Background: Quality of life is a concept of individual meaning which is perceived differently depending on the person experiencing it. To have a chronic disease in the lung, such as asthma, has an effect on the quality of life. Asthma affects people of all ages. It is a disease that causes a constriction in the patients? airways which leads to a feeling of suffocation which in turn produces a feeling of anxiety.Aim: The purpose is to illuminate which factors affect the quality of life in adult patients with asthma.Method: This is a literary review based on ten articles, both quantitative and qualitative, from four different continents.

The main purpose of the essay was to evaluate whether investments in index-linked bonds were suitable investments for smaller investors on the international finance market. To determine whether the index-linked bonds are good investments, the variables yield, cost and risk were used to measure the index-linked bonds against investments in stocks and funds. The reason for the interest in this subject is that investments in index-linked bonds have grown furiously the last few years. With the growth of the investments the criticism of index-linked bonds has also grown stronger. The critics? main point is the cost of the product, and they imply that investors can create their own index-linked bond and thereby avoid the bank fees.This study used a quantitative approach, because all the data of yield, cost and risk consist of numbers.

In this paper the effect of capital structure on profitability has been investigated among Swedish companies. The essay intends to examine how the relationship between debt and profitability appear among Swedish companies and if the relationship differs between industries. The purpose is to find out how debt affects the profitability of Swedish companies.A quantitative approach has been applied. The selection was made among companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, which resulted in a sample of 207 companies. Several regression analyzes has been formed, based on the independent variable debt-ratio and the dependent variables profit margin, pre-tax profit margin, operating margin, return on assets and return on equity.

The digital map product kNN-Sweden contains nationwide data of the country?s forest land. The estimated forest variables are mean age, mean tree height, volume per tree species and total volume. Today Södra Skog?s assessments of timber potentials are mainly based on experience rate and subjective assumptions.

Introduction: Taxes result in a big cost for corporations which create an incentive for tax planning. Previous studies have demonstrated that it's the management team and the board of directors that influences to what extent the corporation is going to tax plan. We want to study underlying factors for how the composition of the groups affect the tax planning in a corporation based on four demographic traits; sex, nationality, age and duration.Purpose: The purpose with the study is to explain how the composition of the management team and the board of directors affect the corporations tax planning.Method: The study has a deductive approach where theories about the composition of the board of directors and the management team have been used to derive hypothesis. The empirical material has been collected from Nasdaq OMX Stockholm. Two different measures have been used to calculate the corporations tax planning.Results and Conclusions: The result of the study demonstrates that the composition of both the board of directors and the management team has an effect on corporations tax planning.

The purpose to this study is to find an understanding of the effects of how sponsorship can affect companies and their business and at the same time get a better understanding of how sponsorship is or can be used as a marketing tool in today?s marketing. By using a quality research method we have chosen to use a half structured research method to make it possible to find out how sponsorship as a marketing tool can be used from a company perspective in relation to our chosen thesis. To enhance the readers understanding we describe the base of sponsorship and principals for sponsorship, after that describes a deeper perspective of sponsorship, what sponsorship is, and what factors are needed to be taken into consideration. Further on we illustrate the figure that later on will constitute the analysis with attributes like: association, exposure, relations and integrated communication.

By using univariate analysis, tobit and logit regressions, this thesis investigates determinants of asset writedowns. After controlling for variables indicating reductions in asset values, the results show that changes in senior management are significant in explaining the writedown decision and magnitude, which is in line with previous research. The explanatory power of changes in senior management has not increased with the transition to IFRS in 2005. No evidence is found supporting the hypothesis that the explanatory power of management incentives is higher for more discretionary types of asset writedowns..

It is important to identify the consequences of alcohol consumption among university students since over-consumption can lead to health problems and poorer academic performance. The following personality factors, neuroticism, conscientiousness and extraversion, have in previous studies shown to be related to alcohol consumption  and shown to be associated with the university students' alcohol use and living arrangements. This study examines the following question; Is there a link between university students' alcohol consumption, and;1) the personality factors neuroticism, conscientiousness, extraversion?2) their living situation?3) personality factors and living situation together?Participating in this survey was one hundred university students with a mean age of 23.4 years (SD = 2.6). To examine participants' personality, alcohol consumption and living arrangements, the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa, McCrae, 2003) questionnaire was used and the questionnaire also contained self-constructed questions about drinking habits, living arrangements and demographic questions. This study's results indicate that neuroticism, conscientiousness, living situation and extraversion predicts alcohol consumption (R2 = .354, p <.001). Thus, students who have these personality traits and circumstances one by one or together have a increased risk for alcohol over-consumption..

The goal of this Masters thesis is to examine how people at the production department of Arkivator Falköping AB perceive the internal organisational communication transfer and exchange of information, by means of a communication audit. The objectives are also to characterise the communication climate and the respondents satisfaction with the internal organisational communication within the organisation. The results of the study are compared with the companys information policy and with previous research in organisational communication. Answers from different demographic groups within the population are compared. The communication audit was conducted using a modified and added version of a questionnaire originally compiled by the International Communications Association.

This thesis is about the effect of political efficacy on societal participation among youths aged 15 to 29. It takes a starting point in the gloomy view of the decline of political participation among citizens in the western world, especially pointing out youths as a threat to democracy. This is a broad subject to take on so my aim becomes a bit more specific. The aim of the thesis is therefore to investigate if belief in ones own capacity and in the responsiveness of the political system affects the actual participation among youths in Europe, independent of a set of alternative predictors. Moreover the thesis is divided into two sub-investigations, one qualitative and one quantitative.

Injuries are considered to be a major public health issue. More than 4600 people die each year and 10 % of all hospitalization in Sweden is related to injuries. The cost in a societal perspective is estimated to 59 billion a year. Injuries are possible to prevent. However it needs knowledge that the injury has occurred and the surrounding circumstances.

Transportation represents 10-15 % of wood supply costs. It is therefore important to improve efficiency in the transport system to decrease these costs. The aim of this study is to map the timber vehicle routing processes used by a sample of timber hauling contractors and to identify possible links between the vehicle routing process and service and economic variables. The study was carried out at Södra Skog in autumn 2008. 15 timber hauling contractors were sampled and interviewed about their work with timber transports.

This paper presents a study of the computer game ?Minesweeper?. The aim of the game is to search through a rectangular area of mined squares without hitting any mines. By using a strategy based on making every operation as safe as possible, series of the game have been simulated. The size of the playground is four times four squares.

Syftet med f?religgande studie var att unders?ka hur vuxna personer utan hj?rnskada skattade sin kommunikationsf?rm?ga med hj?lp av La Trobe Communication Questionnaire (LCQ) och j?mf?ra samst?mmigheten med deras n?rst?endes skattning. Studien unders?kte ocks? eventuellt samband mellan sj?lvskattning p? LCQ och utbildningsl?ngd, ?lder samt k?n. B?de tidigare insamlade och nya data analyserades i denna studie.

The urbanization of the world is increasing. How it affects bird populations have been well studied during the last decade, and comparisons between urban and non-urban habitats have been carried out. A common method for measuring habitat quality is to calculate the population density. This method is easy to use, but have been criticized during the last couple of years. In this study, data of population densities was compared with data on reproduction success.