Sweden recently changed the national regulation of chimney sweeping. This study has two purposes. The first purpose is to evaluate the effect of this reform to see if the new regulation has led to an effect in terms of increased chimney fires in single-family houses and for the wood-burning and oil-burning stoves, respectively. The second purpose is an updating of a previous study (Mattsson 1994) of analysis of society´s benefits and costs of different alternative sweeping frequencies for wood-burning and oil-burning stoves. This study also has a secondary purpose to examine the extent to which the local sweeping rules vary with climate conditions.  Mattsson, based on his results, proposed that the sweeping requirements for oil-burning stoves should be reduced from twice a year to once every second year and for wood-burning stoves the sweeping should be reduced from four times to once each year.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to find out how much influence underlying factors have in connection to the internationalization of Born Global firms. Methodology: This study has a qualitative approach in which data is obtained mainly through interviews and secondary data which consists previous theories about the internationalization in small and medium sized firms and recent theories that entitle these firms as Born Global. Conclusion: Based on the existing theories and the qualitative data, we have concluded that the underlying factors for the Born Global firm?s internationalization are abilities and opportunities to create insidership in relevant networks. The most crucial underlying factors for Born Global firm?s internationalization are the ability to create processes to break old patterns of thoughts and the ability to ally with right partners. .

There is no standardized test to control the appropriate physical ability in the Swedish ambulance service. The county in question does not perform annual physical tests. A project has been going to develop science-based physical tests, designed for the ambulance service. The research has resulted in the Aasa-test.Objective: The aims of this study were to examine the ambulance staff perception of the Aasa-test relevance, introduction of annual tests and the importance of their own physical training in relation to ambulance work.Method: A quasi-experimental study with a comparative design has been conducted. Aasa-tests were conducted in 41 randomly selected staff at an ambulance station in central Sweden.

The background for my thesis is the fact that with rising electricity and oil prices it becomes interesting to calculate on alternative heating systems. I have chosen to calculate upon my parents? farm, which today heats the dwelling house with wood. This is very time-consuming work, time which could be spent on other work. The main objective for this study is to compare three different heating systems to decide how they differ considering effort and cost. The result from the calculations was that grain-heating system demanded the least amount of work, but the total cost was a little higher compared to chips heating. Chips heating required half as much work as today?s wood heating and had a little lower total costs compared with the corn heating. Which system to choose largely depends on how the own work is valued.

Wind is used as an energy source all over the world. To be able to use this effectively, there is a need for as good forecasts and forecast models as possible. One of these models is Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS®) that is used to calculate short time forecasts. This model is used here to calculate wind speeds at two different areas in Västra Götaland, Bengtsfors and Vänersborg. There are also wind measurements with SODAR stations for these areas.

The construction industry has not undergone the same logistical development as the manufacturing industry; this, in combination with increased material price, leads to the fact that the construction industry must be improved. This master thesis is a part of the research cooperation Brains & Bricks goal of reducing production costs for the construction sector by 25 percent. Brains & Bricks is a cooperation between Linköping University, Peab and Katrineholms municipality. The master thesis aims to identify improvements in the flow of material, the Supply chain operation reference, SCOR, model has been used and the work has been carried out on one of Peab?s construction sites. At present the business is characterized by bad communication both between the construction site and the office as well as between the construction site and suppliers.

During the past years Building Information Modelling (BIM), which is a digital way to work, has begun to spread amongst the parts of the construction process. At the construction phase the larger companies has started using the new way to work. This expansion has not been developed amongst smaller companies leading to the purpose of this report, to investigate in which ways the smaller companies can implement BIM by changing their way to work. The thesis is delimited to work preperations with the objective to define how the work preperations should be structured to enable the implementation of BIM. To achieve the objective of the report, information about the subject has been collected by interviews and literature studies.

This report describes an bachelor thesis work which is performed in cooperation with SVIA that develops and sells automation solutions for the manufacturing industry. The thesis purpose was to evaluate the machine FeedLine to find opportunities for improvement in the product?s design that could lead to more standardization and thus improving the efficiency of manufacturing and assembly.Based on these basic issues suggestions for improvements were developed:How can the design of FeedLine be improved to facilitate the assembly?Can more standardization be imposed on FeedLine?s design to enable more stocking of standard components?An initial pre-study was conducted to evaluate FeedLine?s to find opportunities for improvement in its overall design. During the pre-study staff at SVIA and two of its clients was interviewed. Based on information gathered during the interviews and observations by the authors improvements was amendments.

The aim of this study was to reach a better understanding of voluntary work and its possible influence on the work role. Based on a phenomenological approach, five voluntary workers from the leisure field were interviewed. The interpretation of the empirical data was based on the Humanistic psychology and its theories about personality, self-realization, motivation and emotion. The results show that the motive behind the voluntary engagement varied amongst the participants and all of them stated more than one motive. However, social motives, wanting to learn more and develop their skills and also wanting to help others, were the most frequent motives among the participants. In the light of the theoretical background for this study, these motives can be understood as being due to the need of self-realization and appreciation from others, and also a wish to reach an ideal self.

In this report a study is carried out with the aim to identify added values of EPC projects implemented in schools in order to increase the interest of EPC projects on the market. The report examines how the planned maintenance, supervision, maintenance and corrective maintenance is affected, how insurance premiums and terms are affected, the indoor environment and how the tasks of the operating staff is changing. A literature study of energy savings, energy use in schools, maintenance and insurance as well as how energy efficiency improvements are related to the Swedish environmental objectives has been made. Visits were carried out in Ludvika, interviews were also carried out with operation technicians and local strategists in Ludvika as well as employees of insurance companies.Schools often have neglected maintenance and problems with ventilation and indoor environment. Schools also have a large energy saving potential due to their low utilization, mainly because they are empty parts of the year.

If P&C Insurance Company faces a challenge when their treasury system needs a new interface to a software as a service application. They need a suggestion for configuration for how the system and the application can work together. The work presented in this report is a suggestion for how you can make business configuration of an IT-based Treasury System in general. The exact configuration for the case received from If is presented as a separate report, found in Appendix A and is called the If-report. The If-report presents the suggested technical set-up of the configuration.

The purpose of our work has been to investigate how gender is viewed by pre-school teachers, as well as taken into account in their everyday work. We have also looked into how gender plays a part in the planning and shaping of the pedagogical environment.Our work is based upon qualitative research method, as we have conducted several qualitative interviews at different pre-schools along the way. The reason we chose genus as our main focus is that the pre-school curriculum states that all staff is obliged to meet the goals concerning gender..

This qualitative study treats the construction and maintenance of balance between work and private life and how flexibility in the workplace is perceived. The study was conducted using semi-structured interviews and these have been conducted in five large companies around Gothenburg. The analysis and results are based on the phenomenographic method approach and the final results were four themes: Balance, Flexibility, Combining family and work and lifelong learning with related subcategories. The result shows that the construction and maintenance of balance between work and personal life is something that is tied to the indi-viduals and the current situation in life. Two of the most common strategies to maintain a dis-tinction proved to be planning as well as other activities, in order to move the focus away from the work.

During the last year in the Innovation Engineering Program, at Halmstad University, a degree project was performed that was carried out during Fall semester in 2006 and Spring semester 2007. The project was performed by two students in corporation with LIC Audio AB, a company in Stockholm. The degree project was meant to result in a communication aid for people with a cognitive handicap. The project focused on people suffering from dementia because of the expressed need within this group. This aid should first and foremost help in a conversation between a person with dementia and another person, like a relative or nursing home staff.

The number of blogs, from weblogs, are increasing every day. Blogs are also becoming more visible in the public debate as well as the awareness of their existance is rising among politicians and citizens. The aim of this thesis is to answer the question what democratic potential blogs can have. This question will be answered by initially studying the research that exists today about weblogs and democracy. The second part of the analysis consists of a selection of texts from weblogs that touches this subject.