LENGTH OF STAY IN PRESCHOOL A qualitative study based on nine pre-school teachers

Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att studera om förändringar i arbetet med rörelsekapital hade ett samband med lönsamheten i företag. Som mått på rörelsekapital används Cash Conversion Cycle och som mått på lönsamhet används ROA. Teoretiskt perspektiv: Den teoretiska referensramen består av teorier om Working Capital Management, Cash Conversion Cycle, Lean, Supply Chain Management och Supply Chain Finance. Metod: I denna uppsats används en kvantitativ metod där sekundärdata samlas in från årsredovisningar för 2005 och 2013. Denna data ligger till grund för fyra korrelationsanalyser. Den beroende variabeln i korrelationsanalyserna är ROA och defyra oberoende variablerna är Cash Conversion Cycle, dagar i lager, dagar som kundfordring och dagar som leverantörsskuld. Urvalet i denna studie består av svenska aktiebolag inom branschen tillverkning och industri med fler än 50 anställda. Empiri: Empirin består av fyra tabeller som presenterar de beräkningar som gjorts. Slutsats: Sambandet mellan förändring i Cash Conversion Cycle och förändring i ROA blev väldigt svagt positivt men inte signifikant. Alla förändringar i dagar i lager, dagar som kundfordring och dagar som leverantörsskuld visade svaga negativa samband till ROA och var signifikanta.

This paper will discuss parental leave and will only concern full leave according to 3 § 1 st 2 p. föräldraledighetslag (1995:584). The purpose of this paper is to examine and find out how different employers' operations are affected by employees taking parental leave and what aspects that have an impact. The study examines, among other things, how the operations are affected in daily work and what consequences it entails. This paper will also investigate how the legislation surrounding parental leave has changed and developed over the course of history, and if it is possible to see a connection between the development of the legislation and the norms and attitudes on parental leave. Current legislation in the area will also be presented. Further, the study will find out how a completely individualized parental insurance could affect the interviewed employers' operations. All questions in this study are primarily based on interviews with three employers in the construction industry. We want to inform that our study is not to be generalized to all operations within the construction industry. Why we chose to study how taking parental leave affects the employer's operation, is because we believe that it is an area that is not well explored. In addition, we want to study a male-dominated industry to add a focus on gender and men's use of parental leave. Based on three interviews, legislation, proposals for laws, previous research and literature we analyze and come to the conclusion that the Swedish legislation on parental leave has changed as more women have entered the labor market, which has contributed to a more equal withdrawal of parental leave. Employers are affected when parental leave is taken, but in different ways. One of the most important aspects is that the parental leave is planned ahead and well communicated so that the employer can avoid negative impact. Finally, we note that a fully individualized parental insurance could affect the employers' operation, but it may as well remain unchanged.

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Modern power systems are at the forefront of addressing the transition towards a decarbonized energy system, with increased integration of renewable energy sources becoming the key means to achieve the same. In this context, an expansion planning problem provides a decision support framework for investments in new generation and transmission assets over a long time-frame, addressing a wide range of technical and economic criteria aligned with national policies. It is thus an important but complex problem to solve, involving a number of modelling challenges and uncertainties to be considered. These include the treatment of operational variability due to the intermittent nature of renewable sources like wind or solar, while also considering uncertainties such as demand growth, technological developments impacting future investment costs among others, that define the long-term dynamics in the expansion. In this regard, one of the goals of the EU Project Spine is to create open source models to study investment scenarios for the expansion of power systems. This thesis work aims to offer insights for the Spine project, by identifying and exploring various requirements pertinent to a planning problem, along with method development. The primary objective of this thesis is to develop an expansion planning model, that determines the optimal location, size or capacity and time of investment for different candidates in generation and transmission assets, including short-term energy storage. A Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) optimization problem is formulated for the same, with both investment and operational sub-problems solved together. Operational variability has been modelled in a reduced form using profiles of representative days, while also incorporating contemporary requirements in the planning problem such as penetration targets for renewable generation. The developed model has been evaluated using a case study done on a small test network, in which different expansion scenarios involving varying demand growth and phase-out of conventional generators are investigated. Also, a two-stage stochastic optimization is performed to consider long-term uncertainties in demand growth and the quality of the stochastic solution is analyzed. It is inferred from the results that the expansion solution is indeed different for different scenarios, and stochastic optimization proves to be important in addressing long-term uncertainties, as reflected by a high value of stochastic solution (VSS). / Moderna kraftsystem ligger i framkant när det kommer till omställningen till ett fossilfritt energisystem. Ökad integrering av förnybara energikällor är den främsta lösningen för att uppnå detta. I samband med omställningen kan ett utbyggnadsplanering problem bidra till ramverk för investeringsbeslut för genererings- och transmissionstillgångar över ett långt tidsspann, vilket tar hänsyn till en bredd av tekniska och ekonomiska kriterier i linje med nationella policyer. Detta är ett viktigt, men ett komplext problem som inkluderar ett stort antal modelleringsutmaningar och osäkerheter som måste beaktas. Bland annat inkluderas hur drift varierar på grund av de förnybara energikällornas intermittenta karaktär såsom vind och sol, medan osäkerheter kring hur efterfrågan utvecklas, tekniska framsteg som påverkar framtida investeringar m.m., också behöver vägas in. Med hänsyn till detta är ett av målen för EU Project Spine att skapa en open source för modeller med syftet att studera investeringsscenarier när kraftsystemet expanderar. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att ge insikt i Spine-projektet genom att identifiera och utforska olika relevanta krav för ett planneringsproblem samt att utveckla metoder. Det huvudsakliga målet för detta examensarbete är att utveckla en expanderad planeringsmodell som bestämmer optimal placering, storlek, kapacitet och tidpunkt för investering för olika typer av genererings- och transmissionstillgångar samt kortvarig energilagring. Ett mixed-integer linjär programmering (MILP) optimeringsproblem har formulerats, där både investerings- och drifts-subproblem beräknas tillsammans. Variabel drift av kraftsystemet har modellerats på reducerad form genom att använda profiler för representativa dagar, därtill inkluderas samtida krav i planeringen såsom mål för penetreringsnivå av förnybara energikällor. Den utvecklade modellen har utvärderats i en fallstudie på en liten nätmodell där olika scenarier har utforskats. I scenarierna varieras tillväxten på efterfrågan och när utfasningen av konventionella generatorer sker. Därtill, sker en två-stegs stokastisk optimering för att ta hänsyn till långsiktiga osäkerheter kring tillväxten på efterfrågan och kvalitén av den stokastiska lösningen har analyserats. Resultaten visar att den expanderade lösningen är olika för olika scenarier, och att den stokastiska optimeringen är viktig när långsiktiga osäkerheter måste beaktas som visas genom ett högt värde för den stokastiska lösningen (VSS).

The purpose of this thesis is to apply the adventure formulas laid out by John G. Cawelti and the dramatis personae written by Vladimir Propp to the traditional adventure books Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jour (1874) and Treasure Island (1883) and the interactive fictions The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) and 80 Days (2014), both in the adventure genre. After they have been applied, I will compare Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jour with 80 Days and Treasure Island with The Secret of Monkey Island by how the formulas and dramatis personae work and evolve in the fictions. To start things off, I will present the four works and then go through the relevant parts of Cawelti’s formula and Propp’s dramatis personae. Thereafter, I will explain what interactive fiction might be by using Espen J. Aarseth’s Cybertext. Important concepts will be clarified as well.    The analysis in this thesis starts afterwards. Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jour and 80 Days will be the first two works to be analysed after Cawelti and thereafter Propp. When that is done, I will conclude what I have found. The same process will be done with Treasure Island and The Secret of Monkey Island. After that, I will make a concluding comparison between 80 Days and The Secret of Monkey Island and finally conclude whether Cawelti and Propp can be applied to interactive fiction.

This thesis aims to analyze and interpret a number of central works – Vimpelstaden (1985), Som en gång varit äng (1988), Blomman och människobenet (2003), I en cylinder i vattnet av vattengråt (2005) and Vad hjälper det en människa om hon häller rent vatten över sig i alla sina dagar (2009) – by the Swedish poet Ann Jäderlund (1955-) in the context of phenomenology and affect theory. The analysis consists of three chapters and proceeds chronologically with technical scrutinies of separate phases of Jäderlund’s œuvre – from the aphasic-like treatment of established phraseologies in Vimpelstaden and frozen expressions of the botanical discourse in Som en gång varit äng, to the uncanny focus on perceptual patterns as such in her later works. Throughout these analyses the thesis observes a series of techniques with which the author presents us with a kind of sensory paradox, through a) creating language-based complex appearances, non-appropriable by means of the normal perceptual patterns of embodied perception, while still b) simulating, and thus implicitly emphasizing, these appearances as something already concretely looked at and felt. In short, to experience what cannot be experienced, to live the unlivable. Many of these technical observations made are pinned down analytically using concepts from the field of cognitive poetics, namely George Lakoff and Mark Johnsons findings of experiential image schemata underpinning spoken phraseologies and their influential theories on conceptual metaphors. The interpretative conclusion following these observations is that Jäderlund handles her writing aesthetically as a kind of sensory material in a very literal sense, a “being of sensation” in the terminology of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Not as means of experiential or intellectual representation, not as some sort of critical enterprise through mere language-gaming of free- floating signifiers – but as a material able to preserve and perform sensory processes immanent to its own material compilation, a tendency that earlier research fails to grasp or simply ignores altogether. Thus the affectivity immanent to the literary material – often being the starting point of studies in affect theory and cognitive poetics – is here proven to be a characteristic, thereby playing the role more of a conclusion than a field of inquiry. The aesthetics of interrogating the limits of sensory experience, introducing a sort of crisis to embodied perception through the experience of poetic language – and the experience of it as having a “metaphysical significance”, as French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau- Ponty puts it – is articulated in the thesis against the background of influential readings of modern art carried out by Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze.