Due to their complexity and heavy wear from rail traffic, switches are a sensitive part of the railway infrastructure and moreover expensive to maintain. Furthermore, increasing railway traffic not only accelerates the wear rate but also obstructs the necessary maintenance measures. This paper examines the opportunities for a transition to a long-term maintenance strategy in the Swedish railway network. It contains a study of the maintenance strategy of Banverket, and also analyses statistics of errors in the railway infrastructure. The survey was completed utilising interviews with infrastructure managers, maintenance contractors, planners of railway operations and the Banverket material service department.

The thesis objective was to study the partnership between the municipality of Gothenburg and three nonprofit organizations concerning the mobile EU-citizens. The study examines how the EU-enlargement affected Sweden and eventually the municipality of Gothenburg, and how Gothenburg responded to the new situation regarding the target group. The thesis contains one case study and the empirical data are based on semi structured interviews with politicians and officials from both the public- and the nonprofit sector. The results were screened with New Institutional Theory, Resource Dependence Theory and Decision Making Theory: Rule Following. The theories were used to locate any type of isomorphism, resource dependence and rule following in the partnership.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the function of the budget as a means of control within an organisation in the public sector. To accomplish this, a case study has been conducted on a certain business unit within Luftfartsverket responsible for providing Air Traffic Control services. The thesis is built on a framework of contemporary theories of budgeting and includes a brief discussion of the weaknesses usually associated with the traditional budget. The conclusion of the study is that the use of budget as a means of financial control within Luftfartsverket is not efficient enough at the moment.

In this thesis, a transparent model of the human head has been constructed which was filled with a substance that represented the brain. This model was later crash tested. This was done in order to examine how a transparent model of the human head can be constructed to generate accurate data from crash tests. It was also done in order to examine how impacts on the front of the head can deform the rear of the brain. When a head is decelerating, the brain moves forward inside the skull and may hit the front of the skull.

How the renovation of the vast Swedish existing building stock with renovation needs will be performed is considered as decisive in order to achieve the target set by the Swedish government of reducing the energy use by 20 percent by 2020. Consequently, the challenge of the building sector consists in reducing the energy use in the existing building stock but at the same time ensuring that the indoor environmental quality is improved and the cultural values are maintained.So far, there have been a few renovation projects which strongly have reduced the energy use and at the same time have taken into account the environmental aspects and the cultural values. The main reasons are that there have been few incentives and a lack of routines in order to steer efficiently a ?sustainable renovation?.The participants in a Nordic project on sustainable renovation thought that it would be a strong advantage to link the concept of sustainable renovation to the Miljöbyggnad certification system. Indeed it is trusted by the Swedish building and Construction sectors and can provide sustainability targets in order to steer renovation processes.The objective of the master thesis is to show how the Miljöbyggnad certification system could be integrated in practice in the renovation process of Riksbyggen, an organization which administers housing associations (Bostadsrättsföreningar) and build houses.

Wetlands are important ecosystems and form habitat for both common and threatened species. In Sweden, as well in many other places on earth, there is a lack of wetlands. There is an expressed will to adjust this lack through restoration of wetlands with reduced function and through construction of new wetlands. Follow-ups and evaluations are important steps to optimize these actions. The wetland Vattenparken was constructed 1999 ? 2000 for treatment of surface water.

This paper examines constructions of identities in Swedish news paper articles concerning the European Unions?s Tobacco Products Directive. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) supported by theories of discourse, semiotics and identity formation, this paper argues that constructions of a Swedish ?Us? are distinguished from a non-Swedish ?Them?. These constructions depends on categories such as use of tobacco, science, history and war, which are frequently used in the discourse to separate ?Us?, ?the good? from ?Them?, ?the bad?.

Sexmissbruk eller diagnosmissbruk? ? En diskursanalys av begreppet sexmissbruk Jakobsson, R. Key words: diagnoses, hypersexuality, medicalization, nymphomania, sexual addiction, sexual behavior, sexual compulsivity, sexual deviation, shame, social construction. Background: Sexual addiction has been given a dominant discoursive power in Sweden which (re)inforces the idea that sexuality is essentially a dangerous and lethal force. Methods: The thesis consists of two sub studies. Firstly, a critical discourse analysis is conducted over scientifical articles of sexual addiction and sexual compulsivity. Secondly, a critical discourse analysis of the concept of sexual addiction in newspapers in Sweden?s largest newspaper, DN, and an evening paper, Aftonbladet.

The aim of this study has been to examine if an implementation of a One Stop Shop in the public sector and its IT-support can serve as a motor for business development. By examine the relation between the One Stop Shop and the public administrations we have tried to answer this question. The municipality that we have examined underwent a big change, seven years ago, when they implemented a One Stop Shop including a IT-support called Flexite. But despite these seven years and the fact that Flexite has changed approach from a Case Management System to a Support System for Business Development the municipality have not adapted to this change. .

In this thesis, a transparent model of the human head has been constructed which was filled with a substance that represented the brain. This model was later crash tested. This was done in order to examine how a transparent model of the human head can be constructed to generate accurate data from crash tests. It was also done in order to examine how impacts on the front of the head can deform the rear of the brain. When a head is decelerating, the brain moves forward inside the skull and may hit the front of the skull.

Europe has, since the economic crisis of 2007, gained increasing social segregation. The gap between rich and poor has increased and the large number of hidden statistics regarding people excluded from the labor market is greater than in many years. Social exclusion has thus taken a toll on community groups that already before the crisis had a hard time getting included. Groups such as young, elderly, immigrants and people with mental of physical disabilities. To curb this development, the European Commission have, since the 2004 directives, enabled public sector clients to, through procurement of goods, services and contracts, include measures that promote social consideration.Social consideration is a term that have been a part of Swedish procurement legislation since 2007, and was updated in 2010.

This thesis treats Building Information Modeling, BIM, in the production stage. Brieflydescribed BIM is virtual model of a building object where all information about theobject is gathered. All the involved operators in the construction project have access tothe model and can gather or share information about the project. There are several waysto apply BIM in the production stage. This thesis primarily deals with visualization of theobject, preparation and planning, the ability to take amounts from the model andcoordination and clash control.The basic issue was highlighted by Byggdialog AB.

 Abstract: Facebook in the Public Sector - qualitative interviewstudy with The Swedish maritime Administration, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, the Swedish prison and Probation services and the municipality of Katrineholm about their precense on Facebook.In my bachelor?s thesis I have studied how three government authority and one municipality uses or don?t use Facebook in their communication towards the citizens. I have chosen to study four different cases, to see if there are any significant similarities or differences between how the different services are working with their communication. I have chosen to explore my cases through semi-structured qualitative interviews, where I met communications officers of every organisation face to face.I have found out that there is not one right way to communicate through Facebook, every organisations decisions must be based on their own mission, aims and objectives. And I have seen that both the transmitter and the receiver need to mature into the new acting of this new channel - Facebook..

In this thesis, a transparent model of the human head has been constructed which was filled with a substance that represented the brain. This model was later crash tested. This was done in order to examine how a transparent model of the human head can be constructed to generate accurate data from crash tests. It was also done in order to examine how impacts on the front of the head can deform the rear of the brain. When a head is decelerating, the brain moves forward inside the skull and may hit the front of the skull.

Since the financial crisis of 2007, the global financial market has been characterized by instability. At the same time the banks? lending rates and its link to the reporänta have been in the spotlight in various debates in the media. The government with Anders Borg leading the charge has criticized the banks for not lowering their lending rates when the reporänta has been lowered. The banks defend themselves by saying that the reporänta does not have a direct link to their lending rates anymore.