Picker robots are often mounted close to each other above a conveyor belt. To be able topack robots even closer, it is desirable to reduce the footprint of the robot?s base. One way toachieve this is to skew the arms of the robot which makes it possible to move them closer toeach other.This Master Thesis has been carried out at ABB Corporate Research. The purpose is toevaluate the benefits and drawbacks for the idea of making today?s Picker robot morecompact by skewing the arms.

Back in the 1950s Marilyn Monroe and her hourglass shaped body was the aesthetic ideal for how models were to look like. Nowadays, the tide has turned. Research has shown that female models are becoming increasingly taller, narrower and straighter. This trend has occurred despite the fact that both men and women (still) prefer medium sized women with curvy bodies. This essay examines if this trend can be justified from a marketer's perspective.

This study concerns how Muslims are portrayed in a choice of twelve news articles from Swedish dailies and tabloid newspapers on the aftermath of the film Innocence of Muslims published on YouTube. All articles are distributed in the newspapers Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet in the period of September 11th, 2012 until September 30th, 2012.For this study, a qualitative text analysis has been embraced and focus has been on van Dijk?s Critical discourse analysis to the texts, with additional features from semiotics applied on the images.The theories consist of Critical discourse analysis, hegemony, ideology and power, postcolonialism and stereotyping.In the qualitative content analysis, concrete examples from the articles are retrieved and commented. These have been divided into various themes, which are trends that the authors have been able to distinguish in the analysis.The result shows that Muslims in the analyzed newspapers are portrayed as the others, unimportant and extremely religious, in a negative manner rather than a positive. Moreover the press has tendencies to generalize Muslims as a group.

Should new buildings blend in or contrast from the older buildings around? Could contrasts even emphasize different characters? This report is a discussion on that theme. I´ve studied different architects wiev on the question and studied different of examples of where new buildings contrast to the context in a successful way. In part two I´ve done a proposal on a new housing settlement next to Hammarbyhöjden in Stockholm. The new buildings contrast to the existing and the aim is to emphasize the characters in Hammarbyhöjden as well as in the new structure.

The purpose of this essay is to study the impact of different factors on corporate capital structure. The factors studied in relation to corporate debt ratio are industry affiliation, size and profitability. The study involves all 252 companies quoted on the Stockholm stock exchange and cover a time period from 2007 to 2011. The result shows that branch affiliation has a significant impact on corporate debt ratios. Regarding size and profitability, however, these factors do not have an evident impact on corporate debt ratios..

The forest in the northern part of Sweden has changed dramatically during the last centuries. The forest has gone through a large-scale transformation, from it being only used locally for domestic purposes to becoming very important raw material for Sweden in the industrial age. The strategy by foresters during the second half of the 20th century has been to create pure production forests for commercial forestry. This has mainly succeeded and we have today homogenous production forests that give a high profit to the owners. The aim of the study is to compare the state of the forest in the former state forest Hällforsmarken in the years 1925 and 2000 and to interpret the changes which has taken place.

The study?s purpose was to gain comprehension and knowledge about immigrate women?s vision on benefits respective disadvantages with arranged marriages.The study?s question at issues was:(1) How do the women consider that the ideal marriage is suppose to be?(2) How do the women experience that their vision on marriage has changed in a new culture?(3) How do the women consider that parents reasons, around the choice of a partner at arranged marriages?To be able to answer these questions at issues we used a qualitative method where interviews carried out with four immigrated women from four different countries where Islam is widespread religion. Common for these women is that they all are Muslims and that they come from countries where arranged marriages are practiced. They also have concrete experience of arranged marriages, either through themselves or someone they know.Material from interviews was analysed with a help of patriarchal theory and social constructivism. We have also analysed the material with a theory about culture and a theory about groups.

From a social perspective, I have been working on how to change current consumption patterns through a change in people's behavior and attitude towards their possessions. The concept is based on how we can value, care for, and preserve our belongings by using theories in the empathic design field. I have created a structure that allows people to become an active part of a creative process and create their own products. Through this commitment, an emotional relationship is built between the user and the product, and the product tends to gain a longer life. Based on a method to manufacture your own yarn by reusing old clothes, I want to provide the basic tools for an easy and playful way to build the knowledge needed to produce something useful..

To fulfill the climate target that EU and the Swedish government have decided to apply, it becomes increasingly important that the energy efficiency of existing buildings and making new buildings energy efficient as possible. Of Sweden?s total energy consumption in 2011 was 40% used by residential and service. Of the 40% of the energy consumption was 60% used for heating and domestic hot water. A report from year 2012 shows that one reason why the heating volume is so great could be due to underestimating on the energy consumption for the heating in the planning of the building.

The purpose of our study is to get more knowledge about how moral dilemmas affect social workers in their work. This because we find that a big part of social work involves ethic reflections and that is why we find it important for social workers to have knowledge about how they should and can think and act in these situations. Ethic statements exist for social workers to use in their work but we haven?t found any guidelines for concrete situations and that?s why we decided to study this area. Questions we want to answer are how do the social workers define moral dilemmas in social work? How do the social workers deal with moral dilemmas in their work? How do moral dilemmas affect social workers in their work? This is a qualitative study with interviews from seven social workers from one social service office although they are from different units.

What are the basic thoughts formulated in the Heraclitean fragments? A cosmology, a philosophy of nature, the idea that all can be reduced to a single substance? There is always a risk that Heraclitus is fitted into a thought pattern he doesn?t belong to, if we ? from our present horizon ? focus on continuity in an attempt to frame his thinking as part of an overall progress, running from the so-called pre-Socratics to Aristotle, in the history of philosophy. If we picture the dawn of Western civilization as an early development of scientific thinking, built on a gradual and continuous growth of knowledge, we will easily go astray as we try to discover the Greek origins of philosophy. Assuming, for example, that the readings of Heraclitus as a natural philosopher have come to a dead end, can we approach the fragments from a different angle?The aim of this paper is not to give a systematized reading of all the remaining fragments of Heraclitus, but neither to necessarily contradict the various interpretations that emphasise how these shattered remains reflect a coherent philosophy.

This two years master?s thesis consists of a domain analysis on the local Swedish newspaper Gefle Dagblad (GD). The domain analysis was developed by the Danish library and information scientist Birger Hjørland. The purpose of this theory is to understand the information behavior of individuals by studying the social and collec-tive context which surrounds this person. According to Hjørland, four different areas need to be studied in order to analyze a domain.

This thesis investigates three different surface modifications, and the route to design and synthesize them. The thesis is therefore divided into three sub- projects. (i.) Design and synthesis of a peptide which secondary structure could be controlled by a negatively charged surface. (ii.) Design and synthesis of a cyclic peptide, that would self-organize prior to surface interaction, using the type I anti-freeze protein of a winter flounder as template. (iii.) The use of solid-phase synthesis to make the synthesis of SAM-molecules easier..

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to investigate how value creation influences consumers´ choice of market place. We have chosen to focus on how inner city centers can compete with external shopping malls by examining what values consumers find essential in shopping areas. The development within the retail market with more external malls outside cities has resulted in impoverished city centers; therefore, new strategies towards more attractive servicescapes in the inner city are crucial. The study is based on a qualitative approach due to deeper understanding and closeness to the subject, where Kalmar city is chosen as a case. We have completed a focus group study where respondents from each target group where represented.

What are the basic thoughts formulated in the Heraclitean fragments? A cosmology, a philosophy of nature, the idea that all can be reduced to a single substance? There is always a risk that Heraclitus is fitted into a thought pattern he doesn?t belong to, if we ? from our present horizon ? focus on continuity in an attempt to frame his thinking as part of an overall progress, running from the so-called pre-Socratics to Aristotle, in the history of philosophy. If we picture the dawn of Western civilization as an early development of scientific thinking, built on a gradual and continuous growth of knowledge, we will easily go astray as we try to discover the Greek origins of philosophy. Assuming, for example, that the readings of Heraclitus as a natural philosopher have come to a dead end, can we approach the fragments from a different angle?The aim of this paper is not to give a systematized reading of all the remaining fragments of Heraclitus, but neither to necessarily contradict the various interpretations that emphasise how these shattered remains reflect a coherent philosophy.