This paper is an assessment of whether the Nordic countries constitute an optimum currency area (OCA) or not. Hodrick Prescott-­?filtered data of real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and rate of employment are used to investigate the similarity of business cycles between the target countries through a series of correlation analysis with Sweden as the base reference country and also by using a linear regression model. Additionally there is an evaluation of trade volume and labour mobility between the countries. Our results indicate that Iceland had the least similar business cycles within the Nordic countries and that the area should therefore possibly comprise Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. .

This paper describes the development of a simulation model for the ambulance flow in the Västra Götalands-region of Sweden, and an analysis tool for the output of the simulation model. The aim of the simulation model was to be able to evaluate the outcome from changes in the ambulance operations, such as a reorganization of ambulances or an increase in intensity of the ambulance calls. This evaluation is meant to serve as decision support for the strategic planning of the ambulance operations. The analysis tool was developed to visualize the abundant geographical data produced by the simulation model in a meaningful way. The simulation model was validated against historical data which showed that the dispatch time for the highest prioritized ambulance calls corresponds well with historical data.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the Western world. For persons who have had a myocardial infarction the following rehabilitation and the group training, which is a part of this, are very important. The cardiac rehabilitation is designed to limit the physiological and psychological effects of cardiovascular disease. Purpose: This study aimed to examine how patients with cardiovascular disease experienced group training in relation to the International Classification of Function, Disability and Health, ICF. Method: A qualitative interview study was performed according to Malterud, inspired by the Grounded Theory method.

This thesis addresses the subject of internal communication between the leadership and the employees. Communication is a common process and according to Tufvesson (2008), the primary focus has been on the role and responsibility of the leadership. This can mean that, from the employee's point of view, it is not clear what the organization expects, and this lack of clarity dimishes the ability of the employees to live up to those expectations (ibid). Tufvesson (2008) believes that today's organizations need common interpretations, which requires a well thought out communication strategy between leadership and employees. Because communication represents an organization's functionality, the report?s authors were interested in studying the employees? representatives.

Cloud computing is a new buzzword within the IT-industry, and introduces a whole new way of working with IT. The technique delivers web based services, which results in that the user no longer needs to install an application locally on a computer. Since the application no longer needs to run on a local entity, but in a datacenter located on a service provider, the users no longer need any specific hardware more than a computer with an internet connection. Cloud computing also offers IT-infrastructure and development environments as services, these three service types is better known as cloud services. Through the usage of different types of cloud services, the need for maintenance and hardware is significantly reduced.

Mergers and Acuisitions are becoming increasingly common. This can be explained with the fact that the competition is increasing. Therefore many companies are forced to join other markets. This thesis inquires into the process of Mergers and Acqusitions when one company buys another company. The main focus is set on how three different banks handle the process of Mergers and Acqusitions and what results this leads to. These are: Kaupthing Bank, Nordea and Citibank.

Purpose: This thesis aims to study how students in upper secondary school evaluate sources in their everyday school work and how the role of the school library and librarian officiate in this context.Methodology: A web questionnaire was conducted and 155 students from different schools, with or without school library and school librarian, participated. We coded and aggregated the questionnaires according to the strategies that are used when evaluating sources, identified by Francke, Sundin and Limberg. Cognitive authority, a theory by Patrick Wilson, was also a part of our analysis. Conclusions: The study shows that students use different strategies, separately or combined, as a way to evaluate sources. The teacher is regarded as a cognitive authority and is the main influence concerning source evaluation. It also shows that the role of school libraries and school librarians, in this context, seem to be non-existent.

The SK 60 Aircraft has been a workhorse for the Air Force?s training of future pilots since the late 1960s. The aging SK60 aircraft is going out of style, and the system has merely a few years of total running time left. A replacement for the SK 60 needs to be implemented in the coming years, and the Armes Forces Flying School has been commissioned to conduct flight tests on suitable replacement systems. This study will conduct a system analysis of two aircrafts mentioned in the Flying Schools report.

In order to understand user behaviour and navigation patterns, user logging is today widely used in analysis and development of user interfaces. These user logs tend to be quite many and can contain a lot of different data. A big issue is how to process and display this data in a perspicuous way to the stakeholder. This study is about how to develop a prototype to handle this issue. It was solved by various methods from human-computer interaction.

To identify and evaluate apple cultivars is not an easy task, since the taste and appearances of the fruit are affected by where the apple tree grows. At the Balsgård new apple gene bank there is a unique and interesting collection of over 260 different cultivars from all over the world. To find out if these cultivars are consistent with previously published descriptions, the fruit was evaluated for some of the cultivars. Among the evaluated cultivars some were selected that could be suitable for cultivation and/or fruit breeding. A few cultivars were in addition analyzed at a consumer evaluation at the Kivik apple market where visitors could vote for the most beautiful apple and the best taste.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate three web-based search engines and compare the 10 first retrieved documents. We used the search engines Google, Yahoo! and Exalead. The evaluation is based upon 20 topics with strong polarized opinions and these have been derived from Swedish media and every day life. From these topics we have constructed the 20 queries used for searching. The 10 first documents are each placed in four different categories, For, Against, Neutral or Irrelevant.

Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva och analysera enhetschefers syn på sina medarbetares kompetensutveckling för att sedan kunna ställa detta i relation till hur det praktiska kompetensutvecklingsarbetet faktiskt går till. Detta gjordes genom en intervjustudie som inkluderade sju semistrukturerade intervjuer med enhetschefer inom en avdelning i Östergötlands Landsting.Studien redogör för såväl skillnader som likheter i uppfattningar dem emellan och även mellan vad som sägs, och vad som görs. Slutligen visar det sig att det inom ett antal frågor förekommer en diskrepans mellan vad som sägs, och vad som görs. Frågor som visade sig vara inkongruenta återfanns bland annat inom ledarskapsområdet, kartläggnings- och uppföljningsområdet samt personalpolicyområdet. Denna inkongruens problematiserades och härleddes sedan till möjliga orsaksfaktorer vilka i sin tur utgör potentiella förbättringsområden i en optimering av verksamhetens kompetensutvecklingsarbete..

Store windows, as many earlier research studies indicate, is an important factor of the store atmosphere to attract customers into the store. In this study we have narrowed it down and chosen to focus on how different contexts of the store windows will effect customers' evaluation. The purpose is to find out how the context of high creativity and low creativity combined with different time aspect in store windows will affect store image, attitude, entering decisions and purchase intention toward the store. The results are based on a quantitative study where we did an experiment and a field study. The result shows that higher level of creativity is better than lower level of creativity in certain aspects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the three main translation methods used in experimental Cross-language Information Retrieval CLIR research today, namely translation using either machine-readable dictionaries, machine translation systems or corpus-based methods. Working notes from research groups participating in the Text Retrieval Conference TREC and the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum CLEF between 1997 and 2000 have provided the main source material used to discuss the possible advantages and drawbacks that each method presents. It appears that all three approaches have their pros and cons, and because the different researchers tend to favour their own chosen method, it is not possible to establish a "winner approach" to CLIR translation by studying the working notes alone. One should remember however that the present interest in cross-language-applications of information retrieval has arisen as late as in the 1990s, and thus the research is yet in its early stages. The methods discussed in this paper may well be improved, or perhaps replaced by others in the future..

Development of services that?s provided through mobile application technology in today's modern IT society has become a full-fledged market where numerous players trying to make themselves heard in everything from innovative new services to the further development of existing services. In these services actors wants to find new areas of use by taking advantage of the mobile technology.We have investigated how value is created and how the value is captured in the services provided through mobile applications. Through this, we wanted to identify the critical success factors in how a newly developed service should be designed to create value. This has been done through a thorough literature review, together with an indepth evaluation of existing applications.