Since the 1990?s the Swedish school system has undergone major and recurring structural reforms. Two of the most comprehensive changes has been the shift of primary schools as an integral part of the welfare state to the responsibility of the municipalities as well as the introduction of free school choice for the students. Through two months of participant observations and semi-structured interviews this thesis seeks to answer the question of how these reforms has come to effect the work of teachers in a medium sized public school in a small municipality in the outskirts of Stockholm. Earlier research has shown that public schools in socio-economically vulnerable areas are disadvantaged due to the reformation of the school system (Beach & Sernhede, 2011; Östh, Andersson, & Malmberg, 2013).

The purpose of the thesis has been to explore the use of hedge fund styles when constructing portfolios of hedge funds (i.e. funds of hedge funds). The central question is if the use of hedge fund styles can significantly explain and improve risk adjusted returns (characterized by Sharpe ratios). The study has been done in collaboration with Optimized Portfolio Management AB who desire further knowledge and evaluation of hedge fund styles for their fund of hedge funds.To be able to create successful ex ante portfolios we have explored various prediction models for both risk and return. Our findings indicate that return prediction is problematic using simple models such as regression since the risk exposure of the indices appear to change significantly over time.

The aim of the study was to find repetitive behavioral patterns pre calving that could be used as indications of calving in beef cattle. In the study sixteen Standing- and lying down sensors were attached to the leg of sixteen beef cows. Ten of the sixteen beef cows gave birth to calves during the trial period. From these ten cows, data from six cows were used to assess the sensors fitness for use as calving indicators. The analytical part of the experiment was divided into two parts, calculation of divergence of mean lying time within different time intervals, and the number of lying bouts.The first part consisted of Optimization of an equation used to highlight divergence in mean lying time within eight different time intervals (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21 and 24 hours).

The feed is a major cost in the dairy production and there is a constant interest in findingalternative cost-effective feedstuffs. Competitive dairy producers have to seek ways todecrease their production costs and the pursuit of cost-effective feed rations contributesto lower costs of production. An interesting group of protein concentrates are rapeseedproducts like ExPro (heat treated rapeseed) which have during the autumn 2008 andspring 2009 been very favourable compared to other protein feeds.This study focuses on the feedstuff products ExPro and Raps-Drank 60/40 (rapeseeddistillersgrain). The potential use of ExPro in dairy cow feed rations are also explored.ExPro is a well known feedstuff but Raps-Drank 60/40 is a relatively new product andnot known for many farmers.A field study on the use of rapeseed products was made on a limited number of dairyfarms. The main purpose was to study the management of the feedstuffs on the farms.The Farms were selected in cooperation with two local extension services.

This thesis applies to a novel steam expander, one part of a steam engine system, a wobble plateengine. The piston in the expander moves axially with the outgoing rotating shaft and is locatedon a plate, why the engine type is called axial engine. When steam is applied to the plungers theplate wobbles creating a rotation on the shaft going thru the wobble plate. The steam expander issupposed to be used in exhaust gas recovery (bottoming cycle) applications and small scaleenergy production. The commissioner is Ranotor Utveckling AB.

The aim is to develop a new decision-making model for credit-loans. The model will be specific for credit applicants of the OKQ8 bank, becauseit is based on data of earlier applicants of credit from the client (the bank). The final model is, in effect, functional enough to use informationabout a new applicant as input, and predict the outcome to either the good risk group or the bad risk group based on the applicant?s properties.The prediction may then lay the foundation for the decision to grant or deny credit loan.Because of the skewed distribution in the response variable, different sampling techniques are evaluated. These include oversampling with SMOTE, random undersampling and pure oversampling in the form of scalar weighting of the minority class.

Kremering är idag det vanligaste jordfästningssättet i Sverige, de allra flesta som avlider kremeras och gravsätts i urna. Frågan om hur de metaller som finns i kroppen men inte får plats i urnan hanteras har hittills inte väckt så stor uppmärksamhet, speciellt inte ur miljösynpunkt. Dock handlar det om åtskilliga ton metall som varje år grävs ner på kyrkogårdar runt om i landet. Denna metall påverkar dels miljön negativt, dels kommer det att ta upp mer och mer plats på kyrkogårdarna i framtiden, och att gräva ner metaller imarken är inte ett miljöoptimerat sätt att hantera dessa. Det finns dock andra saker än bara miljön att ta hänsyn till i denna fråga.

Simulations of simulink models using Kalman filters are often very time-consuming. This problem depends mainly on the fact that the Kalman correction has to be performed at each sample instance through the whole simulation. The goal for this thesis work is to reduce that time-consumption for the filtering part (the integration partis treated in a complementary report) of a simulation. Furthermore a Matlab routine to perform parameter tuning and finally a graphical user interface is developed.The filtering part of the simulation in this thesis is based on an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The time Optimization of this filter considers searching for the possibility to replace the today?s existing Matlab functions that is used to perform the filtering calculations.

Since the 1990?s the Swedish school system has undergone major and recurring structural reforms. Two of the most comprehensive changes has been the shift of primary schools as an integral part of the welfare state to the responsibility of the municipalities as well as the introduction of free school choice for the students. Through two months of participant observations and semi-structured interviews this thesis seeks to answer the question of how these reforms has come to effect the work of teachers in a medium sized public school in a small municipality in the outskirts of Stockholm. Earlier research has shown that public schools in socio-economically vulnerable areas are disadvantaged due to the reformation of the school system (Beach & Sernhede, 2011; Östh, Andersson, & Malmberg, 2013).

District heating covers around 80 % of the heating demand in apartment buildings and 10 % in single-family homes in Sweden. In the year 2010 the total input of energy to the Swedish district heating grids was about 70 TWh, which corresponds to 11 % of the total energy input to the whole energy system in the country. Through the combined production of heat and power the CHP-plants often reaches an efficiency of 90 % from energy in the fuel to produced heat and power. In order to keep the efficiency high it is important for the owners of the plant to have good knowledge about the plants performance at different operation points. Strängnäs Energi AB initiated this diploma work together with FVB Sverige ab in order to come up with a program for short term planning of the production of heat and power at the company´s CHP-plant.The work consists of three main parts.

As emission legislations across the world continuously pushes engine development forward,engineers constantly need to come up with and implement fuel saving technologies. During thelast decade, variable cam phasing has become a popular solution to increase gas exchangeefficiency. This configuration is typically mechanically constrained by camshaft limitations, anda solution to circumvent this problem would be to use a different valve actuation principle.One example of this is to use pressurized air controlled by electrical solenoids. Such a systemhas been developed byCargine Engineering and this provides the starting point for this work. Tobe able to operate the valvetrain on an actual engine, a control system is needed.

LevMacinstrumentet är ett analysinstrument under utveckling som utnyttjar leviterade droppar på 100 nl ? 2 ?l. Genom att använda leviterade droppar med den omgivande atmosfären som enda kontaktyta, undviker LevMac?en de vanligaste problemen associerade med miniatyrisering av analytiska tekniker, t.ex. kontaminering av provet genom desorption från provbehållaren eller andra gränsytor, adsorption av analyten till omgivningen med minskat utbyte som följd, och optisk interferens vid väggarna av provbehållaren vilket resulterar i störningar av detektionen.Tillsatser till den leviterade droppen kan göras i pl-området och reaktioner i droppen kan följas med olika spektroskopiska tekniker.

Food-poisoning is a major health problem and an estimated half a million Swedes are food-poisoned annually, with acute gastroenteritis as a consequence. One of the major causes of contaminated foods is related to food- and waterborne viruses. To be able to trace back the source of contaminant, the method of detecting viruses must be specific and sensitive. No standardized method for detecting foods for sapovirus exists today. The aim of the work described in this bachelor thesis is to implement and opti-mize a real-time RT-PCR method for the detection of all genogroups of human sapovirus in foods.

In order to optimize calf welfare and health it is important to know the behavior of cattle in free ranging conditions. When the cow is about to give birth to a calf she will leave the heard about 12 hours before. It is then rather obvious that isolating the cow about calving time in a single pen is imitating the cows? natural behavior. To save space and minimize building cost it?s common that the farmers build calving pens for four of five cows especially at larger farms.

To effectively manage a forest resource for both economic and other values good planning is required. The problem is complex since you want to know which forest to cut and when. Often a hierarchical planning structure is applied, including strategic (long-term), tactical, (medium-term) and operational level. Today SCA Forest is one of few forestry companies in the northern Sweden with an integrated forest wood supply and industry. The goals of the company are to supply their own industries with wood and to manage the resources of the forest through a long-term perspective with satisfactory profitability.