Swedish students' knowledge of both mathematics and reading comprehension has deteriorated in recent years. Scientists are discussing whether there is a connection between these areas and that the pupils deteriorating math skills may have something to do with their increasingly lower results in terms of reading comprehension. To investigate this possible connection, I conducted a survey among students in ninth grade and have come to the conclusion that the scientists are right: this connection absolutely exist. Students who received a high score on tasks designed to test students' mathematical problem-solving skills, also received high results on the reading comprehension test. And students who received a poor performance on the problem-solving tasks, were also low performers in the reading comprehension test.

This master thesis was done for a company called BRUKS which is active in woodprocessing,bio-energy and bulk material handling industry. The idea for the master thesis wasto develop a new reclaiming method for silos where wood chips are being stored. A mediumsegment of between 1000 ? 5000 m3was defined as the segment with the most sales potential.Two different concepts were produced, one for new constructions and one for rebuildingalready existing silos.In the beginning of the master thesis a lot of time was spent on visiting different BRUKSoffices and customers to get an overview of the industry and the product. This informationwas the basis when the idea generating phase began.

Norske Skog Jämtland AB is like many other companies in a situation where it has to increase its purchases to provide its industries with raw material. To increase the available amount of raw materials, many companies employ purchasers to cover larger areas. This study aims to find out how to handle the increasing competition for timber suppliers. An important input for defining such a strategy is to examine how the suppliers view their relation to the company today. For a company it is extremely important to have a good relation with the suppliers to secure long term supplies.

Deciduous forests are, according to the National Environmental Quality Objectives, a priority area. Deciduous forests are rich in species and the occurrence of dead wood is an important factor for biodiversity. In order to identify valuable deciduous forests for bio-diversity, conservation needs good analyses and planning tools. Habitat models combined with geographic information systems can be used to study the spatial structure of suitable habitat. The Lesser spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos minor) has been proposed as an indicator species for deciduous forests, since this species is highly specialized on insect larvae in dead wood and requires large areas of deciduous-rich environments. Many riparian forest with high species richness and high nature conservation values are found along the Ume river in Umeå municipality.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how social workers who worked with financial assistance perceived their work situation and the impact work-related stress had on their health and quality of work. Further, the study intended to find out if they felt that they received support from their employer that could prevent stress-related sick leave. The following two research questions were to be answered: In what way does work-related stress affect social workers? health and job quality according to their own experience? What kind of support and help experienced social workers were available within their organization? To receive answers to the questions semi-structured interviews with five social workers were conducted, analyzed and interpreted. The results showed that when social workers have a heavy case burden, high stress and a risk of deteriorated job quality occurred.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate the differences between the traditional way of conducting a reference interview and the electronic way. The main questions of this thesis are: How does the electronic reference interview appear in comparison to the traditional one? How do the librarians experience the differences? Is quality affected in the electronic reference interview? Examples from Fråga biblioteket Ask the Library have been used in this study. The method used in the investigation is based on qualitative interviews in combination with studies of relevant and recent literature. The librarians interviewed all have experience from both traditional and electronic reference work.

This report is a thesis work for a B.Sc. in Forestry at the School for Forest Engineers, SLU. The aim of the work was to compare two different pricelists with the actual output from a harvester. The results have also been compared with a volume estimate of standing trees done by the Swedish Forest Agency and the ?true? value registered by the Wood Measurement Association. The study confirms that the output calculated by the computer on the harvester is more reliable than the volume of standing trees estimated by Swedish Forest Agency. .

This study is about young girls' mental health. In Sweden, the mental health deteriorated in recent years among adolescents, particularly among young girls. Results of the Liv & Hälsa Ung in 2011 in the southern part of the county of Örebro is the basis for the study. The results of the survey showed that a remarkable number of young girls rate their mental health as poor. The purpose of this study was to examine what young girls in southern part of the county of Örebro County believes are contributing factors for good mental health and the method used is qualitative.

Södra Skog chose in 2011 to convert the saw mill in Traryd to a gradually refined sawmill of hardwood. In 2009, they had also acquired the hardwood sawmill in Djursdala. This was strategically important for Södra's business since the demand for hardwood products has increased. The standing volume of deciduous trees in Sweden is today approximately 524 million m3sk and it has increased rapidly in recent years. However, the deciduous forests are to a large extent located in areas that are set aside for nature conservation and is thus not available to the industry.The goal of this work is to create a simple and reliable method for mapping of deciduous wood volumes in areas where Södra Skog is operating (Götaland excluding Gotland).The material that is used is raster databases with estimated forest attributes (kNN-Sweden), data from National Forest Inventory (NFI) and forest management plans.

The purpose with this project is to compare different fuels when investing in a central combustion station at a case study farm. I have chosen to write about biofuel from an economical perspective. This because the heating costs are steadily increasing. Also because the farm in this case study has several different heating systems, which are neither profitable nor easy to work with. I have made calculations regarding usage of splinter, wood and grain for the heating system.

Swedish school children's results have deteriorated in recent years and formative assessment is, in accordance with previous research, a way to develop students' learning and performance. A part of formative assessment is based on feedback that students should receive before, during and after a new assignment. In this study, we want to find out how students and teachers apprehend students' development in relation to feedback and what general attitudes towards feedback can be seen in both parties. The literature and theory discussed is linked to formative assessment, both at international and national level where many important aspects of formative assessment are essential in relation to pupils' further development. The theories are based heavily on human interaction and socio-cultural perspective as a concept.

Industrialization of construction is by some considered to be a solution to the building industry's problems about the lack of quality, high production costs, low productivity and poor environmental adaptation. Meanwhile, industrialized construction partly earned a bad reputation after the million housing program. As large-scale projects where promoted during this period, it worked very well to use the technique of construction elements. In the mid seventies though, criticism arose which claimed that the aesthetic qualities had been deprived in the corporates effort to make housing production as efficient as possible.Tyréns, Derome and CBBT (centre for building and housing in wood) cooperates in a development project to develop a building system for 4-8-storey buildings, consisting of three platforms: a technology platform, an IT platform and a processing platform. The technology platform consists of flexible, industrially built flat modules of wood and from this platform the subsystem stairwells, is broken out.

The present study examines a new production line of glue-laminated wood (glulam). The glulam is produced from non-planed boards of spruce, which also is convex, that is pressed together with high pressure during the gluing. According to a economic calculation, the material has a economical potential mainly on account of the absent planning. The study mainly found out that the shear strength of the material tolerated the demanded values in standard SS-EN 386, but the delaminating values did not. Since there are more areas to be studied around the material, the prospect to achieve the right delamination values is seen as positive..

This study investigates and evaluates a project called "Hisnande historier: från Bellman till Batman". "Hisnande historier" is composed to stimulate childrens literacy and it is directed towards pupils in the fourth class. The project is a co-operation between public librarians and compulsory school representatives in the municipality of Ystad. It contains visits by an author and exercises in reading and writing. We have been following the project during autumn 1998 at two schools in Ystad.

The construction industry can contribute to a healthier sustainable community. A development that is going on right now is by using more prefabricated volume- and plan elements on the construction sites. Building with this method not only provides a benefit to the environment, but also reduces production rates by taking up to 80 percent less time to build. By building in this way it will be easier to recycle and keep all the material that otherwise would go to waste. Also by building inside a protected environment, the material retains its good quality.This report will take forward proposals on further development of prefabricated volume element of wood, by first presenting this construction methods advantages and disadvantages..