The purpose of this degree project was to build laboratory equipment for a new course in power electronics that starts this autumn 2010 at Uppsala University. The equipment is intended for student labs and it covers the most important areas of the course including rectifying, buck-/boost-converters and PWM-modulation. It is built as one sealed unit where all the electronics are built-in but visible and it has a connection board where students safely can connect the different circuits. The project has advanced from theoretical studies of circuit design, choosing of components and simulations to drawing the printed circuit board (PCB), soldering, case building, final testing and troubleshooting - basically most steps from an early idea to a final product. Measurements on the final product gave about the same results as the earlier simulations of the circuits and the result is overall satisfying..

The Thesis purpose is in the context of system development validate the Scrum Methodology. Projects concerning information technology are difficult to manage and tend to fail in quality, time or costs. Scrum presents a new view of the system development. Better cooperation between customers and developers, continuous follow-up on daily basis and extensive communication in the development team are all characteristics of Scrum. Scrum is described as a new paradigm by its founders but has been criticized by experts of system development too.

This master thesis attempts to answerthe question if a startup with amaterial innovation needs a specialbusiness development model. Mainstreambusiness development literature is notwell adapted to the rigor of testing anew material and bringing it tomarket. This was studied using threedifferent methods. First of thetheories that are considered canonicalfor high tech business development wasexamined. The next step was to go into the role of a business developer inone of the hottest high tech materialinnovation startups this decade,Disruptive Materials.

This report describes the construction and development of a control box, which is a tool for testing and verifying a certain model of Rapid?s built in staplers (model A6102). Basically the function of the control box is to interpret any errors that may occur in the stapler and to make it possible to test fire the stapler.The control box should be able to communicate with the stapler using a specialized communication protocol. The different data such as errors, firmware etc. from the stapler is presented in plain language on a display.

This thesis was developed as an assignment from Ludosity Interactive where the goal was to develop a copy of the Xbox Live Indie Games-marketplace from the Xbox 360. Ludosity Interactive had a necessity to easily test a game's attractiveness to potential customers using testing people from outside the company in a simulated Xbox Live Indie Games test environment; excluding this developed system there is no other way to do such an analysis without actually releasing the game on the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace and then analyze the resulting sales from the product.The finished system had to be similar to the original system to the degree that a user could see past the interface itself and use the system just as he/she would have used the real marketplace. It also had to be easy to change and add games to the system so that Ludosity Interactive easily could show the games and the data that they deemed interesting for their tests. The final product was developed using C#, XNA and XML together with an Agileinspired development method in combination with Pivotal Tracker. This report describes how this product was developed..

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.

Banks have been some of the biggest operators on the market of business customers financing. When the Swedish Förmånsrättslagen was changed 2004 the banks became more restrictive to allow traditional bank loans. The change made it more difficult for customers to get their loans granted. For that reason customers had to find other forms of financing. Factoring is an alternative that means companies can mortage/sell their claim on customers to finance companies.

This thesis has examined the Tekla Structures modeling software and answered the question of whether it could act as a suitable modeling program for the design department at Bjerking AB in Uppsala. The method used in this work is a case study of a previous project with existing basis to work form. The demarcation of the study was to examine only the usability of the foundations of in situ concrete. The work examined three main areas within the design process. The first was to model the concrete elements then to model the reinforcing and ultimately production of the drawings. Because Autodesk Revit was the existing modeling program in the Department conducted the evaluation as a comparison between the two programs.

Web pages are visited through a variety of different devices with varying screensizes. One method for adapting web pages to this variety is called responsive design. Geographical information, often in the form of embedded maps, is common on the web. The combination of responsive design and geographical information has been shown to lead to interaction problems and is therefore assumed to need special considerations. This thesis examines this combination and investegates how presentation of geographical information can be adapted to responsive web design.

A new phenomenon on the Internet is the online audience response. Mentimeter is a web-based tool where you can create online polls. The users can then cast a vote and the result is shown in real time. We want to test the information visualization in Mentimeter and we base our hypothesis, that a better graph design is possible, on the work of Edward Tufte and Stephen Few. Edward Tufte is an emeritus at Yale University, where he held courses in statistical evidence and information design and has created theories about how visual information should be designed.

Man has through out times and in all cultures shaped their bodies to the existing bodily ideals. Men's bodily ideals had changed over the last thirty years to a more muscular, less bodyfat and more V-shaped body. Men and women focus their attention to different body parts. That is why there is a need for a questionnaire witch is specially designed for men. The purpose of this study was to deliniate the body image of men aged 20 to 30 years and to test the reliability of the questionnaire "Mäns kroppsuppfattning".

During the late twentieth century, political and societal changes gave rise to an increased interest in performance evaluation in public organizations. This development also affected libraries in the public sector. The main concern for this master thesis is performance measurement in libraries. In this study two different types of libraries are investigated, one public and the other academic. My aim is to find out if and how performance measurement appears in the libraries annual activity reports.

Aquatic organisms are usually not exposed to single substances but rather to mixtures of toxicants in streams located in agricultural areas. The transport of pesticides used in the agricultural area in Sweden is monitored with continuous environmental supervision every year. During 2002-2008 an average of 10 pesticides were found in each sample and 40% of the samples contained substances with concentrations higher than the Water Quality Standards. Chemical risk management is normally based on single-test evaluations. A problem when assessing mixture toxicities is that the constituents and concentrations of pollutants in the environment vary greatly.

The aim of this thesis is to, through an empirical study ofthe social tags in the City of Stockholm libraries? OPACwith critical discourse analysis, examine the social tags?linguistic design, usability, and communicative potential? all in relation to the context. It is a linguistic study andit is important to take into account that the tags are extremelyshort texts ? single-word-texts. My starting-pointis that the tags are a form of utility texts.What I find is that a clear majority of the tags are nounsand function as index terms, but that there are differencescompared to authorized index terms.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to investigate the notions and use of non fiction literature of children 9-11 years old. Moreover, this study tries to dissect the underlying concepts that exert influence over the target groups notions and use of non fiction literature. The method and empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of eight children within the target group. We use a theory of reading exchange to highlight the different areas of usability of non fiction for children. To emphasize how children use non fiction as representative for actual facts, or as non fiction with fictional content, we use a four-field correlation model.