AbstractAccording to several researchers finance is scarce, scarcer for small businesses than for big enterprises. Small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, that want to start exporting and sales or manufacturing abroad need capital to get ready. Which capital structure and financial costs do they have, and which forms of finance do they actually use for that purpose. New american research by Mansi, Reeb (2002) has suggested, that there is a positive connection between leverage and a negative one between financial costs and internationalization, and that a non-linear model better describes this connection.This study has gathered data in two ways: Through a questionnaire from 37 SMEs and balance sheet figures from totally 166 manufacturing SMEs. In order to examine, whether the company was active on the international market, 200 SMEs in south Sweden were asked, if they exported to, produced or sold on any other market than their home market.

The Swedish Transport Administration has, and manages, a database containing information of the status of road condition on all paved and governmental operated Swedish roads. The purpose of the database is to support the Pavement Management System (PMS). The PMS is used to identify sections of roads where there is a need for treatment, how to allocate resources and to get a general picture of the state of the road network condition. All major treatments should be reported which has not always been done.The road condition is measured using a number of indicators on e.g. the roads unevenness.

Abstract CORDIC (Coordinate Rotation Digital Computer) is an iterative algorithm for the calculation of a two-dimensional vector in circular, linear or hyperbolic coordinate systems. This paper presents a survey of known CORDIC algorithms and architectures for the rotation and vectoring mode in the circular cordinate system. In addition an implementation of the differential CORDIC algorithm in VHDL has been done. The implementation is designed to keep the fast timing and throughput characteristic known for on-line redundant arithmetic..

GBD-Storage Systems is a company that provides the industries with products for efficient storage.The company produces pallet racks and accessories like cassettes and extending units. The companyhas also supplied tire racks for a number of tire companies. The company's CEO Gunnar Berglund hasfor some time had an idea to improve the working situation of the workers on tire firms by allowingthe wheels to be handled by a counterbalance truck. The current situation poses numerous heavy liftswhen the tires are handled and therefore is hurting the workers.This thesis has been aiming at helping the GBD-Storage Systems by developing a concept of howan accessory to counterbalanced trucks can be designed to cope with the wheels. This concept willthen be produced as prototype by the company.

Background: It is today common for companies to provide some sort of incentive for CEO's and senior management positions to motivate, retain and benefit employees within a company. This is in order to drive the goals of the CEO and management in the direction that is desired by the owner. Currently, the Swedish centre-right government has forbidden the use of such variable pay within state-owned companies. There are two different attitudes to variable pay, one that is in favour and one that rejects it. However most people agree on the fact that a well-functioning incentive scheme can be of great strategic importance for a company.Approach: has variable pay to CEO's had any effect on the company's profitability.Aim: the aim of the study is to compare companies who use variable pay to CEO's with companies that do not in relation to their profitability in terms of profit margins, yearly performance, returns on total capital and returns on equity.Method: the study uses a quantitative approach.

This thesis has treated a three-axis robot which task is to serve a larger test machine tomove the modules to be tested, from the storage to the test site. The robot is composed ofthree linear actuators; two standard components of ball screw type and a custom-builtactuator of trapezoidal type. The work has mainly focused on the custom-built device to seeif it could be replaced with a standard component. Part of the work has been to look into thepicking tool and to see if there are any possibilities to improve its function.The report presents two different proposals which I decided to call Robot 1 and Robot 2 andthey aim to address the problems arising in the purpose-built linear unit and the X-axislinearity problems. Robot 1 focuses on eliminating the problems that arise around therobot's X-axis, with such simple means as possible and without making excessive materialchanges.

Among the Indigenous cattle breeds in Indonesia, the Bali cattle is the most preferred by small farmers. The Bali cattle is a beef breed, and is considered to have several advantageous characteristics and to be well adapted to the country?s harsh environmental tropical conditions with drought and rain. The main aim of this project was to phenotype of Bali cattle from different locations in order to identify and document diversity within the Bali cattle breed based on their observable characteristics, to compare cattle from different areas and production systems to see the effect of management on phenotype. In this study, 107 cows and bulls of the breed Bali cattle, from Kalimantan, Sumatra, Lombok and Bali were phenotyped.

During 2006 an estimated number of 150 persons are supposed to have been killed in road accidents caused by speed limit violations. Through Automatic traffic security control (ATK) the Swedish road administration (Vägverket) is working towards lowering the number of speed related accidents. By placing the speed cameras on roads they've managed to lower the average speed at those places. The enlargement of the number of speed cameras is based upon knowledge about for example how high the risk is for speed related accidents on the roads. The speed cameras always measure the speed in which every vehicle passes, but aren't constantly activated to register speed violations.

This thesis has treated a three-axis robot which task is to serve a larger test machine tomove the modules to be tested, from the storage to the test site. The robot is composed ofthree linear actuators; two standard components of ball screw type and a custom-builtactuator of trapezoidal type. The work has mainly focused on the custom-built device to seeif it could be replaced with a standard component. Part of the work has been to look into thepicking tool and to see if there are any possibilities to improve its function.The report presents two different proposals which I decided to call Robot 1 and Robot 2 andthey aim to address the problems arising in the purpose-built linear unit and the X-axislinearity problems. Robot 1 focuses on eliminating the problems that arise around therobot's X-axis, with such simple means as possible and without making excessive materialchanges.

The association between disclosure level and asymmetric information is a matter of importance andconsiderable interest to the financial reporting community. The theory in this area suggests that acommitment by a firm to increased levels of disclosure should lower the information asymmetry thuslowering the cost of equity. This theory may be compelling, but so far the empirical results have beenambiguous. Due to increased globalization the demand for high quality accounting standards has risen. In2005 The International Accounting Standard Board launched the standard named IFRS 3.

The first part of the thesis consists of a brief introduction to the general principles of target detection and the sensor-systems used. In the following part there is a theoretical description of the algorithms this thesis focuses on. The detection algorithms described in this paper are called Cell Average, Ordered Statistics, 2parameter and Gammadetector. Two different discriminators called Extended Fractal Features and Quadratic Gamma Discriminator are also described. The algorithms are tested on three different types of data, simulated SAR-pictures, authentic SAR-targets and IR-pictures.

Produktionen och distributionen av fjärrvärme i Luleå kommun sköts av två företag, LuleKraft AB och Luleå Energi AB. Under 2011 utökades samarbetet företagen emellan, med bland annat gemensam driftspersonal. Detta ger förutsättning för ett mer anpassat och optimerat produktionssätt. Med detta som bakgrund skapades en modell över fjärrvärmenätet och tillhörande anläggningar, för att kunna skapa riktilinjer för effektiv produktion vid olika driftförhållanden. Viktiga komponenter för systemet är? Lulekraft - ett kraftvärmeverk vilket eldar processgaser från SSAB och olja för att producera fjärrvärme och el? Fjärrvärmenätet - 42 mil långa ledningar förser i princip hela Luleå kommun med fjärrvärme? Hetvattencentraler - när LuleKraft inte räcker till för att täcka fjärrvärmebehovet finns möjligheten att använda dessa där bränslet är processgaser, olja, pellets eller elFjärrvärmenätet och hetvattencentralerna ägs av Luleå Energi AB men hela systemets drift sköts av personal på LuleKraft.

 This paper discusses whether the allocation of Swedish aid is dependent on absolute or relative poverty, and whether there is any difference in this respect between ODA and aid distributed through officially funded NGO?s. Given the Millennium Development Goals, and their overarching goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015, we should expect the aid allocation to be determined by absolute rather than relative poverty. We use OLS to estimate multiple linear regressions. We find that Swedish ODA has an absolute poverty focus, while the Swedish NGO aid rather seems to be concentrated on relative poverty. .

The purpose of this study is to give a picture of the current status for the recruitment to forest machine operator educations in Sweden, how many the educators are and the outcome of this activity. The three at present different types of education are upper secondary school, polytechnic school and vocational school. The method used for the survey is telephone interviews, pre-broadcast issues were discussed and the responses were recorded. The results are then compiled and presented in linear form. The conclusions one can draw is that education is desirable and important. To get young people interested in forest machine operator education it is very important that the forest industry continues to develop attractive employment..

This study compares the sample variance of the mean in a simple random sample (SRS) and a systematic sample from a surface. The study also compares the prediction error variance in a SRS and systematic sample from a random field. Recommendations are presented on which method to use in the clearance and exemption process in the nuclear industry. The results indicate that quadratic systematic sampling outperformed SRS in most instances and proved to be especially efficient in the presence of a long-ranged covariance function and high sampling intensity (i.e. short distances between observations).