AbstractA master thesis in business administration 30 hp, Jönköping International Business School, Spring semester 2012.Authors: Sarah Henningsson & Jim BörefeltSupervisor: Urban ÖsterlundTitle: Commercial real estate investment ? Factors from an investor perspectiveBackground and problem: In this study, we focused on the real estate investor and the factors and issues that may arise and affect real estate investment decisions. It has been put in relation to the other parties in the process of assessing and affecting real estate investment decision. The parties that we studied are real estate investors, banks, brokers and appraisers.Purpose: This study aims to describe and explain the factors that affect commercial real estate investments for investors, credit assessment conducted by the bank and valuation made by the broker and appraiser.Delimitations: We have chosen to limit the study to commercial real estates including residential, retail and office properties, industrial properties and combinations thereof. Agriculture buildings and forestry plots are not examined.

Many organizations strive to be transnational. This means that individuals with different cultural background will work together. Countries around the world have their own culture, which mark the way individual?s think and act. Different values between leaders and their subordinates are often a key factor to misunderstandings and conflicts in transnational organisations.

The purpose of this thesis work is to evaluate how the physical behaviour of a pipe bend is affected by the pipe bending procedure. Effects such as initial ovalization, thinning, thickening and plastic hardening from the bending procedure are examined and the mechanical properties of pipe bends containing these effects are investigated.This has been evaluated by creating a detailed Finite Element model of a pipe that is being bent. Then the differences compared to a bent tube in a virgin state, so called Elbow elements and an analytical in-house program have been evaluated. The virgin state refers to a model of a pipe that is bent from the beginning, thus having a homogeneous thickness and not containing any plastic hardening. The Elbow element is a calculationally cheap element, specially developed for accurate calculations of pipe bends in an initially virgin state.The goal with the thesis work is to get a better picture of what happens to a pipe as it is being bent, how this affects the mechanical properties and to evaluate the possibility to develop an easy method for taking these effects into account when using the Elbow element.This report describes the layout of the work and how the detailed FE-model has been constructed.

The aim for the project was to develop a risk analyse tool for measuring the fire safety level in Cultural Heritage buildings of Visby, Gotland. In 1995 Visby were taken into the Unesco:s World Heritage List with the explanation ?Visby is an outstanding example of a Northern European walled Hanseatic town which has in a unique way preserved its townscape and its extremely valuable buildings? One of the demands for the tool was that it should be easy to use and result into a ranking level in examined buildings. The user of the tool is recommended to be personnel in the fire department. To develop the tool a Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) method was used.

The aim of our thesis was to describe how the connection between co-dependent relatives and the alcohol-dependent influences the family into changes in their teamwork.Our purpose was also to answer the following questions: How is it living with an alcoholic? Are there any differences in how men and women feel and behave in their relationship with an alcoholic? Are factors like cultural belonging, genre or social class important for how the co-dependent relatives feels and behaves and handle their co-dependency?To answer these questions we made twelve thematic qualitative interviews with six adult children to alcoholics and six people married to alcoholics. We compared the results of these interviews with earlier research. We also applied System Theory and Goffman's Role Theory, as well as Bourdieu´s Capital and Habitus concept.We believe that co-dependency is a family divergence that is very similar to family disease, but that a change in attitude can trigger recovery. According to the interviews many spouses stand by their alcoholic husbands and do actions that perpetuate the alcoholic dependence and thereby hold back any recovery.

Natural monuments are natural objects with special protection due to their high natural value or cultural significance. The natural value is determined by the occurrence of signal species found on and near the natural monument. The law surrounding natural monuments has evolved a lot since the first ones were declared, and today the title natural monument can be replaced with the title tree with high conservation value. The title has come later and can sometimes overlap natural monument. Some natural monuments lack the qualities required to be classified as a natural monument or a tree with high conservation value, but have a cultural importance.

Turismen är en av världens största och mest expansiva branscher. Intresset för kulturturism har ökat under de senaste årtiondena och turisternas efterfrågan på upplevelser som involverar ursprungsfolk växer. På många håll i världen är det västerländska turistföretag som ställer villkoren för hur denna kulturförmedling ska se ut. Detta medför att en stereotyp och missvisande bild av ursprungsfolk många gånger bibehålls, vilket får negativa följder för ursprungsgrupperna. Andra följder av turismens expansion är exempelvis tvångsförflyttningar av ursprungsbefolkningar.

This thesis explores the narrow spaces between closely built houses in the over 300-year-old wooden town center of Mariestad, Sweden, and their potential as time capsules and sources of knowledge in cultural-historical building investigations. By interpreting well-preserved carpentry work on a facade in one of these spaces, the study aims to provide an example of how these preserved spaces can serve as a source of knowledge and understanding of craftsmanship and the history of the place. The thesis also addresses the municipality of Mariestad's work with cultural heritage, as well as maps out more of these potentially interesting interstitial spaces. Old Swedish wooden towns possess a high degree of uniqueness both nationally and internationally; nevertheless, they are subjected to relatively significant threats of demolitions and substantial changes, often in the form of many smaller restorations or changes over a long period of time. The focus of the case study is a window from the 16th or 17th century and the facade's old, hand planed wooden cladding.

In an attempt to develop a more cost-efficient material for solar   energy applications, nano-particles of nickel oxide composite in a silikatmatris manufactured with solar gelmethod and studied structurally by electron microscopy. Furthermore, the thin film optical properties characterized by Variable. Angel Spectroscopic Ellipsometry. Sol gelfilms suitability as a selective absorber surface is also analyzed by optical modeling..

The purpose of this study was to analyze recent appropriations of works of art in advertising. Why was art infused into magazine advertisements, how were the works of art tampered with to achieve commercial goals, how well did they function together with the ad copy? What did these advertisements want? What did the artwork contribute to the commercial message? These were some of the questions asked in the study that involved a closer look at four appropriations: one based on a battle painting by the Swedish 1900th century artist Carl Wahlbom, with a commercial message printed on top;  one a collage including an 18th century portrait of Marie Antoinettte by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun; one advertisement was influenced by Dutch 1700th century still lifes, and, finally, one paraphrased Velázquez?s famous painting Las Meninas from 1655. Companies behind the advertisements featured a Swedish trade journal, a fashion exhibition in Paris, a shop for kitchen utensils in Stockholm, and an up-scale department store in Madrid.The ads, in different ways based on works of art, were evaluated as reasonably successful commercial messages. These ads, however, hardly qualified as works of art in their own right ? if that was the intention.

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Language of text: SwedishNumber of pages: 90.

I två analyser av filmerna; Do The Right Thing av Spike Lee (1989) och Hemligheter och lögner av Mike Leigh (1996), har jag undersökt  hur och varför samhällsproblematik  som berör klass- och rasfrågan presenteras på film utifrån hur cultural studies teoretiskt förhåller sig till problematiska relationer mellan kulturella identiteter i USA och Storbritannien. Jag kom fram till att identifikationen av den kulturella identiteten var olika i respektive länder; USA och Storbritannien. I USA var rastillhörigheten utgångspunkten för den kulturella identiteten och i Storbritannien var det klasstillhörigheten utgångspunkten för den kulturella identiteten..

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to study howuniversity librarians in a South African context relate to theconcept of information literacy. We investigated differencesand similarities in approaches to user education andinformation literacy. We have based our study on thefollowing research questions: What are the prerequisites foruser education at the University of the Western Cape? Howdo these prerequisites influence librarians' approaches toinformation literacy and user education at the University ofthe Western Cape? We have used a sociocultural theoreticalperspective and Hofstede's cultural dimensions in orderto pay particular attention to the cultural and social contextof user education.

This study investigates communication and data in information systems. The paper deals, more specificly, with communication in a CRM-system implemented in a Swedish-founded company in Beijing, China. It discusses cultural, political, linguistic and gender based dilemmas that can arise from the use of a CRM-system in an international and bilingual environment. Fifty-nine interviews were conducted in Sweden and in China, either in Swedish or English. The result of this study shows that communication in the information system is affected by factors, that are not originated in technical shortcomings of the system, but rather from cultural, political, linguistic and gender based pre-knowledge among individuals.