The purpose of this study is to examine how individuals' social capital can affect the opportunities for finding a job. That is, what benefits social contacts can provide in the hunt for a new job. The main questions that will be answered throughout this study are:- Of what importance are social contacts when looking for a job?- What are the advantages and disadvantages that the respondents present with recruitment thru informal channels/social contacts?-What are the advantages and disadvantages that social contacts can provide in terms of personal recommendations when looking for a job according to the recruiters?The study is based on five qualitative interviews with mainly recruiters from various parts of the labor market. The collected empirical data that the study has yielded indicate that individuals' social capital of the highest degree is crucial for the opportunities they have to find a job.

The management of assets in organisations today can be a challenging task and optimising their usage is critical to ensure maximum profit. For rental businesses offering tangible products efficient management of movable assets are an essential part of the business strategy. The main purpose of this study is to investigate how asset management and asset information management can be carried out in rental businesses and in what ways information technology can support it. By doing a literature review combined with a case study where three rental businesses and their use of information technology were examined we could identify several important aspects regarding asset information management. The results we have found is that rental businesses with a high degree of digitization in existing asset information management systems are able to rationalize existing work processes, which in some ways changes the roles of employees.

A district heating plant has the advantage that it can take advantage of the waste heat from industries and use of cheap fuels to produce heat. But for the long term is competitive requires that energy is also saved in district heating plants. One way to save energy in a district heating system is to increasing cooling to the return temperature. This leads to less power needed to drive the distribution pumps,  and that more energy could be extracted from the same amount of fuel by an improved flue gas condensation.In Karlskoga the return temperature into the district heating plant is high. They would therefore reduce the return temperature in order to extract more energy from the flue gases.

In Sweden, exercise takes a great part in people?s lives. Health and a good conditioned body go hand in hand. Many Swedes exercise in groups, with aerobics or a similar form of workout at a training facility. A regular workout lasts for about an hour and is accompanied by music.

New laws and recommendations within corporate governance during the last years have affected the way board of directors work. The board is said to have and fulfill three roles: a control role, a service role and a strategy role. These roles could be understood by three theoretical theories: the agency theory, the resource dependence theory and the stewardship theory. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether, and if so how, the board work differs between two small firms based on these roles, given that one of the firms is a publicly listed firm and the other is a privately owned firm. Using a qualitative case study as research method we find that the board work differs between the two companies when it comes to these roles.

Although Sweden is considered to be in the lead concerning an open-minded perception of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) population, very little attention has been given to the elderly within this target group. The elder LGBT population?s got special needs that haven?t been made sufficiently visible, neither as a research field, from social institutions nor from the LGBT movement itself. This study has described the target group's specific needs, based on the results of a focus group consisting of older LGBT people. Their experiences and stories have given an idea of what adjustments must be made to satisfy their specific needs.

This master?s thesis was written on the behalf of Saba Frukt och Grönt AB inHelsingborg and is the final part of the Master program in MechanicalEngineering at Halmstad University.The main task was to introduce visual control and increase the rate of concept intwo of the departments of the company. The goal is to come up withimplementation proposals, and if possible to implement one in the near future.The author attacks the problem by using the Six Sigma DMAIC-methodology as itis a clear and structured approach. As a complement Lean-inspired tools are used.After compiling the results from the interviews and benchmarking somesuggestions are made. These are reviewed with stakeholders and a discussion ofhow to go on further was held.

Statistics regarding children, who are overweight, shows alarming results in many parts of the world. Overweight may cause serious consequences, as for instance heart- and vascular diseases. Research is pointing out that hereditary, social, behavioural and cultural facts may promote developing overweight and it is of great importance to find out how to prevent overweight and obesity in children and adolescents. The purpose of the literature study was to compile primary and secondary preventions against overweight/obesity in children and adolescents. The result showed that prevention through education, recommendations, healthy eating and exercise may be usable in the work to prevent overweight among children and adolescents.

Pneumonia is a common disease in calves. There are several causes behind the disease. The main purpose of this litterary study was to estimate what kind of nursing calves with pneumonia could benefit from, especially the evidence-based nursing recommendations for the sick calves. A further purpose was to gain knowledge of different treatments of sick calves and what kind of practical measurements that are most suitable to use in the preventive work. The results in this study shows that there are only suggestions of nursing, rather than some actual evidence-based actions. The most important nursing actions is to isolate the calves with dyspnea, prevent or treatment of hypothermia, potential dehydration and malnutrition. It is also important to make sure to place the calf on soft and dry bedding.

Statistics regarding children, who are overweight, shows alarming results in many parts of the world. Overweight may cause serious consequences, as for instance heart- and vascular diseases. Research is pointing out that hereditary, social, behavioural and cultural facts may promote developing overweight and it is of great importance to find out how to prevent overweight and obesity in children and adolescents. The purpose of the literature study was to compile primary and secondary preventions against overweight/obesity in children and adolescents. The result showed that prevention through education, recommendations, healthy eating and exercise may be usable in the work to prevent overweight among children and adolescents.

The biodiversity of the Swedish forest has degenerated since the beginning of the 19th century when fire suppression and large scale logging first occurred. Together with a changed land use, these actions today have had a negative influence on many forest dwelling species, due to gradual reduction of natural processes, successions and different structures from the forest ecosystem. The Swedish Forest Act, together with different environment certifications, have today encouraged private persons and forest companies, among them Holmen Skog, to work actively to improve nature conservation. The aim of this study was to, by field inventories of already existing nature values, literature studies, recommendations from scientific reports and ecological gap analysis as a basis, make a management plan, for a non-production area, to conserve or improve the prerequisites for biodiversity. ?Storskogsberget? is located in the coastal area of Västerbotten County, 35 km from the city of Umeå.

Research on the power of customer involvement, and in particular recommendation is very resourceful. Many studies have mapped the reasons for why customers are willing to recommend, however they often ignore potential differences among brands and how that may affect these reasons. This study is built on a quantitative survey investigating how consumers interact with brands, depending on category affiliation. The categories used were Bhat and Reddy's symbolic and functional, consisting of three brands respectively where each brand represented a different product type.The evolvement of social media has also transformed the platform of recommendation from physical to virtual and changed the way people connect. Thus, taking the investigation further, potential differences between symbolic and functional brands was tested in different social media platforms.

The aim of this study was to investigate for how long patients fast before thoracic surgery, plastic surgery and ear, nose and throat surgery, at the University hospital of  Uppsala, and what knowledge patients have about fasting and how they get affected by it. 30 patients were interviewed, 10 patients at each ward, according to a questionnaire. Data processing was performed with SPSS. There was no difference in fasting time for solids between the wards but the mean fasting time was 14 hours. In the thoracic ward patients fasted from liquids considerably longer than in the other wards.

Volvo Hauler & Loader Division in Arvika produces wheel loaders which they deliverthroughout the world. The factory which is situated in Arvika is the largest wheel loader plant in the whole world, with its 1 100 employees. The different models stretch from L60E all theway up to the brand new L350F, with a loader capacity from six tons up to a staggering 35.The assembly of the different models are divided into three different assembly lines, Small(L60-L90), Medium (L110-L120) and Large (L150-L220). The assembly of Heavy (L350)has just been started with an upcoming pre series.This examination paper gives recommendations of improvements and necessary modifications to rationalize the pre-assembly of boom units. Three different scenarios are presented in the paper.

Location-based services (LBS) contains of services helping users of finding positions of themselves or other objects. LBS applications can present information in varies types of ways, these could be threw speech, text, geographic symbols, photos etc. Not many studies have been done to examine the aspects of LBS communication and there is a demand for user and context centered mapping.The purpose of this report is to present a model for the development of user and context based services. The model will give guide lines of recommendations when implementing LBS. The different technologies that support LBS will also be noticed.