Since the turn of the millennium a sharp increase in the interest for bio energy has been observed. Important reasons for this growing interest can be due to the fact that fossil fuels are a finite resource. A net discharge of greenhouse gases occur when fossil fuels are burned. The discharge of greenhouse gases are considered to be the main reason to the greenhouse effect. Means of control to increase the use of bio energy has been introduced and, as intended, the use of bio energy has increased. As a result of the legal provisions the ability to pay for bio energy has increased, which the forest industry view as a problem.

Lean has been studied intensely since the 1980s and it has been tested and successfully implemented in a wide variety of businesses. This thesis aims to examine the potential effects of a Lean implementation on meeting efficiency, a topic that has gotten little attention in the research community. First, a number of meeting problems are introduced, as they are perceived from the company that is the subject of the study. Second, the potential of introducing Lean in a meeting process is evaluated using the Lean Thinking principles. Third, the wastes that are generated from the meeting problems are identified.

This study focuses on a cooperation (collaboration) project between municipalities social services and the regions psychiatric care. They will capture a client / patient group that often risks falling between the chairs, persons with a psychic disorder and a problem of substance abuse. The purpose of the study was to study the projects cooperation on its organizational level. The central questions of issue were: What is cooperation in the project? What view do the professionals have of the projects cooperation, and partly have on members of the client group persons with a psychic disorder and a problem of substance abuse? The study was implemented through participating observations on three meetings with the govern group, the project group and the POS-team and interviews with two representatives from each principal.

This thesis deals with an iterative user-centered IT-development project in a bank setting. The aim is to present a solution for deployment of future Internet banking for small businesses. The project features a design of IT-related concepts and ideas with a strong emphasis on scenario-based design and the usage of patterns as a documentation tool.The project plan featured an iterative framework and was carried out by a group of designers in collaboration with a reference group representing the future users of the system. This group consisted of company managers and bank employees, all from the small town of Åtvidaberg in Sweden.The method used in the development process was Scrum. A total of three sprints were completed with user meetings at the end of every sprint.

The Swedish forestry aims primarily maximize production and economical wins. However, especially urban forests have great qualities as space for recreation and children?s play, which means that other goals should lead the forests management. The Teleborg forest is a wooded area in Växjö, surrounded by urban dwellings, schools, nurseries etc. A great part of the forest was wind felled during the storm Gudrun in 2005 which changed the forest, earlier dominated by spruce, dramatically.

The power of the meeting is a qualitative study primarily examining how homeless men and women and social workers experience the meeting between them. The homeless are the more vulnerable part in these meetings so their experience of these meetings is my focus in this study. I have in this paper also examined and analyzed how and whether homeless women and men tends to be treated and ad-dressed differently with basis on their gender. The main results I have found is that the homeless but also social welfare officers actually feel that there is com-municative problems when the parts meet and cooperates which often results in conflicts and lack of trust. I have chosen to highlight a number of factors that have been claimed as the main reasons for the experience of a poor meeting.

The EU's Water Framework Directive aims to a long-term and sustainable use of our water resources and wants to ensure good water quality in Europe's water bodies. Discharge of polluted stormwater into receiving waters can be a threat to their ecological and chemical status. Municipalities are responsible for supervision of the environmental quality standards (EQS) and therefore need to gain knowledge of current stormwater management, the expected level of pollution emissions and possible appropriate purification steps to ensure that the goal of good water quality is achieved.This master thesis aims to provide this knowledge in the example case of Vallentunas urban area and wants to prepare future oversight so that it can be assessed how much the discharge of polluted stormwater into the local receiving water is a threat to its status. With the help of maps, aerial photographs, site observations and individual discussions those areas are mapped where appearance of moderate to highly polluted stormwater could be suspected. The degree of pollution at the discharge points is determined based on land use upstream and uses standard values according to the administrators assistance "Tillsyn av dagvatten" (MSL 2014).The study identifies 100 areas in need of supervision regarding their stormwater management.

This master thesis covers the seasonal planning of a small scale hydropower system. The system in this study is owned and operated by Mälarenergi Vattenkraft AB. The total system consists of 4 different main rivers with 24 hydropower stations and several dams. The total installed power in the system is 43.75 MW. Most of the hydropower stations are regarded as small scale hydropower stations and thus entitled to green certificates.In this report the issue of planning is formulated as an optimization problem.

Two of the main approach roads into the city of Enköping are Salavägen and Stockholmsvägen. They are connected to each other through the street Bangårdsgatan in the roundabout Salatullen and crossing Fannakorset, respectively. These crossings are from time to time heavily loaded, which is why the municipality plan for a new street in parallel to Bangårdsgatan. The traffic will then be spread out and is thereby reducing the density. The new street is actually an extension of the existing Mästergatan, a side street to Salavägen, to the east and connecting it to Stockholmsvägen or a street nearby.The purpose of this Master thesis is to show how the new street can be drawn in order to discharge the traffic in the area between the roundabout Salatullen and the crossing Fannakorset.

Thermia Värme AB is one of the market leading manufactures of heat pumps. In order tomaintain this position, the company wants to improve the vibration characteristics of theirproducts. The aim of this thesis is to develop product design changes that lead to a reductionof vibrations in the heat pump Thermia Diplomat 8.The main cause for vibrations in the system is flow pulsation and mechanical forces inducedby the scroll compressor. Vibration is transmitted through the compressor piping and receivedby the heat exchangers, from where it is further transmitted to the connection points for theradiator and heat source circuits.A number of design changes in order to improve the vibration characteristics have beenevaluated through calculations and practical experiments. The changes have included thecompressor and heat exchanger mountings, the compressor suction and discharge line pipingand also pulsation dampening.The results of the experiments show that the vibration levels in the connections for the heatingand brine circuits can be decreased strikingly through changes in suction and discharge linepiping.

Most of the portable electronic devices use a battery as a primary power source. Nowadays, when the applications are becoming smaller and smaller and more power efficient, the designer needs to concentrate more on reducing power consumption, using secondary power sources and introducing power storage devices. Multiple power source availability and a power storage device on the board will make the applications much more useful and efficient in everyday use. This thesis proposes a power supply unit (PSU) for wireless sensor platforms which is capable of supplying a sensor node with energy from multiple sources, as well as status information from the PSU. Present power storage devices, like electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) and batteries, have become more and more common as their characteristics have developed.

Utskrivningssamtalet är den sista kontakten mellan läkare och patient innan patienten åker hem ifrån avdelningen. Syftet med den föreliggande studien är att undersöka ifall det förligger kommunikativa utmaningar i ett utskrivningssamtal mellan en läkare och en patient med afasi.  Den konkreta frågeställningen för studien var hur de potentiella problem som uppkom i samtalet hanterades och vilket utrymme som skapades för patientens deltagande i samtalet samt hur samtalsdeltagarna använde sig av icke-verbal kommunikation för att uppnå förståelse. Den valda metoden för att undersöka detta var Conversation Analysis, CA.I studien deltog två läkare, två patienter med afasi, samt två närstående till patienterna. Patienterna som deltog hade mild till måttlig afasi, svenska som modersmål och var 50 år och 70 år gamla.

The youth of today grow up with all the new ways to communicate that new technology provides. A lot of young people chat on the Internet. Adults often lack experience and knowledge about this way to communicate. This is a study of teenagers and adults values and views on teenagers online chatting. It focuses on area of use, meaning and effects on young people.

The aim and research questions of this study are concerned about how, and what kind of, problems and subjects that citizens raise during verbal interaction with politicians and officials in the field of participatory democracy. The theoretical framework of the study dominates by theories with a positive approach towards participatory democracy, but there is also a broader discussion on the phenomenon?s strengths and weaknesses.The case in focus of the study is a specific phenomenon of participatory democracy created by the municipality of Växjö. The empirical material that is analysed is consisted of written text based on the verbal interaction from these meetings between citizens and politicians/officials.The outcome of the study shows that most of the verbal interaction was held between citizens and politicians/officials in a vertical direction and that a major part of the responsibility concerning the raised subjects is estimated to be in the hands of the latter part. In the light of under what circumstances the meetings are practised, the democratic and collective minded performance of the citizens is argued to be in good condition, despite the dominating vertical interaction and estimation of trust..

Chile and Santiago are struggling with heavy environmental problems as a consequence of urbanisation and industrialisation. In the Santiago region the air is seriously contaminated and most of the rivers are classified as heavily polluted.The aim of this thesis is to survey the industrial fluid waste situation in the Santiago region and to make suggestions on technological improvements or process changes. The purpose is also to study five different enterprises more closely and to give more detailed suggestions for improvement. Another purpose is to summarize relevant Chilean legislation.Information, provided by the supervisory authority, about the release of industrial wastewater to rivers has been analysed. Deep interviews have been made with authorities and consultants.