This study aims to investigate development and reasons behind sustainability reporting in large Swedish companies. By examining 15 companies? environmental and sustainability reports between the years 2000 and 2008, data was collected on matters such as frequency, scope and design. Identified trends were to a large extent in line with previous studies on international development; sustainability reporting is growing in several aspects. The authors have found one major reason for this development to be increasing requirements and expectations from stakeholders and a need for companies to legitimize their actions.

Laura Mulvey was the first to suggest that women and men have different positions on the screen; men drives the plot forward, and the women are objects of masculine desire and lust.The purpose of this report was to look at and compare the two characters from the 70?s - and 80's with two characters from the 00?s - and 2010?s to gain a deeper understanding and insight into how female action heroes are presented. This will be done with the help of the questions; How is the female action heroes that are analyzed in the paper?What are the differences and similarities between the past and the present-day action heroes? Just how stereotypical are the women in their genre? The four female action heroes that were analyzed were; Princess Leia Star Wars, Sarah Connor Terminator and Lisbeth Salander Men Who Hates Women and Katniss Everdeen The Hunger Games.The four female action heroes were analyzed based on Rikke Schubarts categories (Moderarketypen, Amazon, Dotterarketypen, Ha?mnerskan and Dominatrix), the character's personal development, the character's violence and the reason for the character's.Characters from the past were more often presented as more uncertain and fragile than the modern confident characters. The female action heroes of modern times was more independent, strong, and in no need of a man in comparison with contemporary female action heroes.

This essay is a survey of thirteen user studies performed in the field of image retrieval. The purpose is to try to distinguish principles that should be kept in mind when wanting to make image databases available for a wide and varied group of users. The essay tries to answer two questions, namely: Are there any results in accordance among the different studies? What in the user studies should be considered when it comes to how content description, interface and functions for searching can be designed when creating systems for image retrieval? Each study is first reviewed on its own, and then a comparative analysis of all the studies is carried out. Derived from the result of this analysis, the conclusion is presented in the form of a row of suggestions to which aspects are to be suitably included in the design of image databases.

In April 2010 Vägverket (the Swedish National Road Agency) andBanverket (the Swedish National Railway Agency) will merge intoTrafikverket (the Swedish National Traffic Agency). Trafikverket willassume unified responsibility for the risk management that atpresent is responsibility of Vägverket and Banverket separately. Atpresent, as it will be shown in this thesis, Vägverket and Banverketshare the same theoretical background for risk management but usedifferent implementations often within the same agency. The use ofdifferent implementations results in a reduced transparency of therisk management both within and outside the agencies: this willbecome even more problematic when they will be fused intoTrafikverket.The aim of this thesis is to review the current risk managementmethodologies used at Vägverket and Banverket and to suggest aunified tool for the risk management at Trafikverket. This will bedone by focusing in particular on construction projects, one fromVägverket (Partihallsförbindelsen) and one from Banverket(Nynäsbanan).

Background: The Swedish life-insurance business has been extensively criticised lately due to broken promises to customers as well as due to scandals that some companies within the business have been involved in. The companies within the Swedish life-insurance business find themselves in a so- called crisis of confidence, something that is created in and by media. A company that finds itself in a crisis of confidence somehow have to manage the situation and crises of confidence can also result in different kinds of changes. Purpose: The aim of this thesis is to explore and analyse how individual life- insurance companies manage crises of confidence. As a consequence, the aim is also to investigate in what way crises of confidence are initiators to change.

Background: The Swedish life-insurance business has been extensively criticised lately due to broken promises to customers as well as due to scandals that some companies within the business have been involved in. The companies within the Swedish life-insurance business find themselves in a so- called crisis of confidence, something that is created in and by media. A company that finds itself in a crisis of confidence somehow have to manage the situation and crises of confidence can also result in different kinds of changes. Purpose: The aim of this thesis is to explore and analyse how individual life- insurance companies manage crises of confidence. As a consequence, the aim is also to investigate in what way crises of confidence are initiators to change.

Denna rapport har undersökt hur interaktivitet, genom interaktiva barnböcker på mobila enheter med pekskärm, kan påverka engagemanget för läsande hos barn i tre till fem års ålder. Detta har gjorts genom att en interaktiv barnbok skapades och deltagande observationer sedan utfördes vid sex tillfällen på tre förskolor där barnen fick testa den utvecklade produkten. De deltagande observationerna kompletterades sedan med åsikter om digitalt lärande från förskollärare på respektive förskola genom semistrukturerade intervjuer.Resultatet från undersökningen visar på en tendens till att engagemanget hos barnen kan ökas genom att införa interaktivitet i barnböcker genom att leverera dessa på mobila enheter med pekskärm. Undersökningen är dock gjord i för liten skala samt att produkten och undersökningen innehåller för många brister för att kunna ställa upp en faktisk teori. Istället ställs en hypotes upp som skulle behöva testas vidare under längre tid och i en mer rigorös undersökning..

This thesis studies how readers of the electronic book (the e-book) use and perceive the electronic medium as a carrier of fiction. In this study it is assumed that fiction is mostly read in printed format. Therefore it is interesting to ask why some readers choose to read on screen. As there are all too few studies conducted on how readers perceive and use the e-book as a medium, this study aims to enrich an undeveloped research area. The study is based upon a qualitative questionnaire.

Marinediesel has, to meet there customers needs for a suitable sterndrive to powerboats, developed a prototype. The prototype is currently in the testing phase. The opportunity to test the sterndrive under load inside the workshop has not previously been possible. Until now the drive has been tested in a test bench without any load on the propeller axle. The prototype has also been tested under real conditions mounted on a boat.The idea with my thesis was to create a test bench that can run around the clock in order to be able to test things like wear and service intervals and other things that require that the test interval is long.

In the field of maintenance management there are but a few models an organization can use. The one model that has risen to the status of being the de facto standard in Sweden is pm3(på maintenance management model). The aim of this study is to lay the groundwork for a new method of evaluate the use of pm3within organizations. Today there is no uniform way of performing such an evaluation, which is necessary in order to diagnose the performance of the systems maintenance organizations.In the process of creating our own method for performing this kind of pm3audit, we further developed the ideas from a study by Lagsten & Nordström (2013) that was performed at the county Region Skåne. The authors of that study had developed ideas about using method rationale as a basis of creating a method for pm3auditing.

Choosing a new plastic material for a container includes several different steps. In this case,the Finnish company Hackman needed a new type of packaging material for theircutlery- and kitchentool series »Hackman tools«. The project was carried out in cooperationwith the design agency Ytterborn & Fuentes, which has Hackman as a client.Several different demands were put on the material in order to fulfill as many of the clientswishes as possible. The most urgent problem with the existing container was the difficultysfor the customer to clearly see the contents in the container. Because of this problemthe customer tried to open the container in the shop.

The media arena is becoming more and more crowded by various brands and different commercial messages. At the same time, consumers learn how to screen marketing communication and their cognitive ad filters enable them to avoid message elaboration. Thus, new thinking and new communication executions are required in order to surprise the consumers and break through the clutter. In the present study, we have investigated how the choice of media affects attention, memory and several communication effects that the ad can generate in the short as well as in the long term. The study is conducted on a well-known brand within a low-involvement product category.

Background: As a part of a national health control program, Statens VeterinärmedicinskaAnstalt performs diagnostics to screen flocks for certain pathogens causing high mortality,morbidity and/or serious economical losses. There are several viruses in the programincluding IBDV (infectious bursal disease virus), IBV (infectious bronchitis virus) and NDV(Newcastle disease virus). Method: 96 serum samples were collected from different poultryflocks in Sweden and analyzed by ELISA, which are currently used in the health controlprogram as well as by a commercial prototype of a multiplex immunoassay manufactured byLuminex Corp., which is currently under evaluation at the United States Department ofAgriculture USDA. This 4-plex assay detects antibodies for the three above-mentionedviruses as well as antibodies of avian reovirus. In the context of this study the ELISAs run inroutine diagnostics as well as a REO ELISA were used as the standard for comparison.Result: The antibody concentration in serum from vaccinated chickens was high while theantibody concentration level in serum from not vaccinated chickens was low.

The purpose with this thesis is to research what function the National Library Catalogue of Sweden (LIBRIS) has as an information resource for Chinese language material. How is LIBRIS used as an information resource seen from the point of view of a users specific language need. This will be exemplified through an empirical survey of three user groups with different prerequisites concerning their knowledge in Chinese. Group A were beginners and had studied Chinese for one year. Group B were advanced students who were studying their third year of Chinese.

Over the last 25 year IT development has greatly influenced the waycompanies are managed, the tremendous growth in the information society has made a huge amount of information extremely accessible. This has resulted in the problem of information overload where the large amount of information can affect the quality of a decision basis collected by a controller.The purpose of the study is to examine how a controller is affected by information overload and how this influences the decision basis. We intend to highlight the important elements to represent a high quality of information.A survey was conducted through a case study within a global affiliated company in the packaging industry. An adductive approach has been applied with a qualitative research method. Collected empirical material from interviews has been put into relation with existing theories.The case study indicates that there is no relationship between the problem of information overload and flawed decision basis.