In Sweden approximately ten percent of all children grows up in a family where at least one parent is having an alcohol related addiction. Since 1998 the development of group activities for children in this situation has been immense. The aim of group activities is to break the child's isolation and make them feel that they are not lonely in their experiences, give them knowledge about addiction and relive the pressure of guilt and responsibility.In a comparative study we examined studied how two different group activity models one with the conception of illness and one without, use the children's network to support the group process. The aim was also to find each models definition of the "normal family", since we understood the groupactivity as a part in the normalization process. We reached our aim through interviews with group leaders and by literature studies.

The New National Elevation Model (NNH) is a new high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) of Sweden from airborne laser scanning. It creates many new opportunities, particularly in the area of flood mapping. NNH is provided by Lantmäteriet in two formats, both in raw LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data and in grid format with two meter resolution. These alternatives have advantages and disadvantages and the aim of this thesis research is to identify these. One of the focuses of the study is data storage and thus data structure analysis, resolution and storage facilities. The research questions are:Why and in what context the different NNH-products from the National Land Survey are used (DEM 2+ or point cloud)?What constraints and opportunities are created by the different options, mainly in terms of different software, resolution, and data storage?The study area is Kärsön in Ekerö municipality located in Stockholms län and has an approximate area of 25 square kilometers. The study is divided into two parts. The first objective is to identify the consequences of using different software to create DEM from pointcloud compared to the DEM2+ model. Height models with a two meter resolution are created in FME and ArcGIS. The models are then compared with the grid from Lantmäteriet, created in TerraScan. The second objective is to examine the impact of the change in resolution, both the storage aspect and both the accuracy aspect. Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW) is an interpolation method which in previous studies proved to have the best results on high resolution LIDAR data. This model was tested and compared with a model from FMEs built-in function and the model from Lantmäteriet wich are based on triangulation (also proved a good method in previous studies). The grid created in TerraScan has good properties such as accuracy.

Denna uppsats har till syfte att studera den debatt som uppstod efter den 9:e december, då en rapport om CIA:s användning av tortyr som del av kriget mot terrorismen släpptes. Detta sker igenom en kritisk diskursanalys av amerikansk media, specifikt med en metod kallad förklarande kritik, med fokus på vad politiker citeras säga och vad opinionsskribenter själva säger gör tortyr rätt eller fel att använda. Igenom analys av sådant material ges här både en inblick i de ställningstaganden som görs i debatten, där censur av rapporten bidrar till att en debatt där båda parter kan göra starka sanningsanspråk om effektivitet och politisering, samt även förklaringar av de pragmatiska och affektiva argument som används i media för att legitimera CIA:s tortyranvändning..

This report examines the possibility of optimizing troubleshooting log files generated when constructing new Volvo trucks. Errors occur when CAD models are stored and managed by the versioning system PDMLink. By developing a new diagnostic tool, Log Search, the troubleshooting process is automated and thereby streamlines the current manual search..

The bachelor's thesis is to examine the explanatory factors affecting the choice of capital structure in real estate companies. The analysis is based on data collected from the main financial reporting from 2007; all listed real estate companies listed on Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish stock market. Based on previous research and theories, we have defined five independent variables that are linked to the debt ratio, which are: profitability, growth, firm size, cost of debt and operational risk. The statistical tests have resulted in that we can say with certainty that profitable firms tend to have a lower debt to equity ratio. We can also say with certainty that property companies with high interest costs have a high level of indebtedness..

Is the new technology always the best? This final project tries to determine if BIM is the melody of today, or if traditional 2D drawing is recommended. Perhaps a compromise is necessary, utilizing both methods.In order to answer this question, different views from the industry have been retrieved through reports, producers of software and users. The approach has consisted in building a 3D model of the school Råslättsskolan, house 01, along with interviews with people involved in the building process.When working in 2D it is hard to include the third dimension, mistakes are done and collisions happen that must be corrected, in most cases at the construction site. BIM is an incredible help since the model allows you to detect collisions and correct them.

The purpose of this essay is to present, from a theoretical framwork about regional democracy, possible methods to handle the regional democratic problems in Östergötland in Sweden and to investigate the opinion of the political parties regarding this issue. Both the national and the local/regional level are investigated. The contents of the essay is based on literature studies and interviews of politicians in Östergötland. Regional democratic problems that is discussed are the political responsibility and the power distribution between the political actors on the regional level. A solution of the problem could be to organize the regional society structure in accordance with one of the following organization models"Statligt regionalt ansvar","Kommuner i samverkan"or"Regionalt folkstyre".

This thesis presents a system which has been implemented to satisfy a need in theresearch on how speech planning interacts with syntactic and prosodic structure inspontaneous speech. The long-term purpose of the research is to provide models forautomatic parsing of spontaneous speech and for psycholinguistical modelling of speechproduction. Identification of inhalation pauses is an important step in the developmentof automatic methods for spontaneous speech parsing.Identification of inhalation pauses is considered to be a keyword-spotting speechrecognition problem. Hybrid HMM(Hidden Markov Models)/ANN(Artificial NeuralNetworks) approach is applied to this problem. Method gets 90,8% in Recall, 66,4% inPrecision and 76,7% in F-score.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how key performance indicators are being used as performance management tools within the production industry. Specifically the purpose is to investigate how the KPI:s within the telecommunications industry drives reusability regarding production test systems. This thesis will also highlight today?s cost models and suggest improvements of the KPI and what new ones could be introduced. A case study at Ericsson AB has been performed.

The cost of capital for traded companies is basically assessed on information from thefinancial market. Small and non-traded companies are lack of this necessary financialmarket information in order to determine an appropriate equity risk premium and tocompute the cost of capital.In the absence of financial information necessary for an external investor, it is difficult toevaluate a non-traded company with the Capital Asset Pricing model (CAPM), which isbased on the financial market information. It measures only the systematic risk, which isthe contribution of one share to the market risk of a portfolio. It is therefore important tofind models that reflect the small and non-traded companies? real business value and theirunique characteristics.

The purpose of this study was to find out why the law that regulates downloading copyrighted material does not work and which of the most important main reasons lies behind downloading behaviour. The phenomenon being well investigated earlier has actualized a new demand for normative investigation in connection with the hot debated IPRED-law.Using qualitative method comprising of interviews with three typical file sharers and anchored in Max Webers action typology, rational choice theory and the norm model followed by two assessment models, we found that four important reasons lies behind downloading behaviour: 1) economical reasons was the most central and frequent determinant followed by 2) accessibility and comfort, and 3) social acceptance and moral and also 4) habits. Although the content of the law was correctly provided by the interviewees, it was clear that they did not perceive the impact of the law as meaningful or threatening.The results, being compatible with previous research, are discussed in terms of the named theories and assessment models. We suggest further research to take into account peoples norms as the new IPRED-law soon will be functional as well as studies from a perspective of the legal rights of the individual..

This thesis aims to investigate if there are any differences in the value relevance of yearly earnings announcements before (2000-2004) and after (2005-2009) IFRS were implemented for listed companies in the European Union. To assess the value relevance of earnings, an earnings response coefficient (ERC) is estimated using a linear OLS-regression model. The regression model uses accounting earnings per share as the explaining variable, with the corresponding return starting from (but not including) the previous year's earnings announcement date, ending at (and including) the current earnings announcement date, as the dependent variable. This study finds that there is no statistically significant difference between the estimated ERCs for the two periods. Although no statistically significant difference is found, data shows that the R2-values, which measure the explanatory power of the regressions, are higher for the period before IFRS.

An old and well known problem in sawmilling is to determine which dimensions /products those are most profitable to produce. Existing optimization models maximize the value of the log. In other words, based upon the market prices of the dimensions the models calculate the best way to split the log. Yet there is a great uncertainty if the most well paid dimensions really are the most profitable to produce. The costs of the process from lumber to sawn products are hard to determine and are therefore often left out from the optimization process. In this study the economic contribution of different dimensions/products are analysed.

The thesis handles the principal-agency problem between shareholders and the Chief Executive Officer. The purpose of the thesis was to examine the link between CEO compensation and corporate performance measured as a change in Market to Book ratio. Data was collected from corporate annual reports between the years 2000 ? 2008 and the study covers 39 Swedish companies from the Stockholm Stock Exchange Large Cap list. To examine whether there is a link between the CEO´s compensation and firm performance, we performed a regression analysis, and no significant relation is found.

Rapid development in the realms of electronic publishing has had a profound impact on information services in general and the academic library in particular. Since mid 1990´s an increasingly number of scholarly journals and other information resources have been made available electronically. Electronic books are the newest electronic service in the hybrid library and can be seen as the third wave in the digital library. Although electronic books have for a long time existed as electronic texts such as digitalized classics or other texts in the public domain, it is not until recently that e-books have been distributed and packaged in a commercial form. As more e-book models are being developed, libraries are being forced to take e-books into consideration when planning their information services.The aim of this master thesis is to describe the first stage of implementation of the new electronic media, the electronic book or e-book, in Swedish academic libraries.