The transformed municipality ? Economic and social growth in Örnsköldsvik 1997-2007Author: Kristina HanssonThis thesis focuses on the economic and social growth in the municipality of Örnsköldsvik. It is a single case study and the municipality is studied through economic theories concerning regional growth in the period of 1997-2007. The aim is to analyse whether these theories, such as Åke E. Anderssons and Ulf Strömquists K-society, and other more or less microeconomic assumptions, also are applicable in smaller local contexts.

This essay highlights the Swedish retail companies? engagement in ethics and environment issues as a part of the business concept. The Customer is today more aware about what is going on in the world than ever before. Two of the main reasons are the Internet and the globalization. In relation to the customer being more aware about the situation in the world today, the demand for products which have been produced in consideration of ethical and environmental values has increased.

Today's unsustainable resource use is influenced by many factors. One key factor isproduction methods and patterns. Trough change of production patterns enterprises can bepart of the solution to a more sustainable society. This case study has analyzed environmentalperformance of the printer company Edita Västra Aros Ltd (EVA), who has gained awards forits environmental work, and what driving forces they have had during this work. The survey isbased on a qualitative method and the collected data consists of documents and staffinterviews, which have been analyzed with content analysis.

The Swedish Government has set a target to reduce energy consumption through energy efficiency within the construction and real estate sector. The purpose of the study is to examine how energy efficiency within this sector could affect the district heating volume in the future, on basis of Vattenfalls district heating system in Uppsala.An Excel model has been created to study how energy effficiency measures affects district heating demand in buildings by 2045, based on technical and economicalconditions. Furthermore, an interview study has been conducted to examine incentives for district heating customers to invest in energy efficiency measures.Result of the Excel model shows that the district heating volume of Vattenfall in 2045 is expected to 931 GWh, which corresponds to a volume decrease of 10,6 %. Based on the study?s theoretical framework only 15 %, 1 024 GWh, of the technical-economical potential is assumed to be implemented.

This thesis is dealing with the programs of control regarding deceit and quality assurance within the Swedish social insurance administration in Skåne, the years 2002-2005. In 2005 the Swedish National Audit Office released a report regarding the lack of measures towards deceit and fraud, and the lack of quality in the data for decision making within the administration. The questions to be addressed are why the administration does not make up to the demands regarding quality and measures towards deceit that the government and The National Audit Office demands. The main source for data has been interviews with workers within the administration and annual reports from public authorities. To understand and be able to explain the problems within the administration the theory by Michael Lipsky regarding street-level bureaucrats is used.

Fair trials? rights under Swedish law of public administration (FL) are regulated by Article 7 of the Statute. Similarly, fair trials? right under the European Convention of Human Rights (EU Convention) is regulated by Article 6.1. The essay conducts a comparative study of the two legislations and seeks to determine whether Article 7 of the Swedish law of public administration is consistent and compliance with Article 6.1 of the EU Convention.

The research objective of this thesis was to conduct a holistic evaluation of an operational information system. By holistic evaluation we mean that an equal focus was placed on both the system system perspective and its users user perspective, in the actual environment where the system and its users function contextuality. In addition, the methodological objective of the study was to test a new research approach in a real life setting. The participants of the study were twenty newspaper journalists employed at Göteborgs-Posten GP. The information system NewsLink is a manually indexed full-text database containing all articles published in GP since 1994.

For many decades the increase in traffic volume, expansion of highways and infrastructure has lead to an increase of wildlife vehicle collisions which are unfortunately very common in many countries today. They cause great deal of material damage and even kill humans or wildlife. Measures in the form of warning signs, under- and overpasses and fencing have been implemented for a long time with the help of observation by hunters and collisions sites. However this study focuses on the moose?s perspective and the variables that, both spatially and temporally, could have an effect on why and when moose are close to certain types of roads.

The aim of this report is to investigate how the work handling at the department for arriving goods at EFG in Tranås is working, as well as how it could be improved and made more effective. EFG is a corporation who process and sell office furniture. The company is working with a project concerning delivery precision, the subject is therefore particularly interesting from the perspective of delivery accuracy. The number of orders has increased notably during the fall of 2005 and the spring of 2006. This has led to new demands at the department for arriving goods and the topic is as a result of that important also from this point of view.Interviews and investigations have been conducted at location since no written material earlier has been made in the topic.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze two factors contributing to child labor in Ghana, one of the world's largest producers of cocoa. These two factors are: poor countries economic and political dependency on the rich countries, political leader?s ambitions and decisions. We will also describe and analyze the UN's efforts and measures to combat child labor. The method we used was a case study of child labor in Ghana?s cocoa industry together with interviews.

This is a descriptive paper based on a questionnaire- and literature study regarding how dogs are trained, what type and frequency of injuries that occur as well as how the dogs are best prepared for work. Using the results from the questionnaire, an overview is given on how members of Working dog clubs train their dogs and what kind of injuries that occur most frequently. The average age among the dogs included in the study was only about three years. This could indicate that older dogs are not trained in the same extent as young dogs. The results show that only a third of the dog owners warmed up their dogs before training.

The purpose of my task was to map the pallet flows at Findus and put together as well as analyze the problems. My work has also included finding out what alternatives there are to the present pallet exchange system and suggest measures to reduce the problems.The problems can be divided into poor quality and hygiene issues. The poor quality, for instance poor strength is due to arbitrary judgements and the fact that there are companies that make a system of manufacturing forged pallets of an inferior quality compared to the EUR-pallets. These pallets are marked with stamps more or less similar to the EUR-mark and taken into the exchange system. Of course there are rules how to judge a pallet but these rules are many and sometimes indistinct and there are a lot of marks to keep track of.The most dangerous part is when the pallets lack the prescribed carrying capacity.

Volvo Human Monitoring (VHM) is an ongoing project at Volvo Cars where they measure, amongst other parameters, inhalation and exhalation through a device called Respiratory Inductance Plethysmograph (RIP), on drivers. RIP measures changes in the cross-sectional area of the chest and abdomen. When the driver is in motion, such as when she is turning the vehicle, the cross-sectional area changes and noise in the RIP signal may arise.The noise results in a large number of manual adjustments in the analysis of the RIP signal, which is very time consuming and the validity of the device for measuring inhalation and exhalation is questioned.The purpose of this study was to improve the efficiency of the analysis of the RIP signal. The goal was to create a new data processing tool in Matlab that automatically detects inhalation and exhalation from a RIP signal with higher validity compared to the previous data processing tool.In this study, nine tests were performed on drivers while they were driving in different scenarios such as highway, country road and in city traffic. Inhalation and exhalation was measured using a RIP, a pneumotachograph with a tightly sealed facemask and a thermocouple placed between the nose and mouth, which was used as reference to the RIP.The result of this study was a data processing tool that automatically detects inhalation and exhalation with higher validity compared to the previous data processing tool.

The main purpose of this Master Thesis has been to investigate issues concerning apple fruit quality in orchards of Äppelriket Österlen. The goal has been to develop a document, for future benefit towards growers and company management in the production of high quality apples.In order to investigate main issues of fruit quality, focus has been on statistics concerning apple varieties, age of the apple trees, new planting, orchard size and growers opinions. Nine growers have been interviewed to investigate opinions and contribution of different growing techniques to increased fruit quality. The investigation showed high age of the trees in production and low rate of planting of new trees. Differences in fruit quality were highest between small orchards. Most growers were satisfied with their fruit quality and with their own measures made to improve it.

This thesis examines the environmental benefits resulting from the choice of environmental certification scheme, with focus on energy. This was carried out by studying the measures that were implemented as a result of the certification of Sweco's three largest office buildings in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. The office property in Stockholm has been certified with the Swedish Environmental Building, Gothenburg with the British BREEAM and Malmö with the U.S system LEED.The results from the study indicate that an environmental certification can reduce the energy consumption by up to 59 percent and the water consumption by 20 to 66 percent. However; the interviews, literature study and simulations in MATLAB indicate that the size and scope of these environmental benefits depend on several identified factors: the type of building and its conditions, system selection, grade level, the choice of indicators, the ambition of those involved and when in time the certification process begins. The comparison between Environmental Building, LEED and BREEAM showed that Environmental Building for the office property in Stockholm gave the largest environmental benefit in terms of reduced energy consumption thanks to several large measures.