With the end of the Cold War the number of conflicts where the United Nations have intervened has increased dramatically. This has entailed a need for a burden-sharing between the UN and regional organizations regarding management of conflicts. The aim of this study is to make a comparative analysis of the effectiveness and the efficiency in the efforts undertaken by ECOWAS and the UN during the civil war in Sierra Leone, through using theories on conflict resolution and the advantages of regional organizations in conflict resolution.My conclusion is that both ECOWAS and the UN were quite successful in managing the conflict and had an impact on the resolution of the war, although both peace operations suffered from internal problems. ECOWAS was effective in managing the conflict and in its mediating efforts as an insider from the region. The UN was more efficient in managing to attain their goals.

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.

Return handling is often regarded as a slow and complex process. Studies have shown that it is not unusual for a return to cost up to nine times as much as a standard outbound delivery. An efficient return handling process is therefore essential to all competitive companies dealing with logistics. This report investigates, analyzes and gives suggestions on development with the purpose to improve the return handling process at LensLogistics AB in Kista, north of Stockholm, Sweden. The study has been conducted from a deliberately practical point of view in order to suggest improvement suggestions possible to implement and thereby change the entire return handling process.

Due to the globalization today the competition in the market has in- creased and it requires flexibility and produce according to customer demand. In order to reduce the cost of wages industrial companies are now considering moving the manufacturing to low-cost countries. To keep up with the competition in the market without moving the manu- facturing abroad, Lean Automation was developed. The concept of Lean Automation is to reduce the perceived complexity with automa- tion and make automation available for new users and in new applica- tions.Haldex Brake Products are situated in Sweden and want to maintain the manufacturing of the automatic brake adjusters in the country. It is a product well-known and highly exposed to the competition in the mar- ket.

This report is a thesis work for a B.Sc. in Forestry exam at the School for Forest Engineers, SLU. The work was an assignment from Sydved and the aim of the work was to investigate the economical output of removing understorey trees before first thinning. Four treatments were studied. - no cleaning before thinning - cleaning of all trees less than DBH 5 cm before thinning - cleaning of all trees less than DBH 7 cm before thinning - cleaning of all trees less then DBH 9 cm before thinning The result shows a decrease of the cost per m3 for the harvester with about 38% if all trees less than DBH 9 cm was cleaned before thinning compared with the un-cleaned area. At the same time the total net revenue increases with about 22%. .

This master?s thesis was performed during the fall of 2006 at Cloetta Fazer AB in Ljungsbro. Cloetta Fazer is the market leader in Scandinavia of manufacturing confectionary and chocolates. The purpose of the project has been to identify causes that impact the quantity of waste in production as well as a cost/benefit analysis of the solutions that can reduce the problem of production waste.The work includes four production lines that are individually designed depending on what kind of product that are produced on the line. By using qualitative and quantitative methods such as focus groups, interviews and observations data has been collected.

City of Malmö has ambitions for the district Hyllie to become a demonstrative area ofsustainable urban development. As a part of this the following report aims to investigate the potential in using noise barriers combined with photovoltaics along Annetorpsvägen to generate solar electricity. To quantify the losses that shadows from buildings along the roadmight cause, a 3D-model of the area was constructed in SketchUp. This digital model made it possible to simulate shadows and how they change over the year. A reference model of a photovoltaic noise barrier (PVNB) was constructed and used to find the dates on which the solar cells are shadowed depending on building heights and positioning of the barrier.The results show that two lengths with a total distance of 400 meters is appropriate for applying photovoltaic noise barriers.

Since events of September 11 and the subsequent conflicts surrounding the event, the war against terrorism has been constantly present. It has been used several methods and strategies to address these threats, including a method current in use, the targeting method. The method refers to use few but precise attacks to knock out key functions within these organizations, mostly individuals in the higher command and control structures within these organizations. The effectiveness of the method has been put in question when the majority of the terrorist organizations continue their strife, in some cases even increasing its intensity. The purpose of this study is to investigate which role the higher command plays in these organizations ability to wage war.

An analysis of a specific application of anaerobic wastewater treatment at a pulp and board mill, Stora Enso Skoghall, was carried out. A literature study was done and effluent wastewater from CTMP pulp production was analyzed. The analysis consisted of a broad constituent analysis and an anaerobic treatment trial. Results from these test where used to calculate the treatment effectiveness and resulting energy potential at the mill.The literature study and constituent analysis showed that toxicity of the water to be treated, due to wood extractives and sulphur content, was of concern. Detoxification chemicals targeting these constituents where used in the anaerobic treatment trial.

This thesis work is a 30hp D-level assignment in design as a co-operation between MälardalenUniversity and Scania CV AB in Södertälje. The purpose was to develope a close fitted catwalk.The market has seen an increasing value for these types of applications and have the ambition to keep up with the rest of the competitors. The catwalks of todays standards shall be estetical attractive, have a non slippery surface and be costefficient.While working with this project I have spent a lot of time with the concept proposals and with the evaluation of the concepts, resulting in a final CAD model and a approximation of the cost estimate. The new catwalk fulfils all the new recommendations and rules as sharp edges, ADR, the height of the stepup and a non slippery surface with built in drainage..

This study evaluates the retention of nitrogen and phosphorus in four newly constructed wetlands in the municipality of Falkenberg, Sweden. The four wetlands have been selected because they have been specifically constructed with the aim to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus in farming areas. The process of selecting the specific wetlands has been done in collaboration with the county administration in Halland. Through field studies in collaboration with the landowners where the wetlands are sited, the areas that provide the wetlands with water were determined. The size of these drainage areas were determined in a GIS computer program. The type of land use within the drainage areas was also determined.

Förr i tiden producerades musik med analog hårdvara och datorer användes inte i någon vidare utsträckning. På 80-talet introducerades datorer och nu produceras nästan all musikmed hjälp av datorer. Denna uppsats belyser om, och i så fall hur, införandet av datorer i musikproduktion har påverkat musikproducenter i deras arbete i vardagen. Vi har intervjuat ett antal musikproducenter för att se hur deras användande av datorer i sina arbetsuppgifter har förändrat, förbättrat och försämrat deras arbete. Undersökningenhar genomförts med avstamp i ett sonderingssamtal med en musikproducent på en musikstudio i Malmö för att sedan mynna ut i semistrukturerade intervjuer med fem musikproducenter.

Syftet med det här examensarbetet är att undersöka om det är möjligt att överföra hallbyggnadsteknik till produktion av småhus för att sänka produktionskostnaderna. Studien visar att hallbyggnadsteknik enkelt går att överföra till en villa. Dessutom blir det billigare att bygga klimatskalet med vårt byggsystem jämfört med ett traditionellt prefabricerat småhus. Genom detta system kan den totala byggkostnaden för villan i jämförelsen sänkas med 3-10 % beroende på vilket fasadmaterial som väljs..

The aim of this thesis is to describe passage retrieval (PR), with basis in results from various empirical experiments, and to critically investigate different approaches in PR. The main questions to be answered in the thesis are: (1) What characterizes PR? (2) What approaches have been proposed? (3) How well do the approaches work in experimental information retrieval (IR)? PR is a research topic in information retrieval, which instead of retrieving the fulltext of documents, that can lead to information overload for the user, tries to retrieve the most relevant passages in the documents. This technique was investigated studying a number of central articles in the research field. PR can be divided into three different types of approaches based on the segmentation of the documents.

There are several competing views on how to best utilize air power. Following his quantitative study of air power, Robert Pape developed a theory which focuses on undermining the target state's military strategy. According to Pape it is possible to explain the outcome as a result of military vulnerability. This essay seeks to determine if Pape's theory can predict the outcome of Operation Unified Protector. By using a mixed methods approach on four hypotheses, it will be determined if the operation was a successful case of coercion, if NATO acted according to Pape's model and whether this achieved the desired effects or not. The results reveal that the theory could not successfully predict the outcome of the conflict.