The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse the development of the public library in the district of Österåker during a period of 1958-1983. The main goals have been to identify the crucial events in the history of the library within their historical context and to analyse the factors that have been important for the development: financing, location, staffing, stock of books, book-lending level and different activities for children, youngsters and adults. The consideration has been taken to reasons and consequences of these events. The hermeneutic interpretation model of interaction between parts and wholes, between reasons and results is the basic method in this research which leans mainly upon local archives in Österåker. The public library in Österåker was established in 1952 as a fusion of previously existing small libraries: the parish library in Östra Ryd, the Labour Movement?s library and the temperance movement?s library.

During the later parts of the 20th century there occurred several changes to the Swedish public sector. These changes aimed to effectivize and decentralize the governance model in the public sector. One of these changes was the municipalization of the school system, put forward and proposed by the social democratic government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This study aims to examine and compare that times different parliamentary parties' opinions on the municipalization of the school system. The source material consists of government bills, and in direct relation to the municipalization of the school system.

During the summer of 2007 I was employed by Högestad Christinehofs Förvaltning AB. My main task was to make an inventory of giant trees at the estate. Högestad and Christinehof,which with their total possession of 13 000 ha of land is the biggest estate in Scania. A giant tree is a tree with a diameter in breast height more then 1 meter. Trees of these dimensions are registered by Swedish authorities. Landowners with a giant tree on their property can receive a Subsidy for cutting trees that are in competition with the giant tree.(Levenskog, 2007) Giant trees are important for biodiversity in the landscape and there are important habitats for different insects, birds, bats, lichens and funguses.

The concept of quality is difficult to identify clearly. Many attempts to define quality havebeen made, but the resulting definition remains vague.The quality concept (in the artistic sense) has since 1974 played a leading role in Swedishcultural policy. In the spring of 2009, a publication, named ?Kulturutredningen? waspublished. This report suggested a number of changes for the Swedish cultural policy.

Streams and riparian zone are closely linked by reciprocal flows of energy and nutrients. A large part of the transportation from water to land is in form of emerged aquatic insects. Conversion of land from forest to agriculture can greatly affect aquatic ecosystems, and due to the close link, also affect the adjacent terrestral zone. Investigating how the presence of agriculture in the surrounding area affects amounts of emergent aquatic insects gives an indication on how agriculture, in turn, may affect the terrestral enviroment. The study was preformed alongside ten streams in northern Sweden; five in landscape transformed by agriculture and five in undisturbed forest areas.

Local charges may induce people to change their pattern of consumption by influencing investments and acts in certain directions. Some charges could for example give people incentives to use less natural resources. This study investigates four different local charges and whether they benefit an economical management with natural resources or not. This is carried out by investigating whether there is a polarity between local charges that may influence environmental actions or goods, and effective pollution control set to achieve certain nationally determined environmental goals. The study includes two economic perspectives and investigates on the one hand whether local charges counteract governmental subsidies and on the other hand whether the charges vary between the different municipalities since large differences may lead to cost inefficiency.

Biogas is a gaseous fuel, rich in methane, produced through a biological route in an anaerobic digester. A gas engine generates combined heat and power, which can be used at the farm to reduce energy cost. The process also generates a digestate, with better utilization of nutrient compared to cattle manure. The aim of this study is to analyze the profitability of a farm-scale biogas plant for combined heat and power (CHP) at Wapnö. Wapnö is an agriculture company located in the southern part of Sweden.

Fast pyrolysis is a method for converting biomass into three energy rich products: char, gas and bio-oil, where the latter is most interesting.  Pyrolysis is an endothermic process where biomass is heated in an anaerobic environment and, with the right operating conditions, up to 80 %wt bio-oil can be extracted. Key parameters for fast pyrolysis are: stable reactor temperature (~500°C), short residue time for gas in the reactor (<2 s) and a very high heating rate for the biomass. Today there are several different process solutions for fast pyrolysis, where fluidized beds and rotating cones are most developed. Bio-oil has compared to fossil oil: lower heating value, low pH and also polymerizes with time. Because of this upgrading is desirable for increasing competitiveness.

The Swedish government has a goal of achieving a fossil-free vehicle fleet in 2030. Heavy transport constitutes a significant part of Sweden's transportation sector and the vehicles are driven almost exclusively by fossil fuels. Siemens has developed eHighway, a concept for electric road systems enabling electrification of trucks, in order to reduce the environmental impact of heavy transports. This study aims to investigate the potential that eHighway has on transporting iron ore from the mine of Mertainen to a processing plant in Svappavaara. Electrified trucks are compared with conventional trucks, and diesel and electric trains.The evaluation was made with respect to energy consumption, environmental impact, and cost.

Under 1980-talets andra halva hade bostadsmarknaden sin storhetstid, många nya bostäder byggdes och antalet vakanser var nästan obefintliga. Till följd av den stora fastighetskraschen som inträffade under tidigt 1990-tal fick många bostadsföretag ekonomiska problem. Många kommunala bostadsföretag fick höga vakanser att arbeta med. För att komma till rätta med dessa problem behövde bostadsföretagen vidta åtgärder och dessa kunde bland annat vara, hyressänkningar och rabatter, marknadsföring, försäljningar, rivningar, ombyggnad och att lägga fastigheter i malpåse. För de mest utsatta kommunerna fanns i slutet av 1990-talet även möjligheten att söka statligt stöd.Som en bakgrund till studien ges en förklaring till begreppet vakanser och naturlig vakansgrad, här beskrivs även hur vakanser i vissa fall kan ha uppkommit.

Since the early 1940s in Sweden, subsidies have been a recurring feature in housing politics.Throughout history, these have been used as a management measure to control theconstruction of housing and to promote the Swedish welfare state. The political parties aretoday disagreeing on how much responsibility the state should carry for citizens housing. Tosolve the conflict, the dwelling has to be defined. Is the dwelling to be considered a socialright, like education and healthcare or is the dwelling to be considered a product for the freemarket, driven by supply and demand?The positive population growth in Stockholm has lead to an increased demand for dwellings.The supply of dwellings has not been growing at the same rate, which has implied higherhousing prices and longer wait for rented apartments.

The Baltic Sea is threatened by eutrophication that largely is due to nutrient leaching from farmland within the catchment area. To solve this problem the surrounding countries cooperate within various configurations such as HELCOM and the EU-financed project Baltic Compass. Poor manure management in Russia has been discussed frequently the last couple of years. A literature review of different types of reports and legal acts is the core of this degree project which has been performed in connection to two ongoing research projects financed by EU (Baltic Compass) and SIDA. It is supplemented with interviews with Swedish agricultural consultants and travel reports from two occasions when I had the opportunity to discuss with Russians active within the agricultural sector. Different hypotheses were investigated and discussed. The environmental debate in Russia is quiet and there is a widespread approach that economic profit always trumps environmental concern ? a Soviet heritage that influence the Russian agriculture considerably. The Russian legal acts on stable manure management focus mainly on sanitary questions and only secondary on nutrient leaching.

The transformation within the swedish infrastructure has been a slow process from thebeginning of time. For almost a decade, the traditional form of contracting regardingbuildings and foremost infrastructure has evolved contracting involving the owner to definethe outcome of the product, regardless involvement from the supposed contractor. As forthe swedish market, the traditional design-bid-build (DBB) have been the primary choice ofcontracting. Although changes have been made over time regarding contracting formswithin the road administration, the railway sector has not improved or justified changesregarding choice of contracting, they have conducted same contracting relationshipsbetween them and the contractor.This bachelor thesis, conducted at the Swedish railway administration with supervision ofprofessor Kristian Widén at Lunds University, explores the forces behind the new era ofcontracting within the railway administration. This bachelor thesis focuses mainly oncontracting regarding design-build-operate-main (DBOM), the new contracting formulabetween the owner and the contractor.

The transformation within the swedish infrastructure has been a slow process from thebeginning of time. For almost a decade, the traditional form of contracting regardingbuildings and foremost infrastructure has evolved contracting involving the owner to definethe outcome of the product, regardless involvement from the supposed contractor. As forthe swedish market, the traditional design-bid-build (DBB) have been the primary choice ofcontracting. Although changes have been made over time regarding contracting formswithin the road administration, the railway sector has not improved or justified changesregarding choice of contracting, they have conducted same contracting relationshipsbetween them and the contractor.This bachelor thesis, conducted at the Swedish railway administration with supervision ofprofessor Kristian Widén at Lunds University, explores the forces behind the new era ofcontracting within the railway administration. This bachelor thesis focuses mainly oncontracting regarding design-build-operate-main (DBOM), the new contracting formulabetween the owner and the contractor.

The transformation within the swedish infrastructure has been a slow process from thebeginning of time. For almost a decade, the traditional form of contracting regardingbuildings and foremost infrastructure has evolved contracting involving the owner to definethe outcome of the product, regardless involvement from the supposed contractor. As forthe swedish market, the traditional design-bid-build (DBB) have been the primary choice ofcontracting. Although changes have been made over time regarding contracting formswithin the road administration, the railway sector has not improved or justified changesregarding choice of contracting, they have conducted same contracting relationshipsbetween them and the contractor.This bachelor thesis, conducted at the Swedish railway administration with supervision ofprofessor Kristian Widén at Lunds University, explores the forces behind the new era ofcontracting within the railway administration. This bachelor thesis focuses mainly oncontracting regarding design-build-operate-main (DBOM), the new contracting formulabetween the owner and the contractor.