?Mechanical debridment ? A studie in irrigation optimization? is a final thesis which was executed by Fredrick Ekman, in close collaboration with the other group member Mikael Johansson, during the spring 2012. The thesis was carried out through Karlstad University Faculty of Technology and Science in the study program of Innovation and Design Engineering (180 ECTS credits). The client of the project was Medilink AB located in Lindesberg, and the contact person was Nils-Erik Söderström, Chief Executive Officer. The project was supervised by lecturer, Lennart Wihk, and examined by lecturer and professor Fredrik Thuvander at Karlstad University.

The market for biofuels from the forests have had a positive development and the job initiators for this master´s thesis wanted to examine the profitability of a method for harvesting forest fuel, which was unfamiliar to them. The method was the ?long tree tops-method?, here called the LT-method. The LT-method is characterised by the fact that timber is harvested as the only roundwood assortment while the rest of the stem, which in other cases would become pulpwood, is harvested as forest fuel together with the logging residues. The method is based on the assumption that advantages in handling of the forest fuel assortment such as increased load weights for forest hauling and truck transportation, should compensate for the lower price for pulpwood when sold as forest fuel. The aim of the study was to compare the profitability of the LT-method with the GROT-method (harvest of timber, pulpwood and logging residues) and conventional logging without any harvest of forest fuel, and aslo to try to identify factors affecting the profitability of the different methods.

This study discloses Swedish human service organizations and their methods of integrating unaccompanied children into the Swedish society. The purpose of the study is to investigate how social workers at HVB-homes for unaccompanied children depict their experience in and knowledge of how the unaccompanied children are integrated into Swedish society. The method of investigating the questions raised by the purpose of this thesis has been qualitative analysis of answers derived from interviewing personnel at HVB-homes for unaccompanied children. In doing so we have made use of a semi-structured method of interviewing the above-mentioned personnel. The data derived from these interviews has thereafter been analysed and filtered through the concept of integration and the theoretical formations human service organizations and street-level bureaucrats.

In this thesis, the conditions of using the maintenance method live work at the Swedish TSO, Svenska Kraftnät has been analyzed. The study is limited to only include live work on 220 and 400 kV. The live work method is a type of maintenance that can be done, on lines or stations, even though they are still energized. The purpose of this thesis has been to map the present live work situation at these levels in Sweden. The study is based mostly on interviews with people who have specific field competence with in live work but also with personnel at Svenska Kraftnät.

The purpose of this investigation is to study how librarians experience bookcrossing. We focused on the two following questions: Which variations are there in librarians conceptions of bookcrossing as literature exchange and reading support activity? Which variations are there in librarians conceptions of bookcrossing compared to other methods of literature exchange and reading support? Bookcrossing is an international book club where you share your books by leaving them at public places. The thesis is focused on librarians? conceptions and not the conceptions of members of bookcrossing.

Today you can pay in many different ways. You can for instance use cash, credit cards, internet and now even with your mobile phone. Today we can also see new types of technical payment solutions being developed, such as Near Field Communication (NFC), mobile banking or through the use of QR-codes. We have today many different payment methods; therefore it?s interesting to see which payment method people prefer the most.

The study´s purpose is to identify how their communication affects their brand. The study will be made trough the perspective image, the values and associations which the target audience have about the County Council. The study has two question formulations: Which parts in the County Council's communication affect their brand? How does the residents in Värmland's image about County Council's look like? The study is based in Balmers 6C's of Corporate Marketing. There´s also some organizational communication added  to the study.The two methods has been used in the study, qantitative survey's and qualitative interviews.

The purpose of this study is to investigate differences of how the Swedishemployees union ?Unionen? communicates with its members, on one hand thosewho are members of local union clubs and on the other non-club members. Thenumber of non-club members has increased due to labour market changes implyingthat workplaces have been fragmented and hence affect the possibility to form localunion clubs.The questions posed in the study are: How does Unionen communicate with itsmembers? How does the communication differ between club members and non-clubmembers? What are the preferences of Unionen´s members as far as communicationwith the central organization? What kind of information do the members seek andhow do they find it? What values does Unionen represent? Are there differencesbetween the messages that Unionen is sends out and how members and non-clubmembers, respectively, perceive them?A case study method has been used applying both quantitative and qualitativeanalyses. Quantitative methods have been used in illustrating the number ofdiscussion subjects at Unionen´s website, the members needs for receivingcommunication and channel usage while qualitative methodologies have been usedin interviews with Unionen´s members, club chairmen and union representatives aswell as semiotic picture analyses and analyses based on methods of Uses andgratifications theory.One conclusion of the study is that two significant differences of communicationhave been found between members and non-club members.

This study focuses the development on the protection of landscapes with old industries and how it nowadays is appreciated by the inhabitants. The overall aim of this study is to increase the knowledge about how the so called industrial landscape in Norrköping became a cultural heritage that the citizens want to protect. The study also aims to investigate the citizens´ knowledge about the industrial landscape in Norrköping, and what value they think that the place possesses. Data was collected by an information research and six qualitative interviews. The interviews where analysed by qualitative methods techniques.

This qualitative study involves the implementation of Lean and Kaizen methods in a Swedish service industry. Lean philosophy is based on a method to achieve more with less. In practical terms this means that the use of an organization's resources is improved. The origin of Lean is the Toyota Production System. Now, Kaizen methods give managers and employees a better more efficient system to reach their goals within the organization or company.

This study is a formative evaluation of a prototypecollaboratory for sharing data collection instruments inlibrary and information science (LIS). The aims were to findout: how the study participants, five hospital librarians,experienced the interaction with the prototype while workingwith predetermined tasks; and their views on the differentfunctions of the prototype collaboratory.Methods used for data collection was as a survey; followedby a think-aloud session where the participant verbalisedhis/her thoughts during the interaction with the prototype;and finally a semistructured interview. The survey wasanalysed with a frequency distribution, while the data fromthe other methods were analysed qualitatively by extractingthemes from the transcribed sessions.The results show that although the librarians expresseddifferent problems while working with the interface, mainlyrelated to the language in the prototype collaboratory anddifficulties with the page for applying metadata, all of themwere confident in being able to learn the system after using itfor a while. The librarians had a positive attitude towardssharing data collection instruments as well as comments inthe prototype collaboratory. At the same time, they wereaware that students and researchers might have differentabilities or incentives to work and share information.

Individual identification of pigs could be used in commercial herds for production monitoring, disease monitoring and breeding evaluation. This study investigates the possibility of using microchips designed for dogs and cats to identify individual pigs from birth, through rearing to carcass at the slaughter plant. Two different sizes of microchips, and two different ages of the pigs at injection were tested. Castrates and gilts from ten litters were evenly distributed between chip sizes and injection ages. All pigs were identity marked with both electronic ear tags and injected with microchips.

The aim in this thesis is to use carbon, nitrogen and sulfur isotope analysis on teeth and bone to track diet and mobility of the population as well as the individual level from the articulated and disarticulated individuals from the passage grave Frälsegården, situated in Gökhem parish in the region of Falbygden, western Sweden.50 human samples were analyzed from tooth, mandibula and femur, together with 11 faunal samples from different bone elements of local wild and domestic animals.The results fall well in line with earlier stable isotope work done on passage grave individuals from Falbygden in stable isotopes: A homogenous group with a diet which was clearly terrestrial and lived on a pretty high trophic level. It also seems that the analyzed individuals deliberately focused their food intake to the cultural and natural, megalith and limestone landscape of Falbygden, and not to its surroundings, even if the passage grave is situated in the outermost areas of the region.A small study compares the sulfur results to with earlier work done on strontium isotopes. The results show that the different methods might provide a deeper understanding in the interpretation of the methods, and therefore suggesting that further work should be done to compare the methods..

The following essay investigates emission rights accounting. Presently there are several methods through which emission rights can be accounted for by companies. The rights can for instance be valued at fair value or nominal value and as marketable securities or intangible assets; due to a lack of consensus or clear standards companies use these or other accounting methods to value their rights. This essay investigates whether there is a relationship between the company?s choice of accounting method, the key ratio number of owned emission rights/total assets, the accounting firm used and the yearly result as a sign of earnings management.Through a quantitative study based on questioners and numbers from the annual reports three hypothesis are tested.

The digital era has led to technical advances that have transformed the role of the public library from being a place that is used only through physical visits and material, into also being a virtual space that can be accessed by users from outside the library through Internet-based access to e-media such as e-books and streamed or downloadable audiobooks.The aim of this study is to examine how the role of public libraries in Stockholm County has changed in the process of developing into digital libraries: how this has affected their organisation, work methods and strate- gies, as well as their accessibility. The theoretical framework of the study draws on Michael K. Bucklands theory of information accessibility, which is based on six factors of access that are determined by different types of barriers. The methodology is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Primary data was gathered through an empirical survey, which consisted of a structured questionnaire distributed to most of the public libraries in Stockholm County and semi-structured interviews with selected librarians and experts for further in-depth understanding.