The purpose of this degree project was to build laboratory equipment for a new course in power electronics that starts this autumn 2010 at Uppsala University. The equipment is intended for student labs and it covers the most important areas of the course including rectifying, buck-/boost-converters and PWM-modulation. It is built as one sealed unit where all the electronics are built-in but visible and it has a connection board where students safely can connect the different circuits. The project has advanced from theoretical studies of circuit design, choosing of components and simulations to drawing the printed circuit board (PCB), soldering, case building, final testing and troubleshooting - basically most steps from an early idea to a final product. Measurements on the final product gave about the same results as the earlier simulations of the circuits and the result is overall satisfying..

Crisis communication in today's society is an important element for organizations. Whether an organization makes it through a crisis, good or bad is largely based on their crisis communication work. Crisis communication is about how the organization works to repair or maintain the organization's external image, the image that society has about the organization. When a crisis occurs stakeholders lose confidence in the organization or change their mind about it.This case study is about exploring how a municipality handles crisis communication through the various phases of a crisis. The study is also to examine how the municipality communicates with its stakeholders in specific communication channels during a crisis.The case study makes use of theories circulating crisis communication, such as: theories of how crisis communication should be handled, how a crisis is recognized, the different phases of a crisis, the communication channels that can be used and who may be interested in an organization when a crisis reveals itself.

The essay aims to compare Swedish and Finnish decisions regarding refugee policies by tracing them back to the critical junctures when the policies were established, in order to explain why there are big differences prevalent today. The questions asked involve the motivations of the refugee policies and how they have changed over time.The theoretical framework employed is based on historical institutionalism and path dependency. By using a most similar system design and process tracing, material in the form of government declarations and government bills are studied and summed up in two analytical models. The results show that there might be a weak path dependency in the case of Finland. However it is more apparent in the case of Sweden, with frequent statements of a generous refugee policy that is characterised by humanity.

The project has involved the development of two kinds of shooting targets in partnership with Marcus Bergkvist and Christopher Åkerblom. The project from the client was divided into two parts. This thesis discusses solutions for hands-on transport, development of tripods and an overall design. The second thesis affect resetting systems for the products.The work was done with a process and methodology based on design perspectives. This process has involved the search of relevant data which has provided the platform and opportunity for appropriate and purposeful design work.Concept development has been done using hand sketches and Photoshop, where a simple visualization of different concepts for the tripods has been produced.

This study presents an alternate viewpoint to the strive to overcome the gap between research and practitioners within paper prototyping in interaction design. Earlier research identifies three aspects of this gap, which is:Practitioners being unaware of interaction design methods and theoriesPractitioners being aware, but choosing not to apply these methods and theories, due to time, budget and constraints of labourPractitioners and research having different perspective on similar design issuesOur study was done by carrying out qualitative interviews with interaction designers based on two digital design bureaus. One of the bureaus has an expressed link to research: the other has not. Our hypothesis is that the gap would manifest as a difference in work practice between the two bureaus.Our study shows that the two bureaus have similarities in work practice and that this work practice is based on scientific methods and theories, but is adapted to fit the client and/or the project. We conclude that the overcoming of the gap might not be necessary.

Steel is an excellent material to build with, but consideration must be given to the fact that unprotected steel corrodes, rusts, therefore, as a rule, the steel must be protected in some way. This can be done by reducing the tendency of the steel to corrode by using stainless steel or by treating the steel with a protection method. The two most common methods of protection are corrosion protection paint and zinc coating. To determine the method, the corrosive category must first be evaluated and this is done in accordance to EN ISO 12944-2:1998.Stainless steel is available in many varieties but only some of them have properties that make them suitable for use as construction steels. There are many factors to be considered in the design of stainless steel to prevent corrosion from occurring.

I detta arbete har vi undersökt vilka faktorer som är viktiga för ett lyckat införande av CASE verktyg i en organisation. I arbetet har vi utgått ifrån de faktorer som teorin förespråkat och jämfört dessa med den empiri som vi har undersökt. De faktorer som vi har funnit i litteraturen har vi delat in i grupperna organisatoriska faktorer, utvecklingsfaktorer och stödjande faktorer. Vi har funnit att hanteringen av dessa faktorer i många fall skiljer sig mellan teori och empiri. Utifrån undersökningen har vi dragit slutsatsen att utvecklingsfaktorer har varit den grupp av faktorer som har påverkat införande mest i de undersökta företagen..

Abstract This thesis is a case study aiming to give explanations to Russia?s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. By using three different theoretical perspectives, realism, regional hegemony and constructivism, the aim is to find different but also complementing explanations to the case. The theories realism and regional hegemony are related and also similar to each other, but still contributes with some different focuses on the case. Both realism and regional hegemony has their main focus on the sovereign state?s security and their power militarily, politically and economically.

When developing software that is meant to be distributed over several different computers and several different networks while still working together against a common goal there is a challenge in testing how updates within a single component will affect the system as a whole. Even if the performance of that specific component increases that is no guarantee for the increased performance of the entire system. Traditional methods of testing software becomes both hard and tedious when several different machines has to be involved for a single test and all of those machines has to be synchronized as well.This thesis has resulted in an exemplary application suite for testing distributed software. The thesis describes the method used for implementation as well as a description of the actual application suite that was developed. During the development several important factors and improvements for such a system was identified, which are described at the end of the thesis even though some of them never made it into the actual implementation.

Water constructions - as a design element in public spaces is the title of this Master thesis, with a focus on waters function and meaning in the urban environment. By way of introduction, mans relationship to places is described and the factors that contribute to the reality that we prefer some places more than others. A good place to stay is open but well defined, gives protection, offers a good view and is varying in topography and vegetation, together with contents of single landscape elements like visible water. This study then continues to discuss mans relationship to water and its means for our wellbeing. Despite the fact that people have a different relations to water due to personality, background and age, it?s an element that raises positive feelings, interest and aesthetic pleasure for most people.

The aim of this study was to develop, implement and evaluate a mindfulness- and acceptance-based smoking cessation program in group (MRG). MRG was developed into an intervention consisting of 6 group sessions during 35 days including individual homework assignments. 8 of 10 participants completed the program. In order to evaluate the effect of MRG a quasi-experimental design with pretest and double posttest (second posttest at 1 month) was chosen. At second posttest, 50 percent (of 8 completers) were non-smokers, and the rest showed a decrease in smoking at a rate between 45 and 75 percent.

The aims of the following project has beento make a proposition how to create aspecific kind of transformer. Thefollowing report evaluates the differentimportant variables and contains asuggestion for a possible design. Intheory it's an ordinary transformer that'ssuppose to transform electrical effect toa high voltage line. The design of thetransformer is using an already existingcurrent transformer design and is adjustedto work for it's specific purpose. Theproject also contains the developing of atransformer simulation model that will beused to evaluate and optimize thedimensions of the resulting transformer..

Today multi-touch technology is the basis for many new techniques designed to improve interactions with computers and mobile devices. It seems that multi-touch screen interface makes the user handling very natural in the sense that there is no need for a manual in how to interact with the object on the screen. The aim with this paper is to establish a fundamental set of design principles intended specifically for large multi-touch interfaces. To reach this goal we have implemented a couple of sub-goals beforehand: It was essential that we acquired a good understanding of the current state of the multi-touch interface and the different implementations that exist today. To make this possible we constructed a multi-touch display, "Rosie". Knowing how the hardware is produced today will help us understand the limitations and also the possibilities of the design implementations today and in the future. We also needed to devise a sound interaction design process that conveys the modern designers work.

This study has investigated what makes a business relation satisfactory. The purpose is to distinguish the factors that are relevant to a functioning cooperation relationship between sawmills and DIY-stores. The theoretical framework is primarily based on long-term business relationships. The study is based on two case companies and their relations with wood-suppliers. - Case company 1 is a relatively new established and still growing company.

This thesis is a process oriented case-study. The studied case is a interactiondesignassignment of a databasevisualisation and the process. The goalis to do this according to the ways of a screenwriter.When the computers spread from the military and university's into homes all around the world the computers and the programs had to becomeeasier for the users to understand and use. User interfacedesign became more and more important and companies like Apple put a lot of resources intothe designprocess. This quite new and evolving area of research, interactiondesign, has been forced to search for methods in other areas like lm, gamedesign, psychology and behavioural science.