In a time of economic turmoil and financial crisis profitability matters rise Higher and Higher on company agendas. Many companies are pressured to find profitability to avoid layoffs or even bankruptcy. Profitability essentially depends on the margin on the product or service sold and the costs associated with selling these products or services and hence these areas are of vital importance if companies are to improve profitability. Previous research has focused, for the most part, on product profitability while customer profitability has received less attention. This study is based on a case study of a Swedish publishing house and aims to investigate how the company?s Cost-to-Serve varies between its distribution channels.

User education is an important aspect of university libraries' service to its users. This Masters' Thesis is about online user education. The aim of this study is to analyse five Swedish online user courses in relation to information literacy and learning theory. The web-sites were explored through textual analyses to find how concepts of information literacy and learning theory are expressed. The theoretical framework is based on Carol C Kuhlthau's three levels of user education, Paul Ramsden's three theories of teaching in Higher education and Christine Bruce's different aspects of information literacy.

Dead wood is important for many species. The amount of coarse dead wood (diameter >10 cm) is much lower in managed forest than in unmanaged forests. Stumps constitute the largest proportion of the volume of coarse dead wood in managed forests. Since stump harvest for biofuel may increase, the amount of dead wood will decrease even more, which may threaten biodiversity. The first aim of this study was to compare the amounts of fine woody debris (FWD, .

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.

This study examines the connection between social capital and urban and rural areas. The study divides the environments into two categories; metropolises and rural areas. Metropolises are defined as any of Swedens largest cities Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö. The study also examines if there is a difference between these groups in how high social trust they have to people living in the same areas as themselves versus people who live in other areas. The studie also focuses on the urbanization that the world is going through, where people move from rural areas into the cities for work and education.

Women all over the world have been victims for oppression during a long period of time. One main thing they were excluded from was the possibility to educate themselves. Fortunately, the situation is different today and studies shows that there are more women applying for Higher-education than men, at least in Sweden. What motivates them is unknown, but according to the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, it is always something in one?s social environment.The aim of this thesis was to examine how five female students have been motivated to apply for university and college educations, despite the fact that they are from non-academic families.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a correlation between birth order, academic performance and need for achievement. 166 students from Alvesta Gymnasium/ High school and Växjö Fria Gymnasium/ High school participated in the study. The result showed a significant correlation between birth order and study result, but unlike previous studies this study showed that it was the youngest siblings that had the best academic performance. Furthermore, a significant correlation between academic performance and need for achievement was found, also that Higher need for achievement results in Higher academic performance. The study also showed that there is a significant correlation between birth order and need for achievement, and it is the youngest children that have the highest need for achievement.

Abstract: The fashion industry is perhaps the most unpredictable one where change occurs very rapidly. In order to be attractive and interesting in this competitive industry, a brand must constantly be up to date and differentiated from other brands to attract the consumers. This has given rise to an increasing growth of brands that cooperate for marketing reasons and more specifically, clothing retailers that perform designer collaborations with exclusive designers to create limited collections.Studies describing the effects of those collaborations on the retailers brands are rare and especially from a consumer perspective. Since H&M has been a pioneer in designer collaborations and has done it more times and for more years than any other retailer we have conducted our study on their case. Our intention was to investigate how the designer collaborations have affected the brand equity and image of H&M, if the collaborations have increased the willingness to pay for H&M's other ranges and if they have affected H&M's ability to extend its brand to Higher price segments, through an experimental study.

This study examines the connection between social capital and involvement within voluntary associations; involvement is defined either as being a member in an association or a member who has some kind of assignment in an association. The study also examines if there is a difference between two social economic groups regarding the attainment and transformation of social capital through being involved in a voluntary association.Social capital is defined as social trust and the willingness of collective action.The result of the research shows there is a slight connection between the involvement in voluntary associations and social capital. It shows that people who are members of a voluntary association often have Higher social capital than those who are not members of any voluntary association at all. The study also shows that there is a difference in attainment of social capital between those who have some kind of assignment in a voluntary association and general members.When studying social capital and involvement in voluntary associations it is also of interest to take social class into the analysis, because the study shows that people with a lower education had increased social capital when they were members in an association compared to the members with a Higher education..

The grain market is facing substantial changes. Tradionally, cereal has been a supply-led market i.e. supply conditions have had a major impact on price level or indirectly, through market interventions implemented through the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). Just a few years ago, Sweden and the EU were not affected so strongly by world market prices for cereals. EU was a surplus-area and to a substantial degree a local market.

Children are a group of patients that require special knowledge from the anesthesia staff, both general and specific. Theoretical knowledge and practical experience is necessary to adequately care for the child as it anatomically, physiologically and mentally may differ from adult patients.A growing problem in the pediatric population is overweight and obesity. From a stagnation in the early 2000s the prevalence of overweight and obesity among children in the world are again increasing.The purpose of this study was to examine peri-operative care of overweight and obese children.Systematic searches were done in PubMed, CINAHL and Scopus. After the quality audit according to SBU, twelve articles were included for analysis.Results suggest that overweight and obese children have a Higher risk of respiratory peri-operative complications. The risk of hospital admission after outpatient surgery was also greater in this group as well as Higher costs for health care.Overweight and obese children are complex subjects with more frequent peri-operative risk factors than normal-weight children.

In an effort to evaluate the effects of restorations of float ways on population density of stream dwelling fish in relation to the changes in habitat, I studied the physical habitat restored and channalized sites and their population density of brown trout (Salmo trutta L.) in three streams in the municipality of Sorsele. The differences between the channalized and the restored sites where most noticeable regarding substrate which where generally coarser in the restored sites. The analyses showed that the proportion of habitat that where suitable to the age class 0+ where significantly lower in the restored sites compared to the channalized sites. Regarding age class ?2+, no statistical differences in habitat quality were found.

This study was conducted at VikingGenetics' bull breeding station in Falkenberg, Sweden. The bulls waiting for the results of their progeny testing at this station are either kept in group housing or individual housing. Since both of these housing systems have advantages and disadvantages, it was in the interest of VikingGenetics to know which of these housing systems is the best. The aim of this study was to investigate the welfare of the bulls in these two housing systems through behavioural observations and the use of activity monitors. In the preparations for the study 16 bulls, 8 in each housing system, were chosen.

The purpose was to investigate whether using two type of interventions (i.e., Four rooms of change in school and EQ- workshop) in addition to curriculum guidelines can affect character development in children 10-12 years of age. The data was collected using the test Junior Temperament and Character Inventory (J-TCI; Cloninger, CR, 1994) in three elementary schools among students in fifth grade who had been involved in any of the two interventions for the past two years or no intervention at all.The J-TCI scales were used to, besides the seven personality dimension it measures, create a self-constructed empathy scale. A total of 55 participants were included in the study (girls n = 26 and boys n = 29). Statistical testing with MANOVA showed no significant main effect on empathy or any personality trait. There was however an interaction effect between intervention and gender on the character traits.

The aim of this study was to investigate the intraoperative surgical stress response in dogs undergoing ovariohysterectomy and to compare acepromazine and medetomidine as premedications. 15 dogs diagnosed with pyometra were used in this study. Blood pressure and heart rate were used as parameters to measure surgical stress response. The surgery was divided into four phases. Phase 0 was the period 10 minutes before the skin incision, phase 1 was skin incision and opening of abdomen, phase 2 was manipulation of uterine horns, ligation and transection of mesovarium and phase 3 was ligation of cervix, removal of organs and closing the abdomen. The results showed that phase 2 was the most intense phase of surgical stress, regardless of which premedication the dogs received. When acepromazine and medetomidine were compared the results showed that within phase 3, all dogs that were given medetomidine had Higher blood pressure compared to dogs that were given acepromazine. The dogs that were given acepromazine had Higher heart rate than the dogs that were given medetomidine in phase 0, phase 2 and phase 3. .