Aim: The purpose of this work is to investigate what differences there are between a credit union that is connected to Sweden?s Credit Association and an independent association, and how these differences have affected the union?s success. Method: A qualitative study has been made by means of email and telephone interviews. Respondents were chosen from Sweden?s Credit Association, Credit Guarantee Association in Gävleborg and Övre Norrland Guarantee Association. The interviews were then analyzed in the light of our theoretical studies. Result and conclusions: We have found that there are three major differences between the unions.

In the fluidized bed furnace at Rönnskärsverken, Skelleftehamn, sulphur-containing ore concentrates are roasted in order to remove about 50% of the sulphur in the incoming ore concentrate. This occurs in order to reach the goal of a matte containing 55% of copper in the following smelting process. At the same time as the ore concentrate is partially roasted pollutions as arsenic, antimony and bismuth are expelled. Earlier made thermodynamic calculations of equilibrium suggested that calcium and magnesium form stable compounds with arsenic and thereby inhibit expellation of arsenic in the fluidized bed furnace, an element that is undesired. The purpose of this thesis work was to gain knowledge of the mechanisms behind the formation of these stable arsenic compounds.

In this project a LC-MS-method for the analysis of gamma-hydroxybutyrate, gamma-butyrolactone, 1,4-butanediol, amphetamine and methadone was developed.Initially, the efficiency of the ionisation of the analytes was evaluated with respect to the ionisation technique (ESI, APCI and APPI) and the composition of the mobile phase. In the next step a number of different columns was tested in order to find the one with the greatest potential for separation of the substances in question. Using the selected column, the separation was optimised by means of experimental design and the software The Unscrambler 7.8. The parameters studied were the flow rate, the column temperature and the mobile phase composition. The response variables were the resolution between the target compounds and the retention time of the last eluting compound.These experiments showed that, in order to obtain the best ionisation, the mobile phase should consist of 5 mM formic acid in water and acetonitrile.

In Sweden more than 400 000 private households have not yet sufficient wastewater purification. These effluent is considered as an increasing problem and many onsite purification methods have been studied. In this investigation, the method of reactive bed filters have been tested by column and batch experiments. Five different kinds of filter materials with reactive surfaces have been studied concerning their capacity to absorb ammonium and phosphorus from wastewater. The materials that were examined are Filtra N, wollastonite Filtra P, blast furnace slag and Polonite®.

There are around 855 000 on-site sewage systems in Sweden and some 1 800 of these are located in the municipality of Sigtuna. The Sigtuna local authority has set the goal that all sewage systems with insufficient function should be improved before the end of year 2010. A malfunctioning on-site sewage system may cause three main problems: spreading of diseases, discharge of eutrophicating compounds and wastage of resources. The municipality strives to reduce these problems already at the stage of granting permits for installation of on site sanitation systems. The municipality has recently adopted new guidelines, which demands certain minimum reductions for different compounds. The guidelines also state that it is preferred that neighboring house-owners cooperate in jointly built and operated sewage systems and that the system should be able to recycle plant nutrients.

The aim of this thesis is benchmarking of the program, based on dynamic programming, that earlier was written to imitate the production planning at TSS.This thesis starts with a chapter about the construction of the DP-program, a shorter description of one and each of the program parts and also a list over the in- and output data in each program part. The DP-program consists of six linked MATLAB-files that together produce an optimized production plan for the different planning groups at TSS. The program reads in and reformat the given data and optimize the production of the articles in one group. Finally it compounds all article production plans and give us a production alternative.After running the program with new data the result shows, resembling with previous results, that TSS could be able to make some distinct cost-savings. According to the program, a 50 % decrease of TSS production costs is possible. .

Pupils, and most of all girls, drop out of organized sports in the ages 13-18. The purpose of this survey was to study which motives girls had to proceed in sports together with differences between certain groups. This study was based on a survey which included 86 responses from girls active in sports in 10 different compounds. The results showed that the most frequent motives to do sports were to have fun and to feel well. Differences showed were that the ones who trained more often and the ones who practiced more than one sport found that to work hard was an important motive, compared to the other groups.

This report is the written documentation of a project work carried out at the Division of Engineering Materials at Luleå University of Technology in cooperation with Seco Tools AB. The project deals with the analysis of residual stresses in Ti-Al-N thin film grown on WC/Co cutting inserts. The composition of Al varied from 0% up to 75%. Increasing the Al content in the Ti(1-x)Alx N compound improves the compressive residual stresses even after annealing of the material. The experiments have been performed in a high temperature x-ray diffractometer (HTXRD) where the interplanar atomic spacing was determined in-situ and subsequent converted into stresses.

Elite sport is becoming more professional, and elite athletes have to be more committed to spend several hours in training to achieve elite level and this means that the time to pursue a university academic career to the side of elite sport is minimized. Still only few elite athletes will be able to make a living of their sport. The objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of the opportunities and difficulties for a student who combines academic study with elite sport. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with eight students studying at the University of Umeå, combining elite sport with academic studies. Results show that there are high demands on elite students to structure and plan for the combination of studies and elite sport.

The aim of this study is to examine the knowledge and experience of the bad breath among high school students in Kristianstad. A further objective was to measure the amount of VSC (Volatile Sulfur Compounds) among those who perceive themselves to have a bad breath. A questionnaire with 21 closed questions was distributed to 120 high school students from Kristianstad municipality who were between the ages of 17-20. The results of this study revealed that most of the students had good knowledge of halitosis. The majority of all participants thought it was important to smell fresh in the mouth and also experienced most of their breath as very good or good.

In a sustainable society the use of renewable energy and recycling of materials is of high importance. Wastewater treatment plants use large amounts of energy in the processing of wastewater. This study seeks to evaluate wastewater as an energy resource and to examine treatment plants potential to become sustainable energy producers. The study is based upon the internal processes of Himmerfja?rdsverket.

Forestry is an important industry in Sweden, with clear-cut as the most commonly used method for harvesting. Here the long-term impact of clear-cut on lake water quality (dissolved organic carbon (DOC), nitrogen, phosphorus and pH) has been investigated, based on 23 lakes sampled during autumn. Data for additional 15 lakes sampled for the Swedish monitoring program were also used. Lakes were classified as 5, 25, 40 and 60 year based on data of the forest age in the catchment, gathered from the Swedish national forest inventory. Clear-cut lakes were classified as 5 years (>20% of the catchment clear-cut during the last 10 years).

This thesis discusses main problems associated with dictionary-based Cross-Language Information Retrieval as lexical and translational ambiguity of query terms, translation of compounds and phrases, dictionary limitation. The purpose of the study is to investigate how query structure influences the effectiveness of CLIR regarding performance of three query types: original query, unstructured query and structured query. Query structuring refers to the application of #syn-operator to group query terms. The study comprises an experiment that was performed in the InQuery IR system with TrecUta database that contains 550,000 news articles from different American newspapers. 24 topics were used for the experiment.

Background: Chemotherapy and radiation resistance are major causes of failure in cancer treatment. The response to treatment in cancer cells depends on several mechanisms and pathways such as Janus kinases-signal transducers and activators of transcription JAK/STAT pathway. STAT1 was the first described transcription factor in the STAT family. STAT1 is activated by stimulation of signaling proteins such as type II interferon (IFN- ?) and the activated STAT1 translocates from cytoplasm to nucleus.

The objective of this report is to present a review of the studies which has been carried out up to days date concerning how temperature affects vegetables physiologically when it comes to their health inducing as well as quality reducing features. The essay therefore starts off with defining what is meant by the terms health promoting and quality reducing features. It then moves on to describe how different subspecies of Brassica oleracea, that is to say vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and kale, is affected by temperature. B. oleracea was chosen because the species contains several commercially interesting subspecies and therefore provides a broad field even though only one species is assessed.