In this report a study is carried out with the aim to identify added values of EPC projects implemented in schools in order to increase the interest of EPC projects on the market. The report examines how the planned maintenance, supervision, maintenance and corrective maintenance is affected, how insurance premiums and terms are affected, the indoor environment and how the tasks of the operating staff is changing. A literature study of energy savings, energy use in schools, maintenance and insurance as well as how energy efficiency improvements are related to the Swedish environmental objectives has been made. Visits were carried out in Ludvika, interviews were also carried out with operation technicians and local strategists in Ludvika as well as employees of insurance companies.Schools often have neglected maintenance and problems with ventilation and indoor environment. Schools also have a large energy saving potential due to their low utilization, mainly because they are empty parts of the year.

The ability of dairy cows to survive and the economic importance of this have been in-creasing in dairy cattle breeding lately. Increased longevity contribute to an increased pro-portion of cows that produce milk in more productive lactations and reduces the replace-ment costs together with a good health and fertility. Unfortunately it is often argued that longevity has been decreasing due to a strong selection for production traits in dairy cattle.The aims of this study were to find correlations between different longevity evaluations and between different estimates on longevity and other traits in the Nordic Total Merit (NTM) breeding value. The aim was also to compare different traits for cows of two differ-ent longevity groups.The data were Predicted Breeding Values (PBV) from Nordic HOL and SR bulls and records from Holstein (HOL) and Swedish Red (SR) cows estimated by the Swedish Dairy Association.The three Swedish longevity indexes were very highly correlated (>0.89) and the corre-lations between the Swedish official longevity index and the five Nordic Cattle Genetic Evaluation (NAV) longevity indexes varied between 0.73-0.83.In the sire evaluation part, the traits most negatively correlated with longevity for HOL were dairyness, protein and fat index. In SR, milk, protein, and fat index only had slightly positive correlations with longevity.

Todays board game manuals have many shortcomings. One of them is that they are not always adapted to the game's target audience.Adapting the language and shape of a game manual for the the target group children, can save time for both parents and teachers, and give the children a chance to conquer the game by themselves. In addition, playing board games can lead to children developing other important properties such as problem solving and independence.This study found that the game manuals inconsistency, tone and the way they adress the reader makes it difficult for children to grasp the content. Many game manuals do not speak directly to the reader, and often describes gameplay in a passive way, which has been shown by this study.This study has resulted in 12 guidelines for writing game manuals for children. In addition, they have been tested with a sample study.

The tomato is an important crop worldwide, and in recent years it has received great attention due to its rich content of carotenoids, which in studies indicate to have health benefiting properties. Many studies have been done in this area of research and in how to optimize the carotenoid content in tomatoes and tomato products. The objectives of this essay were to summarize present data in this field. The results were as follows:There are nine different carotenoids identified in tomatoes. Lycopene and ?-carotene are the ones that have been given the greatest attention.

Our purpose was to shed light on how parents act in respect of providing alcohol to young people when they ask for a taste of home, or wish to bring alcohol to such a party. We used qualitative interviews and the results show that some of the respondents think that it may be acceptable to provide alcohol, while some do not. The results also show that the respondents think that parents are important as a model for the young. They could not purchase alcohol for the purpose of giving it to the young but only if alcohol is available at home. The reason for this behavior is the parents' assessment that the young person demonstrates a level of maturity for his age that they are presumed to be able to handle a small amount of alcohol.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the properties of the municipalities in Sweden that influence the choice of being a certified Fairtrade city. The independent variables which are used in the statistical analysis are municipal governance, local tax rate, whether there is an university and/or university college in the municipality, average income and higher education in the municipality. The variables are examined by logistic regression. Since there are no statistical data on ethical procurement, this exogenous variable isn?t included in the regression.

As today, companies are facing an increasing competition; markets are expanding while customers are getting more informed and fastidious toward companies and their products. For this reason it is crucial for enterprises to create loyal customers, or at best hyper loyal customers. With today's prerequisite this creation is difficult and it is therefore of highly interest to examine possible and alternative ways for enterprises to attain this type of hyper loyal customer. In this thesis we have examine hyper loyal football supporters with the aim to identify mechanisms that create and characterize this type of loyalty. By means of a survey and a focus group we were able to identify six loyalty mechanisms; the ability to influence, vicarious achievement, self-esteem, group affiliation, family and social relations.

This c-level essay examines how deaf and hearing impaired individuals use smartphones to live and communicate in a ?hearing world?. The main target is to find some understanding of the struggles of this population and smartphones have made it easier to adapt to the hearing worlds? demands with the applications that follow. To acquire the information for this essay, representatives from both the deaf and hearing impaired communities were interviewed.

Title: By what strategies is the old media using the new media? A qualitative essay on TV: s use on social mediaNumber of pages: 54Authors: Marie Magnusson och Sabina KarlssonTutor:  Karin FastCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Spring 2011University: Karlstad UniversityPurpose/Aim: Our purpose is to examine which strategies and why two TV-channels, SVT and TV4, are using social media. Our anticipated view is that SVT as a public service organization and TV4 as a commercial operator may have different motives with its use of social media.Material/Method: A qualitative method consisting of interviews by informants from SVT and TV4.Main results: Our result is that there isn?t any big difference between SVT and TV4 in the way they?re using social media. However, that SVT has to more specifically make sure no commercialism exists, while TV4 don?t have to think about it.Keywords: Social networking, convergence, commercialism, communication, Internet, public service, television..

This thesis is about Swedish and Serbian teachers and their views on how literature should be taught to students in high school. The twist is that these teachers live in two different European countries, and work under two different educational systems. Three of them work in Stockholm, Sweden and the other three in Belgrade, Serbia. The purpose of this thesis was to find similarities and differences in the practice of teaching literature among teachers in these two different educational systems. The teachers were interviewed separately and spoke freely about their views and methods when teaching literature.

Companies today are exposed to a turbulent market with fierce competition and the ability toinnovate itself becomes increasingly important. But what innovation is and how it is managed is farfrom obvious. In this case study at EVRY the research questions are: ?What is innovation in ITconsultant companies?? and ?how can innovation be managed in IT consultant companies?? ITconsultancy is a complex type of business and their focus is often to innovate the customers businessrather than their own. The study is based on a literature review, field studies, unstructuredinterviews and an interpretive analysis.

It has in a broader extent become important for companies and other organizations with large organizations to have a properly functioning web platform where content management is an essential part. Polopoly is a web content management system developed in Sweden, used by several European corporations but foremost Scandinavian such working in different media related business areas.Our aim has been to analyze this tool and render a report which hopefully will assist the initiator of our thesis; a consulting enterprise called Qurius, in their negotiations with future customers, when to suggest Polopoly as a suitable content management solution.By using case studies at companies currently using Polopoly, our goal is to define which characteristic makes the product a competitive publishing tool. To put our analysis in perspective, we will compare the most important aspects of Polopoly with a similar product.According to the results of our investigation we consider Polopoly being a beneficial choice with regard to a number of important parameters. Finally we have summarized these properties in a list of examples explaining in which cases Polopoly is a preferable alternative as a web based content management platform..

The aim of this thesis was twofold, on the one hand to compile a set of usability and accessibility guidelines in order to establish the characteristics of a user friendly website, and on the other to test these guidelines on eight library webcourses with user education to see how well they adhered to the guidelines. The methods used were literature survey and source studies. The guidelines found in the literature survey were divided into four different categories: document properties, structure and navigability, visual characteristics and accessibility. In order to establish the adequacy of the guidelines, I examined reference sources, mostly on the web. To a certain extent this examination has been based on HCI Human-Computer interaction theories.

This master thesis work was done at Saab Underwater Systems AB, a company at the cutting edge of underwater technology. Here torpedoes and other underwater vehicles are developed and manufactured. The major customers are navies of different countries, mostly the Swedish navy. The aim of this master thesis is to develop, construct and evaluate an automatic Trim System for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles. The task of the system is to change the position of the centre of mass and the vehicle?s total mass or volume.

Today's young people find themselves in an intense media traffic where many messages have a commercial nature. Some such messages are for example different types of advertising in various media and advertising often plays on the uncertainty that may be common in adoles-cence. New interactive media like blogs on the Internet has been established in recent years. Mixed types of media content, advertising with different messages, appear in blogs. Therefore, I am interested in how blogs on the Internet can influence young people's creation of their identity.