The student project Elba at KTH started in 2011 and is a project where a battery driven prototype car is developed. The vehicle competes in Eco Shell Marathon in Rotterdam, Holland. In this competition the vehicle that travels a certain distance including several starts and stops with the lowest energy consumption wins. To minimize the consumption is therefore very important, which requires knowledge of the vehicles energy losses.A vehicle's energy losses depends on several factors and can be divided into the powertrain efficiency and the driving resistance. The driving resistance can then be divided in to rolling and air resistance, if smaller losses like vibrations are ignored.

A reward cycle for investigating the emotional status in animals has been developed and it requires that animals go through three main phases, i.e. anticipation, consumption and relaxation. The reward cycle has not been tested previously for access to play in pigs. Therefore, the aim of this Master thesis was to investigate if growing pigs showed more behaviours indicative of excitement than pigs that were not allowed to play, performed play in a play arena and showed more behaviours indicative of relaxation after play when they were back to their home pen than pigs that were in their home pen the whole time. Forty undocked piglets (10 litters of Specific Pathogen Free half pure-bred Yorkshire and half hybrids of Yorkshire x Landrace balanced for breed between two treatments were used.

Om världen till följd av klimatförändringarna blir mycket varmare kommer förutsättningarna för hur vi planerar städer, infrastruktur och jordbruk helt att vändas upp och ner. De delar av världen som idag står för världens livsmedelsproduktion kommer vid bara några graders förändring bli obrukbara som betes och odlingsmark. Dessa förändringar kan komma att starta konflikter, och stora flyktingströmmar som tillsammans med förändrade klimatzoner helt kommer att rita om världskartan. i Skandinavien är det då troligt att vi behöver bygga samhällen och städer för miljontals nya immigranter, och detta samtidigt som vi befinner oss mitt i den mest fruktbara jordbruksmarken i världen. Om hundra år måste vi dessutom, oavsett detta, dubbla livsmedelsproduktionen globalt sett.Vårt samhälle blir allt mer rörligt och infrastrukturen utvecklas i allt snabbare takt.

Handling product returns has become a critical activity for organizations as the volume of gods flowing back through the supply chain rapidly increases. Few research studies have published specific empirical data concerning the reverse logistics practices of companies. Information technology and information support has long been recognized as a competitive weapon ? capable of enhancing company performance and achieving efficient reverse logistics. Reverse logistics is very unlike the forward, as it is more reactive and also has less visibility.

The functional connection between the building and the streetscape affects the city and its attractiveness. Stores located in shopping malls with their entrances facing internal walkways, creates segregation between the mall and the streetscape. This segregation implies that the shopping mall loses some of its attractiveness, which may result in a so-called Greyfield mall. The expression Greyfield mall is used for shopping malls that have lost its visitors. Competition from new modern malls and a lack of investments are examples of factors that influence the development of Greyfiled malls.

The aim of this paper was to discover the functions and workings of personal networks and their advantages for self-employed sound designers and producers whose focus was upon the moving image (film, advertising, tv, etc). Investigations on how entrepreneurs develop their networks were made, as well as inquiries on how these networks are used for generating work. Another important aspect perused was whether or not the networks are dependent on specific geographical locations in order to function. A case study and comparative analysis was undertaken, based upon three qualitative interviews with entrepreneurs whose operations shared several similar characteristics. The results pointed out the importance of constantly making new contacts, and maintaining and managing current ones.

The subject of this project focuses on how Landscape Architects by their profession can explore and directly make a difference in the cityscape. This paper documents the process of art - based research practice. The purpose of installing temporary activities is to encourage people in the city to discover, participate and invite people to be more playful in the city. My experience of interaction in public spaces comes primarily from the education within landscape architecture, from site-specific art installations I have performed in different cities and from observations of landscape architecture, street art and urban life in the cities of Vienna, Berlin and Linköping. It is fascinating and inspiring to see how the urban space can invite and allow visitors to participate and therefore feel invited to the open space. As a landscape architect I wish to create urban spaces that are useful and inspiring for their visitors. The projects main question: How can you make temporary landscapes that encourage outdoorinspired activities at selected locations in the city? is answered by practice based research, an approach in which theoretical research are developed through practical experiments in the designing- and implementation process.

This is a tale about energy and power. It describes the geographer Halford Mackinder?s geopolitical theories and compares them with current views outlined by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Michael T Klare, among others. With a critical approach it also provides a historical account of a Europe that stands in front of an energy struggle so severe that the current world order seems destined to fall. Oil and natural gas, has since the beginning of the 20th century, been used as a geopolitical tool in order to create dependence, control and even sometimes overthrow empires.

In this essay we aim at finding an appropriate flash estimator of the quarterly Swedish private consumption (PK). With the aid of the statistics program TRAMO we study if monthly data from the consumer survey (HIP) and retail industry (DH) can be used in a transfer function model (TFM) to forecast PK. In the work of assessing the state of the market and the business trend, fast information from the national accounts is needed for making decisions for the economic politics in Sweden. A way to speed up the information process is to use leading economic indicators to asses this development. Another way to get information faster is to use a flash estimate.

In this thesis a method for evaluating investments in small scale hydro power is presented. An analysis of the future position that small scale hydro production will have on the Nordic electricity market is also carried out. This is done by an inventory of technology and economic and environmental aspects. The inventory is also a guide as to how the project should be implemented.Hydrolyzer is the name of the Excel tool developed to evaluate investments. The tool requests input data from the user and then evaluates the investment and generates a sensitivity analysis.

The ability of dairy cows to survive and the economic importance of this have been in-creasing in dairy cattle breeding lately. Increased longevity contribute to an increased pro-portion of cows that produce milk in more productive lactations and reduces the replace-ment costs together with a good health and fertility. Unfortunately it is often argued that longevity has been decreasing due to a strong selection for production traits in dairy cattle.The aims of this study were to find correlations between different longevity evaluations and between different estimates on longevity and other traits in the Nordic Total Merit (NTM) breeding value. The aim was also to compare different traits for cows of two differ-ent longevity groups.The data were Predicted Breeding Values (PBV) from Nordic HOL and SR bulls and records from Holstein (HOL) and Swedish Red (SR) cows estimated by the Swedish Dairy Association.The three Swedish longevity indexes were very highly correlated (>0.89) and the corre-lations between the Swedish official longevity index and the five Nordic Cattle Genetic Evaluation (NAV) longevity indexes varied between 0.73-0.83.In the sire evaluation part, the traits most negatively correlated with longevity for HOL were dairyness, protein and fat index. In SR, milk, protein, and fat index only had slightly positive correlations with longevity.

Wind power is an energy source that is becoming increasingly popular in Sweden and around the world. The establishment of large wind farms supply and contributes to energy production within grid in search of a more sustainable energy production. Wind power is becoming more popular and opens up new areas of implementation. More cities are starting to use small-scale urban wind power, everything from full-scale work for a little less work adapted to the villas. Sweden has high goals regarding the production of green electricity and the work which deals with the conditions Sweden plays in achieving those goals.

Det genomgripande syftet med denna uppsats var att synliggöra ungdomsassistenternas arbete på Lyrans asylboende samt att se vilken relevans olika kunskapsformer har i detta. Utifrån frå-geställningarna handlade studien om att beskriva ungdomsassistenternas arbete samt att förtyd-liga gemensamma aspekter i arbetet med EkB. Jag utgick också från att studera ungdomsassi-stenternas beskrivelser av lyckosamma hjälpinsatser samt vilken kunskapsform som assisterar dessa.Empirin i denna studie baseras på mina tidigare erfarenheter av arbetet med ensamkommande flyktingbarn och ungdomar samt resultatet från totalt fyra intervjuer med ungdomsassistenter på Lyrans asylboende för ensamkommande barn och ungdomar. Jag har vid insamlandet av empirin utgått fån tre olika kvalitativa metoder vinjett, semi-strukturerad intervju samt en egen utarbetad interaktivt-strukturerad intervjumodell. Jag har förankrat personalens beskrivningar med aktuella forskningsstudier samt analyserat deras arbete utifrån de fyra kunskapsformerna episteme, techne, fronesis och tacit knowing.Resultatet synliggjorde delar av personalens praktiska och utförande arbete med EkB och fram-förde viktiga gemensamma teman i detta.

The Swedish Transport Administration manage nearly 4,000 railway bridges in different condition and age around the country. These bridges is in constant need of maintenance and requires continuous inspections. This thesis is designed as a damage investigation on a single-track railway bridge south of Solvarbo in Säter municipality. The railway bridge is in operation and serves over 10,000 trains a year, everything from speed trains to freight trains. The bridge is built as a beam bridge, simply supported over a road.

The companies of today compete about the consumers? attention. In a society where the speed is increasing and the trends are constantly changing the marketing of today will soon be obsolete. This is something that is clearer in the fashion business where the consumers always are looking for news at lower costs. It?s no longer an economical question to be able to wear the latest fashion trends, the availability of cheap fashion clothes is constantly increasing.