Public opinion can be shaped as well as transformed in a number of ways. Government authorities occasionally make use of public information campaigns to educate and steer the public. In this thesis the balance between public and private, the individual and the society is analysed in terms of dimensions of individualism and communitarianism. These dissimilar theories on how the society ought to be constructed can be used when analysing many different policy areas, however, they also pinpoint the controversies seen in the public debate regarding Swedish information policy. Based on this analysis an empirical study identifies what kind of knowledge the state wants the citizens to possess and public information campaigns can be problematic.

This essay is a study of the various attitudes and behavioral habits for music consumption and discovery of new music amongst young people in Sweden from a receivers perspective. The aim of the study is to review and map out the current trends, habits and cultural views on music consumption. An online survey was posted and spread on Facebook with 195 respondents as a result. The analyzed result and conclusions of the survey was then to be of use for understanding how to market and spread new music more efficiently. The study showed that there are three dominating sources of music for youth in Sweden.

The purpose of the study was to learn how social structures can enable accessibility, by asking persons with visual impairment about their experiences of accessibility in the public environment in the city of Stockholm. Eleven adults with visual impairments, living in the city of Stockholm, were interviewed using two separate focus groups. The study was carried out with the objective to allow for the participants to be involved in the research process. The resulting data was analyzed on the basis of Nancy Fraser?s theory on social justice, focusing on the conceptions; needs, politicised needs, redistribution, recognition and misrecognition.

Svensk Växtkraft is the owner of the biogas plant in Västerås. The company is planning to increase their treatment capacity at their biogas plant. In connection to this work it is also possible to make some energy saving changes to the biogas plant. The objective of this study was therefore to make an electricity and heat survey of the biogas plant, a detailed study of the heat consumption in the sanitation step and also a comparison of energy consumption with the present sanitation method and an alternative strategy where the waste is treated in 55 °C during 10 hours (the current method is heating to 70 °C during 1 hour). The energy survey was conducted in close collaboration with staff at the biogas plant. The current during normal operation was measured, power was calculated and multiplied by the time of usage to obtain the energy consumed.

This Masters thesis is analysing four Swedish novels written by first time authors published between 1993-2002. The purpose is to make the fictitious main characters illustrate what conditions and obstacles there can be for the individual of today to create a self-identity. Anthony Giddens ideas about the self in the late modern society are used as a theoretical framework. In the core of Giddens theory is the concept of reflexitivity which means that the self must be constructed in a continuous fashion because the overall conditions in society are subject to constant change. The questions posed in this study are dependable on Giddens in general and the concept of reflexivity in particular.

A future expansion of wind power in the Nordic power system makes the balancing for the transmission system operator Svenska Kraftnät (SvK) more complicated. Up to the hour of delivery the balance responsible parties? (BRP) makes prognoses and plans, for consumption and production, to help maintain the balance in the electrical grid. How well this is accomplished is affected by the setup of the market design. Therefore SvK has proposed the following possible changes in market design: Increase the imbalance costsIntensify the regulation of imbalancesIncrease the temporal resolution on the different marketsPresent the prices for balancing power in real-timeModify the balancing market to simplify auction of consumption bidsA mapping over the BRPs? processes within planning and trading on the day-ahead, intra-day, and the balancing market has been performed in this thesis.

SammanfattningKonsumtion och ekonomi är områden som på olika sätt påverkar människors liv. Forskning visar att värderingar, identiteter och idéer grundas på konsumtion. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka elevernas attityder, kunskaper och beteenden inom konsumtion och ekonomi som är ett kunskapsområde inom ämnet hem- och konsumentkunskap. Författaren var även intresserad av att undersöka om det fanns skillnader mellan två skolor bland elever i årskurs nio som skiljer sig åt vad gäller upptagningsområde och skolans geografiska läge. 153 enkäter delades ut och resultatet analyserades med dataprogrammet IBM Statistics Version 20 (SPSS 2010).

Energy efficiency has become a very topical issue that has been discussed throughout the European Union for preventing negative environmental impacts that have been associated with the consumption of energy. In the residential sector have mainly municipalities set strict requirements for the reduction of energy consumption while the renewable energy has been asked. Different concepts of low-energy buildings have been developed to reduce the cost of operation and maintenance in existing buildings such as in new ones.This thesis has aimed to minimize the energy cost of a large building which has had low energy consumption features originally. Energy reviews has been initiated in order to be able for showing how the house electricity could be carried out even more efficiently.The work was initiated through a literature study to clearly increase the reliability on the energy subject. Different concepts of low-energy buildings have been treated in connection with its specifications, afterward those have been compared with the obtained results.

This thesis is a study of Parties as an outflow of societal changes where the aim has been to find out how parties are affected by societal changes and how they justify to new party formation. This is done by using a theory called Parties as an outflow of societal changes which is a theory developed by Swedish researchers in Political Science. To confirm the theory it is necessary to do an argumentation analysis of one external developed party?s electoral program. In this case the party selected is Feminist Initiative which brings a different view on how the society of Sweden should look like.Selected parts of the argumentative analysis will be examined with the purpose to give a perspective on how Feminist Initiative values the changes in society and how they describe their role as a new party.The main question of this study is; Are new parties an outflow of societal changes? The basic arguments includes that along with societal changes in Western Europe also changes the view of a representative democracy in which political parties play a central role.

Simulations of simulink models using Kalman filters are often very time-consuming. This problem depends mainly on the fact that the Kalman correction has to be performed at each sample instance through the whole simulation. The goal for this thesis work is to reduce that time-consumption for the filtering part (the integration partis treated in a complementary report) of a simulation. Furthermore a Matlab routine to perform parameter tuning and finally a graphical user interface is developed.The filtering part of the simulation in this thesis is based on an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The time optimization of this filter considers searching for the possibility to replace the today?s existing Matlab functions that is used to perform the filtering calculations.

In this essay, we have compared a conventional house to a passive house. The housesshared the same local conditions; they have the same living area and the same layout. Thedifferences between the houses were the different construction solutions for the roof, theouter walls, the floor and the heating system. Both the houses qualify the standards fromBBR and the passive house also lives up to FEBY?s special conditions.The purpose with the essay was to examine if it really is profitable to build small hoses aspassive houses.

The rise in prevalence and severity of obesity and related diseases imposes increasing costs on society. The objective of this thesis is to discuss and estimate the possible effects of a so-called fat tax as a tool for minimizing these costs. Two alternatives for differentiation of the value-added tax (VAT) on food are compared. The first alternative is an increase of the VAT levied on food containing saturated fatty acids. The second alternative is a subsidy on fruit and vegetables in the form of a VAT at zero percent, instead of today?s twelve percent.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate how frequently, and in witch ways, theories concerning the "late-modern" society are being used in the contemporary research of social work. My thesis is that theories concerning the late-modern society could be useful in social work research, foremost to shed light on, and broaden the understanding of, dilemmas and problems that are specific to the contemporary society. In the study I'm investigating all doctoral dissertations on social work written in Sweden between the years 2003 and 2006, and to execute the study I've applied a text analysis method in four steps. Simplified the four steps of the analysis can be said to investigate, if, how frequent, and in what way theories on the late modern society is being used in social work study. I'm also specifically investigating how problems exclusive to the late-modern society is being taken under consideration in the dissertations.In the analysis of my results I take a critical theory approach and I also discuss if theories on late-modernity is to be seen as a paradigm in the field of social work science.

One of the most important components of a harvester is the crane. Most harvester cranes are only possible to pivot (or horizontally rotate) at the crane pillar. Cranab in Vindeln, Sweden, has developed a new type of harvester crane which has an extra pivot point on the outer boom. This makes it possible to reach around residual trees, easing thinning work in dense stands. The aim of the study was to analyze if the use of a pivoting outer boom (POB) crane gave an increase in thinning production and if there were any differences in time consumption between the work elements for the POB crane and a conventional crane. A Valmet 911.3 equipped with a POB crane was used in the study.

The family and relatives caring of older people in Sweden lies on an old tradition. By legislation the responsibility for the older people has gone through a development from the family to the society. According to the new social service law (2000) it is not that clear that the utmost responsibility lies on the society. According to the social service law ( 5th chapter, 10 §) the municipality should ease things up by giving support and relief for relatives taking care of older people, prolonged ill and function disabled people. The purpose with the study was to examine how the family care givers are finding their everyday work and their experience of the support that the society is giving.