The interest in harvesting wood fuel in conflict stands has grown in recent years as a consequence of the increased demand for biofuel. Conflict stands are young forests that have not been cleaned and have a large number of stems ha-1with a great height and diameter distribution. This means that traditional field measurements in conflict stands are difficult and very time consuming. Therefore, the forestry sector is in need of new, more efficient inventory methods. In this study, the Lidar data from Lantmäteriet?s (the Swedish mapping, cadastral and land registration authorities) new national height model was used in combination with plots from the Swedish national forest inventory from 2009 to create functions for; height, volume, diameter and number of stems.

Title: Culture?s Affect on the Determinants of Customer Satisfaction in Retailing: The Case of a European Retailer in the U.S. and China Date of the Seminar: 29th of May 2007 Course: BUS 809 Master thesis in International Marketing Authors: Lisa Bustamante Chesley Norman Charlotte Valind Advisors: Johan Anselmsson Cecilia Cassinger Keywords: International Retailing, Determinants of Customer Satisfaction, Culture, United States, China Thesis purpose: Our study aims to identify the determinants of customer satisfaction of two national cultures in a global retail setting, in order to clarify what role culture has, if any, in customers? satisfaction with an international retailer. Further, this will uncover if a Western perspective of determinants of satisfaction is a universal means of capturing what satisfies customers across cultures in a retail setting.

Every year, KTH participates in the Shell Eco Marathon, a competition whose goal is to design a vehicle that can go as far as possible using only the equivalent energy of one liter of petrol fuel. This year, one of KTH?s contributions to this race is the Agilis prototype; a car powered by a uniquely configured HCCI-engine developed at the university. The engine is dependent of several subsystems in order to work properly, among other, systems for cooling and lubrication.Combustion engines are in need of a cooling system that reduces the heat developed during the combustion. In general, two main types of cooling systems are employed; either air cooling, where the outside of the cylinder is exposed to a flow of the surrounding air, ore water cooling, where water flows in tubes around the engine, and the heat are transferred by the water to the surrounding air through a heat exchanger.The purpose of the lubrication system is to prevent the friction that builds up in the interference between moving parts in the engine.

På grund av en ökad befolkningsmängd och nya tekniker som gör fler sjuka går att bota ställs nya krav på svensk sjukvård. Sjukvården måste möta de nya kraven med ett bättre effektivare resursanvändande och där till krävs nya förbättringsmetoder. Med influenser från industriell tillverkning har sjukvården omarbetat lean production för att skapa ett universellt förbättringsverktyg som lämpar sig för vårdorganisationer. Verktyget kallas lean healthcare och är omdiskuterat och dess effekter tvetydiga. Att undersöka om och hur värdeflöden i en akutmottagnings triage, som innebär en prioritering efter patienters allvarlighetsgrad, kan effektiviseras med hjälp av ett flödesorienterat arbetssätt som lean.

The production costs have steadily increased within the construction industry during the 21st century. Voices are raised meaning that the construction industry is too unsuccessful in making the production more efficient and to develop it?s way of working. One way to deal with the production costs is to minimise the waste, with waste meaning activities that doesn?t add value to the finished product.

This report is the result of a thesis work carried out on the Risifrutti production at the company Procordia Food AB. The thesis is at a master level and is the final work for the author to receive a Master of Science in Innovative production at Mälardalen University. The thesis comprises 30 credits and has lasted for 18 weeks. The thesis is mainly a research on whether it is possible to perform an Environmental Value Stream Map (E-VSM) in a food processing industry and an evaluation if the tools E-VSM and Green Performance Map (GPM) are useful in this type of industry. An extra part to this research is to use the results from the E-VSM and give Procordia Food AB information on improvement potentials in the Risifrutti production. The author has found it difficult to collect some of the quantitative data to the E-VSM, mainly regarding energy, but by using the Value Stream Mapping (VSM) tool and other Lean tools the author was able to identify and quantify several wastes in the Risifrutti production. Recommendations for improvements based on these wastes have been given to the company. In the research part of this report the utility of the Value Stream Map, Environmental Value Stream Map and Green Performance Map in a food processing industry have been analyzed. The author has found that the Value Stream Map has been a useful tool since waste and unevenness in the tact of the production has been identified. The Environmental Value Stream Map and the Green Performance Map are also great tools when a company wants to analyze their environmental impact and then invest in environmental improvements. However, no profound energy analyzes has been done in the Risifrutti production because of the lack of energy meters for steam, electricity and compressed air in the production lines..

Scana-Booforge is a Swedish company which specialize in heat treatment of various metal. The treatments take place in quenching ovens, where fans are used to circulate the hot air. The fans used today do not have a satisfactory lifespan. This thesis aims to develop a new design of the fans for the quenching ovens, and the goal is that the new fans will bring cost savings for Scana-Booforge.The design development process started with mapping out the environment in which the fans operate, and with analysis of the existing fan structure and damages, in order to establish the cause of failure and of short durability. The performance of the fan were also established at this stage.

In view of the difficulty of recruiting staff to care profession and in terms of the increasing need to find ways of ensuring a good language level in the profession, have an interest in language tests been revealed. The purpose of this paper is therefore to highlight the use of language tests for admission to the care courses for adults in Värmland. What provided This is a survey of the prevalence and an examination of the validity of the test. The issue that this study assumed is: How is language test in connection with admission to the certified health and social care courses for adults in Värmland? How well correlates intent of the use of the language test with the test's validity and reliability?The methods used to seek answers to these questions has been a combination of questionnaires and experiments.

In today´s forestry, assessments of needs for thinning are based on basal area measurements. This is an indirect measurement. The approach and the developed assessment tables are based on an assumed production forest, which implies that management proposals in stands that deviate from the basic model may be misleading. Since Walter Bitterlich in 1948 launched the idea of the relascope, several modifications have been developed for different purposes. In common is that all are based on a certain angle measurement principle.

The search for antibiotic compounds from the natural environment has been going on for seven decades, ever since penicillin entered the market and antibiotic treatments became routine. The evolutionary pressure put on the pathogenic microorganisms induced a rapid spreading of naturally occurring resistance genes, leaving only the option of finding new antibiotics to treat the resistant pathogens. Microorganisms have been extensively mined for their biosynthetic abilities to produce biologically active compounds. To date, more than 23 000 microbial natural products have been discovered. The Actinomycetales are ubiquitous bacteria that have been used for antibiotic discovery for more than half a century, and over 10 000 natural products have been identified from the order.

By using industrialized building, pre-installed modules can be delivered to the construction site where they are easily mounted. This method has many advantages compared to on-site manufacturing, for example, the precision during the production process should be much higher than building each wall and floor on site. Furthermore, the quick erection procedure when using prefabricated elements and the possibility to use weather protection has the advantage of not being dependent on weather conditions, and many other factors.Masonite Beams AB is a Swedish company (a member of the Norwegian company, Byggma ASA) with a relatively new technology using light weight beams as bearing elements in the walls and a certain stiff board lamella slap which is mounted on the top of the floor structure creating an integrated stiff beam / board floor structure. The elements are flat which make it much easier to transport the elements from the factory to the building site where the building parts are easily mounted with special mounting stud.One of the main drawbacks of lightweight structure is the sound transmission. The main topic is low frequency annoyance, however the complex structural elements and their mutual sensitive connections other acoustical problems might appear.

Public participation in urban planning is meant to increase democracy in the planning process. Even though all citizens have the option to participate in urban planning debates, few seize their chance to partake. This thesis describes a study on how user needs are met and prioritized in design processes concerning urban planning. The aim was to determine whether user-centered design (UCD) methods could be used as an avenue for public participation in urban planning and ultimately invite more citizens into the planning process.The thesis details a design process where a team worked to develop Farsta, a suburb of Stockholm. The design problem was the question of how Farsta could become an attractive business location.

Cannibalism can have major influence on fish population dynamics. A prerequisite for cannibalism is that the cannibal and the potential victim meet, and besides density effects, the encounter rate between cannibals and their victims is therefore also largely dependent on habitat use and habitat heterogeneity. In this study I quantified and compared the potential for cannibalism in stream-dwelling European grayling populations in three rivers in Jämtland by means of habitat classifications. I also analyzed population dynamic consequences of varying the potential for cannibalism in terms of intensity, using a physiological structured population model. Findings based on habitat characteristics were that the potential for cannibalism is in general not favourable in these types of streams.

In view of the difficulty of recruiting staff to care profession and in terms of the increasing need to find ways of ensuring a good language level in the profession, have an interest in language tests been revealed. The purpose of this paper is therefore to highlight the use of language tests for admission to the care courses for adults in Värmland. What provided This is a survey of the prevalence and an examination of the validity of the test. The issue that this study assumed is: How is language test in connection with admission to the certified health and social care courses for adults in Värmland? How well correlates intent of the use of the language test with the test's validity and reliability?The methods used to seek answers to these questions has been a combination of questionnaires and experiments.

Title: The role of social media on today?s markets ? Companies? desire to understand theircustomersAuthors: Kristoffer Avci-Nåmark & Patrik WidlundBackground: The markets of today are characterized by dynamic conditions because of thecontinuous change in consumer preference. Due to this, the interaction between the company and its consumers is gaining importance as companies find the need to increase their knowledge about the market. Out of this need social media has emerged as a tool forcompanies to improve their communication with customers. The popularity of social media isincreasing at a rapid rate and sites such as Facebook now has around 500 million usersworldwide.