As most developed countries Norway has an ageing population meaning that the number of pensioners is predicted to grow rapidly over the coming years. As a consequence the Norwegian pension system will not be able to provide for these future pensioners. Meanwhile, a rising number of early retirees and disability pension claimants is diminishing the real retirement age. Also the individual pension amount is growing while the pension system itself reaches maturity. In short, major reforms are needed in the Norwegian pension system.

The purpose of this thesis is to test whether firms have target capital structure, and if so with what speed they adjust toward this target. Findings that support this purpose are also in line with the trade off theory. One of the key elements of this thesis is the method used, which successfully enables fulfilling the purpose. The panel data method captures the data characteristics of the cross sectional and time series dimension. By using this approach the dynamic effects of capital structure can be studied, thus if there actually is an adjustment towards a target the speed can be estimated.

This study investigated whether in-situ audiometry, delivered via hearing aids, is a better option as a basis forprescribing hearing aid amplification, compared to conventional audiometry. By examining the real ear insertgain (REIG) in 29 ears (18 subjects), that had been fitted with a hearing aid programmed using both conventionalaudiometry and in-situ audiometry, the study looked at whether in-situ audiometry based prescription is closer tothe NAL NL1's fitting target than audiogram based prescription. The hearing aid Siemens Pure 7mi with speakerunit M was used on all participants. The results showed how in-situ audiometry based gain at certain frequenciesis more consistent with the target curve, especially at 1000, 1500, 2000 and 4000 Hz. It was not establishedwhether the findings of the study were statistically significant.

This report evaluates whether an interpreted high-level garbage collected language has enough information about its memory behaviour to make better cache decisions than modern general CPU hardware.With a generational garbage collector, depending on promotion algorithm and generation size, around 90% of all objects never leave the first generation. This report is based on the hypothesis that, because of the low promotion rate, accesses to higher generations are sufficiently rare not to benefit from caching.To test this hypothesis, we built an operating system with a Scheme interpreter in kernel mode, where the interpreter controls the cache. Generic x86 PC hardware was used, since it allows fine-grained control of cache decisions.Measurements of execution time in this interpreter show that disabling the cache for generations higher than the first does not give any performance gain, but rather a performance loss of up to 50%.We conclude that this interpreter design is not an improvement, but cannot conclude that the hypothesis is false in general. We suggest building a better CPU simulator to gather more data from which to make better caching decisions, moving internal interpreter data structures into the garbage collected heap and modifying the hardware to allow control in the currently rigid dimension of where data is cached---for example separate control of instruction and data caches and separate data caches for different areas of memory..

    AbstractThe aim of the study was to describe factors of nurse?s experiences when they give NIV treatment to patients with acute respiratory failure in a lung department. Semi structured interview questions about how nurses experience to give NIV treatment on a ordinary lung department was done on 10 nurses, who work in a lung department were NIV treatment is given. Data were analyzed with content analysis. In the result there was shown two themes.

With this study we aim to learn more about the relationship between digitalization and the swedish church. We have interviewed two priests and two other persons ? one who got married about five years ago, and one who, at the time of writing, is getting married in a few weeks. In addition to the interviews we found some earlier research that were relevant to us, which we read and compared to the empirics we got from the interviews. In our study we have taken qualitative research into practice since we want our interviewees to really share their points of view on the organisation?s usage of digital media.

This essay deals with the question of lines of development within the politics in the rural municipality of Nyed 1950-1962. The aim is to explore how local politics and policies were handled from two perspectives. Firstly the issue of conflict and consensus or majority rule and consensus. Here Arend Lijphard's theory of majority and consensus provides a theoretical base for the essay. Secondly the aim is to explore the actions of the local politicians with regards to leisure time policies to find out whether or not they ideologically belonged to the concept of ?folkhemmets kommun? by Ulla Ekström von Essen.The source material for this essay has been the minutes from the two major bodies of local politics in Nyed, kommunalfullmäktige and kommunalnämnden.

Denna studie har haft som syfte att belysa ledarskapet i grundskolan avseende den studie- och yrkesorienterande verksamheten samt förhållandet mellan ledarskap, personalens engagemang och verksamhetens resultat. Avsikten har bland annat varit att synliggöra om skolorna har ett reellt ledarskap avseende verksamheten eller inte. Bedömningsgrunderna för ett reellt ledarskap har inspirerats av den transformativa ledarskapsteorin. Studien baseras på enkätsvar från 107 yrkesverksamma studie- och yrkesvägledare i Stockholms, Skånes och Västerbottens län. Resultatet visar att den stora majoriteten skolor saknar ett reellt ledarskap avseende verksamhetsområdet samtidigt som flera studie- och yrkesvägledare säger sig vilja inta en ledande funktion för detta.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate the reasons for public libraries to have story-time today and also the reasons for story-time at the public library historically in Sweden. Why is the phenomenon of story-time still existing at public libraries today? The study is based on a questionnaire that was sent to childrens librarians in the Västra Götaland region. The material collected in this questionnaire was put together and resulted in six different categories showing the libraries purposes and thoughts of their story-time activities. The categories were: cultural heritage/tradition, joy of reading, language and imagination, library visits, storytelling and mutual experience.

This thesis will show you how to build and construct a interactive website with a web shop and a web based administration system. The website is developed for a company called Varett. Varett will use the website to reach out for a larger group of customers and also for promoting new products. I have develop this site mainly using ASP, MS Access and HTML. I have also developed a graphic profile for the company to use at the homepage and at other commercial products.

The purpose has been to, by the means of literature studies and conversation, give landscape architects, teachers or other interested people an increased understanding of school gardens as a phenomenon. One episode in the essay describes school garden?s historical background and how its ideology has changed as the society has developed. A conversation with a spokesperson for Södermalmsskolan in Stockholm, depict how a communal public school handles the management of a school garden today. I have also wanted to present the conditions that society and the schools organisation has put on the management of the garden on this particular school. In the year of 2007 Södermalmsskolan got the opportunity to found its school garden thanks to the environmental campaigns that were realized by the city of Stockholm.

Thesis purpose The study aims to examine the effects vertical and horizontal line extensions might have on the total parent brand equity in terms of strength and its baseline product regarding of market share, loyalty and penetration under an elapsed period of time. The study aims to investigate a number of actual conducted line extensions effect on the above mentioned aspects of Kellers (1993) definition of brand strength as a part of the total brand equity. Methodology The effect of a number of line extensions of the parent brands and the baseline products is being examined in terms of market share, loyalty rate, cannibalization and market penetration. The thesis is focused on the correlations between these different parameters during a certain elapsed time ratio in order to test our theoretically routed hypothesizes in a deductive manner. Occasional correlations are derived from an indexation of data collected from the Gfk database. Theoretical perspective The study is derived from Kapferers (2004) definition of brand equity, where he is dividing the concept into three parts. This study is focused on Brand strength in particular, which is one of the parameters in the above-mentioned theory.

Problem areaAlfa Laval is a world leading company in the heat transfers area and have the vision to continue to be that in the future as well. The company has a lot of press lines where the utilization is high and also has started to become old. Prognosis shows that there is an increased demand of heat exchanger in the future. This increased demand is not something that existing lines will manage. To build new lines cost a lot of money and take time so it is essential that new lines are correct from the start and not need to be rebuilt or a lot of time spent to trim it.GoalThe goal is to achieve 100% theoretical utilization of the press (the press shall press the amount of plates it is designed for).

 Extra high requirements are made on all systems in health care that they are functional and usable,´something, however, that is not always the case. At Emergency Admissions at Sahlgrenska University´Hospital many systems are in use at the same time and it happens that much overhead is caused by having to fill in the same information in different places. In addition, data that is gathered is to a large extent saved in free text format, which means that it cannot be used in a larger context such as research, quality control or for decision support. Data is saved in the patient file only for the treatment process of the individual patient.A data collecting system with decision support functionality could be a first step towards reducing Emergency Admissions? costs and patients? waiting times by providing a structured method of data collection.

The purpose of this study was to examine if women's career was affected by becoming a mother after 35 years old. It was also our intention to discover if it was an intentional or an unintentional choice to postpone giving birth just for the sake of the career. We have read articles that are implying that women´s career possibilities, combined with children, is difficult and of current interest in today's society. Science has shown that it no longer appears to be women's main life objective to give birth but they now also wants a career. We wanted to shed some light on the subject from two different angles, so we looked both from the women's perspective and from the employer's perspective.