Since prehistoric time man has used wood to build their environment. The material?s availabilitycombined with its good mechanical properties has often made it the material of choice. Like allmaterials exposed to natures degradative processes the properties of wood decreases over time.Rot, UV radiation and attacks by insects and pests damage wood if not protected. Since we wantwhat we build to consist, optimizing our building materials durability is of great interest.Techniques and methods for increasing the endurance of wood have been developed in severaldifferent places and for a long time.

Lean is a production philosophy which is about increased resource use while meeting customer requirements. The foundation of lean comes from Toyota and their production philosophy The Toyota Way. Professor Jeffrey k. Liker has worked with Toyota's production philosophy and Lean for a long time and has created a 4 P model and 14 principles that characterize the Toyota production system (TPS), which many sources refer to.The aim of my work is to study the working procedure of asphalt projects from sales to the laid asphalt with a focus on planning and production management. The goal is to examine how the lean philosophy can be applied in planning and production to simplify the flow of asphalt projects based on Likers model and principles.

The goal for this master thesis project has been to investigate the power quality in adistribution grid, which has a high fraction of dispersed power production due towindmills. The study has been done on a grid in Laholm South of Halmstad, whereapproximately 45 windmills are connected to the distribution grid owned by SHKEnergi. The investigation has been focused on to two radialy fed 20 kV lines, wheretwelve windmills are connected.Voltage variations have been studied by creating a model of the grid in the simulationprogram SIMPOW. The largest deviation that has been found in any point of the gridis ±1.9 % of the nominal voltage. This deviation is a result of varying powergeneration from the windmills and the voltage regulation at the connection point ofthe line.

The thesis presents an optimally designed kinematic structure for a new 6-DOF haptic devicebased on TAU configuration. The configuration of the TAU-2 proposed by Suleman Khan andKjell Andersson [1] was modified and its mobility was verified by using Grübler criterion tohave a 6 DOF. Analytical kinematic models for the inverse and forward kinematics weredeveloped for the haptic TAU configuration to determine a set of optimal design parameters.Kinematic performance indices such as volume of the workspace, kinematic isotropy and payload index, were defined based on the singular values of the Jacobian matrix. The Jacobianmatrix was scaled to homogenize the physical units. The Jacobian matrix dependent on theposition and orientation of the end-effector gives local isotropy and pay load index, so globaldesign indices were defined, which represent the performance of the mechanism in the wholeworkspace.

District heating covers around 80 % of the heating demand in apartment buildings and 10 % in single-family homes in Sweden. In the year 2010 the total input of energy to the Swedish district heating grids was about 70 TWh, which corresponds to 11 % of the total energy input to the whole energy system in the country. Through the combined production of heat and power the CHP-plants often reaches an efficiency of 90 % from energy in the fuel to produced heat and power. In order to keep the efficiency high it is important for the owners of the plant to have good knowledge about the plants performance at different operation points. Strängnäs Energi AB initiated this diploma work together with FVB Sverige ab in order to come up with a program for short term planning of the production of heat and power at the company´s CHP-plant.The work consists of three main parts.

ur society is today in a phase of development in environmental and sustainable thinking. Alarming reports show changes in climate caused by our load and exhaust of resources. The energy usage contributes to a big part of it, by its emission of carbon dioxide. The built environment uses around 40 % of the total energy consumption in Sweden and requests to strongly reduce it are presented from both EU and national level.This thesis brings up the subject of green building with a focus on how we can create more energy efficient buildings in projects of new construction. Since the construction industry today often fails to pass on the knowledge between different projects, as a return of experiences, the construction company Skanska suggested the topic for this thesis.

BACKGROUND: Today?s societal changes, including high rate of change and increasing information flows, are increasing the demand on the individual mental capacity. It becomes increasingly difficult to analytically process all the different dilemmas and everyday decisions as individuals have a limited mental capacity available to make these decisions. Thus, it has been suggested that ego-depleted relies more heavily on intuition, which is less burdensome, when making decision. However little is known about to what extent intuitive decisions differ from analytic.

Nutrient enrichment is the main cause of the increasing eutrophication process in the Baltic Sea during last century. A prerequisite counteract this process the load of nutrients to the Sea must be investigated. The large contribution of nutrients to the Sea is caused by emission from the rivers within the drainage basin. For the total emission of nutrient into the Sea the retention process in the rivers has big influence. This process in the river system has been assumed as a not important part of the nutrient cycle.

The goal for this master thesis project has been to investigate the power quality in adistribution grid, which has a high fraction of dispersed power production due towindmills. The study has been done on a grid in Laholm South of Halmstad, whereapproximately 45 windmills are connected to the distribution grid owned by SHKEnergi. The investigation has been focused on to two radialy fed 20 kV lines, wheretwelve windmills are connected.Voltage variations have been studied by creating a model of the grid in the simulationprogram SIMPOW. The largest deviation that has been found in any point of the gridis ±1.9 % of the nominal voltage. This deviation is a result of varying powergeneration from the windmills and the voltage regulation at the connection point ofthe line.

Listed corporations achieve effectiveness through segmentation of investors. Categorization of like- minded investors diminishes goal incongruence. This thesis aim to examine an Investor models accuracy, provided by a Professor Emeritus in Economic Psychology in 2001. This model segments investors as active, passive, speculative and naive investors. This thesis has a demarcation to private investors on the Swedish stock market. It has a deductive and qualitative approach as the purpose is to study the Investor model.

Since January 1st 2005 all companies listed on a regulated stock exchange within the European Union are required to present their financial reports in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The intention of the introduction of IFRS is to achieve international harmonization of accounting rules in order to make financial reports more comparable between companies from different countries. The purpose of financial reports presented in accordance with IFRS is to provide information that is useful to the users of the information. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the information regarding goodwill and the goodwill impairment test, presented in accordance with IFRS, in fact is useful to a specific group of accounting information users, namely equity analysts. An empirical study is conducted, based on interviews with seven Swedish equity analysts.

The objective of this diploma work is to investigate a set of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) channel models compatible with the emerging IEEE 802.11n standard. This diploma work validates also advanced, innovative tools and wireless technologies that are necessary to facilitate wireless applications while maximizing spectral efficiency and throughput. MIMO channel models can be used to evaluate new Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) proposals based on multiple antenna technologies. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate means of channel models and their implementation in different environments such as: Matlab, C++ and Advanced Design Systems (ADS). The investigation considers also a comparison between the channel models based on theoretical data and parameter setup to the channel models based on statistical characteristics obtained from measured data.

There are several energy systems in the Swedish society and to ensure the comfort and health of the citizens it is of importance that the different energy systems are functioning properly. District heating is one of these energy systems and many household depend only on district heating to warm up their homes. District heating is dependent on several processes where every step needs to function in order to deliver the produced heat to the end consumer. Previous studies have investigated the distribution of district heating and how to make customers choose district heating as their heating method. The supply of fuel to the district heating plant has not been studied as much, even though it is an important part of the whole system. This thesis is a part of the project NORD-STAR (Nordic Strategic Adaption Research), which has focused on climate adaption in the Nordic countries.

The goal of this thesis is to design an attachment between a duct and a pod. A pod is what could be compared to an outboard engine for larger vessels. The pod is placed on the outside of the ship?s hull and can rotate 360 ?. A duct is a large steel ring that can be placed around the propeller on the pod to increasethe propulsion force of the ship in lower velocities.

Uppsala County has ambitious environmental aims for the planned residential area inÖstra Sala backe. In this thesis different energy sources have been evaluated todetermine which system that would be most favorable given currently availableinformation about the project. Planned energy usage has been divided into tap waterheating, space heating and power. Three base case scenarios were made with districtheating, small scale bio fuel and heat pump. Solar power and solar heating were thensimulated and the production from the two could individually be deducted from theenergy need in the base cases, constituting 9 different scenarios.