This has been a practical innovation graduation project withthe focus of studying the impacts of downsizing on a learningorganization. The study took place at Karlsson Spools in Sala.This has been a part of an ongoing EU project funded by theEuropean Social Fund, ESF. We have, with the help ofinterviews and surveys, gathered information on the presentsituation and with the help of theoretical studies built aframework on how a learning organization is viewed intheory.During our study we found that there are many componentsto a learning organization. The company in question hasdisplayed some qualities that characterize a learningorganization such as a plan to train and further develop theiremployees. The problem we found was lack of communicationand how this has resulted in a less successful outcome of theongoing courses.

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.

I have with this thesis sought to understand how chick lit could be useful in the classroom in the teaching of Swedish B-course in high school. Based on the model of critical literacy I am arguing that this genre would help to meet the objectives of the policy documents which, among other things, are to critically examine and analyze various types of texts.I have found that some of these texts could be used for analyzing and critically examine the ideological dimensions of texts and cultural heritage by the model of critical literacy, and also as a counterweight to the more traditional teaching of the canonical literature as a literary historical stuff that students should learn. I have also wanted to create a basis for discussions about literature in the classroom based on the chick lit genre. To do this I have, based on three themes and questions from the model of critical literacy, tried to focus on issues that might emerge from the ideological analysis and critical review. The model aims to deconstruct norms of society, and in the work of chick lit, I wanted to show how you could deconstruct norms around gender..

This study is part of an international project, The Third Wave Project. The project aims to conductstudies with students of different cultures to see what they value as important in mathematics andmathematics learning. Part of the project involves carrying out a survey, the WIFI study. The WiFistudyaims to examine values of mathematics teaching that may affect student learning. The valuesthat are examined in this study are based on the mathematical values which are described by Bishop(1991).

The cost of capital for traded companies is basically assessed on information from thefinancial market. Small and non-traded companies are lack of this necessary financialmarket information in order to determine an appropriate equity risk premium and tocompute the cost of capital.In the absence of financial information necessary for an external investor, it is difficult toevaluate a non-traded company with the Capital Asset Pricing model (CAPM), which isbased on the financial market information. It measures only the systematic risk, which isthe contribution of one share to the market risk of a portfolio. It is therefore important tofind models that reflect the small and non-traded companies? real business value and theirunique characteristics.

The aim of this thesis is to develop a new business model for district heating and cooling firms which can contribute to a stabilization of the Swedish national energy system. The business model is developed for a district heating and cooling firm and is exemplified with Fortum Heat. The theoretical investigation around the topic creates a rigid base for following qualitative empirical studies. Osterwalder?s canvas for business model generation is used together with a Casual Loop Diagram to identify a number of business opportunities which stabilizes the national energy system.

The aim in this project was to spread play in the city and acrossgenerations. My way of approaching this challenge was to explore theborderland between playground equipment and street furniture. Thisopened up many possibilities to afford play in places where playgroundequipment often is excluded.The goal was to create one, or more, furniture with play value. The targetgroup was all vivasious people spending time in the public outdoorspace. Through user studies, a lot of serious playing and a lot of testing,the project resulted in a bench called Rollin´.

This report summarizes a Bachelor Degree Project in Integrated Product Development, carried out during the fall 2007 till spring 2008 by three students at the Product Design Engineering Program at the University of Skövde. The project was performed in cooperation with Lundbergs Möbler AB in Tibro. Lundbergs wants to start selling furniture to the public eldercare. The purpose of this project was to adjust one of their chairs. The project layout was to first make a preliminary investigation where the market, competitors? assortment and the purchasing process are studied.

REINERTSEN AS performs expansion and buckling analyses of pipelines using ANSYS, afinite element modelling and analysis tool. In an expansion analysis the pipeline is modelledwith thin?walled pipe elements called PIPE20 which allows plastic deformation. However, ina recent analysis the results retrieved from the PIPE20 element were incorrect for strainsabout 1 percent. One main issue was that the PIPE20 element overestimated the strains.The purpose with this Master Thesis was to become familiar with the theories and analysismethods used in pipeline design.

Electrolux Laundry Systems is the world leader in manufacturing professional laundry equipment.The machines are used in the hotel sector, elderly care, in multifamily houses, laundry bars, and incommercial and institutional laundries.If there is oil or grease left in the clothes after washing may the heat from the dryer cause a chemicalreaction. This reaction may, under certain circumstances cause a fire inside the drum. Competitors toElectrolux has developed its own systems that extinguishes fire inside a tumble dryer and customershave expressed desire to purchase a fire-extinguishing system. Therefore, the project team receivedthe task by Electrolux to develop a fire-extinguishing system that extinguishes a fire in a tumbledryer.The purpose of the project has been to develop a system that both detects and responds to fire in anindustrial tumble dryer to meet the competitors and to satisfy customers' requirements.The goal was to develop a fire-extinguishing system for Electrolux Laundry Systems and develop afully functioning prototype.The project began with information searches on a variety of methods to both detect and extinguish afire. Subsequently, a number of different methods were used to develop a final solution and make aprototype.The result of the project is a fire-extinguishing system that extinguishes a fire inside a dryer.

Research is a time-consuming endeavor which requires appropriate tools to manage often vast amounts of information. Militarization 2.0 is a research project aiming to explore Militarization in social media. The aim of this project is to design a user interface for supporting researchers in projects involving large amounts of data in qualitative studies. The project will follow the design process of the first version of the Militarization 2.0 research database interface. The design process involves user studies, interviews and design and testing of paper and digital prototypes.

In 1998 the Swedish Socialist Government initiated a project in order to promote economic growth and to end the discriminating social and ethnic segregation in the greater city regions of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo. One of the goals of the project was and still is to promote political participation in 24 of the poorest areas of the three cities. In a quantitative analysis I evaluate whether or not the project so far has been successful in promoting a specific part of political participation, i.e. electoral participation in communal elections. The results of the 24 poor city areas are compared with a group of 14 likewise poor city areas of major swedish cities.According to my hypothesis, general improvements of the socio-economic status of poor city areas ought to generate positive effects on electoral participation in communal elections.

The actual project presents the development of a testing rig for a steam engine. A short overviewabout the development of steam engines is presented, until arriving to the development of thepresent engine, which will require to be tested in different ways.The testing rig studied on this project (based on a Lanchester engine) will be used to testdifferent materials and layouts for the group Piston-Cylinder.The engine is a high performance steam power engine, which is going to have a highpower/dimensions ratio, what will lead to require high performance components and materials.An introduction to the testing rig is presented, and the entire design project is done in order toreplace the disappeared documentation of the current testing rig, built on the 1970?s. Also somemodifications done in the original testing rig are presented, as well as some detected problemsand their possible solutions..

Soil properties affect the chemical composition of soil water. When studying transport of chemical substances through a basin, it is therefore important to know from which soil layer the main part of the runoff is generated. The aim of this study is to develop an HBV/PULSE model with merged soil moisture and response routines, which generates good approximations of groundwater levels. It should be possible to extend the model to simulate transport of substances and take into account which soil layer the groundwater level is currently in. The hydrological version of HBV/PULSE is used since there is no need to account for pH or alcalinity at this stage.

The objective of this project was to develop an application for mobile phones using the Android operating system. The main goal was, with the help of GPS, to pinpoint locations, measure distance traveled and illustrate the progress on a map. Functionalities for just showing the map, fetching addresses and saving to a database was also implemented. The result of the work was a proper application, called MeasureApp, that fulfills the goals set in the planning stages of the project. MeasureApp can be used to measure distances where accuracy is not a main factor, i.e walks or runs.