Background: The most energy efficient houses today are so called passive houses. These houses achieve high energy-efficiency partly by having well insulated walls. U-value describes the amount of heat transfered through a building element, the more insulation, the smaller U-value. A typical passive house wall have a U-value of 0.10 W/m2,°C. The passive houses are primarily made as small family houses and not as a block of apartments.

This thesis sets out to investigate three questions, first, how the Belarusian democratization process has progressed since the country?s independence in 1991 to the year of 2006. Second, how the relationship between Russia and Belarus has progressed during this time and third, if and how Russia has affected the democratization process. The study has been conducted through qualitative method, mainly using books and articles as sources of information. It has been found that the democratization process in Belarus has evolved in a negative direction ever since the presidential election of 1994.

Construction of an autonomous wind station was a project with the goal of creating a product that could collect wind data from a sensor and then transfer this data to a server wirelessly over the GSM network. The device would be powered by batteries and solar cells and function fully without requiring external power supply. This required that a small computer was constructed and programmed to store and send data at predetermined cycle times and programming of a server that received the sent data. The project also required optimization of power consumption and dimensioning of solar cells and batteries based on this. The construction of this station demanded research both for the selection of hardware and programming software. The computer was based on a microcontroller and a GSM module that sent the data over the 2G network.

The computer consultant company Create in Lund AB wishes to facilitate their invoice routines, as it at present is required that the administration finds and compares information from two different systems.The purpose of this thesis is to develop an invoice management system that simplifies the invoice management process for the administration at Create. During the development of the system, I have chosen to follow the software development process Unified Process and also tried to find design patterns that can be applied to the integration.The result of my project is a self-contained application developed using the Java programming language that communicates with the databases of the other two systems and presents relevant information to the user as a set of invoices. Of the 23 design patterns I studied, I used four of them in the invoice management system. However I couldn?t find any connection between any design pattern and the integration of systems.

This thesis describes the development of a tank insert for diesel cars, from idea to a prototype. The idea is to design an insert which makes it impossible to refuel petrol in a diesel car. The insert shall be installed in the existing tank opening on diesel cars. The tank insert is designed for the Swedish company SverigeGrepen AB located in Vänge, just outside Uppsala. Their main product is a pitchfork that is ergonomically designed and durable.A pre-study were performed in which information relating to fuel caps, tank openings, petrol- and diesel nozzles were collected.

A current conveyor is an active building block that can be used to implement most active and passive components. It differs from the operation amplifier in that it uses current instead of voltage. The current conveyor also has significantly higher voltage gain over a broader frequency range. To simplify the construction of analogue circuits and increase the construction efficiency it is desirable to use a top-down methodology. This means that the whole system is partitioned into a hierarchy of subsystems.

How do we match our education with the needs of the construction line of business and the requirementsof the Swedish National Agency for education? Is there something that we have to change?In this study I have asked our former students about their opinion of our education and I have also asked them to give me their view on what a good teacher is like. I have been able to benefit a lot from their answers in my efforts to be that good teacher. This survey took place at Facebook.The answers showed that we carry on a piece of solid workmanship. But you can always improve, try harder.

This study evaluates the retention of nitrogen and phosphorus in four newly constructed wetlands in the municipality of Falkenberg, Sweden. The four wetlands have been selected because they have been specifically constructed with the aim to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus in farming areas. The process of selecting the specific wetlands has been done in collaboration with the county administration in Halland. Through field studies in collaboration with the landowners where the wetlands are sited, the areas that provide the wetlands with water were determined. The size of these drainage areas were determined in a GIS computer program. The type of land use within the drainage areas was also determined.

This is a degree project performed at Halmstad University in Sweden on the subject carpet ofreinforcement. This project is developed in association with Celsa Steel Service in Halmstad.The purpose of this report is to investigate how much time that can be saved if carpet ofreinforcement is used instead of the traditional way to work with reinforcement and seewhat kind of parameters that is important between the choices. We are also going to seehow this product affects the situation for reinforcement workers from an ergonomic point ofview.Carpet of reinforcement is made by straight reinforcement?s bars that are welded togetherwith steel bands. These rolls are made at a factory with a machine that welds together thebars in determined centre distance, with desired dimensions after the constructionengineers? blueprints.

Every year more than 6000 thefts, to a value of 1.5 billion SEK, are reportedwithin the Swedish building trade. Plus all the indirect costs of having theconstruction site standing still.SafeTool is a newly started company that will try to prevent this problem witha modern technology solution.The key to SafeTool?s solution is RFID ? Radio Frequency Identification ? andthe solution looks like this;All tools are stored in a container on the construction site. Every tool isequipped with a RFID-tag that uniquely identifies the tool. With antennas in thecontainer it is possible to detect when a tool is leaving the container and whenit comes back.

Background: Brand strategy tends to become an important management issue. It is therefore interesting to reach a greater understanding about how companies work to make their existing brands stronger. The purpose of a brand is to influence the customers? view of the brand image. The literature is insufficient concerning how leaders handle the process of repositioning a brand, in order to change the brand image.

Denna rapport ger en bild av vilka olika saker byggherrar i Sverigeanvänder sig av idag för att öka den sociala hållbarheten. De projektsom studerats är Bygga om Dialogen i Malmö, Älvstaden i Göteborg,Vivalla i Örebro och föreningen Byggemenskap.Genom att intervjua en person från varje område studeras likheteroch skillnader i hur man arbetat med den sociala hållbarheten vidbyggnation. I Malmö och Örebro studeras arbetet med att öka densociala hållbarheten vid renoveringsobjekt, hur får de hela områdensom länge haft ett dåligt rykte att bli socialt hållbara där stort fokusligger på att anställa långtidsarbetslösa.I Göteborg och i föreningen Byggemenskap fokuserar man på attföra in den sociala hållbarheten vid nybyggnation och hur vi kan byggahyresrätter som har en lägre hyra än nybyggda lägenheter i dagslägethar..

The students participating in my development work will work with a process book for handicraft studies. In the beginning of their studies, the students need practical knowledge about the development of the profession itself, but they also need to be challenged and learn how to solve problems on their own which will help them gain a deeper knowledge of the subject.    I focus on open questions to create a process with the students. This process is created when working with Solution-Focused-Education. Through ?assessment for learning? we can help the students to improve their self-assessment and understanding of the learning process.

Background: Today there are high claims on organizations to show a positive economic view. To satisfy the demands and expectations from interested parties it is very important to carefully plan the companies tied up capital and cash flows. Purpose: The purpose with the thesis is to describe what actions organizations take to resolve the conflict between showing a positive cash flow and the need to tie up capital.The purpose is also to explain the different factors that must be considered when making decisions regarding cash flow and capital tied up. Method: A qualitative study of the actions and factors wich must be considered when decisions in swedish construction companies are made regarding cash flow and capital tied up. Results: A model of the factors and actions that affect cash flow and capital tied up in projects.

The aim of my study was to describe and interpretate how an international adopted person look back at and describes her learning process individually and in interaction with others. Data are based on one in-depth interview with a phenomenological inspired approach.The findings showed that the interviewee has repressed a great deal of her former life from her country of origin. According to the interviewee, the process of learning in interaction with other people has worked well. She has furthermore never felt that other students have treated her differently based on her appearance. There is some ambivalence in how the interviewee describes this though, which opens up for other interpretations..