A clean and affordable energy source for cooking is deficient in developing countries. People rely on fuels that contribute to environmental, social and health problems.Biogas is an alternative energy source and an increased investment in small-scale biogas production can in several developing countries be found. Several projects have started to use the technology in developing countries because of the benefits with biogas. Some cases in the establishment of biogas plants have succeeded and some have not. The study is a literature review supplemented by two field studies.

The Royal Library (KB) of Sweden harbours great collections of different objects through a special law from 1661. This master degree paper is exploring a part of KB?s digitisation of those collections. It deals with the questions about what the KB had chosen for digitisation, why those choices were maid and who is responsible for making these decisions. The paper will also for example seek out different patterns and trends in the information.

The construction process which is used today while constructing residential buildings has for along time remained unchanged. Unfortunately the development process has gone away frombecoming industrialized and instead most of the work is done at the construction site. In thisrespect this is a worse alternative because the project outcome will be more expensive and theconstruction time will be longer. Skanska?s vision is to have a process which is more like the oneused in small residential buildings which is fully industrialized.The constructing process for residential building involves more parties and therefore it becomesmore complicated.

The project has involved the development of two kinds of shooting targets in partnership with Marcus Bergkvist and Christopher Åkerblom. The project from the client was divided into two parts. This thesis discusses solutions for hands-on transport, development of tripods and an overall design. The second thesis affect resetting systems for the products.The work was done with a process and methodology based on design perspectives. This process has involved the search of relevant data which has provided the platform and opportunity for appropriate and purposeful design work.Concept development has been done using hand sketches and Photoshop, where a simple visualization of different concepts for the tripods has been produced.

Nimo Verken AB is the leading producer in the Scandinavia of drying cabinets. The construction has, with small changes, been the same since the 70s with a thermostat and a timer as controlling system. There was a wish to develop a modern cabinet which showed remaining time on a display and with energy saving functions.In this report we go through how it is possible to implement a digital controlling system, where remaining time is shown on a display and where it is possible to choose a preset ?program?.The report first presents the fundamental theory for a PIC, where we describe the different registers, how interrupts are handled, the internal clock function and how data is sent to control the different parts of the construction.Next the report presents and describes the new hardware that is needed, such as the encoder, the temperature sensor and the display.After the theory we describe how the program in the PIC may be drafted. Last in the report we have the result of the tests of the temperature variations and the accuracy of the time..

Failed system development projects are a common sight within the IT-industry. During the last ten years we have seen several more or less disastrous high profile projects being reported in the news. One aspect that might hold some of the responsibility for these failures is the fact that more organisations are knowledge intensive which makes their work processes difficult to capture in computer systems. How requirements engineering is handled becomes even more important in these cases, where processes are unpredictable and rely on individual judgement and knowledge. In this study we have examined the challenges of developing systems for knowledge intensive businesses through a method of qualitative case study of a university laboratory.

In process oriented organizations, it is important to have well-functioning work processes tosupport the work being performed. In order to accomplish this, the organization has to makecertain decisions regarding the design and usage of the processes. This master thesis is based ona case study of a work process that is being used for the industrialization of products at Ericssonin Katrineholm. The aim of the study is twofold. One aim is to improve the studied process byidentifying improvement opportunities and carrying out the required adjustments.

Construction companies in Sweden have for recent years seen an increase in the numbers ofwarranty complaints associated with the market of resident buildings and the cost for this hasbeen measured to over 1.2 billion SEK per year. Working with poor quality cost as a way ofcreating insight about defects within the company?s processes is a method developed and usedby the manufacturing industry for decades, but have not yet reached the construction industry.This study has been performed in collaboration with a Swedish construction company, wherethe author has been stationed at the aftersales division for residential buildings. Owing tocircumstances, this published report has been made anonymous regarding the company whowill further on be namedthe Company. The Company is aware that warranty claims producegreat costs and has requested a way of putting cost and cause to specific claims in order ofreceiving a more specific cost view and to make the reuse of knowledge more efficient.

The following article consists of two parts; one part is about house construction and the other is a specialization about radon. The house construction part describes how to project a house from start. It contains the conformation of the house, the installations needed, calculations considering the strength of the construction, energy calculation and what materials were chosen. Calculations considering the costs of building and operate the house has been carried out. The result showed that the house would cost approximately two million Swedish kroner to build and thirteen thousand kronor a year to operate.

This report describes the scientific work of designing and manufacturing an intelligent controller module prototype for automobile trailer connections. The functions of the module are both to drive the lamps and detect failures. The module also contains functions to handle other functions of the trailer. To learn about controller modules the group does extensive feasibility study.The group receives three already existing modules, the functions of the three modules are studied and tested in the lab, this is done too get a overview of the construction. The method used I called reversed engineering, a way of constructing by analyzing constructions already done.When the modules are analyzed, the functions of the prototype are tested and designed without copying the analyzed modules.

The production costs have steadily increased within the construction industry during the 21st century. Voices are raised meaning that the construction industry is too unsuccessful in making the production more efficient and to develop it?s way of working. One way to deal with the production costs is to minimise the waste, with waste meaning activities that doesn?t add value to the finished product.

Shear Strength and Deformation Characteristics of Uppsala Clay with CRS and Standard OedometerTyra Morell Bonin & Magdalena MählerTo see how much a clay compact under different pressure one can use several different methods and in this project, two methods were used, the Standard Oedometer and a CRS apparatus. A Standard Oedometer is a full-time manual device and the CRS apparatus is a modern electric and automatic device. The aim of the project was to see similarities and differences between the two methods and examine which method that were most reliable. This has been done with repeated laboratory tests and afterward evaluations. With this information one can get a picture of how the clay will behave and how it will deform in nature.

Lime Hempcrete consists of lime, water and hemp and creates an insulating, sound-absorbing, lightweight and environmentally friendly material that can be used in wall, roof and floor structures (Bevan & Woolley 2008). This construction method is not yet developed in Sweden as there has been a ban on the cultivation of the hemp plant. This ban on the cultivation of hemp was removed in 2003, when the material got a boost. You can use it in many different ways and not just in the construction industry (Ahlsten, 2010).In this study we have investigated the possibility to produce prefabricated wall elements of LHC. We have also studied its mechanical properties and dehydration time.

It may seem obvious that the urban space in our northern cities should be design to function and inspire throughout the whole year. This is not always the case. The urban space is often designed on a summer basis and the winter is regarded more as a problem then a resource and its potential remain unused. I have in this master thesis studied the impact of the winter on people and spaces and ponder on how to design functional and attractive places for winter. The project ends in a design concept for Broparken in Umeå on the theme "everyday winter day". The work with this thesis has given me, as a landscape architect, valuable experiences and filled a gap of knowledge that I had in this subject. I hope that this thesis can inspire Umeå kommun and others who are interested in how northern cities can benefit by its climate and develop towards a more complete city. The thesis begins with a chapter that present the subject from four different perspectives.

This thesis examines and measures differences in effciency between L1- and L2 language use for solving referential problems. Quantitative measures used in the study were time and error frequency. Qualitative measures, such as how the tasks and the participants own performance were experienced, were measured by an post interview and two questionaires. Two different tasks, a sorting task and a construction task, in which each informant was given the role as a constructor or instructor, were used for data gathering. A total of 20 dyads, divided in two language groups (English and Swedish) participated in the study.