The main purpose of this master thesis is to investigate the information seeking of lay politicians, part-time politicians and professional politicians in connection with the possible upcoming fusion of the two administrative regions, Västra Götaland and Värmland. The focus of this study has been to study how politicians use and evaluate information and sources of information, and to investigate if there are any differences in how different categories of politicians seek information. Seven politicians were interviewed using semi-structured questions, and a phenomenographic approach was used to analyze the data. In Sweden there are few available studies of how politician seek information, but some international studies have focused on information needs, information sources, selection and evaluation of information. I have used previous research, and data from respondents to compile and analyze my results in three descriptive categories.

To render outdoor scenes with lots of vegetation in real time is a big challenge. This problem has important applications in the areas of visualization and simulation. Some progress has been made the last years, but a previously unsolved difficulty has been to combine high rendering quality with abundant variation in scenes. I present a method to mathematically generate and render vegetation in real time, with implementation in the scene graph Gizmo3D. The most important quality of the method is its ability to render scenes with many unique specimens with very low aliasing.

This thesis has been carried out at the Building and Civil Engineering Programme at Chalmers University of Technology in cooperation with NCC Technology. The study aims to investigate the optimal design of a library of standardized structural solutions for in-house multi-family buildings and what benefits it brings. Today NCC use technology platforms to improve efficiency and simplify the construction process. The platforms provide the constructors guidelines on how construction details should look like, but the details are not complete. NCC Technology started in the spring of 2013 a project to investigate what benefits there are to create a library of standardized structural solutions for the constructors, with more detailed solutions than in the platforms.

Detta dokument redogör för en användbarhetsundersökningav programmet Webb-MiniQ. Undersökningen innefattar eninledande fas med intervjuer och genomgångar. En fas med 6deltagare som deltog i användbarhetstest, kortsortering ochsvarade på enkätfrågor. Sista fasen utgörs av analys avresultatet samt produktion av designförslag. Analysen avmaterialet indikerade ett stort antal problem (22 unika plusaspekter som framträdde under genomgångarna) medanvändbarheten, designförslagen syftar till att komma tillrättamed majoriteten av dessa.Detta dokument redogör för en användbarhetsundersökningav programmet Webb-MiniQ.

The measuring of logs is important in the sawmills process to the sawn products. The technology of automatic wood measurement is continuance developing. This study has the purpose to see how the different techniques and the routines works of measure frames for determining of wood value and Sorting in sawmills. The study is performed as a literature study and a survey. The survey includes some of the Swedish sawmills that produce more than 10 000 cubic meters sawed products per year.

The main purpose of this Master Thesis has been to investigate issues concerning apple fruit quality in orchards of Äppelriket Österlen. The goal has been to develop a document, for future benefit towards growers and company management in the production of high quality apples.In order to investigate main issues of fruit quality, focus has been on statistics concerning apple varieties, age of the apple trees, new planting, orchard size and growers opinions. Nine growers have been interviewed to investigate opinions and contribution of different growing techniques to increased fruit quality. The investigation showed high age of the trees in production and low rate of planting of new trees. Differences in fruit quality were highest between small orchards. Most growers were satisfied with their fruit quality and with their own measures made to improve it.

SUMMARYEnvironmental issues are currently a hot topic of debate. Studies within the optics branch have not specifically been conducted previously, so the aim of this study was to determine the extent of environmental-awareness specifically within this branch.A survey, consisting of questions relating to environmental issues, was distributed to 100 randomly-selected opticians in Sweden. Of these 100 surveys, 64 were returned and showed a varied branch-engagement for environmental issues.Results of this survey showed that opticians were best in Sorting newspapers, magazines, other paper and hazardous waste. Metal and rigid plastic were not sorted to any larger extent.Choosing environmentally-safe products was not so popular and only six stores always do this. 25 shops turn off electrical machines and equipment over night; while the majority of the remaining stores leave the machines on during the night.27 stores did not know if their electrical company provided ?green electricity?.Results showed that there is a lot of work to be done in making the stores more environmentally friendly.

Abstract Cucumber is the second most frequently consumed vegetable after tomatoes, 33 % are eating cucumber every day. The purpose of this work is to examine if there is any product development of cucumber in Sweden, and if so in what way. A questionnaire was used with a number of questions regarding quality, origin, supply and the way cucumbers were used, and the person was also asked to choose between the normal large cucumber and the minicucumbers. This was answered by totally 100 persons in two different stores, ICA Maxi in Löddeköpinge and a discount store with a large supply of fruit and vegetables and where a large share of customers are immigrants, Özen All Frukt in Malmö. The results from questionnaire show that in some of the issues the results vary a lot between the two stores.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how well information and communication technology (ICT) is implemented in the new teacher training program in the subject of Swedish and how this is presented in the applications for examination licence to the National Swedish Agency for Higher Education. This is an interesting field of study, since ICT has been selected, by an investigation chosen by the government to be one of four overall perspectives that are supposed to permeate the teacher training program. There have been several difficulties involved in this project of which one has been the extent of the material.  27 applications and all curriculums in the subject of Swedish belonging to them have been examined. Another difficulty was that the applications and the curriculums are written by different persons under different conditions such as time and resources.

SammanfattningSyftet med detta examensarbete har varit att, genom att kombinera kunskaperna inom interaktionsdesign med kunskaperna inom visuell kommunikation, ta fram en designlösning åt Norrköpings Visualiseringscenter C som presenterar innehållet i deras utställning ?Att visa det man inte kan se? på deras hemsida.För att nå detta syfte har utvalda teorier och metoder använts och i uppsatsen beskrivs designprocessen steg för steg - hela vägen från uppdragsbeskrivning, genom teorier och metoder till den färdiga designlösningen.Teorierna i denna uppsats handlar om interaktionsdesign, gränssnittsdesign, användbarhet, visuell kommunikation och teknik. Metoderna för att få reda på användarnas åsikter behandlar användartester, Card Sorting, LoFi- och HiFi-prototyper.Resultatet av rapporten beskriver hur Adobe Flash kan användas för att skapa en interaktiv design för en webbsideapplikation med kontroll över interaktion, visuell kommunikation och användbarhet.Resultatet visar också hur användarnas återkoppling under användartesten påverkade slutresultatet. Resultatet visar även att en designprocess är olik från gång till gång men att det finns vissa riktlinjer som kan hjälpa en designer genom processen på ett kontrollerat sätt..

The aim of this paper is to investigate how well information and communication technology (ICT) is implemented in the new teacher training program in the subject of Swedish and how this is presented in the applications for examination licence to the National Swedish Agency for Higher Education. This is an interesting field of study, since ICT has been selected, by an investigation chosen by the government to be one of four overall perspectives that are supposed to permeate the teacher training program. There have been several difficulties involved in this project of which one has been the extent of the material.  27 applications and all curriculums in the subject of Swedish belonging to them have been examined. Another difficulty was that the applications and the curriculums are written by different persons under different conditions such as time and resources.

Konkurrensen om studenter och resurser har o?kat bland universiteten. Fo?r att klara av konkurrensen har universitet aktivt bo?rjat arbeta med varuma?rkesbyggande fo?r att skapa starka varuma?rken. Den sto?rsta delen av forskningen om varuma?rken har bedrivits pa? kommersiella organisationer och den forskning som finns om universitets varuma?rken har inte studerat svenska universitet.

Background: Previous studies have shown that intuition occurs in decision making in small enterprises. However, these studies have not illuminated which decision attributes leads to intuitive decision making.Purpose:The purpose with this study is to contribute with an increased understanding of which decision attributes leads managers in small enterprises to use intuition in decision making and why these decisions attributes have an impact on the role of intuition. The follow-ing research question will be answered in our study: Which decision attributes leads to intui-tive decision making in small enterprises, and why?Method: To answer the research question we have conducted semi structural interviews with managers in small enterprises to achieve a deeper understanding of the role of intuition. We have also used a method called Visual Card Sorting as a complement to the semi structural interviews.Result/conclusion: The result of our study indicates that the relevance and the uncertainty of a decision have the greatest significance in the use of intuition in decision making in small enterprises.

Examensarbetet syftar till att hitta samband mellan ytliga sprickor hos virke, i form av dimensioner och karaktärer, som dagens maskinella avsyningssystem inte klarar av. Tyngdpunkten i projektet har legat på att identifiera eventuella samband mellan verkligt djup hos sprickor och de ytliga sprickmått som kan uppmätas med automatisk avsyning av WoodEye. I huvudsak har projektets praktiska undersökningar gått ut på att bestämma sprickors ytliga dimensioner, djup, typ och position med hjälp av automatisk avsyningsutrustning (WoodEye) samt genom manuell uppmätning i ett antal itusågade sprickzoner. Det provmaterial som använts i utförda försök och som legat till grund för efterföljande sprickanalyser har varit av sådan karaktär att det kunnat jämställas med konstruktionsvirke som normalt sett hållfasthetssorteras enligt europasstandard SS-EN 14081-1.I projektet har 568 sprickor, fördelade över 8 olika spricktyper, analyserats. Av erhållna resultat har det konstaterats att störst respektive minst medelbredd uppvisades hos kådlåpor respektive kantsprickor, störst respektive minst medellängd uppvisades hos splintsidesprickor respektive kådlåpor, samt att störst medeldjup uppvisades hos fäll-, kap- och stormsprickor.

This Master?s Thesis is an evaluation of the software Xilinx System Generator (XSG) and blockset for Matlab. XSG is a module to simulink developed by Xilinx in order to generate VHDL code directly from functions implemented in Matlab. The evaluation was made at Saab Avionics AB in Järfälla, north of Stockholm. In order to investigate the performance of this new module XSG to simulink, a model of a frequency estimator often used in digital radar receivers were implemented in Matlab using XSG.