AbstractWork to develop the Eurocodes started in 1975 by the European Commission adopted a program to eliminate trade barriers within the construction area. The goal was to create common European design standards that would replace the member countries' own rules. Eurocodes will replace The National Board of Housing Building and Planning, National Rail, The National Road Administration and other agencies' calculation rules for the buildings structures. The transition to the use of Eurocodes looks like this:Eurocodes set to Swedish standards  between 2002 ? 2007They can be used parallel with national standards 2006 - 2009 The total transition is at the end of 2010/2011.Right now is going on a lot of work for replacement of the existing standards to Eurocodes.  The transition to the new calculations` standards, many construction companies and consulting firms facing a big changes and competitions.

In the middle of Australia there is a city called Alice Springs. The city has one of the highest amounts of daily sunshine hours and sun irradiation in the world. The Australian Government runs a project called Solar Cities, and Alice Springs is one of the participators. The main part of the goal with the Solar Cities project is to increase the amount of electricity generated by solar power and by doing that lower the impact on the environment. This thesis examines the possibilities for construction of a large scale solar power plant in Alice Springs. This is done to determine the potential of creating a more sustainable energy system in the city.

In the middle of Australia there is a city called Alice Springs. The city has one of the highest amounts of daily sunshine hours and sun irradiation in the world. The Australian Government runs a project called Solar Cities, and Alice Springs is one of the participators. The main part of the goal with the Solar Cities project is to increase the amount of electricity generated by solar power and by doing that lower the impact on the environment. This thesis examines the possibilities for construction of a large scale solar power plant in Alice Springs. This is done to determine the potential of creating a more sustainable energy system in the city.

Interest in alternative energies is high in Sweden today, particularly in the agricultural sector. According to the Swedish lantbruksbarometern (2009), almost all respondents consider the use of some form of alternative energy from the farm. While interest in alternative energies is large, attention to the alternative energy straw has fallen and is almost nowhere mentioned in the literature today. Three years ago, in the Lantbruksbarometern nearly 44% of the farmers would be willing to invest in straw as heating system on the farm. How do the farmers decide to invest in alternative energies? With this information a problem is presented for this paper.

Summary Title: Taxes and Human Capital as Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in EU: The role of Most Favoured Nation treatmentAuthor: Andreas HelmerssonSupervisors: Cecilé Brokelind and Rikard LarssonProblem discussion and problem Formulation: The recent year?s rapid increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) is a clear indication of increasing globalisation. In order to stay competitive companies must take advantage of talented people, new technology and new markets around the world. Not only companies but also countries and regions, such as EU, need to take advantage of globalisation and the advantages that come with the increase in FDI around the world. Studies have shown that FDI does not only make companies more competitive but it also stimulates the economic growth of the region where the FDI takes place.

Increased resource efficiency in an energy system could result in large economic and environmental benefits. Tekniska verken i Linköping AB (Tekniska verken) is responsible for the district heating network in Linköping. Their vision is to create the world?s most resource efficient region. An important step towards this vision is more efficient usage of produced heat, something which could be achieved through integration of a seasonal heat storage in the energy system.

The present study examines a new production line of glue-laminated wood (glulam). The glulam is produced from non-planed boards of spruce, which also is convex, that is pressed together with high pressure during the gluing. According to a economic calculation, the material has a economical potential mainly on account of the absent planning. The study mainly found out that the shear strength of the material tolerated the demanded values in standard SS-EN 386, but the delaminating values did not. Since there are more areas to be studied around the material, the prospect to achieve the right delamination values is seen as positive..

In order to evaluate the benefits and costs associated to investments in information technology (IT) managers need to be aware of the complexity in the nature of the task. Hence all the benefits that arise from the investment are not of pure economic character. The complexity of the task is even more obvious when managers also need to prioritize between a number of possible investments in order to fit a given budget.Stora Enso Skog AB is about to implement a new administration system to the organisation and due to that they will also implement a new standard system for the production planning process. In order to seek the modifications in the standard system that needs to be done to fit the organisations way of working, the managers have put together a reference group to seek out these modifications.The aim with this report is to identify a model that can prioritize these suggested modifications and test it practically with a group of future system users. The first part of the report is a literature study to map the existing models that are available.

Bakgrund: Investeringsplanering utgör en stor del av företagets totala planing. Behovet attinvestera har under senare år tilltagit. Anledningar till detta är bland annat;strukturomvandling, ökad priskonkurrens, optimism samt ökad ekonomisk aktivitet. Specifiktför tillverkningsindustrin är ökade kapacitetsbehov och nya produktionskrav.Tillverkningsindustrin är vidare investeringsintensiv och har under senare tid upplevt ett ökatinvesteringbehov.Problemdiskussion: Investeringar är ett ämne där ett brett utbud av tidigare forskningföreligger. Dock är processen ett relativt outforskat område.

This thesis deals with the numerical 3D simulation of a four stroke, spark-ignited, internalcombustion engine, which is mounted on a high performance motorcycle. The work, carried outin collaboration with Politecnico di Milano and MV Agusta, focuses on the simulation of theintake, compression and expansion stroke, including combustion simulation, using an opensource CFD code.Simulation of internal combustion engines offers a great challenge in the field of CFD research.Moving boundaries of the solution domain, caused by the motion of the piston and valves, leadsto deformation of the computational grid, with decreasing quality of the solution as result. Basedon this, a previously developed mesh motion strategy was employed where a number of meshesare used to cover the whole simulation cycle. Within each mesh interval the internal cell pointsof the mesh are moved to account for the boundary motion of the piston and valves. This strategywas previously applied to simplified geometries as well as real engine geometries.

This thesis discusses various approaches that venture capitalists have when evaluating investment prospects. The thesis is a case study of the business angel network Firm Factory Network. The empirical material is based on an extensive interview with Firm Factory CEO Daniel Kaplan. Our conclusion is that Firm Factory Network uses both informal and formal methods when they evaluate interesting prospects..

Swedish listed property companies report their investment properties under the standard IAS 40 that gives the opportunity to value investment properties to either historical cost or to fair value model. One problem with the fair value model is that there is no observable market price since the real estate market is far from complete which means that the price of the asset is hard to determine because of the limited information.IAS 40 gives companies the opportunity to choose between internal or external valuation and this study aims to show how the property companies? values appeared between the years 2007-2011. From the result we will study if there could be a difference in the outcome depending on if the company chose either internal or external valuation.To investigate this we observe all Swedish real estate companies listed on OMX Nordic Stockholm and their financial reports during this period of time and complement this information by interviewing people working with these matters in the property companies. The methodology for the study is therefore partly quantitative and partly qualitative since we collect data both from financial reports and from interviews.

The agricultural sector is characterized by larger crop farms and more extensive livestockproduction. The efficiency improvement is partly a result from a stronger competition in theglobal market. The agricultural products need to be produced at a lower cost than competitorsin order to survive as a farmer. The solution is larger firms that benefit from economies ofscale. This brings large investments that create a greater need for leverage and closer relationto the credit agency.

The eutrophication of lakes and seas with the algal bloom and deficiency inoxygen that follow, has been given priority by the Swedish government as oneof 16 environmental objectives. The purpose of this project was to develop a toolbased on a simple model, limited amount of data and geographic informationsystem (GIS) to identify areas with risk for phosphorus losses due to surfacerunoff. This tool can act as a decision support to decide where appropriatemeasures should be applied with the aim of reducing phosphorus losses and bythat the eutrophication.The method that has been used is a combination of two models, one calculatingthe potential erosion while the other one identifies areas of erosion (net erosion)or deposition. This ability is of great importance because potential erosionshould be calculated on areas with net erosion. Areas with high potential erosionhave an increased risk for phosphorus losses due to surface runoff.The potential erosion was calculated based on factors which describe how topography(LS), land use (C), soil type (K) and precipitation (R) effect the erosion.All of them have been modified to a greater or lesser extent.

The lack of fresh and clean water today causes severe problems, mostly in developing countries. Waterborne diseases like typhoid, cholera, amoebic dysentery and diarrhea create health problems and deaths among people. There is a need for low cost interventions like household-based water treatment and safe storage (HWTS). Solvatten AB is a Swedish company based in Stockholm. Their product, Solvatten, is a household water treatment unit that can treat water containing viruses, parasites and bacteria.