The Smart Grid technology has during the last decade been established as a way to create a greater flexibility on the electricity grid that will be needed as the development moves towards an increased share of renewable primary energy sources in the electricity production. One part of the Smart Grid technology is the ability to shift loads in time, to adapt to either price or emissions, known as Demand Response. This project, which was conducted at KTH in collaboration with the consulting corporation Capgemini, examines the economic, environmental and social aspects of the Demand Response technology. In the project, three household products are used in a model that derives the potential savings in costs and emissions of CO2e. The results show that the actual savings measured in SEK are small, but that the savings measured in percent can be as high as 20 percent. Reduction of CO2e emissions is slightly lower.

The focus of this thesis is on what is considered to be a suitable foster home. For the study to be carried out an application had to be made to get access to the foster home assessments in a medium-sized municipality in Sweden. With the support of attachment theory and theory of standards different categories have been picked out and analyzed in foster home assessements that have been approved. The conclusion to what is considered to be a suitable foster home is a complex issue, as there are many factors that are interacting. Social workers seem to focus on the importance of a family?s ability to provide some kind of stability and security for a child who is considered to be placed within their home.

The objectives of this research were to determine whether the natural rattan resources in Sulawesi, Indonesia can cope with the strongly increased harvesting pressure that has occurred over the last centuries. I was furthermore looking for patterns in the rattan population dynamics that might give a hint on how the harvesting system could be improved to ensure a maximum sustainable yield. To answer these questions, I developed an individual-based model to analyse the dynamics of rattan growth in connection with rattan harvests by locals to identify sustainable levels of rattan harvests around villages in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Scenarios with different harvesting intensities were run to compare the change in harvest amount. For a given harvesting pressure, scenarios with a high number of harvesters and a low harvesting frequency had the same effect as scenarios with high harvesting frequencies and a low number of harvesters.

Through a case study, I wanted to find out what advantages and disadvantages local companies consider with scrum and what they think about its future. To find out what scrum is, I read the literature and scientific articles and then wrote surveys based on my thoughts. Further, I also wanted to find out if it?s possible to use scrum in a school environment and therefore I visited a high school class who used scrum in one of their projects. The result was good but could have been better as it requires more training of scrum to understand everything.

The main intention with this study was to explore how parents, employed in three Swedish small- and medium-sized companies, experienced their combination of work and parental leave. The investigation was carried out by a questionnaire, and the 21 participants estimated the attitude from and the treatment by mainly the management and the colleagues. The answers were analyzed both from a perspective of gender and in the aspect of high- and low utilizers of parental leave. The results showed that although both men and women generally estimated the attitude from the management and the colleagues towards parental leave to be positive, the parental leave was divided traditionally and unequally between the parents..

AbstractThe assignment were assigned by Camatec Industriteknik AB. Camatec is a Karlstadlocated consulting company, they make everything from pilot studies to complete projects in mechanical design and calculation. They even have their own patented product, Camcoil. It is a winder for steel strips and is used for example with hardening of the steel strip. The assignment has been to solve the problems encountered by some customers within this product.

The purpose of the study is to examine, describe and analyse how a selection of parents to children with Asperger syndrome understand, experience and cope with their parenthood. To attain this purpose we focused on these following questions;How does the respondents view their parenthood?; What kind of strategies does the respondents use to cope with their parenthood on the basis on their child with Asperger syndrome?; How does the respondents experience the mesosystem interact with them regarding situations contenting strenuous and stress?We chose to do a qualitative study by conducting separate interviews with eight parents to children with Asperger syndrome. Then we analyzed the answers using an abductive research, we tested the empirical data against our choice of theoretical perspectives. The results shows; that several of the parents in the study have experiences of high strenuous and stress in combination the several roles their parenthood contained.

This report discusses a method to detect divers in harbour environments usingpassive acoustic detection. The goal was to achieve as high detection as possiblewithout having too high false alarm rate. A short execution time was also desirable.By using the characteristic of an inhalation a band-pass filter was applied to the signalto improve the signal to noise ratio. After the filtering an energy estimation of thesignal was made. This energy estimation was later used in a frequency analysis, whichcould tell us if there were enough energy in the frequencies that correspond to adivers breathing frequency.

My essay deals with a problem in our society which, in my opinion, has been neglected. Even today in 2011, the quality of schools and preschools is extremely varied. This has been a problem for a long time and not nearly enough attention has been paid to it.In my essay I have tried to understand what it is that causes these differences in quality between preschools. With help from literature and research studies I have examined what quality in preschool really means.My starting point is an account of my own experience at the preschool where I currently work and a description of a study visit I made to another preschool which operates in a very different way to the one where I work. I wanted to investigate what the consequences are for children who grow up attending preschools of different quality.

In the light of new technology health care is now given the opportunity to form a more mobile way of working that would bring about potential gains in terms of efficiency and quality. On the other hand, a more mobile health care also requires a more generous handling of personal information, something that may raise issues in terms of privacy. This study shows that the privacy of the patient requires two things: (i) that the personal information of the patient is handled in a way that generates her an overall positive expected utility and that (ii) the negative expected utility that each risk of an information leakage causes is offset by the expected utility it also makes possible. The first requirement (i) is shown, in comparison with today?s way of working, to be met due to the potential gains in efficiency and quality in combination with no increase in the probability of informational leakage or negative effects of such a leakage. The second requirement (ii) was also considered met since no separate risks of information leakage could be identified that was not offset by the gains it made possible in terms of expected utility..

In the year of 2011, the new CEO of AB Volvo announced a major reorganization. This reorganization was a contributing factor to the start-up of this thesis.Volvo Group Logistics Services (VGLS) is Volvo Group?s global logistics partner, which designs, manages and optimizes all of the group's incoming and outgoing logistics flows. With the reorganization, VGLS started a project regarding responsibilities around railway flows. Within the project a demand to collect logistics requirements occurred.

Abstract: Elite soccer in combination with education is a unique and demanding task. The path towards a glory career in sports takes hard mental and physical training. The objectives in this study are 6 elite focused high school students studying high school education programs in combination with football profile. They are 3 of each gender. The purpose of the study was to find out more about their perspective of motivation and what makes them keep going towards a career in football in beside their education.The study is of empiric hermeneutic survey used qualitative method and interviewing to collect data.

The Multispectral Canopy Reflectance Model (MCRM) by Kuusk (1995) has beenused to simulate the reflectance of a sugarbeet canopy. The simulated reflectancevalues show high absorptance in the VIS area, compared to field measurements, andhigh reflectance values in the NIR area. The errors may be due to overestimation ofclorophyll content in the sugarbeet leaves and scattered light during fieldmeasurements. The estimation of the clorophyll content where carried out using thePROSPECT-model by Jacquemoud & Baret (1990).During the vegetation period, the state of the canopy moves towards a closed canopy,with sparse vegetation in spring. The MCRM-model was used to perform a ?spring?simulation, which was compared to the original simulation.

Denna kvalitativa intervjustudie fokuserar etablering av delat ledarskap inom offentlig sektor. Syftet är att belysa varför delat ledarskap uppkommer som en alternativ ledningsform.Förutom beslutsfattares medvetna val och motiveringar försöker studien även fånga underliggande bevekelsegrunder samt identifiera eventuellt andra faktorer som kan påverka uppkomsten av ledningsformen.En komplex bild av faktorer såsom faktisk situation, organisationens normer, förutsättningar och omgivningar liksom de individer som befolkar den, påverkar uppkomsten av ledningsformen.Tilltron till ledningsformens potential är stor och farhågor tonas ner. Ledningsformen ses kunna tillföra organisationen synergieffekter och symboliska mervärden och ses som en lösning på olika problem där den erbjuder ett alternativ. En öppen inställning till att pröva nya ledningsformer, pragmatiskt förhållningssätt liksom enskilda individers arbetsrelaterade egenintressen påverkar också uppkomsten av ledningsformen. .

Because social media is personal and reaches users directly, it has become an important means of communication for companies trying to reach out to their audience (Nygren & Wadbring, 2013). Especially the possibility of interactivity has been discussed as social media's big advantage. But how much two-way communication is actually possible on social media? This is a quantitative study that focuses on how Swedish Facebook users in the ages of 16-25 interact with companies on the social network. The aim was to contribute with increased information and knowledge about how the users mentioned above interact with the companies as well as how the users perceive the companies communication and presence on Facebook.