This thesis is analysing the housing market situation in Malmö. The reason for the research is the always equally relevant choice between two types of housing- cooperative apartments and rentals. Cost and risk is compared between the two in order to see what accommodation is preferable from cost and risk aspects. A theoretical framework dealing with cost and risk associated to housing is the starting point of the thesis. Theory on different cost associated to the two types of housing is presented as well as risk aspects, such as market risk, credit risk and fluctuations in interest rates. The data used in the research is individual data from 993 households living in Malmö, providing the possibility to map out the cost and risk for the two types of housing and compare it to the housing market situation in Sweden.   At first glance it seems slightly more expensive to live in a rental compared to a cooperative apartment. However, when return on capital, risk premium and value change is included this first statement changes. The risk is slightly higher when living in a cooperative apartment than in a rental, due to higher risk associated to fluctuations in interest rate. However, the current initial economic situation is better for households in cooperative apartments than for households in rentals, implying that these households on average are more capable to handle the higher risk associated to changes in housing cost.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the motives underlying the consumption of alcohol among college students and if the motives differ between genders. The study is based on the following questions: What are the motives underlying alcohol consumption among students? Do these motives differ between men and women? Is there any connection between the motives for alcohol consumption and consumption? The study is a quantitative, empirical comparison study and the data presented is mainly descriptive. The study group consists of students from a university in central Sweden. After an exclusion of five students a total of 81 students participated in the survey, of which 55 were female and 26 were male. The average age of all who participated in the study was 24 (sd = 4). The students' alcohol consumption and motives for alcohol consumption were investigated using two instruments: The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and the Modified Drinking Motives Questionnaire-Revised (M DMQ-R). The questions from the two instruments were combined into a single questionnaire which then was used in the study. The questionnaire was accessible through a link on the internet. Students were recruited via advertisement on announcementboards around the school. A link to the survey was also published on the university's group page and on an application's group page on Facebook. The responses from the questionnaires were transferred to the computer programs Microsoft Excel and SPSS where they were analyzed and summarized. The results showed that the most common reason for drinking among both men and women were social motives. Enhancement motives were also more common than the other motives. There were more women than men who reported conformity motives, enhancement motives and coping with depression as a reason for their alcohol consumption. A few more men than women had indicated that they drink to coop with anxiety. There were a positive relationship only between enhancement motives and alcohol consumption, and this relationship was only among women in the study. There were no correlations between the other motives and alcohol consumption

The central theme of this dissertation is the study of a multimedia client for pervasive wireless multimedia applications. Speech recognition is considered as one such application, where the computational demands have hindered its use on wireless mobile devices. Our analysis considers distributed speech recognition on hardware platforms with PDA-like functionality (i.e. wireless LAN networking, high-quality audio input/output, a low-power general-purpose processing core, and limited amounts of flash and working memory.) We focus on quality of service for the end-user (i.e. ASR accuracy and delay) and reduced energy consumption with increased battery lifetimes. We investigate quality of service and energy trade-offs in this context. We present software optimizations on a speech recognition front-end that can reduce the energy consumption by over 80% compared to the original implementation. A power on/off scheduling algorithm for the wireless interface is presented. This scheduling of the wireless interface can increase the battery lifetime by an order of magnitude. We study the effects of wireless networking and fading channel characteristics on distributed speech recognition using Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b networks. When viewed as a whole, the optimized distributed speech recognition system can reduce the total energy consumption by over 95% compared to a client-side ASR implementation. We present an interleaving and loss concealment algorithm to increase the robustness of distributed speech recognition in a burst error channel. This improvement allows a decreased reliance on error protection overhead, which can provide reductions in transmit energy of up to 46% on a Bluetooth wireless network. The findings presented in this dissertation stress the importance of energy-aware design and optimization at all levels for battery-powered wireless devices.

The construction industry is a major emissions contributor and a main resource consumer. Because of this, the industry is formulating short and long-term 'sustainability targets'. The trend points towards an unsustainable future, within the next 75 years, due to actual and projected increases in resource consumption and emissions generation in response to global population growth, and improving living standards, affluence. There are no reliable studies that predict whether the required reductions in ecological impacts can actually be realized, and if so, on what time scale. In fact, currently no available system representations of the industry can serve as the basis for studying long-term sustainability through the twenty-first Century. Hard dynamic systems, based on reductionism, are no longer adequate representations to study the dynamics of complex systems. A worldview that includes complexity requires foremost a philosophical induction (a theory) of the nature of all the forces that move the industry and a mechanism for understanding how complex forces aggregate and affect growth. The dissertation examines the current understanding of the Theories of Complexity in general, and in building construction, as preparation for a deeper understanding on how sustainability and its opposite, exponential growth (or "exponentialoid") relate. Guaranteeing sustainability transcends the current arsenal of counter measures such as LEED, high-performance measures, waste containment, conservation, lessening demand, renewable resourcing, greening of the industry, creation of high-performance buildings, penalizing the polluter, carbon trading, and others… Sustainability is re-framed as the (artificial) force that tames an unsustainable exponentialoid. Sustainable forces are represented by elements of influence acting like vectorials that appear to have identifiable origin, direction and magnitude. A hypothetical example of how the heuristic/theory works is presented, pending future studies (needed to supply the necessary data required for a working model). This is pre-paradigmatic work, using both a novel worldview and method of analysis that points to increasingly detailed research work to be performed in the future.

A micromachined magnetic field sensing system capable of measuring the direction of the Earths magnetic field has been fabricated, measured, and characterized. The system is composed of a micromachined silicon resonator combined with a permanent magnet, excitation and sensing coils, and a magnetic feedback loop. Electromagnetic excitation of the mechanical resonator enables it to operate with very low power consumption and low excitation voltage. The interaction between an external magnetic field surrounding the sensor and the permanent magnet generates a rotating torque on the silicon resonator disc, changing the effective stiffness of the beams and therefore the resonant frequency of the sensor. MEMS-based mechanically-resonant sensors, in which the sensor resonant frequency shifts in response to the measurand, are widely utilized. Such sensors are typically operated in their linear resonant regime. However, substantial improvements in resonant sensor performance can be obtained by designing the sensors to operate far into their nonlinear regime. This effect is illustrated through the use of a magnetically-torqued, rotationally-resonant MEMS platform. Platform structural parameters such as beam width and number of beams are parametrically varied subject to the constraint of constant small-deflection resonant frequency. Nonlinear performance improvement characterization is performed both analytically as well as with Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation, and confirmed with measurement results. These nonlinearity based sensitivity enhancement mechanisms are utilized in the device design. The complete magnetic sensing system consumes less than 200 microwatts of power in continuous operation, and is capable of sensing the direction of the Earths magnetic field. Such low power consumption levels enable continuous magnetic field sensing for portable electronics and potentially wristwatch applications, thereby enabling personal navigation and motion sensing functionalities. A total system power consumption of 138W and a resonator actuation voltage of 4mVpp from the 1.2V power supply have been demonstrated with capability of measuring the direction of the Earths magnetic field. Sensitivities of 0.009, 0.086, and 0.196 [mHz/(Hz and #903;degree)] for the Earths magnetic field were measured for 3, 4, and 6 beam structures, respectively.

This paper is a combination of spatial duopoly model together with consumption externality model. Under the circumstance of heterogeneous products, I will discuss separately the influence of consumption externalities on the optimal equilibrium strategy of the firm. When consumers are characterized with the snob, the equilibrium price tends to be higher; however, consumers are characterized with the conformity, firms will be fierce price competition. Moreover, given the existence of conspicuous goods, consumers purchase a conspicuous good in order to display their relative high income and thereby achieve greater social status. And for this type of conspicuous consumers, the government will generally levy a luxury tax or even prohibit the consumption of the conspicuous good. And finally, by comparing these two cases with the laissez-faire economy, changes in the social welfare are exactly in an opposite direction.

The development of the global luxury market, nearly showing a decade growth of high degree, primarily refering the consumers of luxury market.It expanded not only high status but also general status and it¡¦s different from our past cognitive. Consumption is not a bad thing, but recently consumers change their shopping motives and want to show their status and obtain the identity of others by pursuiting the consumption patterns of higher classu, it will cause the disequilibrium between consumption and status. Therefore, this study explores the relationship between the socialization of status consumption and luxury attitude, and then extended to understand the impact of various media in the consumer socialization process, to identify the major cause of the disequilibrium. This object of the study expandes to the general consumers, it refers to widely understand the consumers actual cognition¡Bemotions and behavior whether he bought luxury goods or not. And exploring the relationship of luxury attitude and status consumption,in which you can understand the role of government in the consumer market and effect. After the questionnaire analysis, we found it is positive relationship between the luxury attitude and the status consumption,and it also has significant relationship between the attitude the consumer socialization process of media¡Gage¡Bthe school pattern in high school ¡B the cognition of government policy and luxury attitude. In conclusion, the luxury¡§cognition¡¨ and¡§emotion¡¨"are major causes to influence status consumption,it said the consumer to do the consupmtion behavior is depending the inherent performance.If consumers do not face their own wrong consumption mode, the overall social climate of the country will not upgrade.

In a water distribution system from groundwater supply, the bulk of energy consumption is expended at pump stations. These pumps pressurize the water and transport it from the aquifer to the distribution system and to elevated storage tanks. Each pump in the system has a range of possible operating conditions with varying flow rates, hydraulic head imparted, and hydraulic efficiencies. In this research, the water distribution system of a mid-sized city in a subtropical climate is modeled and optimized in order to minimize the energy usage of its fourteen pumps. A simplified model of the pipes, pumps, and storage tanks is designed using freely-available EPANET hydraulic modeling software. Physical and operational parameters of this model are calibrated against five weeks of observed data using a genetic algorithm to predict storage tank volume given a forecasted system demand. Uncertainty analysis on the calibrated parameters is performed to assess model sensitivity. Finally, the pumping schedule for the system's fourteen pumps is optimized using a genetic algorithm in order to minimize total energy use across a 24-hour period.

Automobile transportation consumes a significant amount of non-reusable energy and emits emissions as by-products of fuel consumption. There has been much progress in the development of vehicle engine technology and alternative fuels to reduce the adverse impact of highway transportation on the environment. However, the research regarding the reduction of the adverse impact through highway design is still in its infancy. Furthermore, highway design manuals/guidebooks do not provide any information on environmentally-friendly designs. The primary objective of this research was to provide the tools and guidelines for a quantitative environmental evaluation in highway design. This research provided the results regarding the quantitative environmental impacts, by means of fuel consumption and emissions, of various highway geometric design conditions on the vertical grades as well as for horizontal and vertical crest curves that could be included in the highway design process. The researcher generated second-by-second speed profiles using the speed prediction models and non-uniform acceleration/deceleration models, and extracted the fuel consumption and emissions rates based on vehicle specific powers and speeds using recently developed motor vehicle emission simulator (MOVES). The generated speed profiles were matched with the extracted rates and aggregated during a trip on the grades and curves. In addition, the researcher conducted the environmental evaluation including a benefit-cost analysis with actual highway geometric data based on the proposed method and processes. The results demonstrated that fuel consumption and emissions could be significantly changed according to highway design conditions on grades and curves. Throughout the analyses, this research provides the guidelines and tools for environmental evaluations related to selected design features as a part of the highway development process. The provided guidelines and tools can reduce the uncertainty associated with the engineering judgment for environmentally-conscious highway design. Finally, this research shows the efficacy of environmentally-friendly design for sustainable (i.e., social, economical, and environmental) transportation.

In this study, buildings in southern Taiwan area were selected to perform full-scale energy auditing experiment so that the energy consumption of each building can be analyzed comparatively. The result of experimental investigation and computer simulation were compared analytically with good accuracy obtained. The result can further facilitate as the design guide and energy indexes to be adapted in the national building energy code in the future