In recent years, the Swedish railway track system has been neglected in terms of capacity and maintenance. To adapt the existing system to current traffic load there is a great need for extensive improvement and maintenance. Shortcomings are especially occurring on older embankments running over soft subgrades. To select the most suitable method for reinforcement of the embankment, it is important to evaluate different solutions from a life cycle cost perspective. In long-term perspective, it is often shown that a method with low investment cost causes a higher maintenance cost and a shorter technical lifetime.

Mechanization of Swedish agriculture started in the beginning of the twentieth century, to be able to have more animals without raising the number of employers. The horse business has not by far kept up with these cost savings solutions. Cleaning out stables and feeding horses are the most time-consuming tasks in horse stables today. The most common way to clean out the stable is still by shovel and wheelbarrow. The clean out process can easily be mechanized through semi- permanently beds with movable walls between the boxes so that the litter can be removed by a tractor or a loader.

The construction industry is currently receiving much criticism for inefficiency and slow development while demands for reduced built in moisture and efficiency increases. This report examines whether the use of field factories can meet these requirements and what factors that will be critical for future use of field factories. Industrialized construction with field factory is compared with traditional loose timber construction and industrial construction in the fields of execution, logistics and working environment. The aim of this report is to provide a basis for field factories current and future use and development. To achieve the aim of the report, people with experience in the use of the various methods was interviewed and literature studies in the various fields done.

"Anders Andersson had a fire in his tar-kiln ". Analysis of Jonas Åström 's peasant-diary 1868-1891 Peasant diaries are notes written by farmers, crofters and other people connected with small-scale agriculture. The notes give unique information about diverse aspects of rural life, for example, personal relationships and work, travel and regularity of church attendance. One such diary was written by Jonas Åström who lived in the county of Västerbotten, Sweden. The main aim of this study is to describe the work done by farmers in the 19th century, focusing on their use of forest resources, as recorded in his diary.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe property definition and special boundary demarcation and to analyze the differences between the two cadastral procedures. Property boundaries, especially unlawfully determined boundaries created through unofficial parcelling, can create conflicts between landowners and make it diffi-cult to know which land that a property contains of. It is possible to clarify the boundary conditions through a property definition or through a special boundary demarcation re-establish boundary marks.The methods used are: (1) A literature review to collect background information, (2) A case study to summarize court cases and (3) A questionnaire study to collect opinions from cadastral surveyors.The result is summarized in two comparisons. Firstly between restoration of landmark and special boundary demarcation (which replaced restoration of landmark in a legislative change in 2010), which demonstrated that the change in the law is considered positive because special boundary demarcation gives a legal effect on the boundaries. Secondly between property definition and special boundary demarcation which demonstrated that the two procedures are similar to each other.

A third party access to district heating networks has been proposed in Sweden, to increase the competition on the district heating market. Such third party access could create opportunities for the agricultural sector as an energy producer. This study describes the technical, economical and environmental prerequisites for a farmer cluster to build and run a heating plant, fueled with local wood fuel. The heating plant in the described scenario is 8 MW and will supply a village of 1000 houses, and is fueled with wood chips exclusively. Supplying a heating plant with fuel puts high demands on the logistics, since there need to be a continuous flow of fuel. In the scenario, wood residues from felling and thinning is stored in stacks in the forest, and a few times a year chipped and transported to a storage area at the heating plant. In the study, an estimation of the profitability has been made by estimating the cost of the investment, personnel, operating and maintenance costs and costs for the fuel and ash handling.

Within all industries, there is a change in working time required; this also includes the construction sector. However, the way construction sectors are differentiated is by not having been given the opportunity to be practiced or tested.  The aim of this thesis that we have done in collaboration with the Concrete Industry was to investigate the possibility of developing an automated method for quality assurance of SKB at the site. The idea is to make the O-funnel to be more utilized and therefore ensuring that the appropriate concrete quality is provided which eventually would lead to a better development in the production process.The project has involved theoretical work and laboratory experiments. The theoretical work gave us a good foundation at the beginning of the project. After gathering the information and material, the laboratory experiments began by SCC in their laboratory in Hammarby. The collected data from the various laboratory tests formed the foundation for trying to relate measurements for consistency of SCC with each other and therefore find out how measurements from O-funnel varies with different concrete mixtures.

Companies that invest in e-learning have different expectations regarding the outcome of the investment. According to literature and articles it is common that companies see reduction of costs as the primary benefit with e-learning. Therefore we ask ourselves the question if companies have attained the expected benefit of the investment in e-learning and to what extent cost reduction have been a determining factor in the investments? The purpose of the thesis is to examine if companies that invest in e-learning have attained the expected benefits. We also want to examine what the reason for investing in e-learning is and if cost reduction is the primary reason for investing. The study is founded on a qualitative method that is based on a case study in eight companies.

This paper analyzes the Swedish labor market during the interwar and early postwar period within the framework of modern labor market theory. The development of unemployment during this period - according to the commonly cited source of labor union reports - represents a conundrum for research. The unemployment rate rose after the initial diverse shock of 1921 and stayed at a permanently higher level for the rest of the interwar period. This development was reversed after World War Two when the unemployment rate decreased and stayed permanently low for the rest of the postwar period until the oil price chock of the 1970s.In a first step the available sources of unemployment statistics is investigated and compared. The general conclusion is that the labor union reports overestimate the level of economy wide unemployment while being a reasonably good indicator of movements in the rate.

The Smart Grid technology has during the last decade been established as a way to create a greater flexibility on the electricity grid that will be needed as the development moves towards an increased share of renewable primary energy sources in the electricity production. One part of the Smart Grid technology is the ability to shift loads in time, to adapt to either price or emissions, known as Demand Response. This project, which was conducted at KTH in collaboration with the consulting corporation Capgemini, examines the economic, environmental and social aspects of the Demand Response technology. In the project, three household products are used in a model that derives the potential savings in costs and emissions of CO2e. The results show that the actual savings measured in SEK are small, but that the savings measured in percent can be as high as 20 percent. Reduction of CO2e emissions is slightly lower.

The world economy of today is in an extensive financial crisis which has lead to the fact that people seek well placed investments and securing of capital, something that by many people can be found in forest investment. The price of forest estates has increased with 90 % during the last 5 years and marketing polls indicate a positive belief in the future among forest owners. The development of timber prices has not increased to the same extent as the forest property prices which implies that the property price not only reflect the yield value from the forest but also that the lumber value does not have such a meaningful role in the pricing of forest properties as proven earlier. This fact means that forest owners either invest their capital in forest in a speculative point of view or that the purchasers of forest properties invests in non monetary benefits that lacks a direct yield value. The purpose with this degree thesis is to increase the understanding of the pricing of forest properties with focus on the above mentioned fact.

No accidents or injuries should occur because of our public health care. It should be a place with high security and good quality in order to avoid this type of accidents. This is a tough situation when the public health care organization should have as good quality as possible despite savings. It is difficult for middle managers to improve patient safety in the absence of money.The purpose of this study is to explain the work with patient safety that middle manager perform during saving times. The perspective we will look into is how they work with patient safety as an ongoing change.

The avowed aim in this project was to see how the Swedish egg production is today. My first question was if the Swedish egg producers egg production turn a profit. I have done five after calculation at five different egg producers with different systems from case to case. The difference has been the living system, the fodder and the egg price. They made a report in Uppsala, Sweden (Hoffman & Andersson, 1996), where the look forward to a Swedish cage ban and made calculations after that coming ban. After that they lift the Swedish ban of cages and the egg producers could invest in new cages who called the decorated cage.

The enterprises of today are beginning to realize that environmental issues are a important part of their activity. Companies and organizations are expected to a greater extent communicate their environmental work to the world surrounding them in a trustworthy and structured way. Lack of information or information that is incorrect may bring farreaching consequences. Communication is mentioned in several of the ISO 14001-standards. But what is missing is a guideline how companies should act to create and be sure of the quality of the data that can be used in the environmental communication.

Miljöcertifieringssystemen PEFC och FSC ställer krav på uppföljning och revision för att säkerställa att kraven och kvalitén uppnås. Studiens syfte var att belysa de skogliga maskinentreprenörerna och förvaltarnas/virkesinköparnas erfarenheter av arbete med uppföljning inom miljöcertifierat skogsbruk. Materialet insamlades genom telefonintervjuer och analyserades med kvalitativ innehållsanalys, vilket ledde fram till resultatet. Uppföljningen och traktdirektivet har en viktig roll för att nå miljöcertifieringarnas krav. Dialog och delaktighet mellan de olika yrkesgrupperna var viktig, enligt respondenterna, för att miljöcertifieringen ska nå en hög kvalité och för att skapa engagemang och vilja att förbättra arbetet..