The insurance industryis challengedby major changesthrough internationalizationand thusgrowingcompetitionwithmore optionsand greater availabilityfor customers.Solvency II, a new regulatoryframework and anew standard forinsurance companies,is therefore implemented in a steptowardsa more competitive Europeaninsurancemarket. Solvency II will result in extensive structural changes for many insurance companies. Newstandards andinternal models must also be implemented by the companies. Solvency IIhasa tightening effect on thesolvency capital requirements forinsurance companies. At the same time it also leads tomajor changesandincreased demandon risk management andinternal control, alongside with demands fordisclosure of informationto the market.

Equality between men and women has as an ideal won an increasing impact on the contemporary Swedish society and has established as a factor influencing all areas of society from politics to business and private life. The focus of this essay is to explore the impact of equality on hegemonic masculinity and relations of masculinities. The aim of the essay has moreover been to investigate the consequences of an increased focus on men and critique of masculinity due to a growing influence of feminism and women?s movement in Sweden. The study is based on interviews with four members of staff working in a men?s clinic for sexual and reproductive health in Stockholm, Järva Mansmottagning.

The high level of competition and the rapidly growing technology development has created new challenges for today's businesses where they are forced to deliver more customized products at a lower price and a shorter time period. This places high demands on the companies' ability to design and develop better products in a more efficient way. In addition to developing products, the design process focuses on securing long-term success for the company by developing nourishing skills. However, to achieve an effective design process the companies must improve their ability to plan as well as use their knowledge base in a more efficient manner. Toyota's product development system is a critical component for companies to address challenges that they?re facing and offers a great potential to create significant competitive advantages.

Due to an increasing global market with a growing competition and an escalating technologydevelopment the demands on companies today are increasing. To maximise the output fromtheir recourses they need to be more efficient. The research on product development and how toensure the efficiencies in the process are extensive and companies could by adapting andimplementing the result of this research use its benefits.This master thesis is made for Knightec AB with the aims that through interviews anddiscussions with three companies investigate, collate, justify and give proposals for productdevelopment process together with supporting methods and procedures for technical projectmanagement. Besides Knightec AB three other companies located in Sweden has beenparticipating in this study. Through semi structured interviews and discussions in focus groupsinformation from the three involved companies were obtained.

The agricultural sector is characterized by larger crop farms and more extensive livestockproduction. The efficiency improvement is partly a result from a stronger competition in theglobal market. The agricultural products need to be produced at a lower cost than competitorsin order to survive as a farmer. The solution is larger firms that benefit from economies ofscale. This brings large investments that create a greater need for leverage and closer relationto the credit agency.

GE Healthcare operates in Uppsala (Sweden) and develops systems, equipments and medium to purify medical substances. Discussions with the local authority concerning planed far-reaching changes and upgrades of the biological process techniques for sewage management, aroused the question about revising the terms of permit for the activity. Therefore it seemed necessary to evaluate a newly installed biological process technique, which is the background of this thesis. The evaluated biological treatment process was built in 2003 and consists of a biological reactor filled with moving bed carriers with a high surface area for biological growth. At the time of the project the biological wastewater treatment plant consisted of a flow equalization facility and two following parallel biological processes; a biological reactor with moving bed carriers and a tower trickling filter.The aim of this thesis was to survey the function of the biological reactor with respect to the reduction of organic matter.

The agricultural sector accounts for about 13 percent of the total load of greenhouse gas emissions from Sweden (Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, 2007). The Swedish objective to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions with 40 percentage units to the year of 2020, based upon the year of 1990, might imply stricter regulations for Swedish farmers. A regulation or other forms of economic incentives is probably necessary to reduce the emissions originating from the agricultural sector. This study aims to investigate the economic and managerial impact on two agricultural firms with differing production system given that a constraint on green house gas emissions is introduced. Gases included in this study are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

The Swedish cooperative Lantmännen Ekonomiska Förening has initiated a project labelled "Operation Blåljus" that includes an extensive program for closing down elevators. The number of elevators will be reduced from 92 to approximately 15 after harvest of 2007. The objective of Blåljus is to increase the price of grain with 10 öre/kg. A project has been initiated at the Lantmännen Grain division where the purpose is to provide the farmers with support in their decisions and practical advice how they can load a 35 ton grain truck on 30 minutes. The result from the project will serve as a support system to the farmer in his ambition to achieve cost efficient systems to load a truck with grain on the farm.

The aim of this thesis is to describe the customer?s attitudes toward the contracting for availability, i.e., which factors are from the customer?s perspective necessary for the fulfilment of a supplier-customer agreement? Furthermore, the objective is to describe and analyse a supplier-customer relation in the Defence Industrial sphere.The present study has been carried out as a case study using an abductive approach. The thesis is based on a practical problem, i.e. which factors will be important to the customer when a contractor in the Defence Industry wants to increase its commitment of service, and how will their relationship change? The thesis is above all focused on generating knowledge that can lead to rapid and concrete measures and that can be used in the analysis of an increased industrial commitment but also as a case study of a problem of a more general nature in the Defence Industry.

People have utilised and influenced the boreal forest for many centuries. Prior to the industrial revolution during the 19th century, however, human use primarily only had a low impact on the forest. When the timberfrontier swept over the country, the Swedish forests came to change for ever. The study site for this thesis is situated in the northern part of the county of Västerbotten, Sweden, and has previously been a National forest. Today the area is an ecopark and the land is owned by the forest company Sveaskog.

By immersion in the situation of the food production today and a historical study of how past development has led us to this point, one goal of this essay is to discuss whether the current way of farming can be applied in a sustainable future. Another objective of the essay is to study the vision Vertical farming as an alternative approach, and to focus on different aspects of this phenomenon in order to provide as comprehensive a picture as possible.The paper, thus, seeks to broaden the views for alternative approaches regarding a well-established method which we often take for granted. The aim is also to initiate a discussion around the need to also take radical ideas in regard if we want to face the future in a sustainable manner. The method is a qualitative literary study where scientific articles and papers have been used to discuss the issues: why has the idea of Vertical farming arisen, what is Vertical farming and how is the Vertical Farm meant to operate? Does Vertical farming have a place in the sustainable city of the future? For a long time us humans lived as one with nature, in a symbiotic relationship in which we gave and took as a functioning part of an ecosystem.

The purpose of this comparative study is to investigate how certified family therapeuts, with base professions psychologist and social counsellor respectively, construct boundaries through language. The study aims to demonstrate and analyse how the two professions present each other, through similarities and differences. For the purpose of definition and elucidation, the study comprises five main themes (see Appendix). The first theme is concerned with motives for choosing a professional career in family therapy. The second theme investigates conceptions of the professional role, while the third theme looks at professional practise and the implications of family therapy work.

ABSTRACT. In the late 1960?s all the wolves in Scandinavia went extinct in the wild due to extensive hunting. In 1983 two new wolves immigrated and founded, together with a third immigrant in 1991, the population that exists today. Due to the fact that the population originates from less than a handful of individuals, the genetic variation is small.

This study concerns the energy future of the county of Stockholm up until 2050 and describes how the energy consumption can be compared to today with the use of scenario methodology. Within energy future studies the backcasting approach is well known and has been put to use in this study. Due to the characteristics of backcasting the study is self-fulfilling, i.e. the future energy scenarios presented in this study satisfy the targets set up in this study. In the light of what may be the largest challenge of our time ? the climate change - the aim of this study is to describe how the energy consumption in a fossil fuel free Stockholm county in the year of 2050 may be.

Denna rapport beskriver arbetet med att designa och utveckla en plattform för simulering ochutvärdering av olika tradingsystem.Det viktigaste kravet som sattes upp i examenarbetets förstudie var att åstakomma en flexibel ochutbyggbar grunddesign för att man vid senare tillfälle ska kunna uttöka systemet vartefter behov avmer funktionalitet uppstår i en snabbt föränderlig finansiell värld. Vidare skulle Microsofts allrasenaste teknik användas.Resultatet blev systemet Trader som är en modulbaserad applikation med tydliga riktlinjer för hurmoduler ska laddas, skapas, initieras samt hur de kommunicerar med varandra utan överflödigaberoenden. Vägen dit gick via inlärning av diverse designmönster och designprinciper. Omfattandeanvändning av händelser och kommandon för kommunikation mellan olika moduler samtprogrammerandet mot interface istället för konkreta objekt i alla lägen gav få beroenden och enflexibel och utbyggbar grunddesign.Trader kan koppla upp sig mot börsen för att hämta kursdata. Denna data kan sedan användas för attutvärdera hur olika tradingsystem skulle ha presterat i olika tidsintervall.