European cities of today are under the challenge to find ways to stay competitive and flourish in a rapidly changing world, where the old patterns of centrality and periphery not necessarily holds true. New and improved communication networks, a changed political geography in Europe, and the globalisation of not only the financial and industrial markets but also to a certain extent the globalisation of people, have all led to great challenges for cities and regions.In a changed spatial reality the classic monocentric models are challenged by newer models of urbanisation. The polycentric urban region is one such model which has been used to describe urban regions like the Randstad in the Netherlands and the Rhein-Ruhr region in Germany. Regions which lack the single dominant central city of the monocentric models of old, and instead shows a high degree of more equal-sized and sometimes more specialised cities in regional cooperation. The polycentric urban region is in that aspect a possible model for how other urbanised regions in Europe may act to be able to position themselves as attractive urban regions and regional hubs in the European urban network.Polycentric urban regions are not a universal solution, though.

The agricultural sector accounts for about 13 percent of the total load of greenhouse gas emissions from Sweden (Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, 2007). The Swedish objective to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions with 40 percentage units to the year of 2020, based upon the year of 1990, might imply stricter regulations for Swedish farmers. A regulation or other forms of economic incentives is probably necessary to reduce the emissions originating from the agricultural sector. This study aims to investigate the economic and managerial impact on two agricultural firms with differing production system given that a constraint on green house gas emissions is introduced. Gases included in this study are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

This report is part of an Bachelor of Science work in forestry, conducted for the community of Borås, Sweden. In order to create a forest management plan for the area of Hestra, a survey was conducted. People living in the area were given the opportunity to reply to the survey. The questions in the survey are both personal and forestry-related. The aim is to reach out to the different categories of people when it comes to age, living and the different aspects of visiting the woods.

Title: Competition for small audit firms ? a qualitative study on possible competitive strategies and how the upcoming changes will influence competition on the audit market    Subject: Auditing Tutor: Margareta Paulsson  Authors: Per Dahlström and Martin Holmberg Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding how smaller auditing firms use competitive strategies and why. The result aims to work as a support for owners and leaders of audit firms as they make decisions of how to compete in the future. We would also like to explore how smaller audit firms view the change of the mandatory audit, that is, our intentions are also to examine how they think the consequences on the market will be and their view on its affect on the competition of the market.    Methodology: Our methodological approach was characterized by a hermeneutic approach in order to explain and understand why the smaller audit firms do what they do. Our approach is a combination of inductive and deductive as it allows us to develop an understanding of the subject, then gather our empirical data and from that draw valid conclusions.

This paper attempts to display how five teachers of social studies use and relate to the policy documents and their instructions on gender. To penetrate the subject, five teachers were intreviewed. Each interview focused on how the curriculum attempts to guide teachers regarding gender, sex differences and equality of opportunity. The collected information was processed, analyzed and discussed using gender studies and discourse theory.The results show that the interpretation and usage of the curriculum is very subjective and varies greatly between all the interviewed teachers. Their personal interpretation proves to be crucial when it comes to making reality of the stated goals in the curriculum, concerning actively working towards equality of opportunity between sexes.

This paper focuses on traditional clothing enterprise IT strategies. The purpose was to investigate the correlation between traditional clothing companies IT strategies and their brand. In a market where the competition is high it has become more important that the company targets a customer segment. To reach their targeted customers the company builds their brand with different corporate strategies. This segmentation is necessary because of the high exposure to competition, and a well-established brand could be a prerequisite for profitability.  In today?s market, IT has a major impact on the clothing business.

This report brings up the question - ?Is BIM profitable when planning a single-family home??.The methodology for finding the answer to this question is firstly to state the definitions of BIMand the company that is projecting by using the BIM-model. The answer is then obtained byanalyses of the factors of profitability with respect to: time, opportunity of revision, problemvisualization, preference adjustments and energy. A BIM-model has been made simultaneously asthe writing has proceeded to get a perception of how a BIM-model really matters for the analysis.The analysis shows that the answer for the question depends on further factors. The factors thatare mostly discussed are the company?s intentions and the complexity of the house.

People have different hobbies. The people we are going to meet here share the same interest - choir singing. Singing together in different choirs is their hobby (leisure time interest).What brings them together is the singing, getting an opportunity to sing together with people they otherwise would not meet. In this essay you will learn some of the reasons behind the fact that choir singing is a big movement in Sweden (reasons behind choir singing having a great number of practitioners). You will get a direct link to the informants, without having to read answers that have been tampered with.

The use of Web applications is a growing area. While the possibilities and functionalities are increasing, so is the complexity of them, together with the threats against them because the complexity also opens up the application to vulnerabilities. It is therefore important for developers to know how a web application can be developed with security in mind.This study?s intention has been to create an introductory documentation of what kind of techniques that exists which can produce higher security, which methods there can be within the development process and what to think about when programming secure web applications. In this paper we have investigated how theoretical manuals in the IT security department handles that area, and interviewed two developers from two different companies to see how they use security in their web applications.The study has an exploratory technical perspective and does not explain how to practically use and interconnecting different security-enhancing technologies, but is more suppose to give a first glance at what is available and sow a seed for those interested to continue reading further about the subject.

This examination paper is an energy-inventory of Soldathemmet at the regement in Halmstad, in colaboration with Fortifikationsverket in Halmstad. The building is first an foremost for the soldiers, where they can go for a cup of coffee or watch TV. There is also a museum and a drivers school in the building. Calculations have been done with two computerprograms; VIP+ and ISOVER Energy. The results were well matched with the statistics that were provided by Fortifikationsverket.

AbstractTitle: Level/Degree/Grade:Authors:Supervisor:Research question:Purpose:How the bank may improve its financial counselling ? A qualitative case study.Bachelor Thesis; Business administration; Corporate finance.Andreas A?strand, Anton Persson, Kristoffer Wedebrand.Hans Mo?rner.How may the bank improve its financial counselling to private investors using portfolio theory?Our purpose is to examine the advice, with basis in portfolio theory, the bank?s financial advisors provide to their clients, the investors, and how they can improve. If we can identify and point out areas of improvement in the financial counselling, we hope to raise the question and contribute with an improved financial counselling. Another positive effect we are hoping for is to improve the situation for the investors whereas all parties benefit from an improved portfolio selection.This study is conducted through a qualitative case study, where we used a deductive approach and collected our data through personal interviews.The conclusion that emerges is that the financial counselling could potentially be improved if financial advisors improve their knowledge in portfolio theory.The originality shapes through the opportunity to investigate a specific bank and because of that an opportunity to examine a specific case more thoroughly was created. Our thesis contributes with opening La?nsfo?rsa?kringar?s and other banks? eyes to how their financial counselling could be improved through new knowledge in portfolio theory.

In Uppsala CHP Plant, there are six pressure reducing valves to reduce the pressure from 15 to 3 bars, before six absorption heat pumps. During the process the energy is conserved but losses occur in form of exergy. The aim of this thesis is to reduce the losses of exergy. This can be done by letting turbines replace the pressure reducing valves.In this thesis an investigation has been done of the conditions today, the conditions after the change from pressure reducing valves to turbines and a comparison of three different types of turbine solutions. The three examined solutions are one turbine, several helical screw expanders and several small turbines in parallel with asynchronous generators.The six absorption heat pumps have been divided into two groups; one group of four and one group of two absorption heat pumps.

This report is a literature review that aims to describe marketing contexts for mango production in Kenya. The institutional conditions in the country are not well developed for marketing purposes, which causes many difficulties and problems for the society. In Kenya most mango producers are poor small-scale farmers with limited resources. Mango is a perishable commodity and to keep its value and quality it is essential to have the opportunity to sell the mangos in the right time. Inefficient and undeveloped infrastructure and marketing systems hinders the mangos to reach the market in time though, which causes large losses of produce.The Kenyan mango production has increased during the last decade but due to market losses for the producer, the small-scale farmers? profits have not improved.

The study was conducted on 72nd company at Livgardet in order to find out what motivators makes the soldiers stay. The material in the essay is based on an interview with soldiers from the 72nd company. The motivators are then categorized in the model Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model. The model is based on human drives and I used as a tool for the analysis to identify lack of motivation in a working place. The study shows that the key motivators that make soldiers stay is: the opportunity to go on a peacekeeping mission and comrade/esprit de corps, the soldiers state that they will quit without these two essential motivators.

AbstractDespite that e-business nowadays is established scepsis against it amongst consumers exists. We, as consumers, suppose that this skepticism is caused by bad communication from the e-business companies. This has lead to our suggestion that some con-sumers refrain from e-business because of bad communication or deficient trust.Our purpose with this paper was to investigate factors of communication between companies and consumers within e-business (B2C) from the consumers? point of view. We thereby have drawn conclusions regarding consumers? choice of e-business company.