As demand for renewable energy is increasing rapidly, the market for biomass pellets is expected to continue to grow in the near future. Most of the new raw materials that are discussed for pellet production have one thing in common; the production costs will increase compared to using traditional raw materials such as sawdust and planer shavings. The aim of this thesis is to investigate to what degree increased use of new raw materials for pellet production will affect the general pellet prices in Sweden and to survey what plans Swedish pellet producers have concerning new raw materials. To investigate the raw material situation of the Swedish pellet producers an industry survey was performed. Literature studies were also made on previous research in the subject field. Calculations of the production costs for pellets were done for the raw materials sawdust, wet sawmill chips and energy wood respectively. New raw materials are already used by the large-scale pellet producers in Sweden.

Background and aim: Asperger syndrome is a neuropsychiatric disability which is essentially characterized by impairments in social interaction. Little is known about how these individuals experience social interaction and more distinctly close relationships. Therefore the purpose of this present study is to explore how initiating and maintaining close relationships could be facilitated for individuals with Asperger syndrome. Furthermore how these individuals would like others to behave towards them. By assuming an insider perspective the empirical data is based on the participants own descriptions of their experiences, thoughts and ideas about close relationships.Findings: Most respondents state that they experience difficulties initiating social interaction, the main reason being that they don?t know what they are expected to say or how to act in this type of situation.

Our study has found that there are different structures and strategies in China and the US. This is due to the different constraints in each country which either allows the union to flourish or cripples its ability to function in a manner that protects workers rights..

Afasi kan drabba både talförmågan och förståelsen för språket. Språket blir på så vis en utmaning för sjuksköterskan. Enligt hälso- och sjukvårdslagen ska sjuksköterskan skapa förutsättningar för patienten till att vara delaktig i sin vård och i kommunikationen. Syftet med denna litteraturstudie var att belysa faktorer som påverkar verbal- och ickeverbal kommunikation mellan patient med afasi efter stroke och sjuksköterskan. Uppsatsen är utformad som en litteraturstudie, där resultatets elva artiklar har hämtats från databaserna Cinahl och PubMed.

The study seeks to from professionals perspectives describe and analyze the beliefs they have about women with intellectual disabilities and their pregnancy and motherhood. We will also discuss and reflect on the possible support that professionals find important for women to handle pregnancy and motherhood. The information has been gathered through interviews with five different professions that have come in contact with the audience in their work. In our material we found three distinctive perspectives: a child´s perspective, a parent´s perspective and a community perspective. From these perspectives, we could find many similarities in the informants´ perceptions, which resulted in different themes.

The usage of location in mobile applications is becoming more explored as a field, but the ability to implement location-specific data has often been limited and the applications mainly focusing on having information location liked. This thesis aims to explore how to make a mobile application that lets users share and take part of each other?s memories. As well as finding an appropriate balance between location based and location linked messaging..

The economic situation in the Swedish agricultural industry is currently experiencing a development towards larger units. This progress occurs simultaneously as farmers in cooperation more frequently make investments to decrease risk exposure and to improve the financial result. The purpose with this thesis is to study which advantages and problems a group of farmers experience after a common investment in a small-scale seed production. The aim with this investment is to increase the level of vertical integration in their respective agricultural firms and the results will be analyzed from an economic point of view. At present, the farmers are all seed producers with considerable cultivation areas.

Most of the portable electronic devices use a battery as a primary power source. Nowadays, when the applications are becoming smaller and smaller and more power efficient, the designer needs to concentrate more on reducing power consumption, using secondary power sources and introducing power storage devices. Multiple power source availability and a power storage device on the board will make the applications much more useful and efficient in everyday use. This thesis proposes a power supply unit (PSU) for wireless sensor platforms which is capable of supplying a sensor node with energy from multiple sources, as well as status information from the PSU. Present power storage devices, like electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) and batteries, have become more and more common as their characteristics have developed.

The main purpose of this study is to identify and compare classical pianists' understanding of sight-reading. Six pianists were interviewed, four professionals and two students. All of them concidered good sight-reading ability to be an advantage, especially when rehearsing, but most important is to be a good musicians performing music thoroghly gone through..

We are always surrounded by space, not just only in a room with four walls, but also when we are outdoors.Constantly we move in a flow of space that changes whenever we move. Unaware we are affectedby this threedimensional surrounding of ours, and it reacts with our perception. Many times, we chooseto translate it into something two-dimensional, for example when we take a photo, recording a movie orframing a view with a window. It helps us to catch a moment, a piece of reality and restore it in our ownway. In this project I?ve chosen to explore this process, to interpret and create my own theories about thistranslation from space to a two-dimensional surface.

Långvarig smärta är en av de vanligaste orsakerna till sjukskrivning i Sverige. Många olika typer av rehabiliteringsprogram har testats under årens lopp, med både positiva och negativa resultat. Tidigare studier utvärderar ofta rehabiliteringsperioder från en månad upp till flera månader. Det är intressant att se om en kortare rehabiliteringspeiod kan påverka viktiga faktorer som kopplas till långvarig smärta. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka om en kort rehabiliteringsperiod kan ge en ökad hälsorelaterad livskvalité, en högre self-efficacy och en lägre rörelserädsla.

There is an increasing demand for information literacy, which is mirrored in curriculum throughout the whole educational system. This, in turn, has brought forward a growing need for librarians who can teach. But do librarians possess pedagogical competence, and if they do, how is this ability used in everyday library practice? The aim of this study is to investigate librarians' conceptions of the pedagogical role, as it is expressed in their didactic interaction with the users. The research questions focus on librarians' experiences of teaching information seeking and use and their activities in this respect.

In previous studies there has been indications that multilingualism has a delaying effect of the onset of dementia and damage on cognitive abilities (Bialystok et al., 2007; De Bot & Makoni, 2005, s. 58). Cognitive abilities refers to memory, attention, language, abstract thinking and understandings among other things (Läkemedelsverket). Other studies have seen that individuals with Alzheimer's disease (Swedish abbreviation AS from here on) have difficulties with managing a conversation (Hyltenstam & Stroud 1989). This study aims to describe the topic treatment in bilingual individuals with AS and compare their different languages.

Stabilization of subgrade is an internationally common technique to improve the characteristics of a soft soil. Improving the stiffness and bearing capacity of the subgrade enables the pavement to be designed with reduced depths of subbase and basecourse aggregates. This makes the stabilization technique both economically and environmentally interesting. Both natural and stabilized soils have high inherent property variability that should be considered when the characteristic value is derived. By analyzing the spatial variability in stabilized and natural subgrades it is possible get the parameters needed for reliability?based modeling of soil properties.

The aim of this study is to find out what education in literature is like from a student perspective; what kind of literature the students read and how well they understand literature, and the methods and didactics used during the literature lessons. The questions at issue are:1) What kind of literature do the students read?2) How well do the students understand literary texts?3) What do the students think about their literature education?To be able to answer the questions, both quantitative and qualitative methods have been used in the study. The inquiry was accomplished on 29 students, 17 boys and 12 girls in the upper secondary school. The result showed, despite the limited amount of students, interesting facts.