Large companies in today?s business environment are to a great extent depending on their credit score by rating institutes like Moody?s and Standard & Poor?s. There is however indications that these big institutes are not always rating companies accurately. This is why this thesis aims at developing a new credit rating model, CRITA-Score, with the objective of determining a company?s financial health more accurately.

Making decisions have always been part of human life. Political decisions consist of many participants with both formal and informal ways to highlight problems and reach the political agenda. Processes difficult for an individual to distinguish and understand surround political decision-making. The purpose of this study is to investigate the decision process for a specific political issue, Swedish wine producers' desire to be able to sell their own wine at their vineyard; gårdsförsäljning. This is currently prohibited in the Swedish model due to an alcohol monopoly.

The purpose of this master thesis is to create, test and evaluate an analytical instrument for children?s library environment based on a theoretical framework consisting of Howard Gardner?s theory of multiple intelligences and Thomas Armstrong?s pedagogical application of the original seven intelligences. We wanted to investigate whether the environment in Rum för barn stimulated all of children?s different intelligences. We also wanted to identify possibilities and liabilities within the analytical instrument.

Tidigare forskning visar att bråk är ett område där många elever har problem. Syftet med den här studien är att studera gymnasieelevers matematiska kunskaper i multiplikation och division av bråk. Elevernas kunskaper studerades utifrån en konstruktivistisk syn på kunskap och med procedurell och konceptuell kunskap som analysverktyg. 61 elever från kursen Matematik A har löst totalt 10 uppgifter med multiplikation och division av bråk. 7 av eleverna intervjuades dessutom för att få en bättre uppfattning om deras kunskaper.

My thesis is a combination of theory and practice, where theory is meant to create a context and a background for my interpretation proposal. I wanted to ?access? the ideas that are always in the background of the reasoning which underlies both planning in a larger scale, and the design of a place. I wanted to make a ?work of ideas.? In the process of shaping the proposal, I wanted to be deleted from the site itself.

Statistik visar att så mycket som 20 procent av alla trafikolyckor involverar någon form av förardistraktion. Samtidigt finns det ingenting som indikerar att sekundäruppgiftsutförande under bilkörning minskar. För att få ökad förståelse för förares beteende genomfördes detta examensarbete med syfte att studera förhållandet mellan upplevd mental belastning och faktisk påverkan på körprestationen vid utförande av sekundäruppgift under bilkörning. För att besvara syftet genomfördes en litteraturstudie. Analysen av inkluderade artiklar och deras respektive sekundäruppgifter baserades på Multiple Resource Theory.

Undervisning om multiplikationstabellen består främst av lärande genom repetition eller strategi. Syftet med litteraturstudien är att utifrån forskning undersöka och jämföra inlärning av multiplikationstabellen genom strategi- och repetitionsbaserad undervisning. Studien avgränsas till elever i årskurs 1 till 6. Materialet samlades in genom en iterativ sökning på åtta databaser för vetenskapliga publikationer. Det insamlade materialet bestod av sjutton vetenskapliga publikationer.

The system tungsten-oxygen has potential of being suitable for decorative coatings since ceramic coatings are often hard and wear resistant, and since modulations in oxygen content or incorporation of small ions could give bright colours. The aim of this report was to investigate the relationship between process parameters and  the properties of the films, with the wear resistance being of special interest.Samples with tungsten to oxygen ratios in the range of 100:0 to 25:75 at% were made using reactive sputter deposition, either with constant gas flow, or gas flow controlled by optical emission of the plasma. The hysteresis of the system, which means that a certain gas flow will cause different pressure and/or target voltage depending on in what way the flow is reached, makes it interesting to control the process where the system makes the steep change from metallic tungsten to ceramic tungsten oxide. This is difficult and thus requires precise control equipment.The samples were analysed using X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and an empirical wear test suitable for small components like cell phone cover for example, in order to characterize the structure, composition and wear resistance of the coatings. The results could be divided into three groups: (I) tungsten-like, with very low oxygen content; (II) mixed phase and (III) tungsten oxide like, with oxygen content close to 75 at%.

Information technology and globalization has led to an increasing competition and service production has been more and more independent of locations. This has made a market of outsourced telephone costumer service possible. Due to high establishment the market has been saturated and with that price has sunk. Customer companies have the last few years got more negative to outsourcing of their telephone customer service as they through operating the customer service internally want to get closer to their customers.In the empirical study the writers try to figure out which companies the callcenters should try to aim towards to get long and profitable cooperation. This will be done through deducing guiding principles from theories about how different factors around companies costumer service should look like.

Folkhälsovetenskapligt program.

Light has always fascinated humans but ever since the invention of the first light bulb, the use of artificial lighting has accelerated dramatically. Darkness has never been as rare as today and the overuse of lighting has created a new phenomenon called light pollution. Most living beings are biologically dependent on the recurrent twenty-four-hour rhythm of light and darkness, called the circadian cycle. Human beings are evolutionary developed after this circadian rhythm and the effects of constant artificial light is yet unknown. Scientists fear the consequences of constant lighting and what it means physically, mentally and philosophically for the human species.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The aim of the study was to describe what it's like to live with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and experiences of social support and being received and met by health personnel. The method was a qualitative interview study of descriptive design and was analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Three women and two men (26-75 years) with MS from two municipalitiesin central Sweden participated in the study. The main results showed that the participants felt the disease limited everyday life. The majority described feelings of injustice being affectedby the illness, but they now have a new perspective on life.

ABSTRACTMultiple sclerosis (MS) is the leading cause of adult disability inSweden. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) can be used as a treatment option for patients with MS where the disease has an aggressive course. The treatment is preceded by high-dose chemotherapy which lowers the patient's immune system. It is therefore of interest to study infectious complications associated with HSCT in this patient.Aim: The purpose of this study was to identify infection problems in this population associated with HSCT, and to study differences in infectious complications between this group and patients diagnosed with lymphoma who have undergone the same treatment.Method: The study was a retrospective descriptive study with quantitative data. A medical record review was conducted.

In order to survive constant economic, environmental and political challenges, it has appeared to become increasingly important for a firm to recognize the significance of corporate governance. In this thesis, the structure of the board at Smartner Ltd will be outlined and the relationship between the board members and the CEO will be clarified. In addition, the aim is to analyze the corporate governance system at Smartner Ltd to be able to outline and clarify the distinct relationship between the CEO and board of directors..