Background: There has been an increase in savings and investment in recent years along with an increased interest in responsible investments. Ethical mutual funds has developed and gained increasingly popularity.Aim: The aim of the study is to examine if ethical mutual funds are an equivalent alternative to traditional mutual funds in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted return on the Swedish stock market.Theory: Beta, Jensen's Alpha, Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio, and Modern Portfolio Theory.Method: Quantitative survey method, a statistical study.Conclusion:The study concludes that there is no significant difference between ethical and conventional mutual funds in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted return. The small differences that exist between the two fund groups are in favor of the ethical fund group, indicating that funds is a comparable investment option compared to traditional mutual funds..

The energy use in a workshop company has been examined in this work in order to find areas for energy efficiency improvement. The combined oil and electricity heating in the company were compared with other alternative heating systems including cooling of the premises in following combinations:Ground source heat pump for heating and coolingDistrict heating and absorption coolingDistrict heating and low temperate surface water coolingEnergy use, operation costs and carbon dioxide emissions were calculated for the current heating systems and the three alternatives including cooling. The ground source heat pump for heating and cooling decreases bought energy with 34 MWh annually compared to current heating only. The district heating and low temperate surface water cooling has the largest reduction of operation cost and carbon dioxide. The operation cost decreases with 42 kSEK and the carbon dioxide with 43 metric ton CO2 annually.

In Sweden, a big part of the energy use is used in the housing sector. Political goals and targets are set up which the housing sector needs to work towards. Apartment buildings are a major part of the housing sector in Sweden and therefore reduction of energy use in these kinds of buildings are key to lower the energy use in Sweden. But there are not only political incentives to reduce the energy use. Some energy?saving measures are directly profitable and should thus be performed.

Industrial buildings are increasing all over Sweden. Farmers are building new modern facilities and the government chooses to build new halls to invest i youth sports. Glulam is the most common framework but there are limitations because of the transport. Therefore, there is a need to develop new solutions to increase the use of glulam.The maximum torque in the eaves was found in the frame with a roof pitch of 18 degrees and a wingspan of 25 meters. Using hand calculations according to Eurocode and comparison with the computer software StatCon, the maximum torque, shear force and utilization rate is calculated.

The purpose of the house which is the basis of this report is to be able present itself on the market as a relatively cheap and at the same time a climate friendly choice. The house is supposed to be able to be built anywhere in Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia in a short period of time. This puts demand on what kind of heating system the house can have, since not all places have the geographic advantage of being able to use geothermal or district heating. Therefore the heating system choices will only include those that are not limited by their geographic location. The house will be built in modules which only require the groundwork to be done before the house can be erected. In this report "System solutions for plus or passive-housing" a comprehensive literature search has been conducted as well as a number of calculations.

The idea with constructions made out of prefabricated elements is that it should be quick and easy to build as the demands for lower production costs, increased profitability and shorter production times are constantly increasing. High accuracy in measurements and well-balanced tolerances is required to achieve this. The fact that the concrete-elements doesn?t fit and that damage occurs during assembly is a highly topical issue even though we now have methods and systems that make this high-intensity construction possible. Through this report we want to highlight the problems that cause the dimensional and tolerance problems and give suggestions on how to come to terms with these.

Bachelor thesis, Controller, Program of Master of Science in Business and Economics, School of Business and Economics at Linneaus University in Växjö, Sweden, Course Code: 2FE13E:3, Spring 2012 Authors: Jacob Cedergren, Adam Pettersson, Hampus SkelterwijkSupervisor: Anders JerrelingTitle: The ERP-systems impact of the management control - a case study of VIDA AB Original Title: Affärssystemens påverkan på ekonomistyrningen - en fallstudie på VIDA ABBackground: New technology has given businesses new opportunities to use and store information and the current information systems has changed the way of working in more or less all sectors and operations. ERP-systems have been one of the most important IT innovations in the past decade. The potential of a properly implemented ERP-system is great because it has got the ability to link the company?s different areas together. Despite its many advantages, there are several examples of cases where the acquisition and implementation has been a total failure.

Due to recent legal enactments regarding carbon dioxide emissions, the car industry is facing higher demands. An effective way of reducing these emissions is to minimize the weight of the vehicle. This thesis constitutes a feasibility study on whether or not it is applicable for the car industry to utilize an inner floor structure comprising composite materials. The principal was the projectSåNätt, in which the main participant was Volvo Cars Corp. In consultation with a reference group, consisting of delegates from the industry and KTH, a specification of requirements was produced.

The retail banks are usually looked upon as conservative. Since the launch of internet banks in the 90's they have not developed much. Meanwhile the internet is developing in a fast pace and social websites are increasing in popularity. The purpose of this essay was to investigate how internet banking will develop in the near future based on interviews, literature and trend studies. With web 2.0 techniques the internet bank could develop to help the costumers take more informed decisions regarding their economic situation.

The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze the yearly expenses for Swedish rental apartments during the period 1999 to 2007. At the end, it will give the reader a general picture of how the cost-level has fluctuated depending on the production year when the apartment building was finished, and where the same building is located. This paper has the following questions as a starting point:- Can there be an identification of regions depending on where people tend to favor renting an apartment?- How are those regions distributed? That is, where are the cost-levels of the yearly rental expenses highest and where are the levels lowest?Nine statistical surveys from the Swedish government agency Statistics Sweden (Statistiska Centralbyrån) have been used as primary sources for this paper. These surveys deal with price pictures of housing in general, but for this paper the only information that has been used is the one about rental apartments.

The ferry traffic to Gotland is essential for the island?s ability to live and develop. Yearly, it transports 1,6 million passengers, 500 000 personal vehicles and 750 000 lane meters of freight with four Ro-Pax ferries. The traffic is controlled and subsidized by the Swedish government since 1971 in order to guarantee the inhabitants and industry of Gotland a satisfactory transportation service. As a consequence of the past decades increased traffic quality, mainly due to a decrease in crossing times, the traffic?s environmental impact and costs has also increased.The Master Thesis proposes a new energy efficient traffic arrangement that satisfies the users? preferences in the same extent as today.

Most people have been forced to throw away a pot-plant after its death. There are many reasons to the death of a plant, but mainly it?s because its owner forgets it, and therefore fails to water it. The purpose of this project is therefore to develop a product which can prevent this from happening, while the product has to have a low manufacturing cost to be able to compete whit other, similar, products on the market. During the project, a benchmarking has been done to give a clear picture of what the product has to compete with. The directives there are for CE-marking, and which of these who concerns the product has also been looked up.

The Swedish government has introduced a goal to reduce the energy intensity by 20% to the year 2020. To reach this goal actions need to be taken throughout the energy sector which includes residential and commercial buildings. This thesis considers the possibility to reduce the energy usage in a building located close to Uppsala. The analyzed building is a combined office, cafeteria and entrance and was completed about half a year before this project started. Therefore the measures presented for a more energy efficient building are presented as measures for future constructions.Simulations have been made in VIP-Energy, a dynamic energy calculation program.

A large number of system development projects are allowed to proceed for too long, and leads to undesirable project outcomes. Research shows that more than half of the authorities involved reported that at least one of their projects have exceeded their budget, and that a third of all the projects had exceeded the budget. This problem led to the following research question: ?Which factors can explain projects continued escalation within public authorities?? To answer the question, a qualitative case study of the Swedish police?s implementation of PUST, a sort of case management system was conducted. The project received considerable media attention and a large amount of criticism was directed towards the project, partly because the project exceeded the timeframe and budget set at the start.

This project was led on behalf of Bombardier Transportation in Västerås, Sweden, incollaboration with KTH Stockholm and EPFL Lausanne. This project is connected to thedevelopment of a new and simplified tilt system for rail vehicles.Growing competition from other means of transportation has forced railway companiesthroughout the world to search for increased performances.Travelling time is the mostobvious performance indicator that may be improved by introducing high-speed trains.They require very large curve radii and long transitions curves not to impairridecomfort, another performance indicator. Building new tracks adapted to high speedtrains is very costly and can only be justified where the passenger base is large.Trains with the capability to tilt the carbodies inwards the curve is a more cost efficientalternative. The tilt inwards reduces thelateral force felt by the passengers allowing thetrain to pass curves at enhanced speed with maintained ride comfort but increases thefrequency ofmotion sickness.The benefits of tilting trains are improved speed capability in curves and enhancedpassengers comfort, but at higher buying and maintenance cost. As the conventionaltrains increase their speed in curves, the performance advantage of tilting trains isreduced while their prize is still kept significantly higher and constant.