During the past year it has been made possible to buy back a company?s outstanding stock. This is done in order to change the capital structure towards a situation with less equity. A change in capital structure means a change in the cost of capital for a company and by that a change in the value for the stockholder. This Master Thesis studies the relation between capital structure and business risk.

Due to the globalization today the competition in the market has in- creased and it requires flexibility and produce according to customer demand. In order to reduce the cost of wages industrial companies are now considering moving the manufacturing to low-cost countries. To keep up with the competition in the market without moving the manu- facturing abroad, Lean Automation was developed. The concept of Lean Automation is to reduce the perceived complexity with automa- tion and make automation available for new users and in new applica- tions.Haldex Brake Products are situated in Sweden and want to maintain the manufacturing of the automatic brake adjusters in the country. It is a product well-known and highly exposed to the competition in the mar- ket.

I Sverige genomförs varje år offentliga upphandlingar till ett värde av ca 500 miljarder kronor. Alla offentligt finansierade verksamheter måste följa lagen om offentlig upphandling och den formella upphandlingsprocess som lagen specificerar. Lagen är allmänt formulerad och anvisar en process där fokus ligger på förarbete och matematisk utvärdering.Cognitive Systems Engineering har vuxit fram utifrån insikten att effektiva processer kontinuerligt behöver använda såväl feedback och feedforward för att uppnå sina mål. Typiska tillämpningar är dynamiska, tätt kopplade processer där dessa behov är tydliga, men CSE som ramverk är generellt definierat och bör gälla även för en beslutsprocess på organisationsnivå. En CSE-analys har potential att förtydliga funktionella faktorer som tillåter upphandlare att genomföra effektiva och ändamålsenliga upphandlingar.I syftet att testa ovanstående hypotes genomfördes en fallstudie av Linköpings Universitets upphandling av företagshälsovård 2008.

Volvo Construction Equipment is a world leading company in construction machinery. Tomaintain the best products, development is prioritized. The master thesis regards sound reductionof the hydraulic system on a wheel loader. The background to the master thesis is asimulation made on the hydraulic system, performed autumn 2005. The result of the simulationshows that the energy of the pressure ripple is reduced when the paralleled hydraulicpumps are phase shifted and reduces each others pump pulsations.

This is a Master´s Thesis based on my own idea instead of that of a company. It is a survey that focuses on finding out more about which part of the development process that is blocking the establishment of electronic scorecards on the golf market. Why has it not been introduced on the market in a larger scale yet, considering the technology we possess today? This question is investigated through interviews with the Swedish Golf association, and three companies that have chosen different paths to implement an electronic scorecard. The interviews focuses on finding out what developers and the association believe to be the main problem, before taking the next step in releasing electronic scorecards on a larger scale.

This master thesis is a part of the DySCAS project at ENEA. The purpose of this thesisproject is to add support for streaming media and USB support to the DySCAS demonstratorplatform.To achieve this, some of the widely used middlewares available today were studied. The onethat proved to be of most interest is CORBA. Although CORBA?s solution to streamingmedia couldn?t be used due to their use of object programming, the CORBA solution didprovide some interesting thoughts regarding how the USB devices should be handled, in thiscase their ?resource inspector? and ?trading service?.Ethernet was the chosen network to support streaming media.

Detta examensarbete har utförts vid Duroc Engineering AB i Luleå. Duroc Engineering är Sveriges ledande företag inom laserförädling av metalliska ytor och levererar tjänster och produkter till framförallt gruv-, stål-, flyg- samt verkstadsindustrin. Rostervagnar transporterar kulor som används vid sintringen i Malmberget vid LKAB:s kulsinterverk. Genom att vagnarna passerar genom olika värmezoner sintras kulorna och vagnarna töms därefter för att hämta upp nya kulor. Detta pågår dygnet runt, året om, vilket medför stort slitage på vagnshjulen.

Nano materials can today be found in a wide range of consumer products and the number of new products on the market is expected to inrease. In the shadow of hope for nano materilas potential in various applications, low awareness of its health and environmental risks is hiding. Furthermore, the knowledge about people´s risk perception of nano materials is limited. Parallel to the situation described above, the scholls meet the challenge of incrasing the scientific literacy. To achieve this goal, skills in argumentation in science studies has been emphasized and the concept of socio-scientific issues has been emerged.

The subject of this master thesis is the school library and how we find its potential unutilized. We look at this problem in connection to the democratic assignment that the Swedish school has. The purpose is to elucidate what the democratic assignment consists of and to establish the role that the school library ought to have in this assignment. To describe the democratic assignment we examine and interpret the documents that regulate school and library activities today, including UNESCO/IFLA School Library Manifesto and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We use critical ideology analysis because we consider democracy to be a sort of ideology and have a critical view of how the school library is used or rather not used in school.

Title:Chillchain for cut flowers ? how the distribution works.Author:Anna-Maja Svarén, student at Lund Institute of Technology, mechanical engineering.Supervisors:Annika Olsson, Department of Design Sciences.Bengt Sahlberg, Bioett AB.Problem:How does the distribution of cut flower works regarding temperature, losses, responsibility, complaints, packaging and weak points?Purpose:The purpose is to map the distribution of cut flowers, with focus on losses in the temperature, from farm to store. The goal is to identify weak points in the chillchain and to se how wrong temperatures affect the flowers. The results can be a help to secure the chillchain.Method:The work started with a problem; map the distribution of cut flowers with focus on temperature losses. Data was collected on the basis of this problem, then analysed, and finally conclusions were drawn.Conclusions:The affect handling and distribution has on a cut flower is very complex.

The division of Engineering Materials at Linköping University, department of Management and Engineering, conducted a research project concerning Fatigue life of thermal barrier coatings during 2009. During this project equipment to provoke these fatigue failure by rapidly heating and cooling test subjects in cycles, was ordered.Design and manufacturing of the equipment was handled internally at LIU.The equipment was built using a furnace that is lowered and raised over the table where the test subject is placed. To keep the temperature of the furnace a lid slides in place to close the downward facing opening of the furnace when it is in the raised position. On this door there is nozzle that is used to cooling of the test subject by air.To make sure that the equipment can work independently you need an automation controller that can evaluate if movement can occur without danger of collisions. The control system also needs to monitor that all elements are performed according to plan.This degree project is based on a modular system from OPTO 22 and includes the configuration of a PLC that will be supplied with logic and a user interface.The degree project resulted in a graphic interface in which a user can set desired values for different parameters and get information about current values for them.

Uppdraget som gavs av Brimer VA Produktion AB i Osby var att ?föra fram deras nya vattenledningssystem i ljuset?, göra en FEM-beräkning på en detalj i systemet och ta fram en ekonomisk samt teknisk jämförelse mot det traditionella vattenledningssystemet. Bästa lösningen på uppgiften var att visualisera vattenledningssystemet med hjälp av animerade filmer. Detta med tanke på att visualisering har ingått till stor del i utbildningen Virtuell Produktutveckling & Design..

The purpose of this master thesis is to identify some phenomena that may contribute or work against the individual musician?s opportunities to contribute with their personal musical intuition in the orchestral work. I want to investigate under which conditions and in what context the orchestra environment gives musicians opportunities to take musical initiatives. I will also test a method to develop and work with musical intuition in a staged trombone audition called blåst. My wish is to highlight orchestra musician's perspective and experiences and to discuss where in an orchestral musician?s everyday work the artistic and authentic musical initiative appears and how we are going about it.

This Master's thesis in library and information science aims to shed light on the concept of information literacy in higher education, particularly as manifested in two dissertations on the subject. Two models of information literacy are compared: Christina Doyle's list of ten attributes for students to master and Christine Bruce's seven conceptions of information literacy. The cognitive-behaviourist tradition in Doyle's study and the alternative, phenomenographic approach in Bruce's research are compared and commented. The taxonomies and internal relationship between separate components in the two models are investigated, as well as the ways the models relate to each other. The respective views of knowledge and learning are described.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate the understanding of children's librari-ans regarding children's needs and preconditions in a library context and based on devel-opmental psychology and information seeking theories. The children's perspective is said to be the guiding star in the children's library and the thesis also aims to study the chil-dren's perspective as defined by children's librarians.The master thesis is a qualitative study based on interviews with children's librarians working at major public libraries. Observations of the children's libraries in the study have to some extent been performed.The study reveals that children's librarians are fairly knowledgeable about children but do not to a full extent use that knowledge into adapting the library to children and their needs. The children are not contributing to the adaptation of the library to any extent as there are few routines for that matter. In society in general children are on a regular basis represented by adults and their perspective on children and children's needs, which may differ from the perspective children have on their own lives, and the same is applicable for the children's library.