Hearing is considered to be the most important sense for the communication between people. Several studies have shown that hearing loss can lead to deterioration in quality of life, reduced social activities, feelings of alienation and hence the increasing incidence of depression symptoms.An early audiological rehabilitation is a prerequisite for proper communication among people with hearing loss. Knowledge has been shown to be of great importance and structured learning and individually targeted approach can be expected to facilitate the audiological rehabilitation.The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of an educational effort for people with hearing loss where the effort was made in the distance within the audiological rehabilitation and was followed-up by professional phone support, through a randomized controlled study.The study group consisted of 69 hearing aid users who were randomized by an independent person into two groups, an intervention group and a control group. The intervention group (n = 33) had access to the book "When the sounds are weaker - on hearing and hearing aids". The group received weekly topic-based information related to the different chapters of the book, in five rounds.

The objective of this study was to investigate how the local newspaper readers felt about reading the local newspaper in a tablet device, such as the iPad. We wanted to study the attitudes from consumers towards tablets and if the traditional local newspaper can be substituted with a tablet device. We decided to use qualitative interviews as our method. The selection of respondents was based upon age, whether or not they had a subscription and if they owned a tablet device or not. We accomplished fifteen interviews with respondents living within the area where the newspapers of Barometern and Oskarshamnstidningen are spread. The study shows that the majority of the respondents who already had a subscription tended to lack interest in changing their traditional newspaper consumption. Their habits of reading the local news on paper were strong.

Thermal fatigue is a serious problem in todays power plants. A large amount of damages around the world circles around that subject. The damage can come from the mechanism of two flows mixing with different temperatures in a T-junction. It is a fundamental prerequisite that these T-junctions are frequently tested for damages. An amount of criterias steers the rate of testings.

The goal of the society to increase the proportion of renewable energy has led to an increased demand of bioenergy e.g. forest biomass. However, there are concerns that removal of biomass will lead to decreased base cation concentrations in the soils and acidification of streams. In order to find in which types of landscape removal of branches and tops could have such negative effects, this study aims to analyse the relations between pH-sensitivity and landscape variables in the Bothnia Bay water district. GIS and digital geographical data were used to analyse the landscape in subcatchments.

Relationsmarknadsföring har idag blivit en central del i många företags marknadsföring. Kort sammanfattat är relationsmarknadsföring ett marknadsföringssätt som fokuserar på att etablera och utveckla relationen till kunden. Eftersom en konsument idag, bland annat med hjälp av Internet, har tillgång till väldigt mycket information ökar medvetenheten och ger kunden en större möjlighet att välja var och av vem hon ska handla. De konventionella marknadsföringsmetoderna blir alltmer ineffektiva och företagen lägger istället mer energi på att skapa en relation till kunden som individ. Inom modebranschens detaljhandel syns detta tillvägagångssätt i form av kundklubbar, nyhetsutskick och den personliga interaktionen i butikerna.

In the automatic manual transmission system, Opticruise, the choice of gear is based on several parameters such as road incline, driving resistance and vehicle mass. Many different mass estimations are made during driving. A final vehicle mass is then used to determine the current gear. Construction vehicles are often not equipped with air suspension and can therefore not estimate the vehicle mass when standing still. If that sort of vehicle is reloaded while standing still an incorrect mass estimation will be used and as an effect of that also a wrong gear.

Purpose: This thesis aims to study how students in upper secondary school evaluate sources in their everyday school work and how the role of the school library and librarian officiate in this context.Methodology: A web questionnaire was conducted and 155 students from different schools, with or without school library and school librarian, participated. We coded and aggregated the questionnaires according to the strategies that are used when evaluating sources, identified by Francke, Sundin and Limberg. Cognitive authority, a theory by Patrick Wilson, was also a part of our analysis. Conclusions: The study shows that students use different strategies, separately or combined, as a way to evaluate sources. The teacher is regarded as a cognitive authority and is the main influence concerning source evaluation. It also shows that the role of school libraries and school librarians, in this context, seem to be non-existent.

E-commerce is a conception who many are taking about nowadays. E-commerce is associate with computer based business and it?s a new way to do business on. Users and system connect up to each other for effective mediate and transfer information. Within e-commerce there?s a lot of ways to do business on and it can for example be between a business and a another business (B2B) or between business and consumer (B2C).In this degree report have I reached if small business will invest on e-commerce and if they will, how.

The study aims to investigate Swedish fitness companies positioning and strategic choices when internationalising in the Scandinavian countries and what has influenced this choice. Furthermore, the corporate risk and what obstacles they encountered will be examined.The study was conducted as a qualitative study with a deductive approach. The results are based mainly on primary data from interviews, as well as secondary data.The fitness companies? choice of strategy in internationalisation depends largely on its concept and positioning. The main obstacles in the internationalisation process are lack of communication, language difficulties and regulations.

De senaste decennierna har en rad streckkodstekniker utvecklats för att grafiskt representera digital information. Gemensamt för dessa är en strävan efter hög densitet, det vill säga kapacitet att lagra mycket data på en liten yta. Densiteten begränsas emellertid av kravet på precision vid tolkning av den digitala datan, eftersom felaktigheter i digital data kan resultera i omfattande informationsförlust.Analog information, exempelvis ljud, är däremot inte beroende av exakthet hos underliggande data i samma utsträckning. En analog ljudsignal kan beskrivas och återges approximativt, och ändå tolkas korrekt av en lyssnare. Detta faktum gör att det finns fördelar med att representera ett ljud utifrån dess analoga egenskaper.

I denna rapport undersöktes S&P 500 Energy Index genom multipel regressionsanalys. Modellerframställdes genom regression och baserades på data hämtad från börsen. Modellerna angavs iprocentuell ändring respektive absolut ändring. Validitet för varje enskild kovariat testades och en risknivå avgjorde om en kovariat skulle inkluderas i modellen eller inte. Detta ledde till två modeller med bättre kurvanpassning till den givna mängd data över det valda energiindex.

The purpose of this master thesis was to explore and develop prototypes for visualization of trade statistics in a market surveilance application. In such an anapplication a large amount of information is processed. This information is then summarized and presented to the market surveillance staff. The practical part of this thesis was done at Scila AB in Stockholm. Three prototypes were developed based on modern visualization methods.

MobileReader är en mobil RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) applikation. Syftet med denna applikation är att skapa en RFID-läsare som skall gå att bära med sig ute på fältet. I första hand kommer läsaren att kunna läsa passiva RFID-taggar på Lågfrekvens-bandet (LF) samt att vara anpassad för nyare mobiltelefoner av tillverkaren Sony Ericsson. Detta examensarbete resulterade i ett program avsett för en Atmel ATmega16 mikroprocessor. Mikroprocessorn tar emot data från en befintlig LF-läsare via ett protokoll vid namn Wiegand 44.

The main purpose of this thesis has been to identify and discuss problems connected with the preservation of newspapers in Sweden. Another purpose was to see if the preservation of newspapers has been influenced by the fact that preservation studies in general concerns printed monographs and digital materials. This qualitative study is partly based upon interviews with four librarians experienced in working with newspapers and preservation. The thesis deals with cultural heritage in general and on a more specific level with newspapers where the following questions are dealt with: Why preserve? Who preserves? How to preserve? and What is preserved? Strategies used for preserving newspapers such as paper, microfilming and digitization are described as well as legal deposit, the Swedish microfilming programme and TIDEN, a digitization project of newspapers.

This thesis has been a part of Forsmarks Kraftgrupp AB's evaluation of a turbulencemodel used in simulation of turbulent flow called PRNS (Partially Resolved NumericalSimulation). This model has promising properties and may be of use in savingcomputational resources. The purpose of this thesis was to analyze this model andcompare it with industrially applied models such as k-omega SST and LES (Large EddySimulations).PRNS works as a hybrid of the k-omega SST and DNS (Direct Numerical Simulation)where a constant, RCP (Resolution Control Parameter) with a value between 0 and 1are selected. This constant is then used in the calculations and determines thebehavior of the simulation. When RCP is set to zero the equation are the same as fora DNS simulation and when RCP is set to one the equations for k-omega SST issolved.