The aim of this study was to evaluate whether gallop training, rather than regular drive training, is worthwhile for trotters race performance. Another aim of the study was to expand the author?s riding- and driving capacity, and get more practical experience on the impact of interval training on trotters. The sample population in the study was two trotters, one Standardbred, and one cold-blood. Given the small sample population, the results of the study is only indicative on the effects of gallop training on trotters, and not conclusive.

This thesis investigates young people´s (16-21) preferences in reading through a survey including interviews and questionnaires. The groups attitudes towards reading and libraries, their reading and library habits, and to what extent eight libraries had bought the preferred literature were also examined. Some reports from the 80´s were used to find the changes. The result shows that youngsters read and visit libraries somewhat more frequently. Trivial literature is not as dominant, more teenage-books were read.

We live in a society where the technology has an enormous role in our lives. The average age of using digital tools among Swedish people is down to a very young age. In the recent period of time there has been much debate about tablets and their use in preschools. The aim of this study is to examine the preschool teachers experiences and perceptions of tablet use and how the implementation of the tablets benefits the school activities. What is central to this research is not how kids use the tablet, but how educators are using the tablet device as supplement for children?s development.

The NIPF (Non Industrial Private Forest) owners in Sweden have very differentiated goals and needs with their forest. They have different backgrounds and some of them live at their forest estate while other live in an urban environment, and some are economically dependent on their forest estate while others are not. The heterogeneity among these forest owners creates problems for market actors that want to aim marketing messages to catch their interest. This is the problem background to the task that was provided to us as an investigative masters thesis for us. Their request was a plan for ensuring a successful marketing towards different segments of the NIPF owners. We commenced with a literature study based on market information and previously carried out similar investigations. We summarized the most important market information from the literature and created some hypotheses regarding goals and needs of the NIPF owners.

In this thesis we study the development of post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD) in the Swedish equity market from 2000 to 2009. By forming portfolios based on the stock price reaction to quarterly reporting we show that the characteristics of PEAD have changed. We demonstrate that negatively surprising companies show a positive drift during a holding period of six months sufficiently large to render the trading strategy unprofitable. This development holds from 2005 and onwards and these results contradict many a study which finds the same portfolio construction to be indeed profitable. We argue that this development is a trend that will not only affect our study but future studies as well..

Organic animal husbandry has received a lot of criticism lately. The aim of this literature review was to examine if the rules and principles of organic pig farming give better or worse welfare in comparison to the conventional systems in Sweden. Health, physiology and behaviour have been used as indicators of welfare in this study. This is due to the importance of using more than one indicator in welfare assessments. Studies have shown that organic pigs have more remarks on joints when slaughtered, but these remarks can be reduced by vaccination against erysipelas.

This paper studies the option market?s implied dividend as a predictor of future equity market returns. We introduce this variable in the simple total return framework and discuss some complications of using it as a proxy for the expected dividend. We construct some regressions using the price-dividend ratio and the implied dividend growth, and test them on six years worth of data on the EURO STOXX 50-index. The main result is that implied dividend growth exhibits some forecastability over two-year horizons, but that the dataset is too short to draw any definitive conclusions about long-horizon forecastability.

Problem: The question is if investors falls into psychological decision traps when they are about to make an investments decision. Research in other areas suggests that this may be case. The reason is that they are not aware of that psychological decision traps exist. If so, it can lead to pernicious consequences for the return on the portfolios they manage. Purpose: To investigate if investors fall into four different psychological decisions traps: anchoring, confirming evidence, overconfidence and regression towards mean, at investments in IPOs Method: We have collected data through a form of experiment.

Nature conservation on certified small private forest owners- a comparison between the two certification systems FSC and PEFC in southern Sweden Today two different certification systems are used in Sweden to certify forest, FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and PEFC (Pan European Forest Certification). During the last years certification of forests in general and different certification systems have frequently been debated. FSC is a globally widespread system and about 10 million ha out of 23 million ha Swedish forest is FSC-certified. The FSC-standard is mainly used by major forest companies and to some extent also by smaller private forest owners. PEFC is a European system and about 2 million ha Swedish forests is PEFC-certified today.

The background to this study is that the forest company, Holmen, has found large discrepancies between harvested volume and the measured volume at the industry. Factors like bark features, breakage, double tops, bends and stem damages was noted, and all stems were measured manually. Hypothesis testing with the method "random in pairs" were used to examine whether the harvester measured values significantly differed from the manually measured. The result of a properly calibrated harvester shows in average underestimation of the volume with Skogforsk Pine as a bark function. This means that the harvester isn´t the reason why the volume measured in the industry is lower, the fault is elsewhere. The study also indicates a need for a unique bark function for logepole pine..

The main purpose of this study was to study the heredity of osteochondrosis (OC) in fetlock-, hock- or stifle joints within the Swedish half-bred population, using data from the regional animal hospital in Helsingborg. A large number of horses with clinical symptoms, for example lameness, are radiographed every year at the regional animal hospital in Helsingborg. In addition, many clinically healthy horses are radiographed in order to be sold (inspection radiographed / export radiographed). This study is based on electronically stored data from horses in both of these groups of patients that underwent joint radiography at the regional hospital in Helsingborg during the years 1992-1999. The first file (inspection file) contained 1035 observations from 983 horses that had their fetlock-, hock - or stifle joints radiographed for inspection or export. The other file (clinical file) contained 6121 observations from 3800 horses that were radiographed due to clinical symptoms in the fetlock-, stifle or hock joints.

När en recessiv sjukdom studeras i en släkt används jämförelser av familjemedlemmarnasarvsmassa. Med hjälp av datorsimuleringar som utgår från modellering av arvsförloppet kan information erhållas om hur mycket arvsmassa individerna har gemensamt.Denna information kan vara till nytta vid en fysisk kartläggning av individernas genom.I detta projekt har ett Java-program konstruerats som på ett verklighetsnära sättmodellerar arvsförloppet. Tillsammans med Java-programmet har ett mer teoretisktresonemang genomförts och implementerats i MATLAB, i syfte att få referensdata.Java-programmet har använts för att undersöka den genetiska likheten mellan besläktadeindivider. Informationen som erhållits har använts för att approximera fördelningarför individernas genetiska likhet. Utifrån dessa uppskattningar fastslås att fördelningarnahar relativt låg varians på grund av genomets extensiva totala genetiska längd.Det konstateras att individernas könskromosomer bidrar med skillnader i medelvärde.Dessutom fastställs att mäns och kvinnors olika genetiska längder bidrar med skillnaderi varians..

Who would not like a profit of more then 95 % in a day? Investors in Sweden had thatopportunity, if they had bought a certain stock on the primary market and sold it on the firsttradable day at the Stock Exchange. Most of that profit fell into the hands of institutionalinvestors. The reason for this extraordinary profit was the underpricing of that specific stockduring its initial public offering (IPO).Our report aims to analyze the relationship between offer price, underpricing and theownership structure of stocks. Our investigation is based on all IPO?s on the Stockholm stockexchange during the years between 2000 and 2005.

This paper?s objective is to investigate whether Modigliani and Miller (MM) I & II proposition from 1958 with regard to capital structure, is still valid among public Swedish firms.We have chosen the 63 firms on the Stockholm Stock Exchange (OMX) that Affärsvärlden magazine?s general index (AFGX) has categorized as industrial firms. We based this selection on the assumption that these firms are relatively capital intense and have a clear focus on production and, therefore, mainly uses capital structure as a mean to finance their production and not as a means in itself.To be able to fully evaluate these firms we have calculated the current key ratios based each firm?s annual report. To make the figures comparable across the entire population we adjusted them to each firm?s turnover.The results we have reached concur with MM?s proposition I regarding capital structures independence of the firm value.

As the companies of today are good at protecting themselves against external threats, but are having problems with internal threats, we focused on how information can be protected from ending up in the wrong hands. First and foremost to protect information from employees who might steal it and sell it to another company. Since the security investments needed are connected to the financial costs of implementing them we have tried to create a balance between the investments needed and the cost of implementing them. The different kinds of protection needed are first and foremost protection to make data less accessable, passwords and traceability. While it is hard for us to estimate the amount of money a company lose by the hour when the production stands still, we have not been able to use any of the excising models to calculate the profit of installing countermeasures.