The purpose of this Master Thesis has been to investigate the possibilities for a new type of noise reduction solution that could decrease the negative effects resulting from larger traffic roads. The idea has been to construct a noise barrier with a roof ? like a tunnel placed on a road. The choice of material has been focused on transparent materials in order to lower visual intrusion and barrier effects. This project idea is called the Noise tunnel.After having investigated the current offer of noise solutions, it has been concluded that these solutions rarely provide a sufficient level of noise reduction ? at least not when government regulations of acceptable noise levels are applied.

The increasing complexity in the development of a configurable real-time system has emerged new principles of software techniques, such as aspect-oriented software development and component-based software development. These techniques allow encapsulation of the system's crosscutting concerns and increase the modularity of the software. The properties of a component that influences the systems performance or semantics are specified separately in entities called aspects, while basic functionality of the property still remains in the component. When building a real-time system, different sets of configurations of aspects and components can be combined, resulting in different configurations of the system. The temporal behavior of the system changes and a way to ensure the predictability of the system is needed.

Problem statement and purpose:The purpose of this study was to analyze in what way first-time voters chose to take part of political information. The questions we aimed to answer was how first-time voters use media and other information channels for political purposes, what importance and trust the first-time voters give the different information channels and finally which indicators there is for that structural or individual factors affect the media consumption and political interest.Method and material:We did interviews with twelve 18 years old first-time voters from six different high school programs in Sundsvall, Sweden.Results:The study showed that the premier source of political information were traditional news media, in particular the debates on TV. It?s also in the debates the first-time voter?s trust the most. Even though the social medias are constantly present in their everyday life and even though the first-time voters believe the social medias have potential for engaging young people politically, the possibilities are only taken in advantage by people who are already politically interested.

Denna uppsats har för avsikt att utreda begreppet Just-In-Time (JIT) och dess komponenter för att sedan försöka finna dessa i den svenska lastbilstillverkaren Scanias produktionssystem. Litteratur har bidragit med en definition av JIT som sedan har jämförts med hur Scania arbetar inom produktionen. Empiri har erhållits genom intervjuer med berörd personal samt observationer på plats i Oskarshamn och i Södertälje.För japanerna är inte Just-In-Time-tänket en ny företeelse utan det är något de har arbetat efter en längre tid. Denna uppsats har valt att utgå från Jeffrey K. Likers (2004) definition i The Toyota Way.

My curiosity concerning what pupils read and write during leisure time led me to gather information using a quantative method. The study's aim is to investigate which reading and writing habits they have during their time outside school. A comparison was done of pupils at school year level 3 and level 4 in two different schools with the intention of investigating the influence of social background on reading and writing habits. 137 pupils filled in survey forms and thereafter the MYSTAT statistic program was used to process the information. The results point towards that the pupils read story books both more often and for a longer time than any other type of literature and that they read them often or very seldom.

Title: The dynamics of the Audit expectation gapIntroduction: The audit expectations gap is the difference that exists between what auditors and users of accounting information expects an independent auditor to do. Since the definition arose in 1974, much research has been done about the gap. What is relatively unexplored is how the gap changes over time within a country, and how it is affected by external events. This lack of knowledge has motivated this study.Problem: How has the audit expectation gap changed in Sweden, from the emergence of the definition until today? In which way have corporate scandals and legislative changes affected the gap?Purpose: The aim is to identify and create an understanding of how the audit expectation gap has changed in Sweden.

This report is the result of a thesis at the company Sanmina in O?rnsko?ldsvik. The thesis is the final work at the mechanical engineering program at Umea? University.Sanmina has in 2015 launched an initiative to ensure that all sites are using LEAN principles and tools to enhance their business. As part of the plan for the LEAN-work, an LSS (Lean Six Sigma)-project has started to study the company's receivehall and inspection.

The Swedish social insurance agency provides financial support for families and children, but also for people with work injury, illness and at old age. During 2012 they saw the amount of notifications of insurance increasing in Sweden, which is a development that cost our society a great deal of money. With the aim to pursue a sustainable development I have therefore devoted this project to wellness and stress management within preschool.The employees of preschool are often dealing with a lot of stress, due to the big groups of children that causes high noise and sound levels. The high noise and sound levels is a contributor to stress which additionally can damage the health and cause impaired hearing loss. About half of the people around their forties until the age of retirement have difficulties understanding speech in large groups.The purpose of this project has been to investigate the causes of negative stress for my target group, women between 30-60 years old who works in preschool.

The Swedish social insurance agency provides financial support for families and children, but also for people with work injury, illness and at old age. During 2012 they saw the amount of notifications of insurance increasing in Sweden, which is a development that cost our society a great deal of money. With the aim to pursue a sustainable development I have therefore devoted this project to wellness and stress management within preschool.The employees of preschool are often dealing with a lot of stress, due to the big groups of children that causes high noise and sound levels. The high noise and sound levels is a contributor to stress which additionally can damage the health and cause impaired hearing loss. About half of the people around their forties until the age of retirement have difficulties understanding speech in large groups.The purpose of this project has been to investigate the causes of negative stress for my target group, women between 30-60 years old who works in preschool.

Volvo Construction Equipment is a world leading company in construction machinery. Tomaintain the best products, development is prioritized. The master thesis regards sound reductionof the hydraulic system on a wheel loader. The background to the master thesis is asimulation made on the hydraulic system, performed autumn 2005. The result of the simulationshows that the energy of the pressure ripple is reduced when the paralleled hydraulicpumps are phase shifted and reduces each others pump pulsations.

The Smart Grid technology has during the last decade been established as a way to create a greater flexibility on the electricity grid that will be needed as the development moves towards an increased share of renewable primary energy sources in the electricity production. One part of the Smart Grid technology is the ability to shift loads in time, to adapt to either price or emissions, known as Demand Response. This project, which was conducted at KTH in collaboration with the consulting corporation Capgemini, examines the economic, environmental and social aspects of the Demand Response technology. In the project, three household products are used in a model that derives the potential savings in costs and emissions of CO2e. The results show that the actual savings measured in SEK are small, but that the savings measured in percent can be as high as 20 percent. Reduction of CO2e emissions is slightly lower.

The aim of the study is to research if the Sweden Democrats portray themselves in a way that can be described as populistic and xenophobic and also if this portrayal has changed over time.In order to do so, the terms of populism and xenophobia has been defined by research and put together into two separate ideal types. Through the eyes of the two ideal types and their traits, four of the party programs of the Sweden Democrats have been researched to look at how they express themselves in the programs and if it can be connected to some of the traits within the two ideal types.The conclusion is that some of the traits are to be found in the programs, and that this also varies over time. From showing signs of both populism and xenophobia, the populistic traits become less over time, while the xenophobic ones instead increases..

Feedback tools support electricity users within the Swedish residential sector to increase their knowledge of electricity and the electricity market as well as to become more aware of their electricity consumption, which in turn encourages a reduction and an increased flexibility of electricity use. The primary aim of this study is to identify and analyse how existing feedback tools can be improved, to ensure that they contribute efficiently to the achievement of the EU objectives congruent with a more sustainable energy system in 2030, emphasizing: greenhouse gas reduction, increased energy efficiency and an increased share of renewable energy. In order to reach the primary aim of this study, existing feedback tools have been identified and mapped and interviews with feedback tools providers have been conducted. The study is limited to three research areas: the practical functions of feedback tools, available technology and the use of feedback tools.The use of more efficient feedback tools will provide an increased success rate for energy management, which includes both behavioural changes and energy efficiency. According to the results from the interviews conducted for this study, an increased use and user frequency is important to utilise the energy management potential.

Presently Sjöfartsverket do their maintenance according to a standard program, which means that every maintenance task will be done when the task limit occurs. This leads to a very long downtime for the aircraft in some occasions and very short downtime in others. The goal with this work is to reach a higher regularity of the aircraft operation. To reach a higher regularity for the operational needs, this work will present a hypothetic better maintenance concept for Swedish Maritime Administration. The concept is based on equalized maintenance structure, which means that every maintenance occasions are meant to take the same time to perform.

The Swedish road transport sector relies almost completely on fossil fuels. In 2007, as much as 96 percent of the total sales of fuels was made up of petrol and diesel, while at the same time the share of total emissions of greenhouse gases in Sweden that came from road transports amounted to close to 30 per cent. Sweden is by no means worse off than any other European country in these respects. In order to address the questions of high oil dependence and CO2 emissions the European Commission has proposed a reinforcement of the legislative framework, with a 10 percent minimum for the market share of biofuels in 2020. Furthermore, the proposed target is binding for the member states, unlike the current voluntary target of 5.75 percent by 2010. More than doubling the usage of biofuels in only a bit more than a decade will most likely not be possible without policy interventions.