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.

Introduction: The health for individuals with intellectual disabilities is asubject that is prioritized by the Swedish Institute for Public Health. Socialsupport has been proven to be important for health and quality of life. Despitethis fact there is no research available regarding the influence social support hason health and quality of life for people with intellectual disabilities in Sweden.Aim: To describe social support and the consequence of social support forhealth and quality of life for individuals with intellectual disabilities. Method:A litterature review of research in a defined area with a descriptive design.Systematic searches for articles were done in several databases and ultimately16 articles were chosen. Themes and categories were created with respect to theaim of this study during the analysis of the articles.

The surface finishing technique called black oxidation is currently being used on thetool holders made of low alloyed tool steel produced by Sandvik Coromant. Blackoxidation isn?t considered a sufficient technique because it doesn?t make the toolholders look like the quality products that they actually are. The reasoning behind thisis that the tool holders can show signs of corrosion after prolonged storing times orin countries with high humidity and temperature. The corrosion doesn?t decrease thetool holders performance, but the customers might believe otherwise.

Inspections within the building industry are surrounded by a rigorous set of rules presented in AB 04 and ABT 94. There are several types of inspections but the final inspection has the biggest legal implications and is important in many aspects, since it?s the one that ends the contract time for the contract i.e. when the contract is passed on from contractor to the client. It is also a confirmation on how the contract has been carried out and that the potential guarantee times after the contract will start to apply. The objective of the following report is to find out what different types of inspections there are as well as a legal understanding about what happens before, during and above all after the final inspection.

This work investigates the breeding success of the Black-throated Diver, Gavia arctica, related to the water quality in three lakes located in the Vallentuna area, north of Stockholm, Sweden.For more than 30 years, I have studied the bird life around these three and other nearby lakes, and noticed that the Black-throated Diver breeds in some lakes, but not in others.The results confirm that the deep and clear lakes Tärnan and Stora Harsjön have good water quality regarding pH, alkalinity, aluminium and Secchi disk values. As expected, the Black-throated Diver shows breeding success in those two lakes, but does not breed in the shallow and eutrophic lake Mysslingen. .

Inspired by the current debate over the effectiveness of Public Relations (PR), the authors of the following thesis have sought to analyze how PR and advertising differ in terms of how they affect consumers. The subject of the thesis was chosen due to the lacking knowledge of how PR shapes consumer attitudes and intentions. The authors wish to upset the institutionalized myths which dominate in the PR-business. One example of such a myth is that the effectiveness of PR can be measured by the number of press releases an activity produces and that PR?s superiority over advertising is due to its higher trustworthiness.

Silviculture in young stands in Sweden is below the mark concerning what has to be done in the forest, and it is time to solve the problem. The problem will not be solved only by the private forest owners, professional help is needed. Skogsägarna Mellanskog is one of four forest unions in Sweden who wants to play a role and take responsibility for forestry in the middle of Sweden. This academic essay is based on a market survey sent to 350 forest owners in the Örebro district. 186 of them answered the questions, giving a response frequence of 53 percentage. The purpose of the essay is to find the determining factors which will make a forest owner to find a collaborator when planning and carrying out the silviculture measures in young stands. The result of the survey shows that the forest owners are anxious about the price and the costs. The costs have a severe effect if the silviculture measures in young stands will be carried out or not.

Background: When companies decentralize their operations into profit centers, transfer pricing often becomes an integral part in intracompany trade. A profit center may affect both revenues and costs and seek to maximize profit. Transfer Pricing is a complex subject because it is affected by a large number of factors including the profit centers will to generate profits. This leads us to the subject of decision-making in a transfer pricing-systems. On what grounds are decisions made? Are transfer pricing purposes, factors and interests taken into consideration? What type of information is used in such decisions, how is the transfer price issue perceived and how is it used?Aim: The purpose of this thesis is to analyze which type of information that is makes up transfer prices, how the transfer price is perceived by different parties and how it is used for decision-making.Completion: A qualitative study has been performed with current theory as a starting point.

Introduction: Sleep is necessary for human survival. Difficulty sleeping occurs in about one in four adult person in Sweden, insomnia in every ten. There are several reasons for difficulty sleeping, where stress is one of the most common. The quality of life and health are affected negatively. Treatment with proven efficacy against insomnia is not only sleep medication, but also cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT.

Bakgrund och problematisering: Tjänsteföretag på konkurrensutsatta marknader motiveras att anpassa sina produkter utifrån kundernas efterfrågan där utvärdering och förbättring av en tjänsts kvalitet är ett tillvägagångsätt. Fallföretaget Vindsurfing.se studeras med en problembakgrund baserad på hur företag kan utvärdera kvalitet i sina tjänster och vilka positiva och negativa faktorer i produktionen av tjänsterna som går att identifiera utifrån kundernas uppfattningar.Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka den av konsumenterna upplevda kvaliteten på de nybörjarkurser som företaget Vindsurfing.se erbjuder. Detta för att identifiera olika faktorer med påverkan på kvaliteten som kan ligga till grund för utredning av hur verksamheten kan utvecklas i framtiden.Teori och modell: Litteraturgenomgång med utgångspunkt i begreppet service quality, dess definition, tillämpningar och mätinstrument. Nyckelmodeller är bl.a. Grönroos (1984) ?Service-Quality Model? och Parasuraman et al., (1985) ?Service-Gap-model?.

The purpose of this thesis project was to study how different companies are working with LastTime Buy and through that study propose improved ways of working with this for Scania CVAB. The project aimed at studying the work processes from three different perspectives:decision models, quality aspects and liability aspects between companies.To study this, qualitative interviews with one or several representatives from differentcompanies that are affected by or involved in Last Time Buy were used. Representatives wereselected partly from Original Equipment Manufacturers, suppliers, component manufacturersand companies offering third part solutions for Last Time Buy. The companies also reflecteddifferent industries. The interviews aimed to create an understanding for the methods used atthe different companies but also the ways of thinking and the knowledge behind the choice ofthese working methods.The analysis shows that the Original Equipment Manufacturers used very similar decisionmodels for Last Time Buy, but that external factors or the company strategy made them reachdifferent results.

Over the last 25 year IT development has greatly influenced the waycompanies are managed, the tremendous growth in the information society has made a huge amount of information extremely accessible. This has resulted in the problem of information overload where the large amount of information can affect the quality of a decision basis collected by a controller.The purpose of the study is to examine how a controller is affected by information overload and how this influences the decision basis. We intend to highlight the important elements to represent a high quality of information.A survey was conducted through a case study within a global affiliated company in the packaging industry. An adductive approach has been applied with a qualitative research method. Collected empirical material from interviews has been put into relation with existing theories.The case study indicates that there is no relationship between the problem of information overload and flawed decision basis.

Fuel pellets are a refined bio fuel mostly consisting of residues from sawmills and wood industry. At Rindi Västerdala AB's combined bio energy plant in Vansbro fuel pellets are produced, while the waste heat from the process is used for district heating. The pellets are produced from sawdust, wood shavings and dry wood chips that is dried, milled and pressed into small cylindrical rods. The advantage of refining the wood material in this manner is that the energy value is greater per unit volume and unit weight, thereby the cost of transportation per energy unit is reduced. Also, less storage space is needed.Pellet manufacturing is a complex process since many parameters affects the final results.

Operators and Internet service providers invest in broadband to be able to deliver new services that require higher data transmission rate. A way to make this possible is to use ADSL, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, as the access technology. To be able to handle this technology, the service providers should do a pre-qualification. Methods and tools are needed to analyze the local copper lines and decide if these qualify for ADSL with respect to service availability and possible bandwidth through the lines. This report brings up some methods for pre-qualification of ADSL, the important quality parameters and how to gather them from the available services today.

AbstractTitle:                           What is the interaction between information providers and decision makers like? A case study on management accounting in Swedbank.Course:                              Master?s thesis in Business economics, 15 ECTS.Date:                                                        2009-06-01Authors:                            Daoud Ghorbandi and George TekmenSupervisor:                        Paula LiukkonenLanguage:                         SwedishPurpose:        The purpose of the paper is to study the relationship between information providers and decision makers regarding the quality of information for economic decision-making in companies.Method:                     The authors use the qualitative method approach. The essay's primary data consists of data collected through interviews, while the literature that the authors have made use of for the interpretation and analysis of the paper form the essay?s secondary data.Theory:                      It includes a main theory and four other theories supporting the paper. The main theory is the agent theory, while theories on information quality, the theory of outsourcing of management accounting, theories of calculation methods and regulations on management accounting is to support the analysis and conclusions made in the paper.Empirical base:          Interview Responses forming the essay?s primary data is presented in its entirety in this chapter.Conclusions:              The authors conclude that there are no major problems or obstacles in terms of internal management accounting in Swedbank, at least not in the departments such as the HR and the GF.