Aiming to contribute to the discourse on the sustainability of consociational democracy in plural societies, this case study provides an examination of Lebanon?s power sharing model. The study begins with an evaluation of the Taif Agreement. After acknowledging its effect on Lebanon?s consociational system the function and operation of Lijphart?s four consociational elements are analyzed.

AbstractThe Swedish Road Administration in the region of Mälardalen has since 2004 worked to in¬crease the efficiency of the maintance of bridges based on limited functional requirements and time demanded action.The maintenance of the bridges is contracted in the county of Uppsala since 2004, and Örebro since 2007. The county of Nyköping and Västerås is contracted by the traditional system. The contractor will perform a regular maintenance on all bridges. The bridges are inspected by the contractor at least once every year.The contractor registers the result of the inspection in a database called BaTMan. BaTMan is a Bridge and Tunnel Management system and is a strictly web solution were the user logs in via the internet.The Swedish Road Administration also inspects the bridges to se that the demands on the bridges are followed.My work is to compare these different inspections and to see any development..

This report presents the redesign of the online-based non-governmental organization Equalisters? (Rättviseförmedlingen in Swedish) website. It aims to achieve an understanding of how you take into account the user and other stakeholders and their interests when developing a website. The focus was on redesigning an existing website and prioritize the different stakeholders? needs.

Lower energy use in buildings is a result of increasingly stringent energy requirements across Europe. When conventional district heating technology is used in areas with low energy consumption heatlosses do not fall even though the amount of energy delivered is reduced. This reduces income for thedistrict heating company. To maintain their economic viability the district heating companies? majorchallenge is to implement new solutions that minimize heat loss.

This thesis aspires to construct a routing optimization method customized for Volvo Powerstrain?s manufacturing plant in Skövde, Sweden. In order to enforce Volvo?s own understanding and control of there own organization, as well as optimize the utilization of the in-house tow trains, the BRO methodology where created. The methodology where created from observations of the currents working environment, analysis of order data as well as a comparison with two similar producing factories.

The goal of this paper is to provide a model for a sustainable electricity system to an island, in the Pacific Ocean near the equator.The method which has been used is to model supply and demand of electricity in the computer program Stella, through the creation of a dynamic system that balances them against each other. The result from the model will then be used to calculate the electricity price per kWh for the island.The result of the work is that electricity from solar energy is comparable with electricity produced from oil, if the oil pays for all its external costs, and the potential for pumped hydro storage plants is located. It also requires that consumers of electricity can be their own producers to avoid the expenditure of tax and reducing the cost of distribution. But since oil is a finite resource and has had a rising cost in recent years, while solar energy has had a declining cost, perhaps this will be a more competitive solution in the future.

The aim of the study was to support the ongoing kaizen work at a medical centre. Two main topics have been addressed in this study:? Find a solution to ensure that the kaizen decisions are followed and will get a strong grip in the organisation.? Support the kaizen process by giving advice on how to structure the meetingsand how the kaizen work could be done more effectively.The study started with a visit to the medical centre to observe the kaizen process and the attitudes among the employees. The employees were asked to fill in a survey about the kaizen work at the centre. The final recommendations given have been based on this and also information gathered from other medical centres which work after the same kaizen principles.

In modern health care, the quality registry is anexcellent tool to monitor everyday work. Collected data forms a foundation, presented as online reports, from which local work efforts to refine care quality can be performed. All reports are coded manually by specially trained developers. This is a tedious process and hence becomes a bottleneck in the strive for improvement.This thesis evaluates whether an extended way of dealing with reports can fit into the existing work situation, with main focus on the idea of creating custom reports directly within a quality registry. It provides a set of conclusions regarding today's usage of reports as well as the users' general and specific needs within the area.

As trucks are getting more and more advanced, information about their weight has become a key factor for controlling them in a more fuel efficient and safe manner. Knowing the mass of a heavy duty vehicle in real time has been a difficult challenge for the truck manufacturers. With the processing power for electronic control units in trucks steadily increasing, more advanced algorithms for calculating the mass has been developed, but at the moment there still is a wish for better performance.Since there is a lack of good information regarding the external forces acting on the vehicle, forces that depends on the slope of the road, foundation of the road and the wind, the methods have to be able to disregard these. Such an approach, based on an indirect least square solution, has been evaluated in this thesis. The results have been promising and based on these a recommendation about further evaluation has been made..

Since the 1st of May 2004 Cyprus is part of the European Union. The Republic of Cyprus as a whole is part of the Union, but all of the advantages of the Union membership cannot be enjoyed in all parts of the country. Since December 1963 the Cypriot administration has been separated into two, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, and since 1974 the country is also territorially divided. The Greek Cypriot political administration is considered to be the legitimate representative of the Republic of Cyprus, the Turkish Cypriot administration is only recognised by Turkey. Since the disruption of the country in 1963 the UN has been trying to get the Cypriot parties to agree upon a peace solution in order to reunite the country.

ABORT ?n GO is a design project within the crossing boundaries of Critical Design and IndustrialDesign.The contemporary discourse on abortion is problematic, and infected by double norms. Thesenorms may cause feelings of guilt and shame in women who have an abortion. The abortion rightis built upon conflicting standpoints; one is that women have right to have an abortion, withoutbeing questioned. Second is the notion that abortion is something that should be avoided, implyingthat you?ve done something wrong if you have had an abortion.With this project and physical product I want to explore and discuss the contemporary discourseon abortion in Sweden.

The purpose of this project was to further develop and complete a quadcopter that had been built in an earlier course at KTH, so that it could be used for demonstration and education at the school. The quadcopter was at the beginning of the project completed when it came to hardware, and there was some software functionality implemented but no system for automatic stabilization. The main goal of the project was to implement such a system, and to combine it with the previous functionality to make the quadcopter operable and able to fly. To create a functioning and stable ground multiple basic software features has been implemented, and on top of that additional software to improve the safety, stability and functionality. The most important part is the control system that is responsible for converting sensor and control signals to suitable motor values.

This thesis describes the development ofa linear guidance system suited for NORCAN's aluminium profiles. The work took place at LP Innovation, a small technical consulting company, located in Uppsala. The work started with gathering and searching for information. A lot of the information was found in product catalogs, but my supervisor was also a great source of knowledge, as well as the other engineers at the company. I also had the opportunity to work with the rea lprofiles, to get a feeling and greater understanding how they were supposed to be used. With the use of sketching and CAD, a number of concepts were generated.

This report is the result of a master thesis at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Division of Industrial and Economical Development, at Linköping University of Technology. The project was carried out on behalf of Fanerami AB, Mjölby and includes 20 weeks of full time schedule work.Cabinets with vertical mounted roller shutters all share the same problem, namely weight balancing. A roller shutter has an equilibrium area where the sum of the different forces acting on the shutter equals zero. As the shutter leaves that area it will pick up speed as it falls towards the bottom. When the shutter hits the bottom of the cabinet there is a potential risk of getting fingers caught and in this project a solution to prevent this from happening was to be presented.In this project, three concepts have been generated with the following different purposes:?In concept 1 the risk of getting any fingers caught when the shutter closes was to be eliminated in an efficient and inexpensive way.?In concept 2 the roller shutter had to be balanced at all time providing the possibility to keep the cabinet open in any position.?The last and most challenging task was to create a remote controlled TV cabinet.

Social sustainability is often regarded as a solution to social problems in general. In this study, on the contrary, social sustainability is conceived as a socially constructed concept and the result of a certain way of looking at the world, the human being and the ideal society. The study centers around Kinda municipality in the southern region of Östergötland and a few of its elder inhabitants. What meaning and substance social sustainability is contained with as well as the effects that are produced by these conceptualizations is explored and analyzed. Also, the study examines the encounter between political policy?s and judgments on the one hand and the experiences and preferences held by the municipality?s elder inhabitants on the other..