A consultant is an external expert that exists within all types of organizations. The consulting service can be divided into individual practitioners and large companies whose sole task is to hire out consultants to clients. The need for consultants has grown due to the restructuring of Swedish businesses during the past decades. They have put parts of their business on contract. This has led to a market with other player that have been able to focus on these parts.

Parallel to new technological advancements, including the development of interactive recommender systems, digital music services on the Internet, such as Spotify, have in a short time span gradually replaced former physical media such as CDs and MP3-players and become pioneers on a market with an otherwise uncertain future. By subscribing to the service, users have access to a vast library of music and from any device with Internet access. In order to provide a satisfactory and useful musical experience, different ways of coping with the vastness is required - which is precisely what recommender systems are for. Improved filtering techniques and use of devices built in sensors, make way for new opportunities of more precise and contextually tailored suggestions for track selection, which in turn leads to potential privacy issues when using interactive music services. But where do we stand today? By compiling, exemplifying and discussing three different perspectives with relating to the development of interactive music recommender systems, the objective for this paper is to provide a for science, industry and user, objectively nuanced account of current potentials and expectations.

A great number of tourists visits each day the Fox Glacier in New Zealand and are subjected todangers such as jökulhlaups. This phenomena can occur suddenly and in a destructive way when abuilt up of water suddenly bursts and releases large amounts of water. This is well known to happen atthe near by Franz Josef Glacier which has similar settings to Fox Glacier, but sparse previous researchon the subject indicates different results of whether jökulhlaups are present or not by Fox Glacier. Thisthesis therefore aims to study the conditions for jökulhlaups at the glacier. This is done by remotesensing and field observations of the sandur in the Fox Glacier Valley, qualitative interviews andliterature studies with a comparison with Franz Josef Glacier.

When the Swedish Forestry Act was changed in 1994, brushing of young stands became non mandatory. Since then the annual need for brushing in the country has increased by about 100 000 hectares per year. In later years the price for biomass energy has increased to the same level as pulp wood. The high price on biomass energy and the large areas of stands in the need of brushing has created a new market with its own technical, economical and environmental conditions. There is a development of various techniques to manage the forestry stands with late brushing.

A reforming trend is captured showing that countries are shifting from defined benefit pension systems towards defined contribution systems. The reforms have been justified through predictions that the defined benefit systems will not manage to provide good enough pensions to members in the future. The newer defined contribution pension plans often include individual financial accounts where individuals have the possibility to choose how a part of their pension savings should be invested. Sweden was early to introduce such a system, which at the moment provides more than 800 funds to choose from. The aim of this thesis is to capture the market risk associated with these individual investments and does so by using Monte Carlo simulations for six selected pension funds.

In Uppsala, Sweden, Vattenfall has a combined heat and power plant. On the premises there is an engineering workshop with old fluorescent and mercury lamps that need to be replaced. This provides a great opportunity to save energy and money by installing more efficient lighting. The main purpose of this study was to present two functional and energy efficient lighting systems including control system. The lighting systems were designed by investigating the working environment, measuring illuminance and by simulations in the software DIALux.

At Forsmarks Kraftgrupp AB (FKA) forces on pipe systems due to transient flow are frequently calculated as a step to verify their structural integrity. In nuclear industries these forces are often calculated with a one dimensional thermal-hydraulic analysis-code called RELAP5. When calculations regarding more complex geometries are needed, the three dimensional code Fluent is often used. This code is highly time consuming and requires large computational power.This projects aim is to compare calculations of pressure, flow and forces carried out by RELAP5 and Fluent for an arbitrary pipe section during transient flow conditions. This has been accomplished by constructing a simple geometry for which a transient flow is simulated in both programs.

This report is the result of a thesis conducted at the consulting firm Bjerking AB andis the final part of the Bachelor Programme in Construction Engineering at Universityof Uppsala. The work aims to investigate the costs and how the choice of ventilationsystem affects building projects during a long-term period. This report covers costssuch as investment, maintenance and energy but also how they affect residents andbuilders. Building regulations for energy consumption are expected to be tougher;therefore a comparison of two different heat recovery ventilation systems(HRV-system) was made. One system is based on a centrally placed unit that coversthe whole buildings ventilation through vertical shafts.

The aim of this thesis is to examine one part of Amazon.coms recommender systems: Similar Items. The purpose is also to show the difficulties with subject access, i. e. to find a similar book to the one you just read; problems with traditional systems versus the usefulness with recommender systems like Amazon.coms Similar Items. Similar Items presents a set, a cluster of related items to a given item based on customers co-purchase.

The aim with this thesis is to make a comparison between forcing tulips in a hydroponic system and the forcing off tulips that have been planted in soil. The results are mostly based on interviews with six Dutch and one Swedish tulip forcer and the managing director at the Horticultural Research Centre, Proeftuin Zwaagdijke, in the Netherlands. There are benefits and disadvantages with both methods. Tulip bulbs planted in soil seem to get a brighter colour after forcing, compared with those forced ?in water?.

Scholarly publishing has since the introduction of electronically distributed periodicals seen a time of change, mainly in the STM-business (Science Technology and Medicine). The roles of the three main participants in the publication process; researcher, publisher and library are developing into new directions. Researchers themselves are taking a more active part in the discussion, with the boycott list from the Public Library of Science organization as an illustrating example. Reforms are being launched partly as an economical and efficiency issue, partly as an increasing desire from researchers to maintain the control of scientific end result. This Master s thesis examines how the partly conflicting goals of the participants affect the conditions for scholarly publication in an electronic environment.

ABSTRACT?Crisis Management? New York Citys management of the terroristattack against World Trade Center?Essey in political science, C-level, at Karlstad University, by Sara Kringsberg.Spring 2006. Tutor: Susan MartonThe purpose of this essay is to study New York Citys management of a larger crisis and to see how states are coping with stress. It is important to study how states manage stress so that states can learn to cope with larger crisis. That is important for the survival of the state and the protection of its citizens.

Embedded Systems Lab at Umeå University is currently part of a research project with the purpose to examine the behavior of dairy cows inside a barn. Each cow needs to be tracked with a precision of 50 cm, and since GPS-technique has poor functionality at indoor environments, an indoor positioning system needs to be developed.Embedded Systems Lab has already developed an indoor positioning system using IR-light and radio, but since this system demands extensive infrastructure and is rather expensive, an alternate positioning system using ultrasonic pulses and radio is being examined.In this report the range, beam angle and current consumption of ultrasonic transmitters- and receivers are investigated. Three different driver stages for the transmitter is tested, and two amplifier solutions for the receiver. The report also describes how the length of the transmitted ultrasonic pulse affects the received signal, accessibility of a ?shadowed? signal, and the effect of different sound frequency..

The aim of this comparative study is to analyse the French and the Polish regional governance in order to see if there are any differences in their regional ruling systems. Further more I will study their different possibilities in taking part in the European Union regional political market. The shape of the regional systems will be explored both organisationally (study of the institutional entities of the regional construction) and functionally (study of the competencies of the regional body etcetera) to focus on its cause on the regional development. My over all focus will be to find out whether regional rule means differently in the countries France and Poland.Several questions are dealt with and the two main ones are as follows; How do the different structures of the form of government in France and Poland influence the governance on the regional level? Do Poland, as a new member state of the European Union, have what it takes to face the challenges of the new membership; or are there a complex of problems arising from the admittance that prevent its regions from fully taking part in the European regional political market?Some of my conclusions are as follows;There are major differences between the two countries when it comes to their regional ruling systems leading to different abilities in taking part in the European regional political market.

Sammanfattning Titel: Aktievärdering ? En empirisk undersökning med momentumstrategi under åren 2002-2011 på Stockholmsbörsen Large Cap. Författare: Fredrik Appelqvist och Åsa Nilsson Handledare: Anders Wrenne Institution: Blekinge Tekniska Högskola Kurs: Kandidatarbete i Företagsekonomi, 15 högskolepoäng Syfte: Utifrån ett investerarperspektiv är syftet med uppsatsen att undersöka om det varit möjligt att uppnå överavkastning på Stockholmsbörsen, Large Cap under åren 2002-2011. För att uppnå syftet använder vi oss av en momentumstrategi på medel-lång sikt, som menar att aktiemarknaden tenderar att behålla samma avkastningsmönster för perioder av nästkommande 3-12 månader. Syftet är också att undersöka om marknaden är effektiv i svag form. Metod: Studien utgår från en deduktiv forskningsansats där vi utifrån befintliga teorier inom ämnet tagit fram en frågeställning. Utifrån frågeställningen har hypoteser testats och analyserats med empiri.