This essay explores the Swedish state?s geopolitical view and creation, of the spatial spaces in and of the Arctic. With a critical geopolitical framework, a discourse analysis is conducted on the Swedish strategy for the arctic region, with the ambition to unfold the underlining spatial spaces, actors and dramas that this discourse creates. The result of this analysis shows that Sweden creates three different Arctic spaces within its geopolitical discourse; a Swedish Arctic, a Nearby Arctic and a Regional Arctic. This has major political consequences, which will be illuminated in the essay.

In this Bachelor Thesis (20 p.), we present the history and development of "Intelligent Houses", and most important- explore some of the future possibilities in this area. The project has been carried out through an interdisciplinary cooperation between three different educations at the Blekinge Institute of Technology. By conducting a dialogue with various actors with different professions, we have been trying to identify needs within the concept of "Intelligent Houses", were the end user is not only the tenant or homeowner. Through Participatory Design methods, such as a Future Workshop, we have brought the users together to discuss their own and each others needs and hindrances in their respective work practice, and how intelligent house technology could improve their work conditions. We have also been testing a highly sophisticated CO/CO2/Moisture/Temperature/Enthalpy multi-sensor & controller, originally developed for regulating indoor climate systems.

 By changing focus from the active blogger to the ex-blogger this study focuses on a part of the blogosphere that is generally overlooked, why bloggers stop blogging. 30 terminated blogs where studied and the ex-bloggers where contacted. Six main reasons why a blog is terminated was found: Changed life situation, The blog effecting private life, The blog effecting the professional life, Done with testing to blog, Blogging about an event, Done with the blog ? the logical termination. Outside the main focus of the study  it was also evident that most bloggers terminate a blog to put focus of one of their other blogs or start a new one.

The main purpose is to illuminate how a company links certain values to its brand in an effort to achieve a competitive position. We have done this by studying the government owned company Svenska Spel and its entrance on the netpokermarket. With Corporate Social Responsibility as a guidance for the company they wanted to offer Swedish gamblers an alternative to the, often morally dubious, international actors. Our thesis has taken an internal (corporate) as well as an external (consumer) perspective on the result of this strive. Our conclusions are that although Svenska Spel is successfully integrating social responsibility into their netpokerbusiness, they are facing a difficulty in making the consumer fully appreciate it.

The purpose with this thesis is to analyse different factors that can explain district heating prices for energy companies in Sweden. We are further interested in examining if the prices is affected by the use of industrial waste heat in their production and the company?s ownership structure. The method applied is a multiple regression analysis using a panel data set of 50 companies over 5 years (2008-2012). The data used is yearly data obtained from the Swedish district heating association.

This paper presents the results of a workplace study of two smaller companies in the design industry. The core issue has been to investigate the companies use of technical tools and to what extent social praxis influence the daily work. The methods used are based on a qualitative analysis of interviews and observations. Various kind of work procedures, such as verbal and computerized, have been identified, but the most important occurrence was how spontaneous conversations between employees required certain flexibility, since the actors repeatedly were required to change focus and quickly perceive different information. For that reason, a thesis has been defined regarding how the use of spontaneous communication put an indirect need of a flexible working environment and also how this lead to more significant participation and exchange of information, as well as more awareness at the companies..

Shopping for groceries often means that, as consumers, we travel to the grocery store ourselves, by ear, bike or on foot. At the store we pick out the groceries that we want, go the register and pay for them. During the last couple of years consumers in Sweden have been given the opportunity to let someone else select and transport the groceries to their home instead, so called home shopping. As this report is being written, the possibility to buy groceries this way is somewhat limited, but many forecasters believe that in the near future it will increase immensely. Because of the large volumes of groceries that are being transported, there is great transport work being done in the supply chain.

Quadrotor UAVs are self-stabilizing, autonomous flying machines that has recently become more popular than ever. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have their roots in the military, where they were developed for use in reconnaissance and combat. During the last few years, advances in the fields of electronic sensors, electric motors and microcontrollers have enabled smaller designs and autonomic flight control even for private use. The quadrotor, which is the particular kind of UAV we are looking closer at in this paper, has 4 rotors in an X-like formation. This configuration has many advantages such as good lift capacity, non-complex mechanical structure and serviceability.In this project we aquired a current overview of the domain and determine whether it is possible to construct a quadrotor UAV designed for use in a WISENET sensor network on a low budget and short time schedule.Based on existing community project AeroQuad, a quadrotor is constructed with a budget of about 500 euro.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the needs of pre-commercial thinning on private owned forest properties, which is considered to be increasing. The reason is believed to be the high cost of labor that pre-commercial thinning brings. Furthermore thinning is costly, the revenue created through pre-commercial thinning are post-poned until the first thinning. The study was made through a survey among members of Mellanskog forest owners association. The survey was distributed by e-mail. The time to answer was set to two weeks. The answers indicate that the most common reason why the pre-commercial thinning is delayed, or not done at all, is the forest owner?s lack of time.

This work is meant to contribute to the research of adaptation studies by focusing on a special case: the transformation of a fictional diary into a movie. In order to sustain the form of the literary source the adaptation to movie requires certain strategies. Först of all, the diary genre is characterized by a one-dimensional narration. Second, diaries only supply a few written dialogues, hence this "void" has to be compensated and filled by media specific measures. Third, the investigated diary is a story of individualization and emancipation of a single woman.

Background: Increasing globalization makes companies more influenced than before by actors and factors in their environment. For some this has lead to a more dynamic and complicated business context. Therefore it is of strategic importance to understand what is currently going on as well as to have a general idea of what the future brings. Purpose: To contribute to a deeper understanding of how a corporate management can perceive its business environment and how it affects he gathering of business information from a strategic perspective. Realisation: In-depth interviews were conducted with all four members of the management in the studied company, Volvo Competence Center in Skovde, Sweden.

Farmers are constantly facing changes, and the exposure to risk requires monitoring these changes. Financial risks, institutional risks, market risks and production risks are the different risk categories that the farmers face. Production risks stems from factors the farmer cannot affect or is beyond his control. The crop?s output is the basis for the primary income of agricultural operations, which is why it is important for farmer to manage their production risk. A tool to reduce the consequences of production risks is crop insurance.

This paper investigates strategic opportunities for film festivals in a digital film business, with emphasis on Göteborg international film festival and the Swedish film industry. Using a theoretical framework of strategy analysis, the film value chain is examined with special regards to disruptive technology, and the film festival's unique resources are linked to industry structure. It is shown that relationships between actors and across sectors are crucial features of the film industry, and hence a network perspective is added to the theoretical framework. Barriers to entry are shown to be relatively low in all sectors except the cinema market, and it is proposed that film festival's could expand into digital distribution, taking advantage of brand strength, customer loyalty and knowledge of industry. The study adds to the mounting research on film festival practice and its significance for marketing and distribution in the film industry, and highlights the emergence of strategic openings in destabilized networks..

Uppsatsen undersöker fem mäns berättelser kring krigsfilmen Saving Private Ryan, med fokus på maskulinitet. Föreställningarna och bilderna kring maskulinitet som kan urskiljas i intervjupersonernas berättelser, knyts till R.W. Connells teoretiska ramverk kring hegemonisk maskulinitet och de hierarkiska relationerna mellan olika maskuliniteter. Vidare resoneras det kring hur berättelserna exemplifierar en syn på mediepublik som aktiva meningsskapare, då intervjupersonerna tar fasta på olika aspekter i filmen samt ger den olika mening och betydelse. Slutligen belyses hur genus- och andra identiteter är något som kontinuerligt skapas i mötet med en mängd olika diskurser varje dag, samt hur själva handlingen att se på krigsfilm i sig kan ses som konstruerande av maskulinitet..

The presidency of the European Union (EU) is one of the most important institutional actors for the improvement of democracy and equality between the member states. To hold a presidency is a big task and for many countries a tough challenge. What makes a presidency successful? The purpose of the thesis is to examine this question using Ole Elgströms? ?four properties for defining a successful presidency? as the theoretical background. This thesis will employ a comparative framework of four countries, using size and age (age understood as ?time being an EU Member State?) as the defining factors.