Marketers of today are confronted by the fact that it is increasingly difficult to gain the customer's attention, as they first have to break through the ad clutter. In a landscape where the general attitude towards advertising is negative, one way to successfully deliver the message to the customer involves communicating through personal impact. By using stimuli containing identical information with different senders, this thesis seeks to quantitatively explore whether brands can make use of the personal networks of its employees, in their social media marketing strategy. The purpose of the study is to investigate if communication via the employees could enhance traditional communication effects, such as buying intention and electronic WOM intention. Furthermore, the study aims to examine which role the employee should hold when communicating on behalf of the brand, and if the communication effects vary with the degree of product involvement.

The purpose with this study is to investigate funds that are environmentally friendly. Environment issues has become a large subject that affects all aspects in today?s society.  It is a global issue which has affected the awareness of environmentally friendly products and its benefits for the environment.How has this awareness affected the financial market?  In this study the authors have looked at six environmentally sound funds and six energy funds to answer the question if it´s better to have your money in traditional energy or in renewable energy.This study is made in an quantitative way, the data has been gathered from the internet database Morningstar. The energy funds have had its biggest assets in companies dealing with oil, and the environmentally sound funds have had its biggest assets in renewable energy. Bye looking at the different funds rate of return and relating that to risk managing theories of Sharpe and Treynor, the authors compared the two types of funds.During the period that was looked at during this study ( third quarter of 2007 until third quarter 2010) the energy funds outperformed the environmentally sound funds in every aspect. .

Since Africa?s decolonization a number of foreign economic actors have begun toemerge in several African countries and they prove a vital role in many ways. China isone of the largest actor and they have a long history of political and economic ties withAfrica. China act primarily in Africa to meet their growing economy?s demand fornatural resources, and by providing aid and trade with development countries in Africathey get important natural resources like oil and iron ore in return.

The report aims to investigate how well a certain type of affordable embedded single board computer can hold up against today's more expensive computers in a computer system by doing various tests on a system with the specified requirements. The system has a Raspberry Pi as the single board computer which task is to control a camera based on coordinates obtained from a server as well as capture and stream a video signal on a network.The researches were conducted to check how much network traffic a single-chip computer sent in different video formats and how much CPU utilization was required. Studies were also made to ensure the accuracy of the camera control. The researches have been experimental, where several tests have been performed and analyzed.The results show that a sufficiently good accuracy can be obtained from the camera steering unit, in which two different servos have been investigated. When the video format MJPEG and H.264 are used, the single-chip computer is able to transmit a video signal up to 1280x720 at 15 fps.

This project concerns a new lower and mid level compulsory school in the currently developing area of Annedal, northwest of central Stockholm. According to the given program, the school should hold 500 pupils and 100 pre-school children. As an addition to the given program, my suggustion holds a sports hall and a public library.In my project, my ambition has been to investigate how to create an inspiring and exiting place for kids to inhabit and, at the same time, create an activated, central place in a developing suburb. The latter has resulted in the two program-related additions, which purposes is to extend the hours during which the area is activated and to create additional incitements for visiting the building. Both additions are chosen based on lack of service in the area. Architectually, I've been inspired by the medieval castle which has been used as an inspirational resource for the parts of the school holding classrooms.

Previous research on philosophy for children in schools has almost exclusively focused on how it is perceived by students. The aim of this study is to focus on how it is perceived by five teachers and other adults involved in implementing philosophy for children in schools, in total four teachers participated and one adult who worked with implementing took part in the study. The theoretical background is composed of Olga Dysthes view that knowledge is not only constructed but that the object that one intends to gain knowledge of has to be interacted with and how she applies this view dialogues in the classroom. The study was conducted by interviewing the participants. The results found that the teachers saw philosophy for children as something more than a tool to work with questions that were important to students, they were also viewed as a way to work with language and building solidarity within the class.

This paper is intended to provide a picture of which associations water can wake in the human mind from the perspectives of garden history as well as from that of environmental psychology. I hope to paint a fairly broad picture of our perception of water that can serve as a basis for discussion and as a starting point for different forms of design work in landscape architecture. The historical perspective emphasizes the importance of water as a condition for the emergence of gardens and in a wider perspective the importance of water in early cultures. Also, I describe a picture of how water has been used throughout the history of gardens from early Egypt to the baroque era. The garden history analyzed from an art historical perspective gives a picture of human associations to water, and the history behind these associations is presented. As a compliment to the art history approach, I have chosen to highlight our associations with water from the perspectives of environmental psychology and evolutionary science.

The use of social media has increased considerably in recent years and has also caused some problems. It has been notable cases in the media where employees adversely criticized their employer on social networks, which subsequently led to the dismissal of the employee. The purpose of this study is to investigate an employee's right to express themselves about their employers in various forms but the main focus will be on social networks. The study investigates employees on both private and public sectors.Employees have a duty of loyalty to their employer, which means that they must be loyal to their employer and not deliberately harm them. The reason that employed comment his employer on social networks has its basis in that they also have freedom of speech and it is raised in such a case, a collision between their rights and responsibilities as an employee.The employees also hold a critique right entitling them to publicly criticize the employer and its activities.

Hyresbostadsfonder är en ny placeringsform i Sverige som erbjuder privatpersoner, företag och institutioner att äga hyresfastigheter och erhålla avkastning från förvaltningsöverskott och värdeökning. I denna studie jämförs aktie- och obligationsfonder med en simulerad hyresbostadsfond ur ett risk kontra avkastningsperspektiv. Fonden baseras på data över den svenska fastighetsmarknaden från Svenskt Fastighetsindex och Investment Property Database, därför att placeringsformen är ny och det råder brist på historisk data från verkliga aktörer.Målet med studien är att besvara om hyresbostadsfonder är ett konkurrenskraftigt alternativ till aktie- och obligationsfonder. Utöver finansiella jämförelser redogör författarna eventuella dolda risker och nackdelar med placeringsformen.Resultatet från studien visar att hyresbostadsfonden har presterat bättre än både aktie- och obligationsfonderna under perioden 1988-2008. Bidragande faktorer till denna utveckling har identifierats och redovisats.

Bullying can have serious consequences on everyone involved. Consequently it is important that school counselors are able to intervene. Thereby they need an unambiguous definition and knowledge about bullying that has been produced from research so they do not make mistakes that could lead to further damaging of the students. Thus the aim of this study was to examine how school counselors define bullying compared to the views held by scientists and students in secondary school. Through a review of previously done research the definitions of scientists and schoolchildren was summarized.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate the design of the reference service and its development that Internet has caused in college/university libraries when it comes to the service provided to the user. I want to examine the quality of this development from the view of the librarians, and also investigate their attitude and how they deal with this development.The following questions were asked:? How has Internet changed the reference service at college/university libraries?? How do the librarians look upon the possible change of quality in the reference service when the Internet is involved?? What attitude do the librarians hold toward this development where Internet is used in the reference service and how do they deal with it?The method used was qualitative interviews. A total of six librarians from Blekinge tekniska högskola, Halmstad högskola, Lunds universitet and Växjö universitet have been interviewed.The theories and models used were ?media richness?, a quality framework including ?quality aspects of a service?, and social psychology and its ?reasons for a positive/negative attitude on an organisations change?.The result shows that Internet has brought more sources of information and additional ways to contact the library.

The purpose of the following essay is to analyze how the Swedish regional policy has been influenced by the regional policy in the EU. The study builds on the theoretical framework that is Europeanization, the top-down approach, which stipulates where you can find evidence of this influence. To obtain the information that I needed to answer my question formulations, which main question formulation are; in which way has the EU regional policy influenced the Swedish regional policy? I used the method of literature analysis. Both the theoretical framework alongside the chosen method pointed me to analyze the public debate in Sweden in the regional question.

Bakgrund: Det rådande pensionssystemet i Sverige består av sex så kallade AP-fonder. Genom åren har pensionssystemet flertalet gånger kritiserats för dess låga avkastning.Problem: Vår huvudfråga är att jämföra AP-fondernas risk och avkastning med aktiemarknaden som helhet, detta ska ske med hjälp av två jämförelseindex: MSCI World och SIXRX.Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att jämföra de fyra första AP-fondernas risk och avkastning med aktiemarknaden som helhet under åren 2002-2010.Metod: Vi har använt oss av en kvantitativ metod, genom att samla in information från AP-fondernas årsredovisningar och hemsidor. Vi har samlat in historisk data, som vi sedan har bearbetat och analyserat.Slutsats: De studerade AP-fonderna har presterat sämre än aktiemarknaden..

This study is a thorough comparison between what people think about the website www.sl.se, which is a Swedish web-based travel planner for Stockholm metropolitan public transport (such as subways, busses and suburban trains), and how these views compares to the design of the actual website itself. The travel planner offers a wide range of functions and services for their targeted audience to find the fastest route between their current location and their destination. These functions are for example real time information on hold ups and malfunctions on different travel routes, and an interactive map of specific destinations so that the user can get a clear view of the area and nearby traffic stops. But how much does the average user care for these functions, and how often are they used on an average visit? What are the users? motivations when they visit the site? Earlier research suggested that there are services and functions on this website that are useful and well crafted, but that some people may not be aware of.

Background: Folate is a water - soluble vitamin necessary for normal DNA synthesis among  other mechanisms. Folate deficiency can cause megaloblastic anemia resulting from abnormal erythrocyte d evelopment. At the Department of Clinical Chemistry, Linköping, analysis of folate is performed with Siemens ADVIA Centaur® XP which uses an immunochemical method with chemiluminimetric detection. Currently, the assay is conducted on serum, is poured off and frozen after 48 h and treated with light protection because folate is considered to be light sensitive.Methods: This study tested lithium heparin plasma for analysis of folate with Siemens ADVIA Centaur® XP with the aim to be able to perform a package of analyzes in anemia investigation from the same collection tube. Furthermore, the stability of folate was studied for up to 168 h and examined regarding light sensitivity.Results: Statistically significant higher values were obtained in the analysis of folate in lithium heparin plasma than folate in serum (p < 0,001).