After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the satellite states of the former Communist bloc immediately departed on a journey towards democracy and market capitalism. Among the many tasks of the newly elected governments, one was to transform the paternalist Communist welfare state into a social system that would decrease the oversized role of the state, at the same time as protecting the citizens from the hardships ensued from the transition.I have studied the evolution of new welfare systems in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, three countries generally agreed as the most similar and most successfull transition countries of the Eastern bloc. Gøsta Esping-Andersen's prominent typology of welfare regimes, consisting of the liberal, corporatist and social democratic regime-types, has constituted the theoretical basis of the analysis. Simultaneously, applying new cases to the typology implies an element of theory testing.The study shows that 40 years of Communism and partial isolation from the West has not prevented these three countries from developing welfare states fully compatible with those of Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon nations and that all three of them in fact fall within the scope of the corporatist regime-type..

Bipolar disorder is a severe, affective illness which causes a person to alternate between episodes of pathologically elevated mood (mania) and depression ? in between these episodes the mood is normal. The length and intervals between the episodes are highly variable among the ill, as are the severity which is divided into two major subgroups: bipolar I and II. Bipolar I disorder is the most severe because of the patient?s inability to realize that he or she is currently in a manic phase, in the case of bipolar II disorder, the patient is aware that he or she has an abnormally raised mood, a state which is called hypomanic state instead of manic.

This pre-study investigates the possibility of U-value measurements through an acoustic method. A hypothesis about an acoustic model built on acoustic theories combined with U-value theories is presented to answer the questions: ? Can U-value theory be combined with acoustic theories? ? Can the coefficient of heat be affirmed trough an acoustic measurement? The idea for this dissertation begun with a logical idea in mathematical similarity, between the coefficient of heat transmission units and sound intensity units. The U-value theory is based on assumptions such as initial resistance for inner walls and initial resistance for outer walls. The resistance in the material is interpreted through sound intensity theory. The argument is built upon mass law theory, which means if the frequency or thickness of the material layer doubles it implies an increase of sound reduction by 6 dB.

The aim with this master?s thesis is to examine the information practices and information literacies among social workers in the field of the social services and in the work with child welfare investigations. This is in this study related to their ambition to fulfill the requirements of an evidence-based practice. On a theoretical level, the study is based on three theories grounded in the idea of situated learning and of human activities based in a social context. These are the sociocultural theory, the theory of communities of practices and the theory of information practices.

This degree project has been performed along with Classic Garden in Gothenburg andBallongfirman Far & Flyg in Stockholm. Together we have developed a sun- wind- andrain protection. The protection is permanently assembled and mainly intended for publicenvironments as restaurants and outdoor cafés.The design on the sun protection was already done so our task has been to develop theconstruction and to build a prototype in scale 1:4 and one in scale 1:1. The look of thesun protection is approximately as the name implies, equal an igloo. The lamellae aregoing to fold out in different steps all the way down to the ground and the both sides willbe independently of each other.The first stage in the project was to develop differently principle proposal on how thefunction will work when folding in and out the protection.

Safe operation of a large synchronous power system as Nordel is not an easy task.There are several aspects to take into consideration. This thesis focuses on the problems due to voltage collapses in a transmission system.The ability to foresee an upcoming collapse is vital to maintain stable operation of the grid. The grid operator at Svenska Kraftnät (SvK) uses the computer program SPICA to predict the maximum transfer limit at specified transfer sections. SPICA uses actual states from the grid to predict the transfer limitation, and a quarter later a renewed estimate is produced and so on. This means that the operator can se his transfer limits vary every fifteen minutes.Our task in this project is to validate the accuracy of the limitations obtained by SPICA.

Background: Sweden and the rest of the world went through the biggest financial crisis at the end of 2008 since the 1930s. The major Swedish banks have goodwill related to their acquisitions inside and outside Scandinavia. Swedbank, SEB and Nordea has acquired in the Baltic countries and Russia, however Handelsbanken has established itself in Great Britain. The crisis in the Baltic countries led that real wages fell, unemployment rose, real estate prices collapsed and the number of borrowers who had trouble repaying their loans increased rapidly. All this led to the problem of impairment of goodwill in the Swedish banks that had expanded rapidly in the Baltic countries.Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the application of IFRS 3 in Swedish banks before, during and after the financial crisis, and to investigate the low-downs in the four majorSwedish banks in 2006-2010.Completion: The study is primarily based on the case studies by the examination of the annual reports from all banks as well as evaluation of the interviews.The authors have chosen to makea strategic choice of a small number of cases through the concentration on the impairment of goodwill in the bank sector of Sweden.Results: The result of this study is that there are problems for banks in implementation of IFRS 3 in practice because of insufficient information in the banks' financial statements.Generous estimates used in the calculation of impairment testing.

Sahlgrenska Academyat University of GothenburgDepartment of Internal Medicine and Clinical NutritionAbstractTitle: The relation between alcohol and abdominal obesityAuthor: Anna Eriksson och Karin EdenholmSupervisor: Fredrik BertzExaminer: Ingrid LarssonProgramme: Dietician study programme, 180/240 ECTSType of paper: Examination paper, 15 hpDate: May 30, 2013Background: Abdominal obesity is a part of the metabolic syndrome, which has a worldwideprevalence of 20-25 %. The problem with abdominal obesity is the accumulation of visceraladipose tissue, which is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Alcohol haseffects on metabolism, and can also lead to an increase in total energy intake; these twofactors can lead to an increase in accumulation of visceral fat. Besides this there are studiesthat show that a moderate alcohol intake could be good for your health. The context gets morecomplicated since different studies have shown contradictory results concerning theassociation between alcohol, different types of alcoholic beverages and measurements ofabdominal fat.Objective: The objective of this article review is to assess the evidence of whether alcoholintake is associated with accumulation of visceral adipose tissue, using the measurementswaist circumference (WC) and waist-hip ratio (WHR).Search strategy: The databases used in the literature study were PubMed and Scopus.

Södra Skog chose in 2011 to convert the saw mill in Traryd to a gradually refined sawmill of hardwood. In 2009, they had also acquired the hardwood sawmill in Djursdala. This was strategically important for Södra's business since the demand for hardwood products has increased. The standing volume of deciduous trees in Sweden is today approximately 524 million m3sk and it has increased rapidly in recent years. However, the deciduous forests are to a large extent located in areas that are set aside for nature conservation and is thus not available to the industry.The goal of this work is to create a simple and reliable method for mapping of deciduous wood volumes in areas where Södra Skog is operating (Götaland excluding Gotland).The material that is used is raster databases with estimated forest attributes (kNN-Sweden), data from National Forest Inventory (NFI) and forest management plans.

The master thesis, conducted at Metrima AB, concerns the development of a non-intrusivedistribution meter as a basis for individual tap water billing in apartments.The project is conducted in response to the market interest in individual tap water billing inapartments as an answer to environmental concerns regarding water consumption. Due to thehigh installation cost of traditional water meters, a new method of determining waterconsumption, without having to cut water pipes, is proposed.The proposed method distributes the total water consumption for an apartment complex toindividual apartments according to distribution meters, measuring water run-time, in eachapartment. The water run-time is estimated by measuring the water pipe?s outward vibrationsand temperature changes.A test environment was established and a prototype built, using a tilt- and vibration sensor forvibration sensing and a precision temperature sensor to measure temperature changes. As bothsensors work well in the test environment, further testing was done in 3 apartments for aduration of 5 days.

Problem formulation: This paper will examine how the capital structure of firms affects their market valuation by applying the Modigliani-Miller theory on Swedish listed companies in a boom and a recession. The study will examine whether it is possible to draw any conclusions as to whether companies with high debt to equity ratios are valued lower in a recession, in comparison to companies with low debt to equity ratios.Purpose: To empirically test the Modigliani-Miller theory of capital structure in a boom and a recession in order to see if the companies? market value is affected differently depending on whether they have a high or a low debt to equity ratios.Methodology: The essay has a deductive and a quantitative methodological approach. Data analysis was done through a correlation analysis, a regression analysis and a hypothesis testing.Theory: The Modigliani-Miller theory of capital structure with taxes states that companies with a high debt to equity ratios has a higher value. One of the risks with a high level of debt could be that during a financial downturn companies have more difficulty realizing capital and are thus more likely to go bankrupt.Conclusions: The study shows results that are contrary to the Modigliani-Miller's theory; all the correlation analyses between debt to equity ratios and market value are negative.

Background: Animals are used in several health care areas and have been shown to promote many aspects of patients? health. Animals have potential for use in nurses? health promotion work. Nurses need a deeper understanding of the importance and health-promoting properties of animal-assisted therapy.Aim: The aim was to describe the importance of animal assisted therapy for patients? health.Methods: A literature review was conducted based on ten nursing science studies with both qualitative and quantitative approaches, which were selected after critical review.

The project, Flexible Snowboard System, has been carried out by the project group independently and is a module developed for snowboarders, ski rentals and ski schools. The problems of today?s solutions are that they cause the user an inconvenient standing position when riding the ski lift or skating the transportation slope, also mounting, adjustments and disassembling of the bindings are time consuming and brings undesired wear to the screws and screw holes. In addition any adjustments require that the user steps out of the bindings and have tools at hand. Flexible Snowboard System is a universal module which means that it can be assembled with all of today?s snowboards and bindings.

Information stored on unprotected computers that gets lost or stolen, and falls intothe wrong hands, can easily be accessed by moving the hard disk to a controlledcomputer, or by booting the computer from a removable medium, in order to getaround the operating system login. This is something that largely affects companieswhere customer information, trade secrets and other sensitive information can becompromised. A classic solution to the problem is encryption of individual files, but ithas some drawbacks as it puts a great responsibility on the users and unencryptedinformation can be left by mistake. A better solution to the problem is transparentencryption of the entire hard disk, i.e. that encryption and decryption of informationis performed automatically and without the user being affected.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the academic discipline translation studies; the analysis centers upon bibliometric aspects, and is carried out chiefly by means of quantitative methods, enabled by the databases Web of Science and Scopus as well as by the corpus-linguistic software Wordsmith; however, this quantitative focus is complemented by auxiliary qualitative means of investigation, i.e. a discourse-analytically oriented study of a corpus of domain-endemic reviews.A number of core journals are analyzed in order to show what and whom are cited in translation studies, and, furthermore, what adjacent domains hold sway over it; attention is also given to influential authors, regions and languages operating within the domain. It is shown that the domain under scrutiny is quite differentiated, even fragmentary; the term pluricentric is used to describe this tendency towards sprawling. No superior authors (in terms of publication frequency) emerge, which arouses the suspicion that the domain may be conditioned by a hierarchical divide between journals and monographs. Furthermore, it is clear that translation studies is a eurocentric domain: European languages dominate.