The academic underachievement of looked after children is well known. By involving foster carers in a Paired Reading intervention a Swedish project tried to address this issue, replicating a successful British trial. The aim of my thesis was to study the variations in the foster carers? experiences of this literacy intervention. Reading reports from 100 children were collected and qualitative interviews with 15 foster parents were analyzed using concepts from motivational psychology.

The dependency of continuous electricity supply is high in the Swedish society today, at the same time no one is willing to pay for a too costly or over dimensioned power distribution system. The owners of the distribution systems are the ones responsible for this balance act of maintaining a high quality of electricity delivery to customers at a reasonable cost.In this master thesis a limited part of the primary distribution system (10 kV), owned by Mälarenergi Elnät AB and located in the city centre of Västerås, was chosen for a deeper analysis of its reliability. Its ability to handle outages of system components (N-1 and N-2 contingency analysis) was investigated to find out potential weak spots and parts of the grid that showed signs of being overdimensioned.The results of the performed simulations showed that in 74 % of the studied N-1 contingencies cases, consisting of outages of a bus bar in a distribution substation, the system could handle this without causing outages in other parts of the grid. For the N-2 contingencies 61 % passed the test. It was also found that one of the two included high voltage substations could alone supply the investigated part of the grid.

This thesis is a report concerning the practical aspects on exhibition techniques. During an internship at the National History Museum in Stockholm I participated in the work with their new, temporary exhibition Gränslöst - en global utställning på Historiska museet [Boundless - a global voyage of discovery at the National Historical Museum]. I was part of a small project team of museum staff. The purpose of this exhibition was to show how cultures have met and influenced each other throughout history. The National Historical Museum has in its collections and exhibitions several examples of objects that has been imported from or inspired by other cultural areas.

This thesis at the Institute for Language and Folklore has as its purpose to lay a foundation for a continuinginventory work. The tasks I have performed during my time there was to create an archival description, anintroduction to the material and a process map showing the process of incoming delivery of documents. The aimwas never to finish the list of work, but to structure the material to get an insight into the material and to theproblems that existed within. The documents are of a very unique nature and require that the archivist is familiarwith and have knowledge of sign language. One of the problems I encountered was how fragmented the materialwas.

A persistent problem in the construction industry is its low margins of profit. It is often difficult to earn money due to low efficiency and high costs. Logistics on the construction site answers for a large amount of these costs and it is therefore of interest to find new, more efficient logistic solutions. The purpose of this thesis is to compare two different logistic systems and further to evaluate which one that is the most efficient and profitable. A comparison is made between the traditional logistic systems used for years and a new logistic system developed by an industry association called BEAst.

The technological progress of the world has had a massive effect on how we communicate with one and other, it also has had an big impact on how companies communicate with their customers and consumers. Today you cannot only communicate a ?promise to your costumers and consumers you also have to ?deliver? what it is you promise. Strategic communication is today not only to market your product but to ensure that your strategic communication is shown even in you innovation, design and product development.  This thesis is conducted in collaboration with No Picnic AB.The purpose of this study was to get an insight in how Swedish companies use their strategic communication. We aim on bringing a new point of view of strategic communication with innovation, design and product development also as a communication channel.

Det bör vara möjligt att skapa verktyg för att beskriva scenarion och med hjälp av tillgänglig mjukvara för visualisering kunna spela upp både verkliga och simulerad bilddata. Detta examensarbete beskriver hur några sådana verktyg tagits fram. Till förfogande fanns en stor mängd bilddata, insamlad på ett militärt övningsområde som dessutom finns representerad som en syntetisk omvärldsmodell. Insamlingen gjordes med en UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle)- prototyp, som var utrustad med videokamera, IR-kamera och tröghetsnavigeringssystem. För att simulerad bilddata skulle få ett verklighetstroget intryck placerades markfordon ut i den syntetiska modellen på exakt samma position som under fältförsöken.

The society of today can?t manage without transportation. We need transports to getfood, to go to work and to create new products. The transportation ofgood is thus an important part in the function of the society and they?ll increase, bothin number and in amount.

Det bör vara möjligt att skapa verktyg för att beskriva scenarion och med hjälp av tillgänglig mjukvara för visualisering kunna spela upp både verkliga och simulerad bilddata. Detta examensarbete beskriver hur några sådana verktyg tagits fram. Till förfogande fanns en stor mängd bilddata, insamlad på ett militärt övningsområde som dessutom finns representerad som en syntetisk omvärldsmodell. Insamlingen gjordes med en UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle)- prototyp, som var utrustad med videokamera, IR-kamera och tröghetsnavigeringssystem. För att simulerad bilddata skulle få ett verklighetstroget intryck placerades markfordon ut i den syntetiska modellen på exakt samma position som under fältförsöken. Markfordonens position mättes in med DGPS och UAV:ns hastighet, position och rotation bestäms med GPS och tröghetsnavigeringssystem. Resultatet, i form av lagrad tröghetsnavigerings- och sensorstyrnings-data, ges efter en Kalmanfiltrering och blir vanligtvis noggrannare än vad som erhålls från de respektive delsystemen. Tyngdpunkten i arbetet låg i att ta fram Matlab-funktioner som plockar ut rätt vy vid rätt tidpunkt och åskådliggör detta på ett tydligt sätt, samt att placera ut markfordonen enligt de givna koordinaterna.

Due to increasing international competition and new technology IT-consultants has been forced to oversee their business models lately. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the process and consequences of a shift in business model for a consultant by using a methodology based on action research. The empirical foundation consists of a field study with observations, notes, interviews and business related documents. The case describes a consultant?s process of shifting business model from profits based on man-hours to selling a standardized system.

Forest enterprises have always searched for ways to improve efficiency. For the past few years there has been an emphasis on stock-keeping levels. Increased demand for fresh round timber and the need to decrease the amount of tied-up capital has made the forest industry reduce its inventory levels. This has brought on a higher demand on the timber supply from the forest management districts concerning both delivery in time and assortment output. As a result, the flow of timber has fluctuated a lot with serious consequence for the timber supply during 1994.

In recent years, the penetration of new players on the telecom market hasdrastically increased the work pace, affecting both design and production. Inthis report the technical and economical potential of a DC/DC converterplatform is investigated, in order to shorten the time of the design process.This is done in comparison with the present discrete type designs. PowerIntegrations offers a product, the DPA-Switch?, enabling this.By developing a wide DC/DC converter platform based on the DPA-Switch?,many advantages are gained. The component count is decreased by up to48 % and the yield increases by up to 2.9 % which in all yields a costreduction by up to 43 % or ?390 000 for 100 000 manufactured units.

ABSTRACT Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to examine and explain which consumers who choose to, or not choose to, shop for clothes via Internet. This will give businesses, and the reader, a better understanding on the views, of customers, on E-business with clothes. Procedure: A quantitative market research has been performed through a survey. Also the gathering of the material and the analysis is done with quantitative methods. The primary sources dominate the thesis.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) är obemannade flygfarkoster som främst använts och utvecklats inom det militära. Under senare år har användandet även tagit fart inom den civila sektorn, däribland mätningsbranschen. För att samla in geodata används Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), vilka är system som består av fler komponenter än endast luftfarkosten t.ex. även kamera och kontrollstation. UAS är ett bra alternativ till traditionell flygfotografering då högupplösta bilder kan genereras till en låg kostnad.

Purpose: The study aims to increase knowledge of dealers' purchasing behavior of impulse goods in wholesale trade.Methodology: An exploratory survey method has been selected in order to investigate the relatively unexplored topic; buyer behavior of impulse goods in the wholesale. Data has been collected through interview of 27 dealers that conduct business with bulk confectionery sales across Sweden. A semi-structured interview technique has been selected, with a predetermined interview schedule but with space for follow-up questions and discussion.Conclusion: The background to this work argued that there is not much research on how retailers reasons when buying convenience products, or also called as impulse items. It is usually the sale of goods such as several of the informants believe is critical to their business existence. Impulse goods which do not require any effort, has little search time and usually are cheap and suits many customers pockets.