The out-of-town retail establishments are part of the dramatic structural changes in the retailing of food and groceries. There are however strong indications suggesting these establishments result in negative externalities concerning areas such as pollution and urban environment. The purpose of this study is to describe and, from an economic perspective, analyse the Swedish political regulations and planning policies concerning the out-of-town supermarkets. The analysis establishes that the current regulations regarding out-of-town retailing do not, due to the occurrence of market failures, produce an optimal situation. It might therefore be necessary to change the planning policies in a more restrictive direction.

Concrete is one of the world?s most common construction materials and is composed of 70-80 % stone material. Today crushed stone is used as aggregate in concrete in order to replace natural aggregates due to strong environmental reasons. Stone crushing yields flaky material and in this thesis studies are made on the flaky particle shape and how it influence properties of concrete such as workability, rheology and strength. The concrete recipes used in this thesis have fixed values, the only variable is the flakiness of the crushed stone.

Electromyography (EMG) is a technique that measures muscle activity, whichmeans detecting the electrical signals that travel through the muscle in connectionwith muscle contraction. This project deals with how EMG can be used tocontrol a computer game.The project is centered around the game 'EMG Track Game' which has beenconstructed as part of this work. 'EMG Track Game' is controlled by twoelectrodes fastened on the player. These are attached to two selected musclesand control the motion in one direction each, one up and the other one down.The game is constructed in the purpose of being used in several elds of application.Among these are as entertainment, training equipment and a tool inresearch related to EMG and muscles.To highlight a possible application a study concerning muscle control has beenconducted. It answers the question of whether players score better with theirdominant arm in comparison with their non-dominant one.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to see how technology is presented in different fictional picture books that are available in preschool. Six fictional picture books that have connection to technology in picture and text have been analysed. In order to show how technology can be made visible in fictional picture books, the relation between picture and text has been analysed through a technology perspective. Furthermore, the pictures and the texts have been analysed separately in order to show what they show respectively in terms of technology. The fictional picture book has a potential to be a basis for making technology visible in preschool, which is a step in a new direction.

The forecast ability of four well-known exchange rate models for theSwedish krona is tested in this thesis. The models that are tested arethe purchase power parity, the real interest differential model, thesticky-price model and a productivity model. In addition to thebenchmark, the random walk, they are also compared to each other.They are all tested on three different horizons one quarter, two quartersand four quarters. The mean squared forecast error criteria and thedirection of change criteria are used for evaluation of the forecastability. Only in a couple of cases are the forecast ability of thetheoretical based models significant better than the random walk..

Guazuigua is a small village in Bolivia, which has had too small water resources, especially for irrigation. A project started after some studies were made, to create a canal to provide the village with water from a nearby town. To make the canal work it had to cross a dried out river. There have been several attempts to cross these dried out rivers, but with poor results. The purpose of the report is to provide a solution for this problem.

The purpose of this Bachelor Thesis is to investigate whether the introduction of IFRS, and in particular IAS 40 regarding fair value accounting of investment property, has lead to increased financial risk for Swedish real estate companies. Financial risk is measured using several financial risk ratios during the period 2000-2009, effectively covering the period before and after the introduction in 2005. The financial risk is found to actually have decreased significantly in comparison with the control group. The relative decrease supports the notion of a factor unique to the real estate companies at least partially driving the change, possibly IAS 40. However, this change is, due to the statistic method employed, only an indication of the direction of change, and consequently interpretations of the magnitude of change cannot be made.

This study is intended to give an impartial view of a young and complex program in Sweden titled Product Innovation Engineering program. The purpose of this program is to increase innovation capability in Sweden that will result in new companies, patents and economic growth. The results from this study might give some direction to future innovation initiatives, but should primarily serve as a tool for the PIEp participants. The study will focus on investigating the creation of the program as well as the development of its strategy. From weaknesses and strengths within the strategy of the program the study should also attempt to show its future potential.

This study is intended to give an impartial view of a young and complex program in Sweden titled Product Innovation Engineering program. The purpose of this program is to increase innovation capability in Sweden that will result in new companies, patents and economic growth. The results from this study might give some direction to future innovation initiatives, but should primarily serve as a tool for the PIEp participants. The study will focus on investigating the creation of the program as well as the development of its strategy. From weaknesses and strengths within the strategy of the program the study should also attempt to show its future potential.

In this study I want to survey which plays preschool teachers thinks are accepted in preschool and wish aren?t. I also found it relevant to investigate when and why they choose to interrupt a play and what happens when they do? My interest for the possibility that we might judge by some values was the reason for my question formulations and for the follow-up questions in my interview. For my survey I used semi-structured interviews to get a deeper knowledge about this domain and for the opportunity to ask further supplementary questions.The results show how preschool teachers accept most of the plays and that those plays that aren?t accepted and in need of being disrupted or to be changed mostly are plays where someone could be hurt or violated. It also shows that the preschool teachers think that they should regulate or interrupt children´s plays as little as possible because most of the time interruption turns the plays in a negative direction.My conclusion is that preschool teachers are willing to see children?s intentions but there are also norms and values that regulate what´s accepted or not..

This study is intended to give an impartial view of a young and complex program in Sweden titled Product Innovation Engineering program. The purpose of this program is to increase innovation capability in Sweden that will result in new companies, patents and economic growth. The results from this study might give some direction to future innovation initiatives, but should primarily serve as a tool for the PIEp participants. The study will focus on investigating the creation of the program as well as the development of its strategy. From weaknesses and strengths within the strategy of the program the study should also attempt to show its future potential.

The present study investigates the relationship between narcissism, using identified facets in the five-factor model for the grandiose and vulnerable narcissistic personality, and job performance. The results, based on analyses of correlations from previous studies, meta-analyses and norm-data, show general differences regarding the grandiose and vulnerable narcissistic facet profile and their respective relationship to job performance. The results confirm previous study implications of the facet level data?s ability to capture aspects of the personality that a broader measure misses. Similarly, the results demonstrated that facets could differentially predict job performance in both a negative and positive direction.

For the actors in the Swedish forest industry, it is important to have the ability to forecast the state in the privateforests. The information that comes out of the forecasts will be the base for the activities strategic direction.The aim in this exam is to survey what information that is present today as basis for forecast calculation, andeven to examine what other possibilities it might have in the future.From a limited geography and out of different time perspective forecast the felling potential in the privateforestry.With the word felling potential means regeneration felling and thinning. The exam will answer the questions:What information is needed to build a relevant forecast model?Is this information available today?Is there information to buy that would improve the forecast model?The result of this exam will be presented in form of a ”case study” showing the opportunities in the market tocreate a forecast calculation of felling potential in the private forestry within the Forest Owners’ AssociationMellanskogs wood-area Dalarna..

In this thesis we study four groups of students in grade 8, 9 and 10 when they try to solve a classical mathematical problem: Which rectangle with given circumference has the largest area? The aim of the study was too see how the students did to solve a mathematichal problem?The survey shows that students have rather poor strategies to solve mathematical problems. The most common mistake is that students don?t put much energy to understand the problem before trying to solve it. They have no strategies.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse studies that evaluate Web search engines. This is done in four categories; the researchers? purpose, the evaluation measurements, the relevance, and the time aspect. Our method is based on a text analysis in which we use the direction of analysis of the content of sixteen evaluation experiments. Our results indicate fundamental differences in the way the researchers are tackling the problem of evaluation of Web search engines.