In today's society there is a trend in progress that it is positive and effective to have working groups or teams in organizations. But is it really all good? This essay explores this question through the concept "group weariness". Group weariness is defined as a negative attitude towards working in groups based on previous experiences of the working form. The aim of this study is to explore the concept of group weariness through a quantitative study.

In order to decrease the disturbance from a cable testing equipment, the company Ericsson Network Technologies in Falun determined to design a new series resonant test system with a lower frequency. The new equipment is of series resonant type with a system frequency of 500 Hz. This equipment consists of an inductor, a capacitor and a voltage source. The voltage source is the same as the old one, the cable acts as the capacitor but the inductor has to be designed especially for the new equipment. In this thesis work several air coil inductor types were examined.

In the last decade, member states of the European Union have adopted a range of measures to decrease the dependency on fossil fuels. This has led to an increased use of biomass in heat and power production. In some countries, the lack of forest resource has led to large scale power producers importing their biomass needs. Due to high energy content and homogeneity, wood pellets have become an internationally traded commodity used for large scale power production. The Baltic States have emerged as one of the largest wood pellet exporting regions in Europe.

Environment friendly transports are one of the main topics in the industry and society today.Shell organizes an annual university competition called Shell Eco Marathon. The goal is to buildthe car that consumes the least fuel during a race. KTH participated for the first time in 2006.The engine for this competition, DoubleTwo, has been developed within the school. Theprinciple is a two stroke counter piston HCCI engine with variable compression ratio. HCCIstands for homogenous charge compression ignition.

In recent years it has become more and more evident that man has contributed to much of the climate changes that have taken place during the last century. A major challenge today is to reduce emissions and energy usage at the same time as the global population is growing. To contribute to a better environment, Stockholms Stad has set at target of becoming fossil fuel free by the year of 2050. The construction of new districts is done with this goal in mind; energy efficiency and renewable energy sources are examples of methods to achieve this.Solar energy is considered to be a sustainable energy source and the most common techniques to harvest solar energy in Sweden are solar cells and solar collectors which produce electricity and heat respectively. This report aims to investigate whether an investment in any of these systems would prove to be economically beneficial at Kvarnholmen, a district under construction in eastern Nacka, Stockholm.Since the finished blueprints only cover a small portion of Kvarnholmen, the report examines the possibilities for a house where construction has already begun, Nya Kvarnen.

Urbanization and the flight of the creative class drains the countryside when it comes to creativity and talent. Especially the young leave sleepy societies. Richard Florida claims that the city attracts the creative class and enables for economic growth to flourish. Robert Putnam adds to the picture by saying social capital might be equally effective as nourishment for growth. In Uddebo, a rural village in the south of Sweden one combines the two creating a vivid society where creativity flies high and ideas fertilize each other?s.

According to the Conventions on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to make their voices heard and express their opinion in situations concerning them. With this paper the authors have chosen to explore social worker?s view?s on children?s participation and influence, and how these are manifested through the entire case process. The focus in this study has also been the positive and negative effects the children?s influence may have.To investigate this, a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews has been conducted.

The sun is an endless energy source and the heat it produces can be used to heatup our homes. This technology is relatively old and was introduced in the late70-s. There are two kinds of solar collectors that are most frequently used todayand these are plain solar collectors and vacuum solar collectors. The plain solarcollectors are the once that are used the most but the vacuum solar collectorshave increased more as a percentage the last couple of years.The biggest question asked regarding an investment in solar heating is if theplant is economically profitable. This question has no direct answer because itis dependent on a couple of prerequisites.

The sun is an endless energy source and the heat it produces can be used to heatup our homes. This technology is relatively old and was introduced in the late70-s. There are two kinds of solar collectors that are most frequently used todayand these are plain solar collectors and vacuum solar collectors. The plain solarcollectors are the once that are used the most but the vacuum solar collectorshave increased more as a percentage the last couple of years.The biggest question asked regarding an investment in solar heating is if theplant is economically profitable. This question has no direct answer because itis dependent on a couple of prerequisites.

In this essay we discuss the broad area of website usability from a tourism perspective. Our goal was to investigate the usability in smaller and bigger tourism websites. We have declared what website usability means and the importance of involving the users when designing a user interface. In a pilot study, we conducted three interviews with people who work with usability and then used the information we got to form questions to use in a focus group interview. In this focus group, we asked three people to assess two Swedish tourism websites, one bigger and one smaller, to find out if they were considered usable and if there was any difference in usability depending on the size of the site.

This thesis examines how a company can get an effective, high quality, maintenance of their computerized systems. After literary studies concerning the life cycle activity Maintenance we have studied how the maintenance at the department IT Supply of IKEA IT AB in Älmhult is carried out. What steps and measures in the analyzing of results of changes are carried out and if they have predefined processes for changes. Based on the facts we found most important in our literary studies we have created a model and theoretically applied this to the maintenance of a specific system to see what they can work with to further improve the quality and efficiency in their maintenance. The basis for our thesis is literary studies and the collected material has been used as a foundation for the research at the company, which was carried out through interviews. This thesis is based on the question: ?How do the lack of a model for maintenance and the lack of orientation affect the maintenance in a company??.

This paper analyses education regarding its profitability from an individual?s perspective. The method for conducting the analysis is an ex ante cost-benefit analysis and the time period examined is between the days the education begins until retirement age. The conclusions of this paper are that tertiary education is not profitable for an individual given the conditions stated in this examination. Furthermore the longer the education lasts, the more unprofitable it is.

The aim of our study was to examine how Swedish journalists use the three social networks Facebook, Twitter and blogs to find news. We wanted to study which group of journalists that were using these networks most frequently and why. We also wanted to find out which of the three networks they use the most.We made a questionnaire which we sent out by e-mail to 400 Swedish journalists. 215 of them participated in our study.We analyzed the results of the responses from the questionnaire and discussed patterns and relations between them.The study establishes that the majority of the respondents believe that the networks are very useful and effective in their work.Our results show that out of the three social networks the journalists who participated in our study prefer to use blogs as sources in their line of work, as they are full of information from individuals and contain unique facts and stories.Alongside the results we discussed how social networks might be used in the future of journalism. Most of the respondents are aware of the possibility that they may need to increase the usage of them eventually, and that they will be an important part of the journalistic work process in the future. .

The purpose of this paper is to examine how teachers choose to work with the teaching of reading and writing skills, how teachers justify their choice of teaching method and how the documentation of student development is being used. This paper also discusses the definition of reading and writing, phonological awareness and how different reading- and writing educational methods can be combined. The gathering of information has been done through a literature review in which I have looked at past research on reading and writing. I have also conducted qualitative interviews with teachers involved in literacy learning. The result of my research shows that it is not possible to determine which literacy learning methods that are most effective.

Detta examensarbete utreder möjligheterna att utveckla en energieffektiv luftningsstrategi i en aktivslamprocess. Arbetet innehåller först en litteraturstudie där forskningsläget gås igenom.Därefter följer en optimeringsstudie i Matlab, en simuleringsstudie i en förenklad variant av Benchmark Simulation Model No 1 (BSM1) och en redogörelse för ett fullskaleförsök vid Käppalaverket.  Resultaten från optimeringsstudien visar att, under vissa förutsättningar, är ett konstant luftflöde energioptimalt. Simuleringsstudierna visar att en minskning av energiförbrukningen på upp till 16%  kan uppnås, då luftflödet hålls konstant, jämfört med att hålla ett konstant ammoniumbörvärde. Preliminära resultat från fullskaleförsöken indikerar att ett konstant luftflöde kan minska luftförbrukningen men en längre utvärdering bör genomföras för att få mer tillförlitliga resultat.Slutsatsen från detta arbete är att den utvecklade metodiken kan vara intressanta alternativ till en överordnad reglering av ammoniumkoncentrationen och bör därför studeras vidare..