In order to be able to change, to maintain competitiveness as a company in a world where rapid changes is part of the daily life, it is crucial to have knowledge and methods in how to change. One method, originally developed in Finland, is the Change Laboratory. This method is said to be efficient, not only concerning change aspects but also learning, since change and learning in this method is intertwined. This Master Thesis (20p.) tells about the process of conducting a Change Laboratory with a Swedish high-tech company and analyses factors in the process that makes change possible..

This paper describes the integration of environmental assessment in Swedish municipality comprehensive planning through a chosen case study. The implementation of a new EGdirective in Swedish law, concerning Assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment, should lead to some changes in the way Swedish municipalities' deals with environmental issues in their comprehensive plans. This could later on lead to new preconditions for municipality comprehensive planning. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the planning organisation in the municipality adapts to new regulations for impact assessment of comprehensive plans required by the Planning and Building act. Secondly the purpose was to partly participate in the early stages of the planning process and thereby indicate and identify possible environmental impacts regarding the aspects of land and water. This was done as a case study in a well defined part of the process.

Chapter 1 defines the aim of the project and gives a general orientation about ground heat extractors. In chapter 2 physical processes that could be expected to be involved in the heat transport around a ground heat exchanger are discussed. It is shown from a literature study what amount of moisture transport due to thermal gradients there could be expected in a ground heat exchanger. The conclusion is drawn that the moisture gradient (Sr) is of same magnitude as the driving temperature gradient (°C). At the expected amount of increased moisture around the pipes the moisture transport could be considered to have a little effect on the brine temperature.

To be able to compete on the market environmental Management System has become an important part of operations work. However, many companies still haven?t implemented an environmental management systems due to lack of time and the high costs. One of the companies with this problem is Falu Bildemontering. Their goal is to accredited according to the ISO 14 001 certificate.

I examensarbetet har läroboksserier inom fysik för gymnasienivån studerats med avseende på Nature of Science. Begreppet Nature of Science, NOS, handlar om naturvetenskapens epistemologi och de sammanhang som påverkar skapandet av ny kunskap inom naturvetenskap. Aspekter från andra vetenskapsområden som, historia, filosofi, ekonomi, och sociologi lyfts fram som viktiga i kunskapsutvecklingen av naturvetenskap. Som grund för studien har ett avgränsat avsnitt, som i examensarbetet benämnts vad är ljus, undersökts. Inom detta område har det studerats om och hur NOS används i läroböckerna.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how the EU directive 2004/35/EC on environmental liability impacts the Swedish administrative legal order. The thesis examines the directive through two main EU principles - the principle of good administration and the principle of procedural autonomy. The EU principle of good administration as a concept contains various procedural and substantive obligations that make up the subject for examination of the directive, both as regulated in the directive and as general principles of EU law. The directive is analyzed using a comparative method to determine to what extent the procedural and substantive principles of the directive impacts the Swedish administrative law, and weather or not the Swedish regulations comply with the EU principle of good administration.The results of the study shows that, althought there?s a general principle of national procedural autonomy, the EU principles of good administration do affect the Swedish administrative regulation in various aspects, through the implementaion of the directive on environmental liability as well as general principles of EU law.

Syftet med studien var att pröva vilka psykologiska mekanismer som påverkar sambandet mellan attityder och beteendeintentioner inför miljöpåverkan hos individer i konsumtionssamhället. Hypotesen var att det finns ett miljömedvetande hos människan, men att det är en skillnad mellan attityd och beteendeintention. Även emotioner inför miljöpåverkan hos deltagarna undersöktes, för att fördjupa studien. Undersökningen har gjorts kvantitativt via en webbaserad enkät, genom utskick via Facebook till vuxna individer i Sverige mellan 18-65 år (N=49). Svarsprocenten var 46 procent.

Today environmental management systems (EMS) are common documents (more correctly, a combination of documents) that direct, steer and regulate environmental efforts within many companies. The intention of EMS is that its guidelines are reflected in how the employee carries out his everyday work tasks. This study aims to illuminate the attitudes that exist regarding the EMS at ALSTOM Power Sweden. By using questionnaires and interviews as a method to communicate with employees,a study of the existing attitudes regarding the EMS was carried out. The results were analyzed categorically and statistically and show that there are consistent attitudes among employees, but that there are also inconsistent attitudes.

Hemp has been used for textiles for a long time in history until it became illegal to grow in many countries in the 1930s. It is interesting from an environmental point of view because it doesn?t need any pesticides and in most locations it doesn?t need any irrigation either, compared to cotton, which normally requires big amounts of both pesticides and water for irrigation. Hemp is a bast fiber, which means that the fibers are located on the bast of the stem (on the outer layer of the stem). Therefore they cannot be spun directly, they have to be removed from the stem first.

The aim of this review is to assess the ethical implications of aquaculture, regarding fish welfare and environmental aspects. The aquaculture industry has grown substantially the last decades, both as a result of the over-fishing of wild fish populations, and because of the increasing consumer demand for fish meat. As the industry is growing, a significant amount of research on the subject is being conducted, monitoring the effects of aquaculture on the environment and on animal welfare. The areas of concern when it comes to animal welfare have here been divided into four different stages: breeding period; growth period; capturing and handling; and slaughter. Besides these stages, this report includes a chapter on the current evidence of fish sentience, since this issue is still being debated among biologists.

The Arctic region is rich in natural resources such as oil, gas, minerals and fish. Climate change causes the Arctic ice melt, making resource extraction possible as well as opening up new transport routes through the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage. This has led to competition and cross-border strife among the Arctic States. The two largest states in the Arctic are Russia and Canada, which are also members of the Arctic Council. Russia and Canada are at the moment involved in several disputes regarding the Arctic territory where the ownership of the North Pole is one example.

In today's society it has become increasingly important for organizations to take into account non-financial values. Sustainability reporting involves reporting the economic, social and environmental aspects of an organization's operations. The trend has been towards an all the more scrutinizing society with an increasing demand for transparency and translucency. A greater focus on environmental issues has also contributed to sustainability?s increasing importance as a topic.

The report describes an ecodesign thesis performed by the author at the ÅF EcoDesign Center. The basic idea of ecodesign is to develop products with a minimized environmental load, without neglecting other significant product aspects such as function and price. During the last couple of years the public interest in environmental friendly products has increased, which has made it possible for companies to make a profit from their investments in ecodesign. To meet the increasing market for ecodesign services ÅF started the ÅF EcoDesign Center, where the company has gathered all of their competence in ecodesign in order to help companies to become greener. The task was to develop a tool for an Eco Screening.

Climate change and the sea level rise that it contributes to is an ever more pressing issue for costal municipalities around the world. Today there is a great deal of scientific reports and projections on what these changes could entail. However, resent studies on south Swedish costal municipalities have shown great discrepancies when it comes to how these scientific projections are implemented in the municipal planning and adaptation strategies. In an effort to understand the underlying reasons for this lack of concurrence, this paper has applied Rolf Lidskogs theory of the hetrogenity of science. The theory gives an explanation to the complications in the science-policy interface, by describing complicating factors in the communication between these actors.

This master thesis has been written in collaboration with Science Park Jönköping and is based on a problem related to corporate innovation. Science Park Jönköping believes that there is an untapped potential in existing industry in the form of ideas that are never commercialized. These theories are also supported in the research in which other authors have perceived that the ideas and inventions which do not belong to the core business risk ending up in drawers. If more of these ideas could be spin-offs or other forms of enterprise instead of staying in the drawers it would lead to growth, both for companies and for the society in large.The purpose of the thesis work is to, based on the case Science Park Jönköping, analyze how science parks and incubators can support the commercialization of ideas that derive from industry, who otherwise had been left lying. The work began with a mapping of the Science Park Jönköping operations and the skills they possess, and then other initiatives that aim to commercialize more ideas from companies were examined.