One of the city of Stockholm?s main objectives is to have a society completely free from fossil fuels. To achieve this, several investments regarding improvements in energy efficiency and renewable energy are currently being planned or implemented. One of these investments is a project called Hallbara Jarva which is located in the suburbs of Stockholm. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the prospects of an investment in photovoltaic cells from an energy-saving and economical point of view. The analysis is limited to three buildings within Hallbara Jarva and is intended for the property owner.  Solar energy is a type of renewable energy source and is commonly divided into solar heating and solar power.

The problem with keeping horses with to little social contact has come to attention in a new regulation that comes into effect august 1st 2009. It states that horses? need of social contact has to be accommodated. That?s why it feels important to try to survey the horse owners? awareness about the regulation and its present fulfillment.

Between 1965 and 1974, the Swedish Parliament decided to build one million dwellings, called Million Program. The million program buildings were erected with new, untried design solutions, in a short range of time, and at low cost. The residential buildings from that time are now greatly in need of renovation. The municipal housing company, Gavlega?rdarna, renovates and improves the energy efficiency at some of it?s apartment buildings in the district Sa?tra, Ga?vle.

EU-kommissionen har satt upp som mål att få ett unisont redovisningsspråk för alla företag i Europa. Därför har kommissionen antagit de regler och standarder som den London baserade organisationen International Accounting Standards Board arbetat fram.Studien syftar till att undersöka och utvärdera hur ett antal slumpvis utvalda bolag, som i huvudsak agerar i fastighetsbranschen, efterlever IFRS regelverk IAS 40 gällande förvaltningsfastigheter.Vi har i vårt arbete använt oss av en kvantitativ metod. Underlaget för empirin är hämtat från årsredovisningar från 2009 och är insamlade från företagens egna hemsidor som vi har navigerat oss fram till via Nasdaq OMX Nordic. Dessa har vi granskat och resultatet har redovisats i tabellform.Resultaten visar att det fortfarande finns mycket att arbeta med när det gäller efterlevnad av standarderna. Den största skillnaden fanns hos de Danska företagen när det gäller att lämna vissa upplysningar och kan vara värd att följa upp i en framtida studie.

Title: Management control of facility efficiency in municipalities - A case study of Halmstad municipalityLevel: BachelorSeminar date: 2012-05-31Authors: Markus Nilsson & Sara MattssonAdvisor: Sven-Ola CarlssonKey words: Control management in municipality, facility efficiency, management by objectives, internal rents and incentivesBackground: The public sector owns and manages a large property portfolio and in the municipalities, the properties are always a big cost item. Because of the outside world changes and the public interest, the properties should be used as efficiently as possible.Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how control management of facilities looks like a municipality. The paper also seeks to explain how employees work to make the facilities more efficient in a municipality.Methodology: The authors use a qualitative method with open interviews.Theoretical perspectives: The choice of theory was made with the field of management control and facility efficiency in mind. The theory therefore includes management by objectives, internal rents and reward systems, motivation and communication within organizations.Empirical foundation: The organization has undergone a reorganization 2010/2011. There are no clear incentives to reduce facility costs.

 This paper evaluates the effect of exchange rate risk on the sum of bilateral trade. To distinguish the effect between different types of countries, two groups are defined: advanced and developing economies. Economic theory on exchange rate risk and trade proposes ambiguous effects of increased volatility. However, the ex ante hypothesis is that developing economies are more sensitive to volatility. Contrarily to the hypothesis, the empirical results suggest that advanced economies would benefit up to twice as much from a removal of exchange rate risk.

The report examines the factors which may be a contributing cause to the problems that are present when ferritic stainless steel are eddy current tested in a warm condition. The work is carried out at Fagersta Stainless AB in Fagersta which manufactures stainless steel wire. In the rolling mill there is an eddy current equipment for detection of surface defects on the wire. The ferritic stainless steels cause a noise when testing and this noise complicates the detection of defects.Because of this, a study was made of how the noise related to factors such as steel grade, temperature, size and velocity. By observing the signal and with the possibilities to change the equipment settings the capability to let a signal filter reduce the noise level were evaluated.

The purpose of this paper is to increase knowledge and understanding of how an identity is constructed on the internet and if it is different from the everyday identity. To analyze this, I have studied the theories of how identity is constructed in everyday life and then applied this on the empirical data that I have collected. In this study, I have chosen to pursue a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews to gather the empirical data. In the study, six informants participated and all of them has an active social life both on and off the internet. The results that I have found in this study shows that an identity online is constructed in a similar way as it does in real life, however, some limitations that exist in everyday life do not exist online.

The aim of this report was to investigate the economy of passive houses. The work was focused on economy in total and on the economy of different components such as windows, insulation, heat exchanger and the air tightness of the climate shell. No attention was paid on the comfort factor or to the impacts on the environment.Two houses, aspiring to be passive were chosen; A big one and a small one. Hence, comparisons considering the size of the building have been possible to do as well.The comparisons were made by calculating ?break even? between two concepts; passive and BBR- concept.

This master thesis covers the seasonal planning of a small scale hydropower system. The system in this study is owned and operated by Mälarenergi Vattenkraft AB. The total system consists of 4 different main rivers with 24 hydropower stations and several dams. The total installed power in the system is 43.75 MW. Most of the hydropower stations are regarded as small scale hydropower stations and thus entitled to green certificates.In this report the issue of planning is formulated as an optimization problem.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the experiences and views some users have of the library environment and services of the University Library of Halmstad. The main question to be answered in this thesis is what importance the users attribute to the library environment and services while pursuing their most recent library errand. To answer this question a study of relevant literature on the subjects of library environment, library services and user-surveys in other academic libraries was carried out and a questionnaire was distributed to 22 respondents in the process of visiting the University of Halmstad Library. The literature background and the results of the conducted study were interpreted and discussed and led to the following conclusions: 3 respondents encounters with the library environment and its services were negative in part and thus their experiences and views were relevant to the completion of their library errands. The other respondents? encounters confirmed their overall positive earlier experiences and views of the library environment and its services, but had no real concrete significance for the completion of their library errands..

Hofstede constructed a culture dimension called Power Distance, measuring the inequality of Power. Germany and Sweden have relatively similar values according to his world-renowned research. But a series of interviews of Swedish entrepreneurs in Germany shows that these perceive a large difference in inequality of power in the two countries. This essay seeks to explain the difference between these subjective-qualitative experiences and the objective-quantitative data of Hofstedes Power Distance Index. We propose that a combination of differences in communication, exercise and visibility of power and formality influence the way Power Distance is perceived.

Before 1944 homosexuality was an act of crime and you could be sentenced to prison for up to 2 years. This law only included men, women where not thought having homosexual activities. Although homosexuality was not a criminal act after 1944 it was still on the list over Swedish diseases, a list maid by the Swedish board of social affairs.The years between 1978 and 1984 a study of the homosexual life in society was maid. The most important thing that this study showed was that homosexuality means that you love someone of your own sex, and that you aren?t different from the rest of the society, except that you choose to love someone of the same sex.The work for equality between these two groups started after 1979 when the Swedish board of social affairs took homosexuality of their list over Swedish diseases.

Silviculture in young stands in Sweden is below the mark concerning what has to be done in the forest, and it is time to solve the problem. The problem will not be solved only by the private forest owners, professional help is needed. Skogsägarna Mellanskog is one of four forest unions in Sweden who wants to play a role and take responsibility for forestry in the middle of Sweden. This academic essay is based on a market survey sent to 350 forest owners in the Örebro district. 186 of them answered the questions, giving a response frequence of 53 percentage. The purpose of the essay is to find the determining factors which will make a forest owner to find a collaborator when planning and carrying out the silviculture measures in young stands. The result of the survey shows that the forest owners are anxious about the price and the costs. The costs have a severe effect if the silviculture measures in young stands will be carried out or not.

China is considered as one of the world?s fastest growing economies and the future of China looks promising. Even though the Chinese market attracts many new foreign companies to enter the market there are entry barriers which companies may encounter as obstacles, which will aggravate the market entry in China. As a result companies loose business opportunities and therefore it is of great importance for Swedish companies, which are planning a Chinese market entry, to identify which entry barriers that are considered to be the most difficult obstacles to overcome.The purpose of the thesis is to examine which entry barriers that are generally considered to be the most difficult obstacles for Swedish companies to overcome when entering Chinese markets and to rank the five most difficult entry barriers to overcome.Information about these entry barriers have been gathered from Swedish companies, which have carried out successful market entries in the Chinese markets, through an e-mail questionnaire.The result generally shows that the most difficult entry barriers to overcome in China were: bureaucracy, property laws, language, cultural differences and difficulties finding local partners. The ranking of the entry barriers? result shows that bureaucracy is the most difficult obstacle to overcome, followed by cultural differences, language, relations and access to distribution channels.We conclude that companies experience different difficulties overcoming these entry barriers, which depends on the companies? size, years in China, markets and if the entry barriers were considered controllable or uncontrollable.