market. Those resources aredefined as a direct channel to the customer, funds/capital and the access to relevant businessnetworks. To get in touch with these lacking resources, three alternative approaches has beenproposed; all of them involving a strategic alliance decision.

Self-archiving as a way to provide open access to research publications is gaining ground in the area of scholarly publishing. An increasing number of research funders and universities are mandating open access for output associated with their research, which calls for evaluation of the effects of the phenomenon.This two years master?s thesis aims to investigate researchers? experiences of self-archiving. A qualitative web survey was conducted and answered by 41 researchers from several different countries, and a vast majority of the respondents concur with the principle of open access. Although self-archiving shows not to be a guarantee of increased impact for the single researcher, the study shows that might be the case.

Today, we live in a consumption society. We buy products to soothe our needs and desires. Thru material things we can express our own personal identity and shopping is seen more as a pleasure than a need to survive. With the background media- and communication studies, the reason of this study was to explore how blogs as a social medium can influence the consumption ideal in society. With dialogical analysis and semiotic analysis we wanted to see if we could find a specific consumption culture in the content of six blogs we did our studies on. We found that the blogs showed us that there is normal to have everyday luxury and spoil oneself with expensive things.

Our digital society encompasses nowadays different channels, which includes social media where many users consider it as a platform where they can fetch news or exchange news and information. This leads to a large spread of news exchange in a very fast speed, which involves the global users within social media to be a part of this social interaction. This study is focused on how Twitter affects the usage of the user?s news consumption. By reaching out to our specific target audience, which includes Twitter users in Sweden, we made a web based survey with a content of relevant questions.

 Purpose/Aim: The goal of this thesis is to examine access and knowledge computers and the Internet among the senior-year students of Anacostia High School. Do the students of this facility have the same opportunity as the residents from better socioeconomical backgrounds or are they being excluded from the technology? Material/Method: To approach the thesis goal I have used a quantitative method. More specifically, a questionnaire was handed out to the senior year students at Anacostia High School. Main results: The study has shown that most of the students of Anacostia had in some way access to computers and Internet.

The aim of this Master thesis was to examine how libraries at Swedish colleges and universities make Open Access journals in physics available to users. We examined if, where, and how the 50 Open Access journals that are listed in the Directory of Open Access (DOAJ) under the heading Physics (General) were made available to the public at 19 Swedish colleges and universities. We also examined possible patterns regarding qualities in the Open Access journals and to what extent the libraries made them available. For this descriptive statistic was used. The selection of library portals that were included in the study were those Swedish colleges and universities that teach physics.