The last couple of years the use of mobile devices such as mobile phones and PDAs has increased tremendously. Most of the these devices have their own protocols for synchronising data and this has given rise to a need for a standard synchronisation protocol, SyncML. This thesis compares this protocol against the existing ones. The comparison shows that the preferred choice is SyncML. Also an application using SyncML has been developed.

Background: Goodwill has always been frequently discussed and a lot of scientific research has been done regarding factors that affect companies? impairment of goodwill. Previous research has concluded that companies reporting low results are more prone to do impairments of goodwill than companies reporting better results which possibly can be seen as a form of earnings management.Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to examine if goodwill impairments occur to a greater extent among Swedish listed companies when the companies are reporting lower earnings. A subsidiary purpose is to see if there has been an improvement since 2008 regarding the size of reported goodwill in comparison to equity in the years 2009-2011. And to analyze the development of the companies goodwill impairments in relation to reported goodwill.Methodology: Three quantitative studies have been performed for the years 2009-2011 where all the listed companies on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm have been included.

AbstractThe development of the construction industry is slower compared to other industries. This implies that there must be improvements in this field. One step to increased effectiveness in construction projects is making the construction process more efficient, therefore resulting in a positive result for both the actual construction project and for the overall branch. The purpose of this study is to identify areas for improvement within the municipal housing company Gavlegårdarna completed construction project, who will then contribute to increased efficiency in their upcoming projects. The work has been performed with the help of two case studies examine construction projects "Fullriggaren" and "The three nursing homes." Opinions about what could have improved the efficiency of these construction projects further have been collected with the help of an interview study among some of the project participants involved in both projects.There have been many studies addressing the topic of how the construction process can be streamlined and similar studies that have been previously conducted.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the literary site Vulkan.se affects the conditions for publishing, distribution, incorporation in value systems and feedback in the literary process, as it appears in Lars Furuland?s model of this process. The purpose is also to propose an updated version of the model. This is achieved through a qualitative testing of Furuland?s theory.

The design regulations of Boverket (BKR) have long been the mandatory standard for construction design in Sweden. However from the end of the year 2010, the BKR will be replaced by the European standard Eurocode (EC). The transition to EC has been delayed and it is not until the second of May 2011 that the use of EC will be mandatory. Because EC and BKR differ from each other it is highly interesting to investigate and explain these differences.The purpose of the thesis is to compare the two standards and investigate how they give different results or not for the dimensioning of structures of steel with associated loads. The current project HVC (Pets Science Center) in Uppsala is used as a model for the design of the steel structure used in this study.

Automatic milking systems (AMS) have been in commercial use since 1992 and have since 1998 increased a lot. The objective of this study has been to examine the development of udder health on farms converting to AMS. The study also included a comparison of how udder health developed depending on how farms handled cows with mastitis. This was because farms choose to either milk cows with mastitis in a separate barn or in the milking robot. Other studies on udder health on commercial farms have shown that somatic cell count increases both among individual cows and in the bulk milk when converting to an AMS. No differences between before and after converting to AMS in the proportion of cows treated for mastitis can be found in the literature.

An energy study has been performed on two blocks in an area called Gävle Strand. The buildings are owned by a tenant-owner?s association called brf Carolina and were built by the company Skanska 2008. The builder as well as brf Carolina are pussled by the fact that electricity use is higher than expected while heating is less. Skanska is also very interested in finding out how much heat recovery from stale exhaust air through a geo-thermal heat pump is contributing to the general heating requirement and energy balance in four out of the ten buildings located on the properties.To find possible answers to the higher electricity use a literature survey on user behaviour was conducted.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine and question the use of mindfulness in the workplace. Mindfulness in the workplace can be understood as an organization recipe and is now a so called trend. We believe that there may be an issue of how mindfulness at work is advertised when it is described in such a way that it could be the solution to many organizational problems, such as reducing stress, increasing efficiency, creativity and productivity. To get a better understanding of what mindfulness is and what it can bring to a stressful work, we conducted semi-structured interviews with four mindfulness instructors. We analyzed the interviews from a theoretical analytical framework consisting of both a constructivist perspective and a power perspective.

This thesis work resulted in a template for how the thermal spray process can be controlled through robot programs. The robots today and their programs need to be replaced, therefore a new structure which can be matched with the new robot systems is needed. The work is limited to only concern structured programming on the new robots on Thermal Spray Centre (TC) with the programming language Rapid. The basic data for the program was retrieved from interviews with concerned personnel at TC, from studies on process parameters for thermal spray and from existing specifications at Volvo Aero Corporation (VAC). The thesis work briefly describes the process thermal spray and the four methods used at VAC.

Under senare år har allt fler organisationer och företag insett hur viktigt det är att identifiera och förstå sina processer, och för att kunna styra och utveckla dem, är det bra att veta vilka de är. Därför vill Reumatologi kliniken veta vad som händer med patienter som har psoriasis artrit, när dem är nyinsjuknade eller ska börja behandlas på deras klinik, samt hur hanteras smärtproblematiken, när de återkommer till kliniken, detta har vi gjort genom att kartlägga processer och sammanställa på vilka olika sätt dessa patienter hanteras på kliniken idag, vart remitteras de? Hur ofta förekommer detta? Vad gör att vissa remitteras och andra inte? Förslag på hur kliniken kan använda denna kartläggning i framtiden.Detta examensarbete genomfördes på uppdrag av:Centrum för Teknik i medicin och hälsa, CTMH, i samarbete med Karolinska Sjukhuset. Arbetet omfattar 15 högskolepoäng.Vid detta arbete har vi använt oss av djupgående intervjuer för att få en djupare insyn i den reumatologiska klinikens handläggningsprocesser. En konstruktionsmodell har utvecklats för att identifiera vilka intervjufrågor som är relevanta för detta projekt.

Forensic psyhiatric care protects the society by giving patients care to diminish risks of serious crimes. In their work the nurses use different care methods to help and support the patient in managing his or her life situation. To clarify how a group of nurses describe the nursing process in forensic psychiatric care. A qualitative study based on interviews. Six nurses were interviewed about their work in four different forensic psychiatric care units.

The Natura 2000 Network is one of the European Unions many tools concerning nature conservation, and is without comparison the premier contribution when it comes to halting the loss of biodiversity. This essay is a case study on how the regional work with the Natura 2000-network has been carried out in four different counties. These counties are Södermanland, Västernorrland, Jämtland and Örebro. They have been compared based on the theoretical concept of sustainable development. This essay describes how the officials in the County Administrations view the regional implementation of Natura 2000 when it comes to the selection of Natura 2000-sites with forest habitats and the creation of an additional protective measure.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify and define Key Perfomance Indicators (KPIs) and value adding services which are used to describe the quality of Forias logistics services from different aspects. The KPIs should be attractive to both Foria and their customers, with the aim to strengthen the interaction between both parties.The basis for this work is a research in which a literature review and a survey of the market for Swedish logistic service providers were carried out. An analysis of the present situation of Foria was carried out, where a number of people in the company were interviewed. These elements were used together with definitions of KPIs to perform the analysis of the work.The result of the work is ten KPIs that have been created and developed for Foria and which are considered to be attractive to both Foria and the selected customers. The KPIs are: · ECO-driving (binary) ? the company has ECO-driving-educated drivers· ECO-driving (comparison figure) ? all drivers individual driving and its resulting exhaust emissions are compared· The environmental impact ? a total of exhaust emissions from all vehicles belonging to a single business, measured in tonne-kilometres· Complete order ? portion of fields with accurate information (in an order), with the possibility of error categorization· Delivery reliability ? time difference between expected and actual delivery, average for all orders· On-time ? the number of days and hours of difference between the expected and the actual time, for all activities of the order· On-time (activity) ? the number of hours and minutes of difference between the expected and the actual time, for each individual activity of the order· Divergence ? a categorization of all causes of divergence and its responsible department· Level of integration ? the level of cooperation between the logistic service provider and the customer· Customer satisfaction ? how well an order will meet the expectations of the customer The KPIs are described in detail with definitions, how they can be used and what is required to implement them in the service process of Foria.

AbstractNowadays, companies and organizations manage large amounts of data to be used as support in decision making. A good solution for data management is in the form of data warehouses. A data warehouse is used to gather information from multiple sources within a company and arrange the information in a way that makes it easy to retrieve and analyze. Designing a data warehouse is not a simple task. The study herein will focus on what a data warehouse is and how the ETL process is used for data storage in the data warehouse. ETL stands for Extract, Transform and Load and is the process that retrieves data, transforms it and finally loads it into the data warehouse.

This paper describes the integration of environmental assessment in Swedish municipality comprehensive planning through a chosen case study. The implementation of a new EGdirective in Swedish law, concerning Assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment, should lead to some changes in the way Swedish municipalities' deals with environmental issues in their comprehensive plans. This could later on lead to new preconditions for municipality comprehensive planning. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the planning organisation in the municipality adapts to new regulations for impact assessment of comprehensive plans required by the Planning and Building act. Secondly the purpose was to partly participate in the early stages of the planning process and thereby indicate and identify possible environmental impacts regarding the aspects of land and water. This was done as a case study in a well defined part of the process.