Abstract: Private equity used to be synonymous with tremendous yields and rates of return. However, the private equity market trembled in 2008, due to the financial meltdown caused by the worldwide credit crisis. Considering the current low number of exits within the private equity industry, the purpose of this thesis is to examine if there has been any change in how private equity firms control their portfolio companies since the inception of the crisis. One private equity company and two portfolio companies have been studied. The case study is prepared from interviews with senior directors in the portfolio company and investment managers in the private equity firm.

In this study, the efficiency of a newly launched predatory mite, Amblydromalus limonicus, has been examined for its potential to use as a biological control agent in cucumber production. A. limonicus can be used for biological control of two thrips species, Frankliniella occidentalis and Thrips tabaci. Field trials were conducted in greenhouses of two conventional cucumber growers in Scania, the southern part of Sweden. The basic control agent used against thrips was the predatory mite Amblyseius swirskii. In selected areas, additional A.

Quality is the main focus in management of all laboratories. Accurate results of the analyses are not only determined by the analytical procedure but also by preanalytical factors. In the total analytical process of clinical specimens, there are many possible preanalytical sources of error. Monetoring of temperature on test samples of the transport boxes is one way to reduce the mistakes in the preanalytical phase.In this study, four laboratories from primary health care were invited to participate. The temperature has been measured on test samples of the transport boxes being delivered to the laboratory.In three cases the temperature remained within the limits, but in the fourth case the temperature varied more than the allowed interval.

Studenter är bland de som konsumerar mest alkohol i Sverige. Hög alkoholkonsumtion och extern akademisk locus of control (ALC) har liknande negativ effekter på studier. Denna studie undersökte relationen mellan alkoholkonsumtion, ALC och alkoholrelaterade studieproblem. 120 studenter, varav 91 var kvinnor, deltog genom att besvara en enkät bestående av The Academic Locus of Control Scale for College Students, the AUDIT Alcohol Consumption Questions och en egenkonstruerad skala som mätte alkoholrelaterade studieproblem. Data analyserades med en 2 (riskbruk/ickeriskbruk) x 2 (extern ALC/intern ALC) ANOVA för oberoende mätningar.

I dagens samhälle är majoriteten av våra tillgångar digitaliserade och bevarade i olika typer av informationssystem. Genom Access Control (sv. behörighetsstyrning) säkerställs att användare får korrekt åtkomst till dessa tillgångar. I takt med att organisationer genererar allt mer affärskritisk data i sina informationssystem har dock hanteringen av användare och behörigheter komplicerats. En modern genre inom begreppet informationssystem som länge visat ökad tillväxt är Business Intelligence (BI).

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between locus of control and behavior in a work group. The investigation was performed using two methods, self-report and observation, which were used in order to provide a description of how the individuals experienced their own behavior in a group context as well as of how they actually could be observed to behave. The 31 participants were divided into five groups. During the procedure each group received a task, which was to be discussed and solved by the group members together. Observations were carried out using IPA.

This master of science thesis is focusing on how the fault handling on hardware connected toa control unit on a Scania vehicle is working. To the hardware counts buttons levers, sensorsand CAN. The work has been concentrated upon how the fault handling is working and if it ispossible to find any new fault modes.The control unit that has been studied is called the Coordinator and is the core in Scanias threenetworks of control units. The Coordinators work is to transmit messages between the threenetworks and to process signals from buttons, levers and sensors. The values is then usedinternally or is sent to other control units on the CAN networks.

A large proportion of businesses around the world is today ISO 9001 certified and is consequently conducting internal audits on a regular basis. It has however not been possible to conclude that internal audits always add value to the organisation, despite the large utilisation of this tool. Some authors, e.g. Alic & Rusjan (2010) and Wealleans (2000), mean that there are possibilities that internal audits may be used as a value-adding improvement tool. This has led to the emergence of this master?s thesis.The purpose of the case study was therefore formulated to examine how internal quality audits can be made more effective and used as an improvement tool.

According to statistics, a significant increase in sickness has occurred in the public sector in recent decades in Sweden. Human therapeutic professions is the area where the illness is most prevalent. The purpose of this study was through a qualitative method and hermeneutic approaches explore how conscious six social workers in the social services are on stress and how they cope with it. Further it investigates and analyzes how these results affect their daily work.One important result due to stress is that the social workers ability to treat their clients is impaired and they are less able to be empathetic. Inadequacy in the work environment leads to a sense of insufficiency by social workers, and a reduced quality of life.

Övertoner orsakade av varvtalsstyrda motordrifter ger problem i industrisystem. Syftet med studien är att identifiera problemen och ge rekommendationer för att undvika dem. Studien utfördes som examensjobb på KTH för konsultföretaget Ramböll. En litteraturstudie i ämnet kombinerades med elkvalitémätningar på drifter hos Sandvik Mining.Elkvalitéproblem orsakade av varvtalsstyrda motordrifter kommer till stor del av att frekvensstyrningen ger olinjärt strömuttag som, om nätet inte är tillräckligt starkt, påverkar spänningskvalitén. Problemen kan vara driftstopp, störd utrustning och ökat slitage på utrustning för att nämna några.Denna studie visar att vid ändringar i system innehållande övertoner kan framtida övertonshalter approximeras för vissa fall.

Tidigare ombesörjde organisationen karriär och karriärutveckling för den anställde och karriärkontraktet byggde på livslånga anställningar. Det nya karriärkontraktet bygger istället på en så kallad proteisk karriär (Hall, 1996), vilket utmärks av att individen ser sig själv som ansvarig för och drivande av sin karriär, att egna värderingar får styra samt att psykologisk utveckling är främsta mål. Studiens frågeställning var att undersöka om personlighetsfaktorer i termer av self-efficacy, självkänsla, locus of control samt neuroticism kan predicera proteiska karriärattityder. I studien användes kvantitativ metod och en enkätundersökning genomfördes på studenter. Korrelationsberäkningar visade att samliga personlighetsfaktorer samt proteiska karriärattityder var korrelerade.

The view on which kind of fiction that should be mediated to the public through the Swedish public library system has since the late 60´s been dominated by what in this Master?s thesis is called: ´the discourse on quality of literary fiction´. The aim of this thesis is to examine to which extent this discourse still plays an active role in the Swedish public library system or if that discourse has been replaced by a more market-led, demand responsive view, where the features of ´quality´ and ´culture´ have been downplayed and replaced by a ´customer?s service view´ on how and why fiction should be mediated to the public. The methodological and theoretical perspective in this thesis is led by the understanding of the discourse analysis in Michel Foucault?s ´The Archaeology of Knowledge´.

The foundation of our study is five strategically selected printed advertisements which all contains signs that refer to digital medias. Through a quality content analysis, we are studying how advertisers may use a room with extended communication too enlarge the space given in a printed advertisement. The potential in these rooms are proposing a social connection and a flexible interaction by providing content that is not possible to create in a printed advertisement. The form of communication is changing and there is a two-way communication created in an obvious way. The different kinds of roles in the communication process are here partially integrated with each other.

Students? performance in school is dependent on the indoor climate. This report studies four schools regarding air quality and thermal environment. A survey was made at the schools as well as measurements of carbon dioxide, dampness, thermal climate and, as an indicator for the furniture?s capability to collect dust, shelf factor and fleece factor.

This report evaluates whether an interpreted high-level garbage collected language has enough information about its memory behaviour to make better cache decisions than modern general CPU hardware.With a generational garbage collector, depending on promotion algorithm and generation size, around 90% of all objects never leave the first generation. This report is based on the hypothesis that, because of the low promotion rate, accesses to higher generations are sufficiently rare not to benefit from caching.To test this hypothesis, we built an operating system with a Scheme interpreter in kernel mode, where the interpreter controls the cache. Generic x86 PC hardware was used, since it allows fine-grained control of cache decisions.Measurements of execution time in this interpreter show that disabling the cache for generations higher than the first does not give any performance gain, but rather a performance loss of up to 50%.We conclude that this interpreter design is not an improvement, but cannot conclude that the hypothesis is false in general. We suggest building a better CPU simulator to gather more data from which to make better caching decisions, moving internal interpreter data structures into the garbage collected heap and modifying the hardware to allow control in the currently rigid dimension of where data is cached---for example separate control of instruction and data caches and separate data caches for different areas of memory..