This thesis deals with information practices of first time parents. The term information practice covers topics ranging from the information a parent need and use, the information they actively seek for through to information attained through browsing, monitoring or simply being aware. Four problem areas have been formulated. What information do first time parents need? How do they get hold of information and how do they use it? What factors decide what sources they use? How do the first time parents validate the information they get? The following theoretical framework have been used; Marcia J Bates? model of information practice and Reijo Savolainen?s Mastery of Life theory.

This master thesis investigates the possibilities of using GPS-information from trains to create a model of a railway system, register the routes of the the trains and predict how the trains will travel in the railway system.The thesis work was done at Icomera AB which is a company that specializes in internet connected vehicle solutions.We describe how the GPS-information is sent from the trains in the form of samples and investigate limitations and possibilities with the available information. About three million samples from 83 SJ-trains were analysed and the samples were filtered with the intent of removing erroneous information. We here found that about 30 % of the samples from the trains were unreliable.A solution for how the samples from the trains can be used to create a model of the railway system traveled by the trains is presented. We use a large set of historical samples and use cluster nodes and Hermite curves to generate a graph that represent the railway system with stations, nodes and the railway itself. A fully automatic solution is not presented since it did not fit into the time frame of the thesis; instead we created a simple tool which can be used to manually finish the model of the railway system.Furthermore, we describe how the railway system and the samples from the train can be used to register the routes the trains travel.

 This degree project aims at developing a concept for how to use solar energy to pump up water. The target audience is people living in areas where the functioning of the electricity and water network is absent. In these areas, the hand-powered water pump is the most common technology. The degree project's goal is to find an economically viable alternative to the time consuming hand-powered water pumps. The power comes from solar energy.

The purpose of this thesis is to explain one aspect of how and why the development in the third world is lagging behind. The precondition is that development through an agricultural revolution is necessary and that all countries benefit from trading. But these two conditions are not met today. By using the urban-bias and the world system theory I have analysed how the situation appears to be according to the precondition. It appears that both the urban-bias and the world system theory are essential to understand how and why the situation in third world still has not reached the same development phase as most other countries.

Abstract ? ?Costs to consider in connection with the implementation of a new ERP system?Date: January 8th 2013Level: Master thesis in business administration, 15 ECTSInstitution: School of Sustainable development of society and technology, Mälardalen UniversityAuthors: Sanna Hellblom-BjörnTitle: Costs to consider in connection with the implementation of a new ERP systemTutor: Cecilia LindhKeywords: ERP-system, business system, implementation, implementation costsResearch question: What costs and issues should companies take into account in order to  establish a realistic budget in connection with the implementation of a new ERP system, and increase the chances for a successful implementation?Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to investigate the hidden costs that may arise in connection with the implementation of an ERP system that companies should take into account in order to establish a realistic budget. The paper will also examine how companies can reduce their costs and affect the outcome of the implementation. It should be investigated by means of interviews, reports and articles.Method: In order to answer the question in the paper secondary data is collected in the form of articles, books and reports. Primary data was collected through interviewing a company that has implemented a new business system, a company that performs implementations and a Senior manager of ERP Services.

AbstractThis report is made in cooperation with the municipality of Vasteras and technical committeestaff. The report addresses several topics that affect fuel stations in Vasteras. The reportcontains two parts, first is a inventory that review all stations in the area to be addressed. Theinventory is made with consideration to various things that geographic situation, whatcompanies are represented and what level of service stations have. And the second part of thereport, is done with the analysis of how it looks in daily situations review.

In this essay we discuss how the decentralisation of the Swedish school system affects the concept of ?equal opportunity school?. We investigate the development from both a historical and contemporary perspective, in order to identify changes over time. The central question of the essay is how the decentralisation of the school system affects the teacher?s perspective and experiences of the government?s framework about ?equal opportunity school?? The analysis is based on four qualitative, semi structured, direct interviews with respondents both active in municipal schools situated in the Malmö council and with more than thirty years of experience in their profession. Our analysis of the interviews show that both respondents experience the overall situation in the schools has deteriorated from an equal opportunity aspect since the decentralisation of the school system.

The purpose of this master thesis is to construct a steering transmission, for a trackedvehicle, containing two hydraulic circuits which are connected. The steeringtransmission should be mechanical to avoid steer-by-wire.BAE Systems Hägglunds has in an earlier study examined a system with two hydraulicpumps and one hydraulic motor, but the safety of the system wasn?t sufficient.To achieve sufficient redundancy there must be two hydraulic motors, which arecontrolled separately. When the two systems are connected in one point, this point is acritical part of the system because it directly affects both circuits. If one of the hydrauliccircuits fails the other should be able to operate independently as a steeringtransmission.

IT exist and are needed in larger organisations today, this creates possibilities for new applications. It has become more frequent with IT within HRM which has developed new concepts like e-HRM and HRIS which links IT and HRM together. We have through qualitative content analysis of interviews investigated how IT-tools affect HR-workmanship. The purpose is to create a basis for describing how employees experience their work with HR within a PA-system. The basis of the PA-system will then answer if it contributes or limits the employees and their activities.

Students at Jönköping School of Engineering were given an assignment from Jönköping municipality, to evaluate their decision support system, QlikView. The students have also developed proposals for improvement with focus on usability.The Jönköpings municipality has currently got 11000 employees and consists of nine different administrations. The target group for QlikView is approximately 600 first-line managers.The intention of QlikView is that the users can get an overall picture of their business by having all information in just one system.The purpose of the thesis is to obtain a picture of what the users think about the system today and present relevant suggestions for improvement, which the Jönköping municipality can use when the introduction of the new version of QlikView takes place. The research questions that the study aims to answer are:? Has QlikView got a user friendly interface?? How can the interface be improved to become more user friendly?Theories that this work is based on is Jacob Nielsens ten usability principles and Ben Schneidermans eight golden rules.

Many organizations utilize decision support systems in order to handle different tasks and tosupport the decision-making process. Decision support system is a broad term used to referto several different types of systems. These types of systems can handle a wide range ofoperations within the organization. Consequently this will have an impact on differentoperations within the organization. The main aim of this study was to create a betterunderstanding regarding the impact of decision support systems on the various operationswithin the City Council's procurement units which in turn will increase effectiveness.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the possibility of integrating an item tracking systemwith a monitoring system currently under development at Fifth Generation Technologies (P) Ltd.A literature study of RFID technology and the networks ZigBee and MiWi was done. Based onthe literature study a concept for a distributed system was developed.The concept is to have several RFID readers placed in the area where tracking is to be performedand allow them to communicate with each other through wireless communication. The RFIDreaders shall be able to form zones and filter the data that is forwarded from the zones to theservers and thus perform some of the work that the server would normally have to do. Theconcept has been evaluated by prototype development and testing. The prototype uses an ultrahigh frequency RFID reader and a MiWi network.The test indicated some limitations with the selected technologies.

This thesis describes the development ofa linear guidance system suited for NORCAN's aluminium profiles. The work took place at LP Innovation, a small technical consulting company, located in Uppsala. The work started with gathering and searching for information. A lot of the information was found in product catalogs, but my supervisor was also a great source of knowledge, as well as the other engineers at the company. I also had the opportunity to work with the rea lprofiles, to get a feeling and greater understanding how they were supposed to be used. With the use of sketching and CAD, a number of concepts were generated.

This masters thesis aims to investigate how upper secondary school pupils experience their information seeking in a school context without access to a school library. It is the pupils own thoughts and opinions about information seeking and criticism of the sources that is the main focus. The literature that has been used consists of material from research concerning youth and different aspects of information seeking such as the information seeking process, information seeking on the web, criticism of the sources and how pupils interact with other people in order to acquire information. The method that has been used is group interviews. Twelve pupils from an independent school without access to a school library have been interviewed in groups of three.

Systemutvecklingsmetoder har funnits för att utveckla system ochprogramvaror sedan vattenfallsmodellen gjorde sin introduktion på dentiden då IT kallades för data processning. Sedan dess har det funnits ettantal metoder, vissa av dem används än idag. Gemensamt för de flestametoderna är att de är anpassade till mycket komplexa system som användsinom stora organisationer. Inom det Svenska samhället så fanns det år 2005över 890 000 småföretag (0-49 anställda) enligt statistiska centralbyrån.Det är lätt att förstå att småföretagen är viktiga för Sverige. För att Sverigessmåföretag skall kunna överleva i en allt tuffare konkurrenssituation så ärdet viktigt att de hela tiden effektiviserar sina verksamhetsprocesser medexempelvis innovativa IT lösningar.