The enterprises of today are beginning to realize that environmental issues are a important part of their activity. Companies and organizations are expected to a greater extent communicate their environmental work to the world surrounding them in a trustworthy and structured way. Lack of information or information that is incorrect may bring farreaching consequences. Communication is mentioned in several of the ISO 14001-standards. But what is missing is a guideline how companies should act to create and be sure of the quality of the data that can be used in the environmental communication.

The thesis is about exploring possibilities for developing a standardised system solution for micro businesses, this since most of the micro business lack proper system solutions, a contributing factor of this is price and also incompatibility between the solution and the business itself. The system solutions we will refer to are solutions which task is to cover the most important needs that a micro business might have on their system. The main goal with this research is to see if this is possible, and if so, how the developers should think to take it further. We chose to do this by identifying the most significant of needs a micro business has when it comes to this type of system solution.In this thesis we will present three needs which were evaluated and brought forth through the analyses of various interviews and observations we had done during the study. The interviews took place at respective company with their employees and consisted both closed and open questions with our main focus on the open questions because we wanted to obtain as much information from the respondents as possible from several viewpoints.

AbstractBachelor thesis in political science by Alexander Hassan, autumn 2008, ?Effects of external factors on a nations democratisation process during the transition from authoritarian to electoral democratic rule ? A categorical analysis?Supervisor: Tomas SedeliusIn recent years globalization has become a hot topic in understanding the world we live in today. Globalization has indeed had a great impact on international relations and with it a great influence on the domestic conditions that determine a nation?s possibilities. It is therefore rational to hold true that this also would apply to a nation?s democratic process.

Competition is keen in the fashion industry of today. Homogenous products and prices aredriving competition and most firms are struggling hard to attract customers. Brands havebecome one of the most important assets for success and are often critical for the choices of theconsumers. A strong brand is often considered as a substantial value in the eyes of the consumerand gives the individual firm a competitive advantage in the marketplace. To build a strongbrand it takes that the brand identity not is in conflict with the brand image of a firm or a product.Sometimes one of these conflicts exit and sometimes the firms are not even aware of it.In this thesis we study how two firms, Lindex and Prada, perceive their own image and then wecompare how the images of the firms are perceived by the customers.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to discuss and analyse co-operation between public and academic libraries. The political changes that were initiated during 2004 have come to alter the conditions for Swedish libraries. The Swedish library law was changed at the 1st of January 2005 and co-operation between libraries is now statuary even if there is no description of how the new mission is to be executed. At the same time an extensive report about the Royal Library and its role as the Swedish National Library was presented. This report also recommended an increased co-operation between different types of libraries.

In 1513 the Florentine humanists Niccolò Machiavelli composed one of the most famous, but also ambiguously interpret, work in the history of politics, Il Principe. Machiavelli´s book The Prince revealed the true nature of politics in Italy in the beginning of the sixteenth century and gives very straightforward advice on how to act to become a successful and powerful political being. Machiavelli´s creation and insights in the reality of politics have be much discredited and condemned in its lack of moral consideration and violent nature. Still it has been read under the centuries with a fascination and eager to understand the structure of power and how to master it. My purpose with this study is to apply this Machiavellian idea of the capable prince on to the earlier research of the Swedish duke Karl, later on King Karl IX.

The largest project at the AICG lab at Linköping University, Cognitive models for virtual characters, focuses on creating an agent architecture for intelligent, virtual characters. The goal is to create an agent that acts naturally and gives a realistic user experience. The purpose of this thesis is to develop and implement an appropriate learning model that fits the existing agent architecture using an agile project methodology. The model developed can be seen as an online unsupervised reinforcement learning model that enhances experiences through reward. The model is based on Maes model where new effects are created depending on whether the agent is fulfilling its goals or not.The model we have developed is based on constant monitoring of the system.

In connection with riding and handling of horses, many accidents that can cause severe injuries to both horses and humans are existent. The cause is in most cases that the horse is frightened. The horse's fear also affects its usefulness and it has been shown to have adverse effects on the horse's welfare. To increase safety and improve the welfare of both humans and horses, it is important to find appropriate training methods to reduce the fear of horses in frightening situations. This experimental study compares handled habituation to free habituation.

A vulnerable group in society is people with ASD (autism spectrum disorders) or autism. This group seems to increase, mainly due to genetic factors but also environmental problems. Medical research has accelerated in the U.S. and Europe. The biggest problem for people with disabilities is the inability to communicate, both verbally and socially.

Denna uppsats behandlar varumärkesassociationer samt dess påverkan på varumärkeskapital. Uppsatsen är genomförd som en fallstudie och undersöker hur det svenska telekommunikationsföretaget Tre tolkar konsumenters associationer till varumärket Tre. Detta jämförs sedan med de varumärkesassociationer som föreligger kring Tres varumärke på marknaden.Varumärkesassociationer formas primärt hos konsumenter och är således inte enbart en process som företag styr. Detta innebär dock inte att associationerna är opåverkbara från företagets sida. En central faktor som påverkar skapandet av varumärkesassociationer har i denna uppsats påvisats vara konsumenters kontakt med företaget, där framförallt den första kontakten tenderar att forma associationerna.

Robotic milking in Automatic Milking systems (AMS) is proposed to reduce manual labour and at the same time increase milk yield by increasing milking frequency. In order to increase milking frequency, it is essential to have well-functioning cow traffic. Investing in an AMS is a great capital investment for the farmer, thus it is of major importance to ensure maximal AMS capacity. This study investigated the effect of the traffic systems Feed First? and Free cow traffic with and without waiting area (WA) on cow performance and AMS capacity.

During the last 20 years, the Swedish health care system has faced major changes. One of them is the increasing pressure to generate economic profit due to private businesses entering the market. Health care units are forced to make some structural changes in order to become effective and efficient. As a result merger and acquisitions has become a part of the health care sector, and seems to be an increasing phenomenon. Mergers and acquisitions have mainly been studied in the industry.

Teachers and special education teachers play a vital role in the creation of a study environment that fosters productivity in students. The current study aims to further expand the knowledge regarding teacher?s perception of common work with developing an optimal study environment within the classroom and the educational institution. In order to achieve this, qualitative interviews have been performed and study results analyzed according Nilholm´s model of the three different perspectives on special education: The critical perspective, the compensatory perspective and the dilemma perspective.The study results show that the concept of order and study environment is not clearly defined among the interviewees. However, the concept appears to presuppose the teacher?s responsibility to create the sense of security and effective study environment to those students who express the wish to educate themselves (Children make the things right only if they have been shown the correct way to do it).

The consumer today is affected by a considerably larger number of world surrounding factors than she used to be, borders between different cultures and other consumer differences are being erased to a growing extent. The consumer can easily get its inspiration from many different directions which become clear in the common life. We eat sushi for lunch, we?re driving German cars and we?re having dinner with international business partners. The community also exposes the consumer for a more intense noise from offers, impact and marketing.

Tobii Technology AB is a global leading company in eye tracking. The technology is a part of acomputer screen called an eye tracker. It enables computers to follow eye movement whichfurther make it possible to control the computer by only using your eyes.The mission was to develop an arcade game for eye controlled games that Tobii can use in theirmarketing or as a tool when doing researches about the interest in the technology amongst gamecompanies. The product realization involved designing an innovative, functional and futuristiccase which gathered the existing hardware and software to build the final prototype. In order toattract users it was important to focus on the visual expressions.Initially, the project started off with an information retrieval which contained interviews, fieldstudies, tests and literature studies.