Environment friendly transports are one of the main topics in the industry and society today.Shell organizes an annual university competition called Shell Eco Marathon. The goal is to buildthe car that consumes the least fuel during a race. KTH participated for the first time in 2006.The engine for this competition, DoubleTwo, has been developed within the school. Theprinciple is a two stroke counter piston HCCI engine with variable compression ratio. HCCIstands for homogenous charge compression ignition.

Urbanization and the flight of the creative class drains the countryside when it comes to creativity and talent. Especially the young leave sleepy societies. Richard Florida claims that the city attracts the creative class and enables for economic growth to flourish. Robert Putnam adds to the picture by saying social capital might be equally effective as nourishment for growth. In Uddebo, a rural village in the south of Sweden one combines the two creating a vivid society where creativity flies high and ideas fertilize each other?s.

According to the Conventions on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to make their voices heard and express their opinion in situations concerning them. With this paper the authors have chosen to explore social worker?s view?s on children?s participation and influence, and how these are manifested through the entire case process. The focus in this study has also been the positive and negative effects the children?s influence may have.To investigate this, a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews has been conducted.

In this essay we discuss the broad area of website usability from a tourism perspective. Our goal was to investigate the usability in smaller and bigger tourism websites. We have declared what website usability means and the importance of involving the users when designing a user interface. In a pilot study, we conducted three interviews with people who work with usability and then used the information we got to form questions to use in a focus group interview. In this focus group, we asked three people to assess two Swedish tourism websites, one bigger and one smaller, to find out if they were considered usable and if there was any difference in usability depending on the size of the site.

This thesis examines how a company can get an effective, high quality, maintenance of their computerized systems. After literary studies concerning the life cycle activity Maintenance we have studied how the maintenance at the department IT Supply of IKEA IT AB in Älmhult is carried out. What steps and measures in the analyzing of results of changes are carried out and if they have predefined processes for changes. Based on the facts we found most important in our literary studies we have created a model and theoretically applied this to the maintenance of a specific system to see what they can work with to further improve the quality and efficiency in their maintenance. The basis for our thesis is literary studies and the collected material has been used as a foundation for the research at the company, which was carried out through interviews. This thesis is based on the question: ?How do the lack of a model for maintenance and the lack of orientation affect the maintenance in a company??.

The aim of our study was to examine how Swedish journalists use the three social networks Facebook, Twitter and blogs to find news. We wanted to study which group of journalists that were using these networks most frequently and why. We also wanted to find out which of the three networks they use the most.We made a questionnaire which we sent out by e-mail to 400 Swedish journalists. 215 of them participated in our study.We analyzed the results of the responses from the questionnaire and discussed patterns and relations between them.The study establishes that the majority of the respondents believe that the networks are very useful and effective in their work.Our results show that out of the three social networks the journalists who participated in our study prefer to use blogs as sources in their line of work, as they are full of information from individuals and contain unique facts and stories.Alongside the results we discussed how social networks might be used in the future of journalism. Most of the respondents are aware of the possibility that they may need to increase the usage of them eventually, and that they will be an important part of the journalistic work process in the future. .

The purpose of this paper is to examine how teachers choose to work with the teaching of reading and writing skills, how teachers justify their choice of teaching method and how the documentation of student development is being used. This paper also discusses the definition of reading and writing, phonological awareness and how different reading- and writing educational methods can be combined. The gathering of information has been done through a literature review in which I have looked at past research on reading and writing. I have also conducted qualitative interviews with teachers involved in literacy learning. The result of my research shows that it is not possible to determine which literacy learning methods that are most effective.

Detta examensarbete utreder möjligheterna att utveckla en energieffektiv luftningsstrategi i en aktivslamprocess. Arbetet innehåller först en litteraturstudie där forskningsläget gås igenom.Därefter följer en optimeringsstudie i Matlab, en simuleringsstudie i en förenklad variant av Benchmark Simulation Model No 1 (BSM1) och en redogörelse för ett fullskaleförsök vid Käppalaverket.  Resultaten från optimeringsstudien visar att, under vissa förutsättningar, är ett konstant luftflöde energioptimalt. Simuleringsstudierna visar att en minskning av energiförbrukningen på upp till 16%  kan uppnås, då luftflödet hålls konstant, jämfört med att hålla ett konstant ammoniumbörvärde. Preliminära resultat från fullskaleförsöken indikerar att ett konstant luftflöde kan minska luftförbrukningen men en längre utvärdering bör genomföras för att få mer tillförlitliga resultat.Slutsatsen från detta arbete är att den utvecklade metodiken kan vara intressanta alternativ till en överordnad reglering av ammoniumkoncentrationen och bör därför studeras vidare..

Det finns en djupt rotad allmän uppfattning om att de nya kunskapsintensiva företagen är föredömliga vad det gäller struktur samt hur man styr och kontrollerar förhållanden inom organisationen. Åsikten tycks vara att medarbetaren inom kunskapsintensiva företag får en betydligt mer framträdande roll och stor beslutsmakt över sina egna arbetsvillkor.Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur två företag inom konsultbranschen är uppbyggda rent strukturellt och hur dessa organisationer styrs. Det ska utmynna i en jämförelse mellan verksamheterna. Studien är baserad på företagen Deloitte och PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) som är två ledande företag i konsultbranschen.Den teoretiska referensramen presenterar bland annat litteratur inom organisationshierarki och organisationskultur där en rad författare resonerar kring sin syn på struktur och styrning. Alvesson i sin tur återger istället ingående beskrivningar på begreppet kunskapsintensiva företag.

This essay is focusing on leadership and motivation in the creative process. The perception on the leadership has changed over time. Today?s leadership theories suggest that the leadership should be adapted after the organisations conditions. Due to the increasing globalization, companies are forced to operate in an increasingly competitive market.

Librarians like to think that libraries contribute substantially to the progress of research. However, libraries still seem to have serious problems getting integrated in their parent organization on equal terms with other parts of that organization. The degree of integration of the library is thus the main topic of this thesis and the purpose is to examine how the interaction between librarians and scientists is formed and can be developed. That issue leads to concrete questions concerning what part librarians play in the scientists work and which factors influence the cooperation or lack of cooperation. We have chosen, for reasons of comparison, to make two case studies; one is a branch of a university library and the other is a library in a large pharmaceutical company.

Today we live in a world where the demands increase in the aeronautics industry. This creates a situation where no mistakes are allowed about the regulations and for those who are supposed to follow these. Safety comes first, tracking of components, Service Bulletins which are recommendations from the manufactures and Airworthiness Directives which are demands from the authorities, these need to be updated at all time and everything that is done on a aircraft need to be documented.This creates a situation where today maintenance shops need to have full control of all parts of the organization, which creates a need for a working data system.The goal with this exam work is to evaluate the best way to implicate the new bought data system called "System Aircraft Management" on the basis of the needs of Täby Air Maintenance AB. The system are supposed to get started technically and also be implicated to the users of the system. This work will be focused to create a effective working plan to get SAM implicated with no interruption in the daily work.

I en tid när globaliseringen ökar och det blir allt vanligare att organisationer använder multinationella projektteam, så det finns goda skäl att fördjupa sig i hur dessa team kan ledas på bästa sätt. Syftet med den här studien är att utforska hur projektledare tillämpar ledarskapsstrategier för att hantera och dra nytta av pluralismen i projekt med multinationella projektgrupper.Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för studien är de tre strategier för att leda multinationella team som identifierats av Chevrier (2003): låt-gå-ledarskap, relationsorientering och gemensam yrkes- eller organisationskultur. Grunddragen i de respektive strategierna är att lämna det upp till projektmedlemmarna att på egen hand att överbrygga barriärerna; att främja utveckling av relationer och ömsesidigt acceptabla rutiner; att förlita sig på redan etablerade yrkes- eller organisationskulturer. Resultatet har även relaterats till bilden av norsk ledarstil i befintlig teori; en ledarstil som präglas av jämlikhet, kollektivism och konsensus. Det empiriska underlaget för studien har samlats in med hjälp av semistrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuer.

This thesis aims to find a more cost effective model for purchasing and logistics at asmall company. The studied company is a BMX (bicycle motocross) and MTB(mountain bike) retailer. The questions to be answered are: How large parties shouldbe ordered and what mode of transportation is to be used? A literature orientation ofthe field was followed by visits to the company, obtaining information from twodifferent logistics companies and interviews of four other companies in the sameindustry. The study shows that it´s difficult to develop an optimum order quantity fora small company since there often are other factors affecting how large amountshould be ordered.

The European Union is struggling to maintain democracy and tries to increase the participation among the citizens in Europe. The European Citizens? Initiative, ECI, is a platform established by the European Commission to allow citizens to propose new legislation. ?Water and sanitation are a human right! Water is a public good, not a commodity!? is the first ECI that has met the requirements.