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Sweden, as well as the rest of the world, was hit with a big crisis in 2020, Covid-19. As different international markets went down, so did the swedish housing market. However, this effect only lasted for two months until it recovered itself. Since then the housing market has been hitting new highs as the covid-19 crisis is still very active one year later. This study has focused on the demand for housing in Sweden, specifically the municipality Malmö. What we wanted to study and understand was how can increased housing prices be explained during a crisis?. Another question used for this study, in addition to the point above, was “what could the underlying factors be for the increased housing prices during a crisis”.  The method used in order to answer the questions were interviews with individuals who have bought housing, either in the form of an apartment or house, during the covid-19 crisis. These answers were later used for the analysis.  The results found was that there were a few different factors that helped the decision for moving. One of the main attitudes towards this crisis was that it only affected their social lives, by limiting people and confining them to their homes. Another factor that helped push these buys were that people could afford more since a majority started saving more.  Our conclusions were that since people were more limited to their homes, they put more value into their home. In many homes people started working from home meaning they would need bigger areas and spent more time there. The majority followed the housing market's progression upwards and saw that it went up and saw an opportunity to invest as well. These conclusions are not definite, but we believe they had a big role in this decision and is part of the reason why demand for housing went up so much during this covid-19 crisis.

Den här rapporten avser att undersöka hur religiösa samfund i Karlstads kommun har hanteratdöd och begravning under april månad 2020. Utifrån källmaterial som är framtaget avstudenter som deltagit i ett forskningsprojekt vid Karlstads Universitet framställs ett resultatöver hur de deltagande religiösa samfunden har hanterat död och begravning. Resultatet harvisat att de olika religiösa samfunden har fått förändra sina verksamheter utefter den pågåendecoronapandemin. Det som går att utläsa är att de religiösa samfunden har hanterat död ochbegravning snarlikt varandra. Skillnaderna som påvisats har skett på individuell nivå ochsåledes fått anpassas för det enskilda samfundet. Utöver detta kommer rapporten även att visavilka anpassningar de religiösa samfunden har gjort, med en bakgrund kopplad till derestriktioner och direktiv som Folkhälsomyndigheten har angivit. Undersökningen visar attanpassningar har gjorts och dessa har gjorts individuellt för att vara väl anpassade förverksamheten.2

Auditing is a function that operates in the public interest. By confirming or denying companies' financial information, trust and value is created for external stakeholders. The signing auditor bears ultimate responsibility for the audit work that has been conducted and is required to provide a descriptive audit report in addition to each annual report. The auditor's report states the auditor's obligations and requirements, a confirmation or denial of the financial statements and any comments related to inaccuracies or a concern for the client's ability to continue the business. An objective audit of high quality is required to ensure the credibility of the presented reports. Currently, 37.3% of all authorized auditors in Sweden are women. During the 1990s, gender research began to gain momentum and after a while the focus was directed at the differences that exist between men and women when it comes to positions on the labor market and the possibility of higher positions and leadership roles. Sweden has made a journey towards gender equality and continued during the early 2000s to reduce the differences that exist between men and women in the labor market, but a completely equal situation has not been reached. Parallel to this, there has also been research on the cognitive behavioral differences between the sexes. This have shown that men and women have separate ways of processing information and seeing details. Risk management is also something that differs between the sexes, with women more easily overestimating the risk and thus feeling increased anxiety. All these elements are essential within the auditing profession and are required in the process of conducting the audit. This quantitative study, starting with Type II errors and bankruptcies, has therefore investigated whether the differences between the sexes regarding cognitive behaviors have such a substantial impact that it is possible to see differences in the audit quality between the sexes. Connected to risk management, the recent corona pandemic has been added to investigate whether it resulted in any change in the potential quality differences during the pandemic. When the environment deviates from what is normal, the normally applicable principles may not be valid. 920 Swedish corporate bankruptcies with the latest fiscal year end date between 2017 and 2021 have been investigated to conclude if the auditor issued a going concern opinion in the latest audit report or not. If a comment was not issued and a bankruptcy followed, it was considered a Type II error which indicates lower audit quality. The results support, at a 5% significance level, that female auditors maintain a higher audit quality than their male colleagues. However, there is no statistically proven result that the corona pandemic have affected the difference in audit quality.

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Silicon Carbide (SiC) is a wide bandgap semiconductor that is currently of major interest for power electronics applications. SiC-based semiconductor devices and circuits are presently being developed for use in high-temperature, high-power, and/or high-radiation conditions under which conventional semiconductors lose their efficiency. However, the blocking capabilities of SiC power rectifiers and transistors are yet to approach their impressive theoretical limit due to so called edge effects at the device periphery. Surface passivation, which addresses many issues related to surface electric fields, is an extremely important fabrication step for high performance semiconductor electronic devices. Surface passivation can influence the surface recombination velocity, surface charge, interface trap density, and other surface characteristics. In this work, two-dimensional device simulations are used to establish the trends and the extent of the influence of charges, present in surface passivation dielectrics, on the reverse bias characteristics of SiC devices. Actual charges and charge instability are experimentally evaluated in a few common types of passivation dielectrics used in SiC device technologies. Device simulations are used to predict the corresponding improvement (or degradation) of the breakdown conditions at the device periphery, associated with the experimentally measured dielectric charges.

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Increasing concentrations of pharmaceutical compounds and their metabolites in aquatic environment threatens both aquatic species and human health. Many pharmaceuticals are persistent in the environment and resistant to conventional water treatment; hence, alternate treatment techniques are required to remove these compounds from water. Aqueous phase electrical discharge has been demonstrated to successfully remove a range of pharmaceutical compounds from water. This technique is characterized by the simultaneous generation of highly reactive species and physical effects within the aqueous solution to be treated. The present study investigates and optimizes the efficacy of pulsed corona discharges generated in water for the treatment of carbamazepine (CBZ) in a relatively clean water matrix by varying the solution pH, solution conductivity, gas type injected, and gas flow rate injected. A point-to-plane reactor configuration was employed to produce plasma channel- streamers. In this geometry, the electrical discharges were produced directly within the aqueous phase to be treated by charging a 1nF pulse forming capacitor using a high voltage (25 KV) DC power supply through 10 MΩ resistor to generate discharges within the water at a 30 HZ pulse repetition rate. Solution pH, solution conductivity, gas type, and gas flow rate were optimized to maximize the removal efficacy of CBZ removal by pulsed corona at the laboratory scale. The CBZ degradation rate (concentration decrease over time) was monitored using LC/MS/MS, with overall degradation ranging from 14-94% depending on the experimental conditions. The results demonstrate that higher CBZ removal efficiency is achieved under lower pH and conductivity conditions. Moreover, enhanced degradation efficiency is obtained when gas, and particularly oxygen, is bubbled through the high voltage hollow electrode, especially at higher flow rates. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc) / Pharmaceuticals are being released into the environment at an increasing rate due to population growth and a rising dependence on these compounds. Pharmaceuticals are resistant to many common water treatment methods; however, electrical discharge generated within the water to be treated (pulsed corona discharge) is an emerging water treatment technology that has been shown to successfully treat many pharmaceuticals. In the present work, pulsed corona discharge has been used to treat carbamazepine present in a relatively clean water matrix. Removal was maximized by optimizing the solution pH, solution conductivity, type of gas bubbled through the electrode, and gas flow rate. The best removal was achieved in solutions with lower pH and conductivities where oxygen was bubbled through the electrode at a relatively high rate.