As the information society becomes increasingly flooded with digital images, the need for efficient image retrieval systems increases as well. To handle the vast amounts of data involved, the indexing process needs to be run automatically, using content-based descriptors extracted directly from the digital image, such as colour composition, shape and texture features. These content-based image retrieval systems are often slow and cumbersome, and can appear confusing to an ordinary user who does not understand the underlying mechanisms. One step towards more efficient and user-friendly retrieval systems might be to adjust the weight placed on various descriptors depending on which image category is being searched for. The results of this thesis show that certain categories of digital images would benefit from having extra weight assigned to colour, texture or shape features when searching for images of that category..

The purpose of this study has been to investigate advantages and problems with distributionsystem metering in substations. This report is a study in cooperation with Göteborg Energi.The analyses in this report are made for GENAB, a subsidiary company of Göteborg Energi.To analyse advantages and problems in advance is interesting information for GENAB. Theresult of the report could be based upon whether installation of metering in distributionsubstations will be implemented and in that case which kind of measurement that is relevant.The most relevant and strategic place to implement measurement is at the distributionsubstations on the secondary side (400V), this is due to the placement of the currenttransformers. The measurements in this study involve current, voltage, power, power factor,temperature, energy and power quality.Measuring instruments that are relevant to implement are intended to measure current,voltage, power, power factor, energy and, possibly, power quality in the same measuring unit.It is desirable to have a measuring instrument that measures both energy and power qualitybut since it is most often a cost question, it can be established that energy meters have a lowercost.Metering in distribution substations gives a better illustration of the power network. Thisresults in many advantages for GENAB.

Lumilos is a work investigating the possibilities to use light and color in an interactive design context. I have explored different light sources and compared them to each other and given a short description of the history of light and how it has been developed during the industrialization in the western world. I have also investigated what is currently done in the field and summarized that with examples in the categories passive-, colored-, material- and interactive light. The conclusion is that working with interactive color and light is a hard task. There are many different angles to take into account such as personal likings and earlier experiences that is uncontrollable by the designer. Yet there are many possibilities and light is a material that is moldable in many forms. I have put the knowledge about light and color into practice and developed an interactive light wall that is visualizing energy consumption with the use of different colors of light and animations.

Early extubation of cardiac surgery patients has become increasingly important. The assessment of the patient before an early extubation is crucial and the intensive care nurses (ICU nurses) in this estimation is there for very important.The aim of this study was to examine critical care nurses' knowledge of early extubation, and what view ICU nurse has about factors that affect the time to extubation of cardiac surgery patients.A quantitative approach with descriptive and comparative design was used. Selection was all ICU nurses at a thoracic intensive care unit who were clinically active in patient care.The study showed that ICU nurses had good knowledge of why an early extubation was essential. However, the knowledge about the unit?s extubation criteria was low.

Ett passivhus är byggt av stomentreprenör företaget Strängbetong i Vara med ventilation och uppvärmning i samma system som kallas för Termodeck. Uppvärmningen sker genom att tilluft från ett FTX-aggregat förs igenom håldäcksbjälklag som värmer upp bjälklaget. Med det erhålls ett ?värmegolv och värmetak?. För ett sådant system behövs en byggnad med tung betongstomme.Energibalans beräkning har gjorts med IDA program och schablon värden från olika kravspecifikationer som visar simulerade värden.

When the Swedish Forestry Act was changed in 1994, brushing of young stands became non mandatory. Since then the annual need for brushing in the country has increased by about 100 000 hectares per year. In later years the price for biomass energy has increased to the same level as pulp wood. The high price on biomass energy and the large areas of stands in the need of brushing has created a new market with its own technical, economical and environmental conditions. There is a development of various techniques to manage the forestry stands with late brushing.

When a municipality is about to realize an IT investment, e.g. an economy system, theywill need to do procurement according to the laws of procurements. To perform suchprocurement takes time and energy from the everyday work at the municipalities, andtherefore they want to make a quick and efficient procurement. Unfortunately it showsthat municipalities do not always make an assessment that is sufficient enough for theirneeds, which can result in an inefficient system in a longer perspective. Municipalitiesthink more often about the hard values such as costs of the investments, and not alwaysas much when it comes to the soft values, like the user-friendliness.

The purpose of this Bachelor thesis is to analyze if there is a correlation between stock prices and the amount of searches of the companies names on Google. The theories used in the study were Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). Regressions analysis is used as the statistical method to see if there is a significant correlation between the stock prices and the amout of searches of the company name on Google. The data used were the rate of return of three companies (ABB, Oriflame and Sandvik) on the Nasdaq OMX Nordic stock market, the rate of return of the Nasdaq OMX Nordic stock market index (OMX Stockholm_PI) and the Google search frequency from Google Trends on each company. The result showed no significance and the conclusion of the thesis is that there is no significant correlation between the three studied companies and their search frequency on the search engine Google..

AbstractThe purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse Europol. The research questions are:- How would increased powers for Europol impact on the cooperation between Europol and police authorities in EU-member states?- Which one of the two theories transactionalism and neofunctionalism can best create an understanding of Europol and its integration with the police of the member states?In so doing the study applies a qualitative method.Europol is the European Police Office and it was established through the Maastricht treaty in 1992 with the purpose of making the integration between police of the EU member states more efficient. In order for Europol to make integration between the police of member states more efficient it can be suggested that it needs for Europol to develop into having executive powers.One conclusion of this study is that Europol is an important tool for integration in the EU but there are at least three issues that are influencing the level of effectiveness in the integration work between the police of the member states; possible mistrust, that Europol has no executive powers and that it is voluntary for member states to participate in assisting Europol with information. Another conclusion is that Europol can be understood through an integration perspective when transactionalism and neofunctionalism are complementing each other..

The object for this study is a company developing and manufacturing vehicles for heavy transportation. The company distributes their products on a global market. Therefore the company is required to have efficient internal production development processes in order to successfully beat the competition. The purpose of this master thesis is to study how this particular company intends to implement their standardized theoretical product development process within their organization and how well it is done. We intend to identify and specify if the process has any unexploited capacity.

The research in this paper aims to producing a home version machine thatcan dry and make biological waste into compact pellets. This product ismade primarily for those who want to improve the environment and reducethe energy consuming process of separating the biological leftovers fromother waste in the large processing plants and save money due to reducedpickups of waste. Since there is no commercially available product thatdoes what we want to achieve we had to start from the beginning with boththe design and the mechanical aspects. The result is a machine, that fits inour homes, and in an easy and inexpensive way reduces the amount ofbiological waste that needs to be collected by the public wastetransportation system. This is done without reducing any of the energy inthe waste and it can still be used to compost or by large-scale plants that usethe waste to make electricity.

During 2007 the City of Stockholm installed five grid connected photovoltaic systems. The aim of this master thesis is to quantify the amount of produced energy and recommend routines to collect and analyse production data, to make production data accessible by the public and to gain experience for future installations.The total amount of produced energy until March 2009 is 227 000 kWh, with an annual rate of 150 000 kWh. The expected annual rate was 148 000 kWh.All system owners are positive about their plants and see economical benefits in scaling up such systems.The installations need very little attendance and maintenance, however it is recommended that an alarm function is installed for automatic feedback in case of a system failure. All future systems should be inspected during full operation to determine if the actual capacity is matching the installed capacity..

Skärgårdsstiftelsen, which is responsible for several of the archipelago islands in Stockholm, has chosen to explore the possibilities for more sustainable heating systems in buildings on the islands in collaboration with KTH. A reduction of energy use and improving the efficiency of existing heating systems are included as part of the environmental work. This report studies the island of Grinda, which is located outside the area of Vaxholm in Stockholm. The study area consists of a guesthouse consisting of a restaurant as well as conference facilities and four neighboring cottages used for overnighting. The cottages now run solely on direct electricity, both for heating and hot water.

Det håller på att byggas ett nytt bibliotek i Lomma och VVS Gruppen AB ska projektera ventilationssystemet. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att ta fram ett förslag på ett ventilationssystem som skulle kunna fungera i byggnaden. En utredning om vilka ventilations- samt kylprinciper det finns ligger till grund för arbetet. Även en jämförelse mellan vårt och VVS Gruppens system redovisas..

The consumption and energy use in today's society contributes to the on-going climate change that creates a debt of life quality for future generations (www, DN, 2007, a). The resources that are used by humans exceed by far what is sustainable (www, Regeringen, 2007, a). The purpose of this paper is to examine how a message about energy conservation should be designed to reach youths. This will be attempted by showing their thoughts on energy and environmental issues and also what it would take for them to get more involved in these issues. The views of the youths are gained by a number of focus group-interviews, which where carried out in the fall of 2007, with kids in the ages 12 to 19. Apart from these interviews, interviews where also conducted with representatives from different youth organisations in Sweden, which gave their views on how to get a message across to kids.