Stump biomass is energy rich and stump harvesting for use as fuel become more and more interesting in Sweden. Swedish Forest Agency (2009) has estimated that stump harvesting in Sweden would respond to an annual energy supply of 57 TWh/year. However, stump has not been recognized as a bioenergy resource in Sweden. Suitable methods for pre-treatment of stump are probably of great importance to make it accepted as fuel. It is therefore rewarding to carry out an investigation in this area for stump. This report represents results from a diploma project, which was aimed to develop a fixed bed reactor for experimental study of biomass torrefaction, followed by TG analysis and kinetic modelling employing Ozawa method and different kinetic models including one-step and three-pseudo-component models.

This essay constitutes a literary study investigating how scientific literature within thefield of musicology can benefit to the understanding of how people use music as anaid for sleep and relaxation. Furthermore it aims to answer the question of whatconclusions can be drawn about the music people choose to use in these types ofsituations. The essay depicts the phenomenon of sleep music from several anglesgathered from the literature and investigates several models of understanding howand why people use music as a tool for emotional influence. As a complement to this,and to illustrate the modern usage of music for mind-altering purposes, the essay alsostudies a selection of digital sleeping aids ? apps.The study shows a complexity since the phenomenon can be viewed from severalangles that are not always consistent with each other.

What is the European Union (EU) and which countries should be part of it in the future? These questions became topical during the first part of the 21st century when political and geographical changes hasten the need to decide the nature of the European cooperation. In the European Constitution, that never come into force, the European values that a key role but was taken away in the succeeding Lisbon Treaty. Nevertheless EU continues to expand, recently to the East and non-European countries asTurkey are now on the ?waiting-list?.

I have made a research about two different methods for introducing small children to Nursery School/Kindergarten. I choose to do this as I have found very little about this in the literature we have studied during my education to become a pre-school teacher.This period in the life of very small children and their parents is a big change in their daily life. The more traditional way to start pre-school is to do it very gradually during two weeks, the two-week method. This means that the parents visit the pre-school together with their child for a very short time, about one hour the first day. After one week they leave their child with the staff for about an hour and at the end of that week they try to leave it full time (6-8 hours).

Making accurate predictions of private consumption expenditures is a difficult task. This thesis examines if consumer confidence can be used to forecast consumption. Using regression analysis, the link between consumer confidence and private consumption expenditures is analyzed for Sweden between the years 1994 and 2005. Two different models are estimated. In the first model consumption is regressed only on consumer confidence, while model two is extended to contain more variables.

The study was conducted in Jönköping County Chamber of fibrillation and is about change and improvement of process modeling technology. The process for treating patients with fibrillation is in the need to evolve and improve. In order to develop the care they needed a current state description which usually is made with the traditional process modeling tool.Many scientists and health professionals is in the opinion that this technology gives a too rigid image to describe the care processes. It also does not sufficiently take into account the human aspects. This reasoning suggests that the process modeling technology in healthcare is in the need to develop multiple perspectives.

Apple has since their launch of the Iphone series created a billion dollar business with the market place Appstore. Third-party apps have disrupted the mobile industry, attracted a high number of developers and set the standard for the industry. Despite success, this market has yet not been the topic of any academic study, a fact that makes this thesis important. Under the assumption that apps can be regarded as a service, traditional service marketing theories have been applied with the research goal to map existing business models, evaluate revenue potential and understand best practices of marketing techniques. A series of qualitative interviews with representatives from the difference business models, backed by secondary data describing the domain shows how the Appstore has evolved over time and which marketing practices that appear successful.

Business valuation is something that has been more general and discussion around this subject is very common. The discussions often revolve the various principles and procedures that a business appraiser can apply when a valuation of a business should be done. When there are different evaluation methods there are also resulting in an assumption that there are not so easy to create a complete objective business value. The individual evaluator choice of method will determine the result of the business value. The global world for each business has been more uncertain and turbulent/changeable which have tended to exacerbate the work for the evaluator to determine a business value.

I detta kandidatarbete skapas en animation för att visualisera användarinstruktioner för en balpress. Förberedelser utförs i 3D-CADprogramvaran Geomagic Design 2014 innan arbetet med animeringen påbörjas i programmet SimLab Composer Animation. I förberedelserna rensas modellerna och modifieras. Modeller som saknas skapas. I detta förslag på visualisering av ett moment i användning av balpressen är i syfte att underlätta för brukaren hur den snabbt kan använda maskinen.

The concepts of environmental scanning and Business Intelligence have gained increased interest over the last years in a number of different organisational contexts. The research in this field has mainly been dealing with methods and issues regarding organisation but the aim of environmental scanning, the forming of new perspectives, has been largely ignored. The purpose of this thesis is to study how Swedish joint-stock banks put environmental scanning and Business Intelligence into practice. First a literature study is made to create a background and to explain the different conceptions. Then I describe the different functions of the different services in Swedish joint-stock banks.

The purpose of this study was to examine leadership in the public sector based on leadership models, organizational factors, conditions and health of employees. The study was divided into sub-study one and two. In sub-study one the design was an observational study using cross sectional design in which 67 first line managers in the public sector answered a survey about conditions and leadership models. Sub-study two was an observational study using case-control design focusing on a health promoting leadership intervention in the municipal sector. Two semi-structured interviews and 41 surveys were collected.

Portable IT devices such as laptops, smart phones and computer tablets are becoming ever more ubiquitous. At the same time, the population of the Western world is growing older, with aging bringing about changes with regards to individuals' physical and mental capabilities. These facts raises important questions about how well suited these devices are for use by elderly people. This study focuses on the cognitive aspects of the devices' usability, using the concept of mental models to analyze the users' understanding of a computer tablet. It also draws upon theory of graphical user interfaces in its analyses.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate whether exhibitions and silent pedagogy can be used to develop more inspiring environments in the public library. Silent pedagogy is a term from the field of museum education describing the silent communication with visitors that takes place in exhibitions through introduction and orientation, layout and installation, as well as signage. In the 1980s, articles in a Swedish library magazine discussed the pedagogical importance of library exhibits and how they make the patrons aware of the library?s resources. This led us to museum education and a desire to investigate whether its theories were transferrable to the library context.

PURPOSE: To investigate to what extent product brand positioning models can be used to analyzecorporate brand positioning;METHODOLOGY: The phenomenon is observed from a positivist epistemological position within a primarilyinductive research design. The research strategy is defined as qualitative, while the method of ethnographiccontent analysis is implemented to analyze primary data;THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE: Product and brand positioning literature; Product brand positioning rhombus;EMPIRICAL DATA: Ethnographic content analysis of brand commercials;CONCLUSION: As shown by the extensive literature review product brands (PB) and corporate brands (CB) coexistin corporate environments. One of key insights of this study shows that product brand positioning(PBP) and corporate brand positioning (CBP) processes can also co-exist in the same corporate environment.Moreover, PBs can be built based on the CB, making the investment in CB a long term return on investment.The study also observes that PBP messages include the ?against whom? attribute, highlighting differentiationin the competitive environment; when on the corporate level, this evolves, and in some cases becomes quitethe contrary, when the concept of ?from whom? or ?by whom? is stressed more than the differentiation amongother CBs in the competitive environment. This stresses the importance of including brand identity elementsin CBP..

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to research how the Göteborg City Museum places their organization in a context of culture policies andmuseology.The discursive analysis constitutes the methodical frame for this thesis. According to the analysis of this thesis, since an increasing influence of a market-­oriented discourse, an antagonism between a sociological pathos and a market-­oriented instrumentality seems to be the major theoretical clash at the museum. Inside the organization though, the personnel lacks broader insights concerning these theoretical conflicts, but the stressed economic situation creates no room for further theorization. There is a risk to get caught in a market-oriented discourse where there is no time to reflect on the effects of the discourse because of the lack of time that the discourse itself generates.