The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the status of Swedish real estate companies in terms of financial health and risk of financial distress. The background is the ongoing financial crisis, which partly can be derived from the American real estate sector. Publicly available accounting information from 16 listed real estate companies has been analyzed for a period of one year using financial ratios covering both the operational and financial activities. We find that the deceleration in the economy and in the real estate sector have forced the real estate companies to make large write downs, in line with the relatively new accounting rules, IFRS. Write downs are likely to reoccur during the following periods and real estate companies will therefore probably be forced to continue to show negative results.

At the beginning of 2011, Sweden started using the European rules for structural design, the Eurocodes, instead of the previous national rules. In both the previous rules and the Eurocodes, it is possible to dimension concrete columns using tabled values. However, the required cross section measurements have increased considerably. Moreover, it is possible to dimension concrete columns using calculations, however, this is unusual.The development of a fire in a fire cell can be divided into the growth stage, the fully developed fire and the cooling phase. The duration of each phase, as well as the temperature, is dependent on a number of factors, e.g.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to understand public library users' perceptions of librarians' attitudes to users and professional knowledge. The purpose was also to investigate the relative importance to the user of pleasant or a knowledgeable librarian. As a theoretical framework we use theory from business economy where the experience of the user is in focus. Answers were sought to the following questions: How do users perceive librarians attitudes to users? How do users perceive librarians professional knowledge? How do users want to be treated by public librarians? What kind of knowledge should public librarians have, according to users? We interviewed twelve students in university education that are users of public libraries.

Purpose/Aim: This essay explores the framing and representation of pensioners in Swedish press during the period of 2002-2008. The aim was to investigate what meaning news give elderly people on the manifest level, and also what meaning the media texts construct on the latent level.Material/Method: For this paper I have investigated framing of pensioners using quantitative analysis of 100 news articles, followed by a qualitative hermeneutic analysis applied on the most frequent frames discovered in the quantitative study.Main results: Four frames were identified concerning pensioners: crime victims, heroes in daily dues, economically advantaged and economically disadvantaged. The dualistic result in the economy frame was investigated in the qualitative research. The study revealed that pensioners as a group may have good economic standards, although there are individual differences. Three stereotypes were discovered in the articles: ?kind granny?, ?fragile and miserable? and ?look what I can do?..

In this project a simulator has been developed (in C++) with the purpose of illustrating how changes in environmental regulations, tax levels and other policy measures affect the composition of an energy system. The aim of the project was to investigate how energy companies? investment strategies are affected when changes in economic and environmental conditions occur. A standard scenario has been created based on current Swedish conditions, but the user can create new scenarios and set parameters freely. The user is tasked with building power plants to supply the city/region with district heating and electricity during a pre-set number of years. When the simulation is finished the result is graded in the following categories: economy, environment and quality. To evaluate the simulator three scenarios were created (?early 20th century?, ?reduced environmental control? and ?future?) in addition to the standard scenario and these were compared with each other by examining how a select group of power plants perform under the given conditions.

The main purpose of this thesis has been to identify and discuss problems connected with the preservation of newspapers in Sweden. Another purpose was to see if the preservation of newspapers has been influenced by the fact that preservation studies in general concerns printed monographs and digital materials. This qualitative study is partly based upon interviews with four librarians experienced in working with newspapers and preservation. The thesis deals with cultural heritage in general and on a more specific level with newspapers where the following questions are dealt with: Why preserve? Who preserves? How to preserve? and What is preserved? Strategies used for preserving newspapers such as paper, microfilming and digitization are described as well as legal deposit, the Swedish microfilming programme and TIDEN, a digitization project of newspapers.

The purpose of this essay is to study how the local creators of a "master plan" for the swedish city Kristinehamn, the years between 1940 to -43, looked on their planning. It is an analysis of ideas case study. A hypothesis is upheld for the research: that the local physical planning had largely extended ambitions what regards central state control in a way that is similar to planned economy. Questions that are asked include: Was the planning assumed to be a tool for the state to regulate the environment? Can the planning be seen as a mean to control the society in time and space? The essay search for verification of the hypothesis by a theoretical analysis apparatus made upp of ideal types.

The purpose of this report is to collect, compile and complement the scientific and experience based knowledge concerning high pressure fire fighting today. The goal is to produce a decision data for the Rescue Service concerning the use of high pressure systems for fire fighting. Focus is on hose reel high pressure systems but other systems are discussed too. The report begins by describing the technical properties of the different systems. Then the fire fighting properties are evaluated, including manoeuvrability and safety for users.

The municipality of Olofström is intensifying the co-operation with Sölvesborg and Karlshamn, the two other municipalities in the west of Blekinge. They co-operate in two local federations and for the moment negotiations are going on about a third local federation in continuation school, but the municipalities do not agree. The aim of this thesis is to examine why Olofström co-operate with Sölvesborg and Karlshamn, if there are any problems and where the limit of this co-operation is. The method in the thesis is qualitative interviews with local politicians and officials and an actor-structure-perspective is used. The result shows that Olofström is a municipality where the population is decreasing, and it has lost state subsidy during the last decade.

The forest is characterized by many different values such as those related to forest productivity which are of a big importance for Swedish economy. History has proved that forest resources had helped the country in the transition from the agricultural to the industrial society. Today Swedish forest industry is among the strongest in Europe and significantly contributing to the Swedish export. The industry provides many direct and indirect job opportunities and is one of the biggest employers in the industry sector. It is also worth to notice that the forest can also generate an additional income for the owners, even if the forestry isn?t their primary income source.

The society of spreading useful knowledge started to sell its magazine Reading for the People (RFP) in 1834. The idea with the society was to, through the magazine that contained useful knowledge, enlighten the Swedish peasantry. RFP contained articles about agricultural and economy for example.My goal with this essay is to investigate how the use of foreign articles in RFP changed over time. I?m also going to present a field and language categorization of the foreign articles and study the articles from Benjamin Franklin and Charles Dickens and investigate what kind of articles they wrote.

Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva och analysera sju kommuners soliditetsutveckling under 2006 till 2010 samt analysera om ett samband finns mellan låg soliditet och genuin sårbarhet. I uppsatsen används en blandning av kvantitativ och kvalitativ metod för att få en djupare förståelse kring kommuners soliditet och dess soliditetsutveckling. Insamlad sekundärdata kommer från böcker, artiklar, uppsatser och lagar. Primärdata samlades in vid en intervju samt genom sju kommuners årsredovisningar.Ett lågt antal invånare i en kommun behöver inte resultera i en låg soliditet. En befolkningsminskning behöver inte leda till en minskad soliditet.

The study was a quantitative cross-sectional study which aimed at investigating college students? eating habits in relation to the Swedish food agency dietary recommendations. The likely factors associated with eating habits and attitudes towards dietary recommendations were also investigated. Non probability sampling method was used giving rise to convinient study sample of 51 individuals (41 women and 11 men) ages 19 to 37. The participants were part of four different types of educations, Care and health, Economy, Engineering, computering and societal planning and Culture and media.

The purpose of this study was to examine the discourses that can be identified in medias representation of social services. To answer the purpose we made a critical discourse analysis using Faircloughs three-dimensional model. The choice to focus our study on a local newspaper was based on earlier research that found it possible that a local paper has a greater impact on readers than a national newspaper. Readers can more easily connect with what's happening in the immediate environment than what is written nationally. We used articles published in 2013 containing ?social services?.

The thesis concerns the use of classification schemes for organising resources in subject-based hierarchical search-services on the web. The aim is to investigate the different kinds of classification that are used, which fall into two groups: established respectively new classification schemes. This is attained by studying literature and the websites of each search-service. The prospects for using classification in a web-environment are discussed and divided into three major groups: browsing, control and cross-classification. One question at issue concerns how an established scheme manages to organise web-resources and whether this classification differs from the classification of new schemes and in what way.