This paper deals with the question: "Why does the U.S. aid project to cambat HIV/AIDS in Africa, called PEPFAR, use a strategy that has been shown to be couterproductive?" The author uses an anthropological approach, based on theory of "aid as a gift" inspired by work of Mauss and Stirrat& Henkel. The study demonstrates that the interests that lie behind PEPFAR have had a greater influence on the choice of strategy than the declared goals. It is concluded that evaluations of development assistance should focus as much on the background interests of the givers as the declared objectives..

The main purpose of the essay was to evaluate whether investments in index-linked bonds were suitable investments for smaller investors on the international finance market. To determine whether the index-linked bonds are good investments, the variables yield, cost and risk were used to measure the index-linked bonds against investments in stocks and funds. The reason for the interest in this subject is that investments in index-linked bonds have grown furiously the last few years. With the growth of the investments the criticism of index-linked bonds has also grown stronger. The critics? main point is the cost of the product, and they imply that investors can create their own index-linked bond and thereby avoid the bank fees.This study used a quantitative approach, because all the data of yield, cost and risk consist of numbers.

The aim of our study was to increase the awareness of the importance of implementation when a policy document is widely introduced. We wanted to examine how a political decision was implemented on different levels in a social care administration. We also wanted to examine the discretion related to the decision on different levels in the organisation, and if the work is followed up. The theoretical frame of reference in our study is Vedung?s implementation model and Lipsky?s theory about street-level bureaucrats.

The purpose of this thesis is to find means of control that secure cost efficiency regarding the accommodation for the employees on missions abroad of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Today the ministry?s cost for the employees? rented housing is 100 million SEK and there is a need of improvement in the control of these costs. A work method for organizational development will be used in order to reach the findings presented in the thesis. First we study the strengths and weaknesses in today?s control system.

According to the European Union waste hierarchy, waste should first of all be minimized. Reuse and material and energy recycling come next. Lastly the waste should be thrown at the refuse tip. In the inner city of Stockholm waste handling can be done in various types of ways. The solutions vary as a result of the type of architecture of the building and its condition.

Problem formulation? Are there any factors affecting the choice of marketing strategy?? What is it that determines the degree for the company to use a standardized or a adapt marketing strategy?? How profitable is Scania's marketing strategy in each country?Objective: The overall aim of this study is based on local adaptation and global standardization to compare the degree to which the company Scania chooses to adapt or standardize its marketing to the South American and Asian markets.We also aim to compare and describe any factors that affect the countries' differences in marketing strategies and to evaluate and measure the profitability of marketing strategies in each market.Methodology: The study is limited to Scania's marketing in the truck market in Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and Singapore from 2006 to 2010. In order to answer the study's problem formulation and purpose we have chosen to combine a qualitative and quantitative approach. Four interviews were conducted with marketing executives from Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia / Singapore and Sweden. We have also chosen to examine Scania's annual report and include figures on the market shares of Scania in the respective countries and the number of sold Scania truck which is then compared against the number of registered vehicles by country.

The structure and performance of grocery distribution in Sweden has changed profoundly since the second world war. Increasing access and usage of the private car, in combination with an accommodating town planning has enhanced the exploitation of scale economies within distribution firms. There is, however, some ambiguity concerning the overall efficiency of the distribution system when the costs associated with travelling and purchasing performed by households are treated as an integrated part of the total distribution cost function. The purpose of this master thesis is to develop the foundation of a spatial optimisation model, which defines the most efficient distribution system. The underlying idea is that the optimal localisation and size of grocery stores is a function of economies of scale within the firms weighed against distributions costs within the households, such as transportation costs.

This report describes a new foundation method and compares it with a traditional founding of concrete. This new method is called the Koljern technique and uses cellular glass which is called Foamglas. The Foamglas is compounded to founding elements by lightweight steel beams. Foamglas is an insulation material with high compressive strength, and is rot, insect, vermin and acid proof. The cellular glass is also fire proof and watertight, which makes it a very good construction material.The report contains a study of a number of cases for which the Koljern technique is compared with a foundation of concrete.

An efficient market implies that the use of fundamental analysis should not result in excess return, and that any return exceeding the market average can be explained by compensation for risk, accord-ing to The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). The focus of this study is to test whether the suc-cessful investment strategy developed by Piotroski (2000) generates excess return on American data, after risk adjustment by using Fama & French?s (1993) 3-factor and Carhart?s (1997) 4-factor CAPM. Initially we form stock portfolios based on companies characterized by high book-to-market values, additionally, we divide them into different performance classes by ranking them with Piotroski?s (2000) measure of financial performance, F_SCORE.

In recent years, awareness of the climate change has increased around the world. Environmental issues have been taking into consideration, both by individuals and companies. Therefore the demands for new environmental friendly technology have increased, also known as cleantech. To further establish and develop cleantech it requires capital. Venture capitalists have as well seen the potential.To increase the number of Venture capital investments in cleantech, it is important the investments generate good returns.

The background of this study is the fact that it nowadays is more common to grow wheat after wheat. Usually we plow every autumn to remove the straw, and we wanted to study the effect of alternative methods to do it. We have done this experiment to answer the question if no tillage is better than conventional plowing. The results of the field experiment indicate that there is a link between plant establishment and the choice of equipment, but also a higher weed pressure in experimental plots with only ground tillage. The equipments which left much straw on the top of the ground the problems with fungi were more severe.

In this thesis we compare how different strategies in choosing attribute values affects junk mail filtering. We used two different variants of a naïve Bayesian junk mail filter. The first variant classified an e-mail by comparing it to a feature vector containing all attribute values that were found in junk mails in the part of the e-mail collection we used for training the filter. The second variant compared an e-mail to a feature vector that consisted of the attributes that was found in ten or more junk mails in the part of the e-mail collection we used for training the filter. We used an e-mail collection that consisted of 300 e-mails, 210 of these were junk mails and 90 were legitimate e-mails.

The market is developing and a growing competition increases pressure on companies to maintain their competitive advantage. Working with cost savings is a way to enhance earnings in a short term but also in a longer perspective. Volvo Powertrain Production Köping has an overall goal; to reduce costs by nine percentages in three years. To achieve the goal, Volvo Powertrain Production Köping works with World Class Manufacturing where the Department of Processing Technology constitutes an important part.Volvo Powertrain Production Köping lacks a standard for how savings within the metal cutting tool area are to be calculated. This makes it difficult to control and monitor their business outcome but it also causes difficulties in controlling the tool suppliers? outcome.

Syftet med studien är att beskriva hur svenska multinationella företag tillämpar cost plus metoden vid interna transaktioner över landsgränser. Vidare har följande forsningsfrågor formuleras: Hur tillämpar företag cost plus metoden? Vilka faktorer påverkar internprissättningsprocessen? Fallstudien är genomförd på Älvsbyhus som är en av nordens största tillverkare av prefabricerade sektionshus av trä med affärsidén att sälja och tillverka färdigmonterade, källarlösa trähus i 1 eller 1,5 plan till marknadens lägsta pris. Den utbredda handeln mellan företag i olika länder har resulterat i ett ökat antal multinationella koncerner bildats, därmed har ett behov av internpissättning för värdering av interna transaktionerna uppstått. Huvudtanken med internprissättningen är att internpriset ska avspegla marknadspriset för varan eller tjänsten, vilket ofta inte är möjligt då ett marknadspris inte existerar.

In this Masters thesis we investigate query expansion using an electronic thesaurus. We formed 30 topics from the library and information science field. For each topic three searches were made in the bibliographic database LISA Library and Information Science Abstracts via CSA Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. LISA has an electronic thesaurus attached. We used this thesaurus to form baseline queries, baseline queries expanded with synonyms, and baseline queries expanded with both synonyms and related terms.