As technology have continued to develop over the latest decades and become more advanced the pressure on the general citizens understanding of technology becomes a essential part to live in our society today. The transition have affected our society in great ways and have made a great impact on different groups, one of them being the elderly population in our society. The purpose of this study is to examine how the fast technological development in the latest decades have affected the elderly in our society. This from their perspective by gathering empirical data through semi-structured interviews with elderly people involved in the Agnes-project, a research project focused on improving the general quality of life for older people and increase their knowledge about technology. The study has shown that after the older peoples time involved in the Agnes-project their quality of life had improved in different areas. Areas such as increased cognitive activity, increased interest in new technology and an improvement in their communication with friends and family.

Floor signs in stores have become a more common phenomenon during past years. The problem is that the knowledge about these signs is limited and the actual effects are unknown. This lack of knowledge can have a negative impact on store performance and marketing efforts. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of floor signs on consumer attitude and behaviour. The study was conducted in two grocery stores, where the movement pattern of 39 501 customers was recorded over a four week period.

The purpose of this investigation was to investigate how being outdoors and participating in physical activities affect the concentration in a collection situation among children.The methods I chose were observation of two groups of children two times each and interviews with four educators.The results showed that the concentration in the collected situation depends on past activity, where it has taken place and that the environment has an impact. If the previous activity been more active and physical the subsequent collected situation is calmer and the children more concentrate. The facts that the children have been outside in an inspiring environment that encourage playing and movement also have a position impact on the child´s ability to concentrate. The collected situation is an important moment in the preschool day when the kids need to congregate and get a chance for social interaction and a sense of togetherness with all the children and teachers. The conclusion is that there is a relationship between movement, physical activity and an increased concentration.

Hållbar utveckling handlar om att ha en balans mellan ekonomisk, ekologisk och social hållbarhet. Kommuner ses som nyckelaktörer i arbetet för en mer hållbar utveckling och har på senaste tiden fått en allt större roll. Karlstad kommun har tre hållbarhetsstrategier, däribland miljö- och klimatstrategin som skall se till att kommunen skall kunna växa på ett socialt, ekonomiskt och miljömässigt hållbart sätt. I miljö- och klimatstrategin finns interna miljömål som är till för kommunens medarbetare. Studien söker att ta reda på medarbetarnas kunskap och förståelse för de interna miljömålen och hur de skall kunna bidra till att uppfylla dessa.

Self-archiving as a way to provide open access to research publications is gaining ground in the area of scholarly publishing. An increasing number of research funders and universities are mandating open access for output associated with their research, which calls for evaluation of the effects of the phenomenon.This two years master?s thesis aims to investigate researchers? experiences of self-archiving. A qualitative web survey was conducted and answered by 41 researchers from several different countries, and a vast majority of the respondents concur with the principle of open access. Although self-archiving shows not to be a guarantee of increased impact for the single researcher, the study shows that might be the case.

Previous research has suggested that there is a strong and positive relationship between being an entrepreneur and possessing a high degree of subjective well-being as well as job satisfaction. The big five personality traits have also been argued to be significantly related to both subjective well-being and job satisfaction. Little is however known if personality affects entrepreneurs and regular employees differently. In this paper the impact of personality traits on the cognitive part of subjective well-being as well as job satisfaction are investigated separately among entrepreneurs and regular employees. This is done through OLS-regressions using a Swedish nationally representative survey Employment, Material Resources, and Political Preferences (EMRAPP), where entrepreneurs were oversampled in order to be able to compare entrepreneurs (N = 2483) and regular employees (N = 2642).

In recent years there have been many corporate scandals from environmental and social aspects. Corporate irresponsible behavior has led to major public discussions on responsibility and these pressures made that many companies wanting to show that they are working for a sustainable development by voluntarily reporting economic, environmental and social and social issues in the financial statement. They hope this will create credibility for the companies. In the current situation, there are a number of guidelines that companies can use to report sustainability. One of these is the GRI guidelines which is an international framework that covers many accounting areas and allows companies to compare their sustainability reports with other companies.The purpose of this study is to determine if all state-owned companies follows the government?s requirement that these companies must form a sustainability report under the GRI guidelines, and the sustainability report must be audited and certified by an outside party.

AbstractSahlin, Marcus (2011) Kommunens omvärld ? En kontextualisering av omvärldsbevakning och omvärldsanalys i en kommun[Surroundings of a municipality? A context of environmental awareness and environmental analysis in a Swedish municipality]Avancerad nivå, masteruppsats, examensarbete i Samhällsplanering 30 hp.Handledare: Urban NordinSpråk: SvenskaOmvärlden har blivit större i takt med att globaliseringen har gjort vår värld mindre. Kommuner kan ta hjälp av omvärldsbevakning och omvärldsanalys för att lättare skapa underlag för framtida planer och visioner. Syftet med uppsatsen är att, med hjälp av en fallstudie, beskriva hur en kommun i Stockholmsregionen arbetar med omvärldsbevakning och omvärldsanalys. Avsikten är även att förklara vad omvärldsbevakning och omvärldsanalys kan betyda för en kommun, samt undersöka om kommunen upplever att det finns en konkurrenssituation på kommunens ?marknad?.

This thesis investigates the socio- and environmental economic effects of a deep repository for spent nuclear fuel in Forsmark in the municipality of Östhammar. I seek to show the general picture but focus on the effects on employment, environment and income. Cost-benefit analysis is used to investigate the differences in utility between a scenario with and a scenario without a deep repository in Forsmark. Most of the possible effects can not be valued and many can not even be quantified with the data available today. Therefore this thesis has a bit of a ?preliminary study character? and seeks to show what we know today and what needs to be further investigated when available data allow it. The costs that could be valued are noise from the traffic during the period of building and emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides from the transportation of rock masses during the building period.

In the year 1783 a fissure eruption from Laki in the southern part of Iceland produced a large amount of volcanic gases during a period of eight months. The volcanic gases and aerosols spread across the northern hem sphere due to ideal weather conditions and had a substantial impact on the environment, human health and also climate effects. This, so called dry fog, caused severe health problems, which led to death casualties, killing animals, crops and other vegetation. The consequence was a widespread famine which was aggravated by a hard and long winter in 1783/84. Analysis shows that the Icelandic volcanoes are the primary risk to produce dry fog that can affect Sweden.

AbstractIn the fall of 2003 a project was started in the Swedish building sector that is called BASTA (the building sectors’ termination of especially harmful substances). The project is operated by the building companies NCC, Skanska, PEAB and JM, the Swedish Building Industry and the Swedish Environmental Institute IVL. The purpose of the project is to create a common environmental assessment system for the entire building industry and with the help of this system phase out the use of especially harmful properties from building products.In a large sense BASTA works like this; On the BASTA web site there is a database, to which a supplier can register the company and the company’s products. Only those products with a substance content that fulfil the demands of the BASTA system, is to be registered. As it is the supplier himself that carries out the registration of the company and the company’s products to the system, the BASTA-organisation annually controls that the companies that are registered in the database, fulfils BASTA’s demands.Since NCC is one of the companies that operates BASTA, BASTA is probably going to be the environmental assessment system that is recommended for the company in the future.

The artist Pehr Hilleström has been credited as the founder of the Swedish genre painting. In the second half of the 18th century he began painting everyday subjects of the different social stratums. Today his paintings are noted for their way of showing us the culture of the time since the photograph still had still not been introduced.   Hilleström was a court painter for King Gustav III who wanted him to depict the Swedish people and their different costumes. The king thought the costumes were of great significance for their psychological impact on people and therefore used them as a way to unite the nation psychologically, both by the genre paintings and also by making a national costume. The costumes were used as a symbol of an unbroken tradition and national heritage.

Executive SummaryThis final thesis has examined the effects of an increased centralization and better coord­in­ation of the distribution logistics at ABB in Västerås. The company is today strongly decent­ralized and there is a minimum of collaboration between the 20 business units. This is why the questions were raised; how could the business units coordinate outbound logistic activities and what effects would that provide. The obj­ect­ive of this final thesis is to provide basic data for a future decision-making which desc­r­ibe these effects.The report has mapped out the factors that are important to ABB in an evaluation of their logistic activities and how the outbound logistics work today. The four factors are cost efficiency, delivery service, Environmental impact and logistics capability.

The sun is essential to life on earth and no matter where you are, there is a constant need ofenergy. Nearly 800 000 years ago man learned for the first time to use fire in a controlled way.Since then, fire has given us the opportunity to inhabit places despite a cold climate. In Swedenthe resident sector accounts for a major part of the total consumption of energy. In a time whenenvironmental issues and greenhouse effects are increasing, we also see a future of rising energyprices. With this perspective, we have in this bachelor thesis in the Building Environment at theRoyal Institute of Technology, KTH, in Stockholm decided to focus on the renewable energysource, solar energy.The energy from solar radiation is a free resource and does not have any negative effects uponthe environment.

This essay is about dogs that visit is used, whitin care of elderly. The dogs found caretakers once a week and one hour at a time. The focus has been placed on the dogs that go to the municipality's special accommodation and the research was done in a medium-sized municipality in Sweden. The focus of the narrowing of the work was done to the work situation for care staff to assess the impact of the visits the dogs presence. It was distributed questionnaires answered by care staff in which it concluded their visit to the dog's presence felt and how it impacted the situation.