Urban forests are important for people to get at break and be able to relax in a stressful world. Several studies show that we feel better through being out in the forest and historically this was the normal environment for us. As a result of population growth and urbanization we tend to spend less time in nature nowadays than before. Due to this development urban forests have become a central role in our society as a place where people can fulfill their needs and interests. The management of the urban forest is therefore important, especially for municipalities that own forest which is supposed to be of benefit to local residents.Falköpings municipality owns approximately 260 hectares of forest in the popular and most visited recreational area along Mösseberg?s southern slope.

The purpose of the study is to show the conditions there are by working with aesthetic expressions in pre-school and how these activities are implemented. Questions that we are going to discuss are: What are the conditions for working with aesthetics in pre-school? How is the work implemented when it comes to aesthetic expressions? Our ambition has been to study what conditions it takes to use aesthetic expressions in a way that is meaningful for the children and also show the conditions and alternative methods that are present in different schools. We have used a web survey to reach a result in the study. This web survey includes questions about the different aesthetic activities and has given us the answers to the questions above. The result shows that there are different ways of working and different views at aesthetic expressions.

This study is an examination of how conditions for formal and informal music education look like in two townships in South Africa. The purpose of this examination based on different actors' experiences is to find out whether the children in South Africa receive some form of music education and if so, how they think it can help the children in the surveyed areas. The information was gathered both through qualitative, semi-structured interviews with a music teacher, music therapist, creative music facilitator, students, and people who have worked for Sida and partly through unstructured observations. The results show that children in the surveyed townships do not receive any formal music education through the school but they sometimes can get music education through a NGO project (Non Government Organization) which usually runs by an enthusiast and is funded by various aid agencies. My examination also showed that for the children in the surveyed areas music education can be an alternative from being on the streets, giving a positive group experience, the ability to express themselves, fend off young people from drugs and criminality and bring together various grouping.

The main purpose of this study was to translate Stuttering Severity Instrument 3 and to evaluate its reliability and validity. Five speech-language pathologists assessed 35 adults who stutter with this assessment tool. Overall the results showed a very high inter- and intrarater reliability. A highly significant correlation between Stuttering Severity Instrument 3 and ratings of severity, made by the speech-language pathologists, strengthen the validityof Stuttering Severity Instrument 3. No correlation was found between the total score of Stuttering Severity Instrument 3 and the self-report measure Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering, whichindicates a lack of social validity in Stuttering Severity Instrument 3.

High technology companies in Sweden spend a huge amount of money on research and product development in proportion to what they get back in earnings from their inventions. Product development has traditionally been regarded as much more important than business development. This thesis aims to point out the critical factors behind successful business development processes for high technology companies. We have chosen to make a case study of Hexagon, a highly successful and innovative company within the measurement technology business. Internal and external actors that are important for business development have been identified and interviewed in order to understand how ideas are developed and executed.

The rise of social media has put a focus on the division of owned, paid and earned media, where earned media has recently been hyped at the expense of owned and paid media. Due to a novel area we examine the differences and effects of using owned and paid media, specifically for packaging versus newspapers. Owned and paid media showed no significant differences regarding credibility, persuasion and perceived commerciality, which restored owned media?s status, especially since owned media is more cost efficient. The effects of allowing ads for external brands on the owned medium were also studied.

In this undergraduate thesis you will venture on a journey through the land of democratic values and urban planning. My research question is stated as: whether or not urban planning can show effects on democratic values and whether or not the municipalities in Sweden takes these possible effects into account when planning their city centres. You will in my theory part of this thesis be able to read about different views on urban planning and on democracy. Famous authors like Robert D. Putnam and Richard Florida will be examined as well as other theorists on democracy and urban planning.

De senaste åren har marknaden för surfplattor växt massivt samtidigt som Smart-TV?s har kommit fram som en ny produktkategori. Detta arbete är en undersökningen i hur surfplattor tillsammans med Smart-TV kan användas för att skapa en bättre upplevelse för användaren. För detta utvecklades en applikation på en LG Smart TV som sammankopplades med en surfplatta för att visa information om ett pokerspel. Sedan utfördes en undersökning med intervjuer där hybridapplikationen jämfördes gentemot att bara spela på surfplattan.

Normally when purchasing a trip, an airline, a travel agency and a traveler is included in the purchasing process. Mostly a travel agency acts as an intermediary between the airline and the traveler. The travel agency is not considered to have any major part to the contractual relationship, usually the purchase agreement is considered to be covered by the airline and the traveler as the main parties. This is essentially the view shown from a legal perspective on the specific area. The application of legal provisions on the travel agency?s legal status may nevertheless bring a certain amount of ambiguity in the interpretation.

Data retrieved from airborne laser scanning represents a new source of forest data. Today, the technology has matured so that it can function in an operational environment. The aim of this study was to compile areas of application of laserdata in forestry. Moreover to analyze costs and accessibility of laserdata. The goal was to provide private forest owners information to support assessments of possible benefits of laserdata.

Every year about 210 000 tones dry weight of sewage sludge is produced in Sweden. Most of the sludge is applied to agricultural land, plantsoil and landfill cover. Sewage sludge contains essential nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Nitrogen is limiting growth on solid ground in Sweden and can therefore be used as fertilizer to increase productivity. In order that the sludge can be spread to forest land it requires first a conversion of sludge to pellets, to make it more manageable.

The aim of this thesis was to understand and illuminate how readingpromotion projects can be carried out, what sort of activities they mightcontain and what sort of lasting impressions they might make. We choseto examine reading promotion projects because we consider thepromotion of reading and literacy a vital and important part of thelibraries work. The study took place at the city library of Uddevalla andthe projects included in the study were all directed towards children andyouth.The theory used in the thesis was Aidan Chambers?s model of theReading Circle which consists of the four themes of selection,?reading?, response and the enabling adult. Methods used were semistructuredinterview, document studies and observation.The results show that reading promotion projects benefit from cooperationbetween the adults involved and that education of the adultsin order to indirectly target the children is an effective way of spreadingthe love of reading.

The aim of our graduate work is to study the importance of image and shape?s in children's development and learning and also the preschool teacher?s views on image and shapes. Our research aims to explore the value of image and shapes creation and how it is expressed among children and in classroom activities. We are also interested in finding out how it differs from adults' views and what materials teachers use to promote the image and shapes creation in the curriculum. In our own experience, image and shapes activities are often structured differently in different curriculum activities.

Le Français, what is that? What is actually a language?Questions like these are not easily answered and whilelinguists are continuing their search for the essence ofour communicative systems we are all free to make ourown interpretations.In various media, like schoolbooks and otherlanguage-teaching material, for instance, you mayfi nd visual interpretations of what French is, as alanguage?. Very often it is the common picture of whatis considered typically French that is shown. There areseveral problems to be found in limiting oneself to thesekinds of visualizations. One of these is that the Frenchlanguage is no longer strictly French.

The mission was to create a prototype of a menu system for the companySystem Andersson AB. The instructions were that it has to be as interesting andmodern now as in 20 years. We had to look at technology from the cutting edgeof development to make our prototype survive in the future. WindowsPresentation Foundation (WPF) was the technique we focused on. There areonly a few applications that take advantage of WPF today, but it is predictedthat WPF will be the next generation method for developing applications to theWindows platform.To make our menu visually appealing, easy to use and at the same timefunctional, we followed the clear path and guidelines that are available ininteraction design.