ABSTRACT Introduction: This study is based on Aantonovskys SOC-theory; Sense of Coherence. SOC can be described as a theory which describes how a person experience her existence and the theory is based on three key expressions; comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness. Aim: The aim of the study is to examine a group of elderly (>80 years) men and women who live alone to investigate how many percent of the group that estimate a high value of SOC. The study aims to investigate which factors contribute to the fact that a person achieve a high value of SOC and increase the understanding about how these factors concretely can appear in a persons life. Methods: Questionnaire (SOC scale) and Interviews.

Sustainability reports have during the last decade had a strong development. Both in terms of establishing a sustainability assurance, in its form, and get it assured together with standards, principles and regulations which organisations and accountants have utilized. The growth of sustainability reports and the choice of getting them assured have in particular favoured the accounting business. Due to this result, some critics have voiced that assuring a sustainability report gain accounting firms more than it gains the actual organisation. Other say that it is necessary in order to increase the credibility and the eligibility of the report, while it also has become a requirement from stakeholders.

The goal for this thesis work was to develop Business Intelligence (BI) for an IT consultant company.LexiConsult is an IT consultant company in the Lexicon-group which offers expertise within Office (templates, database, spreadsheets, Outlook etc.) but also SharePoint development and services like support, documentation etcetera.We have investigated the functionality in SharePoint and MS SQL Server and have also evaluated which possibilities these platforms offer in terms of creating a BI-solution for LexiConsults needs. SharePoint offers a variety of different tools and services for BI but none of these where available in the Office365-version which LexiConsult uses. Another solution was therefore suggested where the reports should be published on a web hosting company.We have also studied critical success factors when implementing BI in an IT consulting company.The result is a set of BI-reports developed for SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), which the staff of LexiConsult can access via their SharePoint site.The reports are designed for monitoring and analysis of the economy with e.g. key performance indicators, drill-down of the revenue in different aspects such as by time period, per employee, per customer etcetera. The reports provides vital knowledge that can be used for decision support, e.g.

This bachelor thesis examines the relation between countries? degree of economic freedom and their economic performance. Economic freedom as a concept is defined as the degree of market economy within a nation.The variable of measure that is used is the Frasier institute Economic freedom of the world index (EFI). The paper is built upon the Solow growth model and is extended by incorporation of additional variables; among which of course economic freedom. The study is performed through regression analysis, based on the neoclassical model both on rich countries, poor countries and on all investigated countries.Two investigations are performed: i) the impact from economic freedom on countries level of GDP per capita and ii) the impact from economic freedom on the growth rate in GDP per capita.The finding is that economic freedom can be seen as a relevant determinant of differences in GDP per capita growth rates between nations.

One of the biggest changes which have affected businesses during the last ten years is the accelerating speed at which Internet technology and e-commerce has developed. If Internet earlier was used in the purpose to entertain it is now accepted as an essential business tool and companies are investing more of its resources in e-commerce activities. Everyone ?has to be on the net? today but that implies a challenge in matching e-solutions to the company?s business goals. It is necessary to have clear goals, carry out research and plan a strategy in order to operate an optimal e-commerce website for the company?s needs.The purpose with this dissertation was to see how well companies adjust to new demands in the rapidly changing e-environment.

In connection with the property crises in many countries, caused by the financial crises, people are now more aware of the risks involved in poor property-investments. The unusually cold winters along with extreme prices of electricity in Sweden in recent years has also contributed to increased interest in energy-efficient buildings.The process of developing a modern family home in Kiruna, Sweden is presented the first part of this paper. The house has been designed to withstand very high stresses from snow, low energy consumption as well as a high standard of living comfort. Aspects of the house covered here involves everything from construction, heating and ventilation to sanitation. Each of these areas is presented based on their underlying, scientific methods or theories.

AimThe purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-perceived health and level of physical activity among the staff at The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences (GIH). We focused on the following questions:How does the amount of physical activity affect the self-perceived health among the staff at GIH?  Are there any gender differences in self-perceived health following the amount of physical activity? Do the self-perceived health and the amount of physical activity differ between the various age groups? Are there any differences between the staff responsible for health education compared with the other staff?MethodWe chose a validated questionnaire for our study. It was a combination of two already previously validated questionnaires together with our own supplementary background questions. The questionnaire was presented to 96 respondents and we received 76 answers.

The ability to detect protein-based biomarkers, which are linked to different diseases like colorectal cancer, is very important as a diagnostic tool. Usually complex biological samples like blood are studied which will contribute to different technical issues when performing an assay. The aim with the project is to optimize and develop the high throughput protein detection technique Proximity Extension Assay, PEA, into a 96-plex panel, in hopes of discovering an expression profile for colorectal cancer. PEA was developed by Olink Bioscience and allows specific proteins in a sample to be quantitatively transformed into nucleic acid sequences that are subsequently detected and quantified with real-time PCR. Two proximity probes containing oligonucleotide sequences bind pairwise to target protein and when brought in proximity, a DNA polymerase will extend a hybridization arm from one probe over to the second forming a double-stranded DNA sequence that can serve as a template in real-time PCR.

The objective of this study is to examine the sustainability of recovering industrial wasteheat from several heat sources in a foundry constructed in a plant belonging to ITT Waterand Wastewater in Emmaboda, Sweden. A triple bottom line perspective will be appliedto achieve this objective. The triple bottom line approach takes into account ecologicaland social performance in addition to financial performance. The technology forrecovering the waste heat is a Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES) which is aconstruction consisting of 140 vertical boreholes, 150 meters deep with an internal spaceof four meters.The calculated amount of energy for storage is approximately 3800 MWh annually. Ofthis amount 2500 MWh are expected to be utilized, while storage losses accounts for theremaining part.

As a result of global competition, companies within the automotive industry are required to improve their production systems to achieve sustainable and competitive production. To attain operational excellence, companies have adopted concepts like lean and World Class Manufacturing (WCM).In order to deliver, companies need to increase the availability and reliability of production equipment. This demands focus on both operational and strategic maintenance, and efficient equipment acquisition and management. The main objective of this thesis is to identify processes and success factors that are necessary for improved maintenance performance. By conducting a case study and by performing a literature review, the following has been studied: 1) how companies within the automotive industry work with maintenance and maintenance strategies, 2) implementation of maintenance strategies, and 3) new acquisition and spare parts management for maintenance. The results show that basic maintenance concepts and related terms are well defined in the literature.

This thesis has been developed inassociation with Strängbetong AB, Sweden.A few years backCementa AB introduced a new type of cement on the Swedish market: Byggcement,which is a Portland Limestone Cement. This type of cement is better for theenvironment and cheaper than Rapid Hardening Cement which is used today at SträngbetongAB.Strängbetong AB isvery interested in a change of cement in the factory and wants to know what ittakes to make a transition from Rapid Hardening Cement to Byggcement.This final projectaims at investigating how the workability and strength development are affectedby a transition from the existing cement to Byggcement and how we can change theproperties of the concrete by adding different types of superplasticizers. Laboratory and factoryexperiments were made, to investigate the transition..

The purpose of this study is to map out and to analyze the spatial variation of female representation at the national level in established democracies. The aim is also to explain the variation in the female representation. The main questions that the paper tries to answer are:1.How does women representation in established democratic parliaments vary?2.Why does women representation in established democratic parliaments vary?This study is a comparative and statistic study, i.e. a study that includes a bigger number of countries and where quantitative analysis methods are used in order to achieve comparative analyses.

In Sweden plans to build high speed railways have been around since the early 1990s and the planshave developed to be more precised since. The future Swedish high-speed rail network is supposedto consist of two lines. Götalandsbanan; from Stockholm to Gothenburg, and Europabanan fromJönköping through the Öresund Region to Hamburg.The description of the aim to build high-speed railways in Sweden has in former reports always beento achieve rapid passenger traffic between big Scandinavian cities and Europe. There are almostnothing mentioned about the possibilities of high-speed transports of cargo on these railways. Thisstudy aims to clarify the freight transport market for Götalandsbanan and Europabanan.Today there is only one transport system with high-speed freight trains.

This study aimed to explore how 31 collage students' cognitive performance and their ability to create false memories were affected by the exposure of an extraneous background noise. The studies main hypotheses were based on previous research on how extraneous noise affect the cognitive ability and the creation of false memories: 1) that an extraneous background noise increases the ability to create false memories, 2) that an extraneous background noise impairs the learning of cognitive information, 3) that an extraneous background noise contributes to an increased representation of fictional words, 4) that an extraneous background noise impedes the ability to understand speech . The results showed a tendency in which false memories increased in the condition without background noise, a result which goes in the opposite direction of the hypothesis. Furthermore, the result supported the hypothesis that the extraneous background noise impairs the learning of cognitive information. The results also showed that there was no effect between the conditions regarding the representation of fictional information.

Green public procurement (GPP) can be used as an instrument to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and consideration of environmental aspects within public procurement is becoming more common in Sweden and internationally. Two product groups that have been pointed out as especially important are transports and electricity, where the opportunities for public purchasers to reduce emissions are relatively large. This paper studies GPP which aims at reducing emissions, primarily of carbon dioxide, through environmental requirements within these two product groups. A theoretical analysis of cost-effectiveness, transaction costs and effects on technological development is performed, followed by a closer study of how these aspects appear in practice within GPP. The results indicate that a cost-effective allocation of reductions between the two product groups is most likely to be attained if the main part of emission reduction is achieved through environmental requirements on electricity. The cost for emission reduction within transports is relatively high, especially for heavy transports. For transportation services, more generally focused requirements on emission reductions could probably give greater environmental gains, but the existence of transaction costs steer the environmental requirements towards more technology specific types.