AbstractIT can facilitate communication among individuals and connect people across geographical distances. On the contrary, citizens of the society who do not use communication technologies to some extent might feel excluded from the information society. As elderly citizens are already in a vulnerable position for the digital divide, communication technology becomes an important tool for interacting with friends and family. The social situation of elderly, 60 years of age and older, is a topic of current interest since they are the fastest growing age group in the world today. Further, social interaction becomes more important among elderly since it has a positive effect on well- being.

In Sweden a person is either unlimited or limited liable to tax. It is important to define this status since the consequence of being unlimited liable to tax according to chapter 3 § 8 Swedish income tax law (1999:1229) is imposed tax on every revenue from Sweden and overseas. When deciding the fiscal status Sweden uses the principle of domicile which makes the home of the taxable person important.Despite domilication in another country a person can be considered to have such bonds to Sweden that they still should be unlimited liable to tax here. During the development of the Swedish communal tax law (1928:370) the term essential linkage was introduced. There are numerous factors which can affect this assessment but in case-law some factors have been considered more important than others.

Despite the fast growing development of IP-telephony services, only a small number of people in Sweden use them. Of the total amount of fixed telephony subscriptions, maximally five percent are based on IP-technology. Through an exploratory study, the main purpose with this thesis is to identify factors that influence the use of IP-telephony on the consumer market, and the factors? internal relationships. The thesis also has two sub-purposes: firstly, chart the supply of IP-telephony services and secondly, discuss what IP-telephony services that are requested by today?s customers in the future.

Despite the fast growing development of IP-telephony services, only a small number of people in Sweden use them. Of the total amount of fixed telephony subscriptions, maximally five percent are based on IP-technology. Through an exploratory study, the main purpose with this thesis is to identify factors that influence the use of IP-telephony on the consumer market, and the factors? internal relationships. The thesis also has two sub-purposes: firstly, chart the supply of IP-telephony services and secondly, discuss what IP-telephony services that are requested by today?s customers in the future.

In the world we live in today the environmental issues has become increasingly important, and we have begun to realize that we can not continue to use fossil fuels at the rate we do. When it comes to generating electricity we are constantly trying to come up with cleaner and more efficient solutions. The fuel celltechnology is one such alternative and has been around for over 100 years. Yet, it is not until now that the world has started to notice this great technology. The fuel cell has been developed in several areas and can today be used for handheld electronics, vehicles and small settlements.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate what the work situation of children's librarians looks like in the year 2000, after the changes in society which took place since the 1980's. Did the tasks of children's librarians change during the nineties, and if so, in what way and why have they changed? Which new knowledge needs emerged for children's librarians during the nineties, and what was the cause of these new needs? Finally I want to know which needs for professional development arose, and how these needs are fulfilled. The thesis is based on qualitative interviews with children's librarians, library managers, library consultants, one representative of the Swedish school of Library and Information Studies and one member of SAB's children and youth committee. The study reveals that the identity of children's librarianship is strongly associated with the stimulation of language and reading.

Samhället går mot en mer tjänsteinriktad och kunskapsintensiv produktion vilket har lett till att immateriella resurser har fått en större betydelse för företagens ekonomier. Några av resurserna uppfyller kriterierna för en tillgång och finns med i företagens balansräkningar. När företag är i behov av kapital ser bankerna till företagens balansräkningar för att göra en kreditbedömning. De måste då bedöma immateriella tillgångar.  - Hur bedömer kreditgivare företags immateriella tillgångar? - Vilken betydelse har denna bedömning för kreditgivningsbeslut? Syftet med studien är att beskriva hur kreditgivare bedömer immateriella tillgångar och vilken betydelse denna bedömning har för kreditgivningsbeslut.En kvalitativ studie har genomförts där datamaterialet har samlats in genomintervjuer med respondenter från tre olika banker. Två av de undersökta bankerna bedömer inget ekonomiskt värde på immateriella tillgångar men dessa är med och påverkar helhetsbedömningen av ett företag. Betydelsen av detta är att företag med för stor andel immateriella tillgångar får svårare att bli beviljade kredit och straffas med högre kostnader.

The reason for performing an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is to incorporate environmental concern in different kinds of plans and projects. The purpose of such an assessment is to identify and describe direct, indirect and cumulative environmental impacts.Geographical Information System (GIS) is a tool that can be used to combine spatial extension of both sensitive areas and different environmental impacts in a quick and easy way. Because of that, descriptions of environmental impacts and motivation of different standpoints on a specific issue can be more correct and easier to make if GIS is used as a tool.Hence, GIS can contribute to improve the quality of Environmental Impact Assessments. If the benefits of using GIS are to out weight the costs, geographical information of satisfactory detail, actuality and accuracy need to be available at reasonable prices.In this paper, case studies are carried out for three different geographical analyses to investigate the use of GIS as a tool in EIA. From these case studies, more general conclusions about the benefits and limitations of using GIS for Environmental Impact Assessments are also drawn.

In this Master's thesis, a direct-conversion receiver front-end has been designed in a 0.18um CMOS technology. Direct-conversion receivers (DCR) have obvious advantages over the heterodyne counterpart. Since the intermediate frequency (IF) is zero, the problem of image is circumvented. As a result, no front-end image reject filter is required and the channel selection requires only a low-pass filter, which makes it easy to integrate directly on chip. However, the DCR also suffers from several drawbacks such as extreme sensitivity to DC offsets, 1/f noise, local oscillator (LO) leakage/radiation, front-end nonlinearity and I/Q mismatch.

The web has evolved much through the years. From being a place where author and reader were clearly distinguished, it now invites everyone to take part in the development of both content and technology. Social services are central in what is called Web 2.0. Wikis, blogs and folksonomies are all examples of how the users and their communities are key to the development of services. Collaborative writing, tags and API:s are central.

This thesis has been carried out to the Technology Group at industrial plant Tube Mill2012, which belongs to the Sandvik AB. Technology Group is a unit that takes care ofall requirements and suggestions regarding investigations, test runs and designmodifications. The main objective is to identify and analyze the existing initializationprocess to see where improvement opportunities exist and to come up withsuggestions for improvement, supported by previous research and literature. Anextensive literature search and case study has been conducted to provide a solidfoundation to refer to during the work. Completing the interviews and the workshopgave a clear picture of their unstructured work and approach, how the lowrequirements on the received orders caused problems for the group as well as thelack of a standardized resource allocation method provides major delay factors.Solution proposal then became a very easy process model in five steps with all theinformation gathered in one place.

This thesis examines which function the information technology may have in thechildren's library, with the example from two library computer programmes. One is anexpert system, Hedvig, which will help children to choose and to find books, and theother is a computer game, The mysterious signs, that will teach children library user education.The main question is: What conceptions do the project-leaders, the children'slibrarians and the children have concerning the function of these two programmes in thechildren's library?The study is based upon qualitative interviews with two projects-leaders, fourlibrarians, three computer programmers and twenty-eight children.The theoretical material consists of examples on other library computer programmesfor children developed in Denmark and USA, some American studies in children'sabilities to use computerized information retrieval systems, and studies concerningchildren's relations to computers.The adult's conceptions of the computer programmes are divided into categories asfollows: Democracy, aspect of sex, complement, marketing, reading promotion,development of competence, information technology development, pedagogics, adulteducational activities, compensation and armusement, pedagogics, usefulness,effectiveness and information. These categories shall be seen as the conclusions of the thesis..

When a disaster occurs the main focus is on the loss of human lives. Here the environmental effects have been in the centre of attention. This work has had two main purposes. The first one was to formulate attributes, variables that together present a complete picture of the consequences that an event has had on the environment. The other main purpose was to investigate how people value the impact that a disaster can have on the environment.

Vocal Cord Dysfunction (VCD) is characterized by paradoxical vocal cord movement during inspiration or expiration, and generally affects adolescents and predominantly women. Previous studies have shown a large inconsistency concerning terminology, definitions, etiology, assessment, differential diagnosis, co-morbidity and treatment. The purpose of this study was to map knowledge on and management of VCD in Sweden. The study was conducted as a written survey addressed to speech-language pathologists and physicians, and attained an answer percentage of 79 percent. The results showed that several professions were involved in the management of these patients, but no clear pattern of referral could be observed.

Det finns ljud som är på väg att försvinna i takt med teknologins utveckling. Dagens ungdomar har aldrig hört ljud från den äldre teknologin, som den äldre generationen har fått växa upp med såsom skrivmaskinen, modemet m.m. Dessa produkter gav ifrån sig ett speciellt ljud som numera inte hörs lika mycket idag. Men vad händer när tekniken utvecklas till den grad att ljud blir en säkerhetsfråga? Förutom teknikljud finns det ljud från förhistoriska och nyligen utdöda djur som forskare har lyckats återskapa genom studier av kvarlevornas anatomi.