ABSTRACTThe discussions about energy use have increased year by year everywhere in the society, and so also in the healthcare sector. But what is actually energy use in a hospital facility, and what affects it?The typical way today to express the energy use is in kWh/m2. The problem with a key performance indicator that is expressed as energy use in relation to a specific area is that it does not take into account the activity in the building. Even though the activity to a very high extent affects the energy use.

Swedish students' knowledge of both mathematics and reading comprehension has deteriorated in recent years. Scientists are discussing whether there is a connection between these areas and that the pupils deteriorating math skills may have something to do with their increasingly lower results in terms of reading comprehension. To investigate this possible connection, I conducted a survey among students in ninth grade and have come to the conclusion that the scientists are right: this connection absolutely exist. Students who received a high score on tasks designed to test students' mathematical problem-solving skills, also received high results on the reading comprehension test. And students who received a poor performance on the problem-solving tasks, were also low performers in the reading comprehension test.

In today?s society computers are getting a much more important role. To get a computer to work as intended it has to be programmed. A computer program is written with programming languages. There is an abundance of programming languages available today and there are many differences and similarities between them.

Clustered Columnstore Indexes (CCI) and In-Memory Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) are two new techniques that were introduced with Microsoft?s new database management system SQL Server 2014.The thesis analyzes these two techniques, describes the theory behind them and also the background information that needs to be known to understand more of the new techniques. Performance tests of the new techniques have been performed to see how much faster response time we can get and less storage we need to use where the result is represented by performance diagrams and a compression diagram. This thesis is a cooperative work with a company called Trimma and the result is used as support to decide if these new techniques could be of advantage for the company.The test consists of five test queries with different purposes. The result is illustrated by diagrams that show the result and another diagram that shows how much the data gets compressed with the different techniques.

Abstract 1.The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects whole body vibrations on maximal strength, power output and neuromuscular activity in m. pectoralis major during bench press.Participants consisted of 35 male and 9 female military high school students (m=23, 1 years). On the basis of initial maximal performances in bench press the participants was divided into two experiments groups and one control group. Intervention groups performed a specifically designed push up program on a vibrating plate respectively a step board during 12 weeks Initial load at 60 % of 1 RM showed an average of 46, 5 kg. All groups showed an average increase of 13 kg for each person after 12 weeks.

With new energy directives in place, the Swedish Social Service (SSS) stands beforethe challenge how to reduce the energy demand in its locales. It is a complex matter,as the locales are rented from various property owners and it becomes a question ofhow to reduce the operational electricity and influence the property owners to workmore with energy efficiency. This thesis takes a balanced research approach in threeparts. Firstly a qualitative part in form of interviews with personnel at the SSS and itsproperty owners, secondly a quantitative part of descriptive nature in form of energystatistics and thirdly a literature review of Energy Management (EM) Supply ChainManagement(SCM), Green Supply Chain Management(GSCM) and EnviromentalPerformance Indicators (EPI). This in order to be able to give normativerecommendations of how the SSS should act to reduce its energy consumption in itslocales and provide new insights on how EM, SCM, GSCM and EPI can be applied ineffect.

The high debt levels experienced in European Countries have lead to academic interest in the deficit bias -the tendency for governments to run budget deficits and accumulate debt. In part one of this thesis a surveyof the economic literature on the origins and solutions to the deficit bias are conducted. The proposedinstitutional solution to the deficit bias in the form of Fiscal Policy Councils (FPC) are outlined and existingEuropean FPCs presented. Based on the works of Calmfors and Wren-Lewis (2011) the EuropeanCommission (EC) is defined as an FPC. Based on this survey, two hypothesis are formulated: (1) theforecasts of future macro-economic events and fiscal performance will differ between the national FPCs andthe national government.

Energiutvecklingsprojekt är idag mer aktuella än någonsin. För att kunna genomföra så stora projekt som hela fastighetsbestånd, och samtidigt ta hänsyn till lagen om offentlig upphandling har affärsmodellen EPC, Energy Performance Contracting, utvecklats. I samarbete med SIEMENS AB Building Technologies har jag tittat på hur man kan garantera en viss nivå på besparingarna som genomförs. Denna garanterade besparing beräknas mot en uppställd baslinje, som är en beräkning av hur energianvändningsmönstret skulle ha sett ut med dagens förutsättningar om inga förändringar gjorts. Modellen med regression är noggrann och hjälper till att identifiera avvikande användningsmönster..

E.ON Elnät has in their project Operational Performance developed a priority tool forconstruction and operation. The tool will help the users to increase the capability to prioritybetween new development projects and removal of faults. The tool can be seen as a measuringfor different bay?s reliability, size and the community usefulness. The result of the priority isdirectly connected to which calibration that is chosen in the tool.The priority tool is still under development and there is therefore an uncertainty about howsensitive the tool is for changes in the calibration.

Soft rubber flooring have gained in popularity over the last years. Rubber flooring al-lows cow to move more freely without slipping and improves claw and leg health. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of a stepwise introduktion of soft flooring on cow`s placement in cow houses with robotic milking. A case study was carried out in a herd in northern Sweden with 41 cows. Observations were made every 15 minutes between 09.00 and 16.00 concering cow placement in cu-bicles, in cubicle alley, in feeding alley and in feeding alley with the head through feed-ing gate. One observation period was carried out per flooring alternativ: 1) all concrete slatted floor, 2) rubber slatted floor in feeding alley and concrete slatted floor in cubicle alley and 3) rubber slatted floors in feeding alley and solid rubber floors in cubicle alley. The study showed that 6 %-units fewer cows lay in the cubicles when the feeding alley surface was slatted rubber.

Man spends most part of the day at work and is therefore influenced by it?s ambience. That?s why it?s important that the environment at work is health promoting and can function as a supportive environment. The purpose of this study was to describe job satisfaction among employees and to analyse a possible connection between job satisfaction and employees experiences of SOC.

Many companies have historically forced their interests through without any thoughts about the future needs of the humans and the society. In the last few years voices have been raised for a change, companies need to take their responsibility regarding sustainable development.The purpose of the report is to describe and explain possible relations between sustainabil-ity performance of companies and profitability, valuation, industry and size respectively.To be able to judge the sustainability performance of the companies Folksam (2006a) have been used. This is a solid investigation of the companies listed on the A- and O-lists of the Stockholm Stock Exchange by the end of 2005. The sustainability marks have been com-pared with the chosen key values for each hypothesis respectively. With this quantitative data as foundation, a quantitative approach and a deductive method have been used.In the first area of the investigation, profitability, the authors found correlation for the main hypothesis between sustainability performance and ?Return on Total Assets? through a statistical test.

To render outdoor scenes with lots of vegetation in real time is a big challenge. This problem has important applications in the areas of visualization and simulation. Some progress has been made the last years, but a previously unsolved difficulty has been to combine high rendering quality with abundant variation in scenes. I present a method to mathematically generate and render vegetation in real time, with implementation in the scene graph Gizmo3D. The most important quality of the method is its ability to render scenes with many unique specimens with very low aliasing.

When constructing a building, a number of aspects must be harmonized in order for it to fulfill requirements ? a building must fulfill requirements such a load-bearing, conservation of energy and a good indoor environment by means of, among other things, moisture proofing .Moisture problems in buildings can affect health negatively. As we are increasingly staying in indoors, demands on a good indoor environment are higher.This work starts with examining moisture problems in slab-on-ground solutions, and then links the various scenarios to moisture problems in a concrete slab of a real building. The building with moisture problems is located in Årby by in Borlänge and moisture damage was found in the slab at an apartment adjoining wall.By reviewing literature written within the field of moisture problem, making hand calculations and modeling in the program Comsol Multiphysics, judgments are made to find explanations as to why the rise of moisture occurred in the building in Årby by.Generally, the following guidelines may be used to reduce the risk of moisture problems in slab-on-ground constructions:Drying of construction moisture before laying the floor material.Using draining layer beneath the slab, to prevent capillary suction.Using insulation under the slab, partly for comfort and to establish the temperature difference between the ground and the concrete slab.Avoid direct contact between the wood and concrete, due to degradation and fouling smells that normally occurs.If necessary, use additional vapor barrier.In addition to the above, there are various methods for moisture-proof and moisture-monitoring by design or by the method ByggaF suited for the entire construction process various events..

This thesis work involves a quantitative study concerning secondary school students' understanding of older Swedish words in the lyrics in the Lucia song written by Elmfors way back in 1919th. The text has some old words and phrases that today's high school students do not really understand. The study includes surveys of two different classes in high school, a theoretical and a practical program. In some cases students can understand words by the context, but previous research shows results in general weakness in students' existing vocabulary. According to previous research, this is due, inter alia, that young people read and write less today.The results of all students are totally 38%, where the theoretical program has a slightly higher performance.