As energy prices skyrocket and the environmental issues become more frequently debated, interest in energy-efficient buildings has increased sharply in the past decade. Because of this, the interest to achieve high air tightness in building envelopes have once again awakened, due to a good air tightness contributes to lower energy consumption in several ways and to a healthier indoor environment.As the regulations for energy consumption and controls of achieved air tightness has tightened considerably in recent years, the work regarding sheets for air tightness changed significantly for construction contractors. This thesis includes a study that aims to detect what kind of manuals, recommendations or instructions contractors working according, and how a number of randomly selected construction companies in Halland, Sweden, are dealing with the matter of high air tightness of the building envelopes. The study also includes a knowledge inventory of supervisors, site managers and skilled workers, and what their opinions and attitudes are like towards work regarding the sheets of air tightness. The results have been compared with a similar survey dated to 2004, conducted by the SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden in collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology.

This study examines how management consulting firms work with business- and functional strategy and how these strategies are interrelated. More specifically we focus on business strategy (business unit level) and knowledge strategy (functional level) and whether these are aligned or not, i.e. whether strategic congruence exists.A number of recent studies have examined the importance of business strategy and knowledge strategy in management consulting firms separately, but few have pointed out the importance of the alignment between them. With this study we contribute to the strategic field of research with a model that describes how management consulting firms should work with their knowledge strategy given their business strategy. The model is developed through a synthesis between theories in the field of strategic congruence, business- and functional strategies and thereafter tested by an empirical case study of six management consulting firms.

Dissatisfaction with the current market for scientific publishing, dominated by a few large publishers able to obtain high subscription fees, gave birth to the Open Access movement. One problem for the Open Access movement, which aims at making research results freely available, is that scientists are reluctant to publish in journals that are free on the Internet, so called Open Access journals. This master's thesis aims at showing how scientists reason about their own publishing in scientific journals. It is investigated which factors are important when scientist decide on which journals to send their articles. The aim is to increase the understanding of scientists' views on Open Access.Six interviews were conducted with scientists in Biomedicine at Lund University.

Mind-mindedness refers to the mother?s ability to treat her child as an individual with a mental life of his or her own. In the present study, the purpose is to investigate the relationship between the amount of mind-related comments the mother produces when the child is 9 months of age and the child?s development in language and communication at the age of 15 months. The hypothesis is that the amount of mind-related comments the mother produces has a positive affect on the child?s language abilities as well as his or her ability to initiate joint attention.

AbstractInterest in the subject appeared from real events. We seemed to discern a trend in society. Wehave noted that the amount of social enterprises to a greater extent is formed in Sweden.Companies like GodEl, Postkodslotteriet and DEM Collective are typical illustrations ofcompanies included in the category of social enterprise. It seemed as socially profiledcompanies is the new generation companies. The purpose of this essay is to make aninventory of possible competitive advantages that arise from social branding.

Soils in a metal contaminated site on Stångberget in Gusum in southeastSweden were investigated and compared to relatively unaffected soils a fewkilometres away. Pollution came from historical release of untreated flue gasesfrom a brass mill. The objective was to find information on how high the metalconcentrations are, if metals from the polluted soil affect the surroundings andif the metal contamination affects the microbial community. The soil wasinvestigated using several different methods, such as field XRF measurements,chemical analysis of metal, carbon and nitrogen content, pH, acid neutralizingcapacity, texture, soil depth, field leach tests, sequential extraction and microbialfunctional profiles. The study showed that copper and zinc concentrationswere above Swedish Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for lesssensitive land use on the entire investigated area.

Mixade vårdsalar, det vill säga där man blandar män och kvinnor, är något som förkommer på sjukhusen runt om i landet och bör uppmärksammas utifrån patientens perspektiv då denne är i beroendeställning av sjukvården och dess vårdmiljö. Det blir allt vanligare att sjukhusen idag har mixade vårdsalar, detta oftast på grund av tids- och platsbrist. Studiens syfte var att beskriva patienters upplevelser av att vårdas på mixad vårdsal på en akut sjukvårdsavdelning inom nedre kirurgi. Studien var kvalitativ med fenomenologisk ansats. En intervjustudie med femton patienter som hade vårdats på mixad vårdsal genomfördes och i resultatet framkom att majoriteten av patienterna upplevde det positivt att vårdas på mixad vårdsal.

More and more people today manage their social relationships through social networking sites. A social networking site is a virtual place where people can meet and interact with each other. On such sites, one can use the various features and attributes to present ourselves to the friends we have online. The central question of this report is what characteristics of relationships show on social networking sites. With the features and attributes that are represented and whether the architect for a social networking site affects the relationship between friends.

Erasteel Kloster AB Söderfors have been commissioned by the county administrative board in Uppsala län to make an inventory of possible contaminations in theirs industrial- and landfill areas on the basis of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency?s; ?Method of Surveying Contaminated Sites-phase 1? (MIFO-fas 1). The inventory starts with maps and archive studies, place visits and interviews, and finally a risk classification is done. A risk classification is a compilation of four categories; pollutant toxicity, contamination level, possible spreading condition of the pollutant, sensitivity and protection value of the environment. In this paper five partial areas (Holmen- and Jörsöområdet, Järnsvampsområdet, Ingsådeponin, Östra verken and Myrområdet) have been described from a historical point of view. Only parts of four areas have been risk classified (Holmen- and Jörsöområdet, Järnsvampsområdet, Ingsådeponin and Östra verken), due to that the other areas isn?t own by Erasteel Kloster AB. Holmen- and Jörsöområdet Holmen- and Jörsöområdet have during the entire activity time been carried out as the production core in the company.

This paper examines how the ideal of manhood is portrayed and constructed and how the participation of Swedish soldier volunteers are motivated and legitimatized. The purpose of this examination is to gain understanding and knowledge about the Swedish soldiers in the Swedish brigade, how they legitimatize and motivate their participation and how the ideal of manhood is portrayed and constructed. The study is based on material from the war archive in Stockholm. The empirical material is composed by letters and propaganda material. In the analysis of the empirical study, there have been two theories used which are Eric Hobsbawms historical method and theory about invented traditions and Peter Aronssons historical method and theory about ?historiebruk? and legitimacy.

Soil properties affect the chemical composition of soil water. When studying transport of chemical substances through a basin, it is therefore important to know from which soil layer the main part of the runoff is generated. The aim of this study is to develop an HBV/PULSE model with merged soil moisture and response routines, which generates good approximations of groundwater levels. It should be possible to extend the model to simulate transport of substances and take into account which soil layer the groundwater level is currently in. The hydrological version of HBV/PULSE is used since there is no need to account for pH or alcalinity at this stage.

The objective of this study was to make an inventory and a potential analysis of the organic beef production in the region of Gävleborg, Sweden. A survey was conducted, where a questionaire was sent to all farmers in the region who had environmental subsidies concerning organic cropping systems in 2001. In total, there were 701 farmers, of which 46 % participated in the study. Three slaughter houses were interviewed to get their pictures of the development of organic beef production. The study shows that there are potentials and interests in the region to increase the production of organic beef.

The concept of art infusion has become more and more used in the field of marketing and product advertising, and the phenomenon has been subject to research. The purpose of this paper is to study how the perception of an office environment is influenced by different kinds of art settings. The study is made as a survey in which the respondents have been exposed to working environments, only differentiated by the existence of different kinds of art or non-existence of art in the presentation. There are many conclusions to draw from the study, the most important is that the presence of art gives positive spillover effects on the surrounding environment..

In the pilot study for a biography, some of the methodological and/or theoretical problems facing the anthropologist and biographer are discussed.The empirical section is based on a number of interviews I made with my grandmother over the period 1995-2001. I have come across inconsistencies in the material when rendering a historical event. Furthermore, the material makes me reflect on how the biographer or anthropologist is able to handle or interpret that she and the subject/informant has a different attitude to metaphors and how the metaphors can change over time, space and interpretation.The essay begins with a summary review of some of the central social and behavioural scientific theories that can be related to the individual and the biography.There then follows an in-depth discussion based on Paul Ricoeur's philosophy that says that your identity is created in relation to how you look at your history and future at the present time. Identities are created in an interaction between the field we are currently in, the cultural capital that includes gestures, mannerisms, symbols, our language and the area of interpretation the field allows in the culture. Consequently, the biography is also a representation that is created in time and space and between the subject and the person rendering the subject.The biography or ethnography is transient and is of necessity a historiography.Ricoeur talks about the living metaphor.

This thesis deals with the numerical 3D simulation of a four stroke, spark-ignited, internalcombustion engine, which is mounted on a high performance motorcycle. The work, carried outin collaboration with Politecnico di Milano and MV Agusta, focuses on the simulation of theintake, compression and expansion stroke, including combustion simulation, using an opensource CFD code.Simulation of internal combustion engines offers a great challenge in the field of CFD research.Moving boundaries of the solution domain, caused by the motion of the piston and valves, leadsto deformation of the computational grid, with decreasing quality of the solution as result. Basedon this, a previously developed mesh motion strategy was employed where a number of meshesare used to cover the whole simulation cycle. Within each mesh interval the internal cell pointsof the mesh are moved to account for the boundary motion of the piston and valves. This strategywas previously applied to simplified geometries as well as real engine geometries.