Titel                                    Indirect economic impacts of a national environment certification as financial business strategyAuthors                              Ida Antonsson, Emma Hellberg and Linn RingströmAdvisor                              Arne SöderbomCourse                               Bachelor thesis ? business administrationSeminar date                     2013-05-27Purpose                              The main aim of this study is to describe and analyze how private corporations use national environment certifications as a business strategy to gain power and financial benefits. By studying already certified corporation in Sweden, this study aims to understand, explore and develop already existing theoretical theories and concepts concerning ?national environment certifications?.Background                      All corporations have an impact on the environment. Therefor many corporations use a variety of worldwide certifications to be able to prove to ?others? that the corporation meets national- and international set goals.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to investigate how librarians approach to the multicultural collection development and which methods they use in providing library materials in minority languages. The questions to be answered are: which methods the libraries use when purchasing library materials in minority languages, how the respondents experience that the minority user groups needs are met in the library and how the multicultural competence of the staff is used in the libraries. For this purpose the qualitative interviews with 6 librarians in Gothenburg are conducted, mainly from the libraries in the immigrant-dense parts of the city, while the study being concentrated on 6 language groups of library users. The study?s theoretical framework is based on theories of multiculturalism, culture, identity and bilingualism.

The subject-matter of the following essay is to investigate the relationship between what is commonly called Deep Ecology or Biocentric Philosophy, as articulated by the co-founder of the Deep Ecology Movement, Arne Naess, and later proponents of the biocentric school of environmentalist thought. I contrast Naess? concept of Self-realization as founded in his Ecosophy T to the ideas of american conservationist and co-founder of the radical green movement Earth First! Dave Foreman, and to the controversial finnish environmentalist and ecofascist Pentti Linkola?s ideological agenda of population-reduction respectively.According to some critics of the movement, especially the social ecologist Murray Bookchin and French liberal philosopher Luc Ferry, the Deep Ecology ideology is essentially misanthropic and totalitarian in structure. A central idea among deep ecologists is that ecosystems and natural entities have intrinsic value in themselves, even outside a human social context. This idea is thought of among deep ecologists to create a philosophically sound basis for counteracting the environmental global crisis.

Aim:The aim of the study was to describe the experience of working environment in open plan office within IT- sector.Background:Previously was the most common office model cell office, open plan office is now the most common. A good working environment in theise two office types needs different attributes. A theory to explain relationship between health and unhealth is Karasek and Theorells demand- control- supportmodel.Method:A qualitative interview study was performed to gain a deeper understanding of the experience of working in open plan office within IT- sector. Ten informants from two different organizations were chosen. The result has been analyzed with qualitative content analysis.Results:The analyses resulted in three themes and six sub-themes.

In recent years, existing solutions for cooling personal computer CPUs have been supplemented by a new product category, factory sealed water cooling loops. These systems, consisting of a water block with an integrated pump, a fan and a radiator, perform well compared to the air cooling solutions but are less effective than larger, custom-built water cooling systems.This project aims to explore the most important aspects of a factory sealed system and to identify possible cost-effective enhancements of the performance.The most significant differences between the different groups of water cooling loops are the block design and the pumping power. The performance of both categories is also largely dependent on the fan power, but increasing fan power has a large negative impact on the noise level.Both radiator size and fan model choice appear, in tests, to be relatively unimportant, presuming that the noise level is kept constant. The position and direction of the fan, however, has significant impact on both the temperature and the sound level.Water blocks can be designed in several different ways, both regarding the heatsink design and the flow direction. In simulation, flow with the inlet centered above the heatsink result in considerably lower pressure drop and slightly higher temperatures than flow through the block, for heatsinks with fin arrays.Creating a competitive product in this product segment certainly seems possible, as there are performance-increasing changes to be made that seemingly has little impact on the production cost.

This Master of Science thesis is conducted at the faculty Integrated Product Development at theRoyal Institute of Technology and in cooperation with EssNet Interactive AB, both situated inStockholm. In the report the final results and the road to get there is described as well as thedesign process and how the process is used to obtain the goal of this thesis.The author of this thesis has developed the design and the function of an interactive videoterminal (IVT) and by using semantics created an encouraging gaming design. The projectspurpose was to change the anonymous withheld shape and produce an experience of gamingmachine that has been absent. The work was aimed to answer the question: How does oneproceed to develop the IVT and by using semantics creating an understanding of gamingmachine?In general the author wants to show that small changes, with the help of design and its signals,can completely change the overall picture of a product.

The most common way to treat wastewater in Sweden today is by a combination of an activated sludge process and a chemical treatment. These processes are not very energy efficient and may not be the most environmentally friendly. That is why it is interesting to evaluate new alternative methods to see if they can be less harmful to the environment and help to a lower resource consumption. New techniques are tested in a pilot installation at Hammarby Sjöstad, Sjöstadsverket. To be able to evaluate these techniques in a wide perspective system analyses are conducted where different impacts can be considered, advantages and disadvantages in the systems.Five system structures for water treatment have been constructed in Matlab/Simulink in this study.

Prosody can be characterized as the rhythm and the melody of speech. Prosodic features convey emotions, thoughts and geographic origins of each individual. Spoken language without prosody would be monotonous, without variations in loudness and rate. Children with cochlear implants perceive speech in a different way than children with normal hearing. Consequently the speech produced by a child with cochlear implants may sound different.The purpose of this study was to examine prosodic skills in Swedish children with cochlear implants and to compare them with the prosodic skills in Swedish children with normal hearing.

Investment aid is a part of the Rural Area Programme, which contains support to Swedish agriculture and the countryside. There is a new programme every seventh year and SLU (Swedish University of Agriculture) has the mission to perform the evaluation of the previous programme, which lasted between 2000 -2006. The investment aid's aim is to support investments that, among other things, support the adaptation or conversion to more environmentally friendly production methods, improves the product quality, develops new or complementing activities, and improves the environment and the animal- and working environment. The question is if it's only money that matters for these kinds of investments to be done and what has happened with the money that was paid? This thesis investigates how the investment aid has affected the receivers.

To curb greenhouse gases and mitigate climate change is one of the biggest challenges human society face today. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has accumulated rapidly in the atmosphere as a consequence of burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. The aim of this study is to explore two methods to store carbon dioxide in geological formations and biological sinks. The aim is also to discuss the two mitigation options from a sustainable perspective and whether it can lead to a better environment and benefits for local and global societies. The research questions are: Which method to store carbon dioxide, geological or biological, is the most effective? Which method to store carbon dioxide, geological or biological, has the greatest potential to promote sustainable development for local communities?The method used is a comparative case study and presents four case studies that explore the potential for CO2 storage offshore in Norway and Brazil; and in tropical forests in Mexico and Brazil.

Tidigare studier har indikerat att extroverta personer använder mobiltelefoni mer än vad introverta personer gör (Inyang et al. 2010). En enkätstudie genomfördes för att testa sambandet mellan personlighetstyp och huruvida en frekvenspreferens gällande brukandet av mobiltelefoni eller portabelt ljud förelåg. Hundra stycken deltagare svarade på enkäten som bestod av tre delar. Fyra hypoteser var formulerade; extroverta förutspåddes vara flitigare brukare av mobiltelefon än introverta, medan introverta förutspåddes vara flitigare i brukandet av portabelt ljud.

Grubbe Ventilation AB is a sheet metal and ventilation company who provides design, installation, service, and repair of ventilation. The company is expanding their business by building a new facility in Umeå, Västerbotten. The property is designed to be used for both office and industrial work.Grubbe Ventelation AB has not yet decided upon wish system which is to be established to provide the building with heating and cooling. The consulting firm Umeå Projekt Team has therefore been asked to investigate the possibilities to invest in geothermal- heating and cooling.If the investigation of a geothermal heating- and cooling system would provide favorable results it would be a very appropriate alternative that provides energy at low costs and are an environmentally friendly option as the energy comes from stored solar energy in the ground is provided by stored solar energy in the ground.The facility ´s heating and cooling consumptions are calculated in the program BV2 and the result indicate a heating demand of 185 000 kWh per year due to thermal transmittance, transmission losses, heating of warm water and a cooling requirement of 5500 kWh.Three different systems of geothermal heating and cooling were tested in the computer program Energy Earth Design. The results show no difference in the dimensioning of the drill hole if merely heating were to be used or both heating and cooling were to be established.

Today  Real  estate  companies  face  the  challenge  where  extensive  renovations  on  existinghousing built before 1980 must be performed. Conditions have changed and the housing need performance-­?enhancing measures that meet today's quality. With a current renovation rate,  it  would  take  30  years  to  meet  the  renovation  needs.  The  renovation  rate  must therefore rise dramatically, which requires the real estate companies to act consistently in accordance with commercial principles and in an economically, socially and environmentally responsible way.The  paper  discusses  renovation  strategies  in  four  municipal  housing  companies  in  the Stockholm  suburbs.  The  report  includes  surveys  of  four  ongoing  renovation  projects; Fastighets AB Förvaltaren in Sundbyberg project Hundloken 3, Stiftelsen Signalisten in Solna project Ritorp, Sollentunahem in Sollentuna project Svalgången och Väsbyhem in Upplands Väsby project Dragonvägen. The main purpose of this study was to analyze the practices of redevelopment projects.

Due to better nutrition, veterinary and overall care, pet dogs? lifespan has increased. With more old dogs we see more health problems associated with age, among those cognitive decline, leading to deficits in learning and memory, disorientation, anxiety and other altered behaviors. Cognitive decline can have severe negative impacts on the life of both dog and owner, when the dog for example forgets being housetrained or starts being awake at night. Two pet food manufacturers have developed food with specific ingredients in order to improve cognitive functions or delay the onset of cognitive impairment. Hill?s Pet Nutrition has developed a dog food with supplements of a broad spectrum of antioxidants and mitochondrial nutrients, aiming to diminish oxidative damage in the brain, thereby maintaining brain function and improving learning ability.

Newspapers have undergone big changes with the progress of Internet and the newspapers establishment on the Internet. This adjustment to the Internet has resulted in differences between the content in newspapers and Web news sites. A quantitative content analysis and questions to Web authorities have been used in this study to describe what these differences are. During three days, three different newspapers were analysed and the conclusion was that many of the articles that were published in the newspapers also could be found in the newspapers Web versions. At the same time a lot of the articles on the Web news sites were not published in the newspapers.