The main purpose of this study was to determine the impact of bedding material on the faecal microflora of horses. Another objective was to investigate the hygienic and physical qualities of the bedding materials used and how these may change in the course of the trial period. The bedding materials used were sphagnum peat and wood shavings. Six horses had each material as bedding for a three week period in a change?over experiment.

ÖREBRO UNIVERSITYDepartment of Behavioural, Social and Legal SciencesProgram of social workSocial Work CC-essay in Social Work, 15 creditsAutumn term 2013The family is the only way back home? A qualitative study on staff?s view on family involvement in the treatment of adolescentsAuthors: Cakici, Nahrin and Claesson, SandraAbstractThe aim of this study is to investigate how the staff at residential treatment centers works to involve the family and the social network in youth?s treatment and how they experience that the involvement affects the young person. The aim is also to study the difficulties the staff experience in their work to involve the family and the social network. In this study, staff from two residential treatment centers in Sweden participated. The study is conducted based in on qualitative method in which four semi-structured telephone interviews and one group interview have been conducted.

This study aims to investigate how consumers perceive variety in grocery stores and further how private brands have affected consumers? perceptions of variety in grocery stores.The study focuses on the perceptions and attitudes towards variety and the impact of private brands on perceived variety. Hence, a qualitative rather than quantitative study has been used. Photo elicitation has been used in both focus groups and in-depth interviews, which have been the empirical data collection of the study. Scientific articles and books have also been used in the process.

Background: Previous studies have shown that intuition occurs in decision making in small enterprises. However, these studies have not illuminated which decision attributes leads to intuitive decision making.Purpose:The purpose with this study is to contribute with an increased understanding of which decision attributes leads managers in small enterprises to use intuition in decision making and why these decisions attributes have an impact on the role of intuition. The follow-ing research question will be answered in our study: Which decision attributes leads to intui-tive decision making in small enterprises, and why?Method: To answer the research question we have conducted semi structural interviews with managers in small enterprises to achieve a deeper understanding of the role of intuition. We have also used a method called Visual Card Sorting as a complement to the semi structural interviews.Result/conclusion: The result of our study indicates that the relevance and the uncertainty of a decision have the greatest significance in the use of intuition in decision making in small enterprises.

ABSTRACT: Introduction: There are intentions from the Swedish government to provide guidelines and tools for a healthy social planning. The field is in a Swedish context relatively unstudied regarding psychosocial health and the neighbourhood. Aim: The study aimed to examine how social planning can affect the health of individuals. The focus areas were contextual and compositional factors related to individuals' psychosocial health and the contextual risk- and health factors that exist in the neighbourhood. Method: A literature-based study was conducted and 15 scholarly articles form the basis for analyse.

One step towards a more sustainable energy system is to create a more flexible electrical grid, where increased demand response among electricity consumers can play an important role. A distribution grid owner can encourage their customers to use electricity more evenly distributed during the day by introducing different types of grid fees such as time-differentiated power tariffs. In this master thesis, the theoretical economic impact of a flattened load profile for a distribution grid owner is investigated. Different factors that impact the distribution grid owner?s economy are identified and two are chosen to be quantified; losses in the grid and the fee to the feeding grid.

Problem formulation: This paper will examine how the capital structure of firms affects their market valuation by applying the Modigliani-Miller theory on Swedish listed companies in a boom and a recession. The study will examine whether it is possible to draw any conclusions as to whether companies with high debt to equity ratios are valued lower in a recession, in comparison to companies with low debt to equity ratios.Purpose: To empirically test the Modigliani-Miller theory of capital structure in a boom and a recession in order to see if the companies? market value is affected differently depending on whether they have a high or a low debt to equity ratios.Methodology: The essay has a deductive and a quantitative methodological approach. Data analysis was done through a correlation analysis, a regression analysis and a hypothesis testing.Theory: The Modigliani-Miller theory of capital structure with taxes states that companies with a high debt to equity ratios has a higher value. One of the risks with a high level of debt could be that during a financial downturn companies have more difficulty realizing capital and are thus more likely to go bankrupt.Conclusions: The study shows results that are contrary to the Modigliani-Miller's theory; all the correlation analyses between debt to equity ratios and market value are negative.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to investigate the value and impact that reading groups organized by Swedish Public Libraries, have on its participants, role of the librarian and the Library as whole, according to librarian?s conceptions. In literature and earlier research reading groups are described to represent an important reader pro-motion tool for Public Libraries. At the same time the typical reading group member is often described as a per-son with a familiarity of reading. Another purpose is therefore to investigate the contribution of reading groups in promoting reading, according to librarian?s conceptions.

Energy efficiency has become a very topical issue that has been discussed throughout the European Union for preventing negative environmental impacts that have been associated with the consumption of energy. In the residential sector have mainly municipalities set strict requirements for the reduction of energy consumption while the renewable energy has been asked. Different concepts of low-energy buildings have been developed to reduce the cost of operation and maintenance in existing buildings such as in new ones.This thesis has aimed to minimize the energy cost of a large building which has had low energy consumption features originally. Energy reviews has been initiated in order to be able for showing how the house electricity could be carried out even more efficiently.The work was initiated through a literature study to clearly increase the reliability on the energy subject. Different concepts of low-energy buildings have been treated in connection with its specifications, afterward those have been compared with the obtained results.

During the past 20 years, the price of forest estates in Sweden has raised more than the price of timber. The purpose of this study is to investigate if it, despite this development, is possible to buy a forest estate based on economic grounds. Different forest parameters will also be studied to analyse their effect on the profitability. The study is done in cooperation with the company LRF Konsult. Purchase price of 34 forest estates near the coast of Norrbotten, Sweden, has been compared to yield valuation. For the valuation, guidelines from the Swedish author Lantmäteriet was used.

An increase interest of new methods and tools has begun to grow in the real estate business, this new trend causes an increase in new programs that aim to simplify processes of energy-efficiency and environmental issues.After consulting with Björn Alsmark from Bjerking AB, an architect and engineering company, we made a decision that the Degree Project is going to examine the program IES (Integrated Environmental Solutions) with some integrations from Revit Architecture application.To be able to examine IES, we got access to a completed project from Bjerking. The project is a nursery school in Uppsala. An application has been handed in from Bjerking to make this project to a Green Building-certificated project. According to Bjerking own calculations (with the energy-calculation program Enorm), the consumption of energy of the nursery school is 48 percent lesser than required by BBR.An evaluation of IES and Enorm has been made with an aim to compare these two programs and find out if IES is an appropriate program to replace Enorm. Does Enorm or IES come up to BBR´s recommendations?The Degree Project cover 15 ECT, that required several adjusting and delimitations, and the study sketch ended with a literature study.After finishing the study sketch the modeling of the nursery school began.

The aim of the project was to develop a method to investigate differences in adhesion of microorganisms to materials that contains lignocellulose. The method was tested on a gram-positive (Micrococcus lutea) and one gram-negative (E-coliJM109) bacteria.The study was begun by cultivation of the two microorganisms. The cultivation was done to calculate the generation times of the bacteria and to obtain growth curves. Cells from these cultivations were also frozen (-70ºC) and later used for inoculation.At STFI-Packforsk AB the total charge on the mass was measured and later a conductivity titration on the mass was executed as well, all to find out more about the different properties of the mass. Properties that in a later part of this study could possibly be linked to the adhesion of cells to the pulp.

THE ROLE OF TARGET GROUPS IN FEEDBACK EFFECTSBrand extension is one of the most commonly used brand strategies since it reduces some of the risks involved in introducing a completely new brand. There are, however, several challenges associated with brand extensions. One of these challenges is the impact of a new brand extension on the parent brand image, which is known as feedback effect. Feedback effects are the changes in parent brand associations that are caused by a new brand extension, these effects can be both negative and positive. Several previous studies have investigated feedback effects and the antecedents of these effects.

Most of the portable electronic devices use a battery as a primary power source. Nowadays, when the applications are becoming smaller and smaller and more power efficient, the designer needs to concentrate more on reducing power consumption, using secondary power sources and introducing power storage devices. Multiple power source availability and a power storage device on the board will make the applications much more useful and efficient in everyday use. This thesis proposes a power supply unit (PSU) for wireless sensor platforms which is capable of supplying a sensor node with energy from multiple sources, as well as status information from the PSU. Present power storage devices, like electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) and batteries, have become more and more common as their characteristics have developed.

Background: The purpose of this study was to explore the reasons that motivate women to seek cosmetic breast augmentation surgery, to examine their self-concept and how they relate to their breasts.Methods: Ten female postoperative participants who have undergone an aesthetic breast augmentation surgery on private clinics were interviewed using an unstructured interview format. Self-report questionnaire was used as a complement to the interview. The purpose of this was to examine women's self-concept. Six female postoperative participants who have undergone a breast augmentation surgery on public clinic and had medically confirmed defect also completed the measures.Results: The results of the interview analysis showed that some participants experienced positive physical and psychological outcomes of surgery and some did not. Several main themes were identified relating to the initial reasons for performing surgery.