It may seem obvious that the urban space in our northern cities should be design to function and inspire throughout the whole year. This is not always the case. The urban space is often designed on a summer basis and the winter is regarded more as a problem then a resource and its potential remain unused. I have in this master thesis studied the impact of the winter on people and spaces and ponder on how to design functional and attractive places for winter. The project ends in a design concept for Broparken in Umeå on the theme "everyday winter day". The work with this thesis has given me, as a landscape architect, valuable experiences and filled a gap of knowledge that I had in this subject. I hope that this thesis can inspire Umeå kommun and others who are interested in how northern cities can benefit by its climate and develop towards a more complete city. The thesis begins with a chapter that present the subject from four different perspectives.

This study titled When the spaces dominate A study of the school as disciplinary rooms is a study where the emphasis is on quality and where the results are based on observations. The purpose of the research was to analyse rooms and other artefacts in the school as seen from Foucault?s analysis of power. He emphasised that power is expressed in human relationships. To understand how that power is used one can study the techniques adopted and resistance offered.

This thesis concerns an energy audit of a food industry. The company's business consists of boiling and peeling shrimps, and producing mayonnaise-based salads. This type of work involves energy-intensive processes, such as steam generation, compression of air and refrigeration of large spaces. These needs are supplied with electricity. Furthermore, the industry is a major consumer of district heating, particularly for heating the supply air in the ventilation system.

Children's need of a good environment of playing outdoor at schoolyards is, both from a perspective of commonly public's health and from the children themselves, indisputable. Children who have a good and varying playground develop physically, psychologically and socially. As an instrument of pedagogic a playground also is valuable for example in teaching the round, periodical successions and understanding of democratic processes. The conception playground means here in my work the environment outdoor for children at schools up to about twelve years old. What is a good playground then? How is it possible for a landscape architect to contribute improvements? The purpose of my work has been to enlarge my knowledge about playgrounds, understand more of the profession as a landscape architect and apply a perspective of children in the planning. To sum up, the shaping of playgrounds has great importance for the activities of the children and if the teachers make use of it, the teaching. A good playground gives the delight, the excitement and the curiosity free spaces and stimulates new challenges.

The composition of the board of directors and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are two widely researched subject and discussed by the media. This study aims to examine the impact of the board of directors' composition on CSR performance among the largest companies listed on Nasdaq OMX stock exchange 2008 in Stockholm, Sweden. A linear regression analysis is applied to investigate the relationship and evidence is found that board attributes have an effect on CSR performance. Among these; the size of the board, outside directors and employee representatives all have a positive impact on environmental performance. Furthermore; female, outside directors and employee representatives have a positive impact on social performance.

The purpose of the thesis is to investigate whether a higher income make individuals more likely to exceed the speed limit. In addition to income the variables age, sex, perception of the speed of the average driver and offense history for the last three years are taken into account.The method used is based on a survey performed at the mandatory annual motor-vehicle inspection (Bilprovningen). 177 individuals were asked to participate, of these, 124 completed the survey which in turn left us with 117 usable observations.The analysis is based on two forms of regression, a linear regression and an ordered logit regression to confirm the results for the ordinal data.The final model indicates a result where income and age are statistically significant. Sex is considered insignificant for our data material and is excluded from the model. Age has a negative effect on the propensity to exceed the speed limit while income has a positive effect.

A new shipyard on the island of Beckholmen consisting of a new ship hall and complementary workshops. The program is extended with rentable industrial space for other smaller companies to take advantage of synergies with the yard and to create an active maritime cluster around Beckholmen. By building a marina and a port at the northern shoreline of the island the shipyard can expand their potential customers to non-commercial and larger recreational boats that are becoming increasingly common in Skärgården. The port is also supplemented with a combined naval fuel station, harbor office and a small café. The boat traffic in the region gets a additional stop at the end of the port and act as an additional gateway to Djurgården. Several small retail spaces with direct access to the water is created along the promenade between the port and Djurgården. The shipyard gets a modern and efficient industry building, while the island is made available to the public again, and Beckholmen will hopefully take an equal place in the city's consciousness as it does visually in the inlet to Stockholm..

Den här rapporten har utrett möjligheten att automatiskt identifiera diken frånflygburet insamlat LiDAR-data. Den metod för identifiering som har valts harförst skapat en höjdbild från LiDAR-data. Därefter har den tagit fram kandidatertill diken genom att vektorisera resultatet från en linjedetektering. Egenskaper-na för dikeskandidaterna har sedan beräknats genom en analys av höjdprofilerför varje enskild kandidat, där höjdprofilerna skapats utifrån ursprungliga data.Genom att filtrera kandidaterna efter deras egenskaper kan dikeskartor med an-vändarspecificerade mått på diken presenteras i ett vektorformat som underlättarvidare användning. Rapporten beskriver hur algoritmen har implementerats ochpresenterar också exempel på resultat.

We are surrounded by sounds. There is always something that makes a sound: a breeze through the leaves, traffic on a distance or your own blood rushing through your veins. Human will always be surrounded by sounds which makes it an important part of our lives. Therefore the sound should have a big influence on how we perceive our surroundings and interpret our world. This essay inquires into what sounds can mean to an open space and urban spaces.

This thesis discusses model based tracking of radar echoes in tanks with liquid content. The errors in the measurements are not always random in these cases, and the interference that occurs when nearby echoes moves in relation to each other makes tracking difficult. The tracking problem can be broken down to four parts; track initiation, track destruction, association of the measured echoes to the tracks and to update the tracks with the associated echoes. The radar measurement is primarily made on the surface. However, additional echoes from the tank floor or other structures and double bounces are normally present.

This thesis aims to investigate if there are any differences in the value relevance of yearly earnings announcements before (2000-2004) and after (2005-2009) IFRS were implemented for listed companies in the European Union. To assess the value relevance of earnings, an earnings response coefficient (ERC) is estimated using a linear OLS-regression model. The regression model uses accounting earnings per share as the explaining variable, with the corresponding return starting from (but not including) the previous year's earnings announcement date, ending at (and including) the current earnings announcement date, as the dependent variable. This study finds that there is no statistically significant difference between the estimated ERCs for the two periods. Although no statistically significant difference is found, data shows that the R2-values, which measure the explanatory power of the regressions, are higher for the period before IFRS.

This paper is a study how students at a high school in Falun, Sweden, estimates theirperformance in an upcoming math test which is then compared with the actual grade thestudent performed. The students who participated also answered questions related to ?risksituations? to examine whether there is a correlation between how students estimate theirperformance in the context and their risk behavior, and if the students act like economicmodels assume. In agreement with previous studies, the boys in the survey tended to beoverconfident in their performance. The girls in the study were neither over- norunderconfident in her performance and no significant difference in the estimation of one'sperformance between the sexes could be proven.

The plants in the genus Elatine are characteristic for oligo and mesotrophic lakes. This study focuses on Elatine hexandra one of the four species in Sweden. It is stated as vulnerable by the National Environment Agency and a conservation plan with guidelines to preserve the plant in Sweden is under preparation. There have been a few previous studies investigating this plant in other countries but this is the first one for Sweden. The aim of this study was to investigate the distribution, growth and reproduction of E.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of joint venture announcements on stock prices behavior and simultaneously to test the German stock market (Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse) for efficiency. We tried not only to analyze the general impacts of a JV-announcement but also to look for differences in the market response to announcements of different types of joint ventures, namely: domestic, international, horizontal and vertical. Our expectations of efficient market were confirmed during our paper, which employed the technique of the standard event study. The calculation of abnormal returns which are the signals for market efficiency or inefficiency respectively were based on the market model, establishing linear relationship between the return on the market and the return on an individual security. The parameters of the model were obtained through regression analysis..

Graphic design is an integrated part of the public spaces we move through in our daily lives. This thesis explores the emotional aspects of graphic design, with a focus on environmental graphics for the public space. The goal is to find ways in which the emotional aspects of a design solution can be varied without compromising the practical aspects, i.e. affect the conveyance of information. This goal is pursued through an analysis of historical and contemporary literature as well as by design practise.