The purpose of this paper is to analyze the ongoing changes in German family policy. It explores the issue of whether the German welfare state, in this policy field, can still be regarded as a conservative welfare model or rather approaches a more liberal or social democratic model. A qualitative method is used to analyze the material, especially from the German government, including press releases, other public documents and also articles from the political weekly magazines Der Spiegel and Die Zeit. The changes analyzed are the new parental benefit, the expansion of child care, the concept of whole-day schools and the system of joint taxation. The point of departure is Gösta Esping-Andersen?s categorization of three types of welfare states: the social democratic, the conservative and the liberal.

Waste appears to be a low-cost fuel compared to biofuel. This Masters thesis was conducted for Vattenfall Utveckling AB and deals with how waste in the fuel affects the performance of a SCR-catalyst. Different mechanisms of deactivation were surveyed, focusing on the poisoning mechanism. A literature study was carried out, which was used as a reference when analysing the results.Small samples (9x2x2 cm, 64 pieces) cut out from a full-scale unused honeycomb catalyst were exposed up to 1500h in two different combustion plants, Johannes in Gävle (co-combustion) and Högdalen in Stockholm (waste-combustion). The activity was measured mainly at 300°C but also at 250, 350, 375 and 400°C.

Title: A Business Perspective on Reducing the Climate Impact from Tetra Paks Transportations of Goods. Authors: Pär BerglundSebastian Lyngström Supervisors: Lars J Nilsson, Environmental and Energy Systems, Lund UniversityNils Månsson, Department of Business Administration, Lund University Problem Analysis: Increased awareness concerning climate change will put pressure on companies to reduce their climate impact. Problems arise when trying to reduce the impact from transportations due to companies? limited control on forwarding agents and difficulties measuring the emissions. Purpose: From a business perspective, this report will enable a reduction of the climate impact that arises from Tetra Paks transportation of goods.

Type 2 diabetes is a growing disease in the population which includes that older people are a risk group. With the disease grows even cost?s. A lifestyle change is a major part of the treatment for type 2 diabetes. There are several factors that suggest positive effects on prevention among the elderly where, among other things, economic and health benefits are presented.

This thesis of 15 hp has been implemented at Halmstad University, incollaboration with Saab Dynamics in Linköping. Saab Dynamics is a companyoperating in the defence industry where competition is tough. This necessitatesnew ways to increase efficiency in the company, which is the basis for this thesis.Saab Dynamics wants to introduce simulation driven design. Since SaabDynamics engineers have little experience of simulation, required a usermethodology with clear guidelines. Due to lack of time, they chose to assign thetask to students, which resulted in this thesis.The aim of the thesis is to develop a methodology in mechanical design, wherethe designer uses the FE analysis early in the design process to develop thestructures' mechanical properties.

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.

Research and Development-costs constitutes an important part in contemporary companies. R&D are treated differently depending on their definition and how the historic value is decided. The main goal for this essay is to bring clarity to how the definiton of the term R&D is decided in accounting as well as in tax law. Another goal is to decide how the historic value is calculated. It is also interesting to examine under which circumstances the costs can be activated in the balance sheet, and under which circumstances deduction for the R&D-costs may be allowed.

This study investigates a method for identifying human capital and its effect on company valuation. We devise a measure for the efficiency of human capital based on the personnel cost. We include all companies listed in the financial and industry sector on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm in an attempt to examine human capital and its effect on firm valuation. Our results indicate that a higher efficiency of human capital has a positive effect on return on assets. However, we find that our measure can be interpreted in two ways; either as a firm?s level of human capital efficiency or its dependency on human capital, to achieve its net sales and revenue.

The purpose of this thesis is to map out and investigate how the banking sector affects a customer?s willingness to change bank, and what the switching costs are for a customer when making these changes. A case study was performed through qualitative and quantitative questionnaires and interviews. The qualitative part was carried out to create hypotheses. The hypotheses was tested in a quantitative survey to be able to either accepted or rejected these them.

Background: Nosocomial infections pose a big threat to patient safety and increased costs for society. An effective way of preventing cross-infections is to apply hygiene routines. Studies show that compliance to hygiene routines is low while there's a lack of knowledge about the best way of improving it. Aim: To investigate whether a conversation based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) could influence a nurse's compliance to hygiene routines and whether it could benefit the understanding of a nurse's compliance. Method: A quantitative and qualitative method was used in the study and included one nurse.

The purpose of this study was to examine how food managers of Östergötland County disucss around their possibilities of reaching the government´s orientation towards 25 per cent of the food - procured, prepared and cooked in the school meal - coming from certified organic production. The study was a cross-sectional study in wich a qualitative approach was used. The sample consisted six food managers in Östergötland. Data processing was done through a semantic content analysis.  The result showed that involvment and intrest were significant factors for the introduction of organic food in the school meal. The three municipalities with the highest percentage of organic food used the SMART - concept.

ITT Flygt is a world leading company that mainly manufactures submersible pumps. A problem of ITT Flygt is that product development projects rarely manage to hold the estimated project time. It shows that something unexpected occurs in projects quite often, which results in delays. The delays can both be due to an optimistic time plan of projects and risks in product development projects which are not discovered at an early stage. This added with unforeseen delays makes it difficult for ITT Flygt to estimate the duration of their projects.The goal with the Master thesis is to examine a suitable method for simulation of project time.

This paper investigates the internal product costing system in one of the Swedish banks with the purpose to evaluate the quality of its product costs and possible implications on decision making. The study shows that the current system distorts product costs by, among other things, using relative allocation of costs and time and by allocating all costs to individual units of products. We therefore propose an alternative product costing system, which mainly draws on ABC theory but is also adapted to the specific needs of service companies and of the Bank. This proposal is intended as a solution in this particular case and not to be generalized in other contexts. We hope however to add to the understanding of why more complex costing systems, such as the ones based on ABC theory are, according to previous studies, not widely used in practice.

Because of increasing demand of power on Malmbanan the capacity of the existing wires which supply the trains must be increased. This increases the stress on the existing poles and for this reason the system for supplying the loads along the railway is to be removed from the poles and be replaced by some other system. This thesis is a study on a two-level low voltage (1 kV and 0.4 kV) electrical system with the aim to investigate if it can be an alternative to the system used today taking into account the voltages, fault currents and costs.In this thesis the following tasks have been performed:? Gathering of data? Description of basic theory? Loadow and fault current calculations of the system with MATLAB? Life Cycle Cost estimate of the system? Analysis and conclusions from the resultsThe results show that the new system can be an alternative to replace today's system. The simulations and calculations show that the voltage drop is at an acceptable level and that the fault currents are large enough to supply a safe disconnection if a fault occurs at the far end of the system..

A reforming trend is captured showing that countries are shifting from defined benefit pension systems towards defined contribution systems. The reforms have been justified through predictions that the defined benefit systems will not manage to provide good enough pensions to members in the future. The newer defined contribution pension plans often include individual financial accounts where individuals have the possibility to choose how a part of their pension savings should be invested. Sweden was early to introduce such a system, which at the moment provides more than 800 funds to choose from. The aim of this thesis is to capture the market risk associated with these individual investments and does so by using Monte Carlo simulations for six selected pension funds.