The company Sound Precision has developed a new Line Array loudspeaker system (VHA-40). When using this system, their customers need computer aid to get the best possible sound-quality and control of sound levels for the whole audience. The aim of this thesis is to develop a truly useful sound quality simulator for the VHA-40. The system will help the sound engineers to position the loudspeakers for optimal sound by simulating loudspeaker configurations and visualizing the resulting sound quality and quantity. To solve this a human-centered design (HCD) approach is taken to implement a system that is truly useful for the users, meaning that they will use it more and hence deliver better sound for the audience.

This thesis aims to study how teachers develop pupils' motivation to read. Using qualitative interviews, three Swedish middle school teachers describe their experiences regarding pupils' motivation to read. They comment on how they attempt to stimulate motivation and the conditions and circumstances they experience while carrying out their work. As a basis for the teacher interviews, their pupils completed a web based survey about how they value reading as an activity and how they see themselves as readers. An analysis of the interviews raises several issues for discussion: pupils have different needs, good readers are described through their abilities, not through their experiences or reading habits, and teachers feel they can be limited to implement the teaching they think is necessary to promote reading abilities.

The company Sound Precision has developed a new Line Array loudspeaker system (VHA-40). When using this system, their customers need computer aid to get the best possible sound-quality and control of sound levels for the whole audience. The aim of this thesis is to develop a truly useful sound quality simulator for the VHA-40. The system will help the sound engineers to position the loudspeakers for optimal sound by simulating loudspeaker configurations and visualizing the resulting sound quality and quantity. To solve this a human-centered design (HCD) approach is taken to implement a system that is truly useful for the users, meaning that they will use it more and hence deliver better sound for the audience.

The study aims to demonstrate the significance of educators lived experiences of stimulating children's physical development. It has been noted that children are occupying themselves with more and more sedentary activities, which may lead to that they do not develop motor skills at the pace expected. To understand educators lived experiences from a phenomenological hermeneutic perspective empirical relevance has been collected through narrative interviews. The results shows that educators find it difficult to understand the Curriculum goals for motor activity and that the desire to stimulate motor development is great, but the realization is conspicuous by its absence. The discussion highlights educator?s commitment and motivation and the importance of being a reflecting practitioner..

This degree project was conducted in collaboration with Gremo AB located in Ätran.The aim of the project was to develop a solution to secure quality and to help assemblingthe locknut holding the vertical hinge on the harvesters and foresters from Gremo.At this time the nut is assembled manually by the aid of an overhead crane. The nut istightened differently from time to time, and there was no specified torque to which it istightened. Another present problem was the locking washer which sometimes getsdamaged during assembly, when this happens the procedure has to be started over fromthe beginning. The current assembly procedure is very time consuming and lengthy forthe employees.Our task was to design a machine that could tighten the nut to a specified torque with amargin of error of ± 3%. The assembly procedure will be held simple and the timerequired at a minimum.The project started by developing several principle solutions, the one solution that bestmatched our specifications were developed to a primary solution.Today we have started manufacturing and assembling our prototype.

The objective of this literature study was to describe the nurse?s preventive actions to prevent diabetes type 2 among children and adolescents in school age. It emerged from the analysis that the nurse is working according to three pillars; screening, lifestyle changes and counselling/education. This result showed that what often increase difficulties when working with screening are: undefined guidelines, lack of time and resources. Overweight/obesity is one of many indicators to develop diabetes type 2, therefore it is important that both BMI and waist are measured.

Society and technology develop together in interaction processes. Because of the development of information technology, the Industrial society has been left behind in favor of a society where information is the key production factor, i.e. the Information society. In the Information society, social functions and processes are organized in networks. These networks integrate geographically separate markets to parts of a complex global economic system.

The purpose of this study was to examine if there were anychanges in quality in the voices of speech and language pathology studentsafter four years of study at the University of Gothenburg. Recordings oftwenty student voices from the first and eight semesters were evaluatedperceptually by six speech-language pathologists. The parameters judgedwere: vocal fry, glottal attacks, strain, breathiness and resonant voice, usinga scale from 0 to 10. Acoustical measures were made of F0 mean andmedian to detect possible differences between the two recordings. Theresults show a significant decrease in vocal fry, glottal attacks and strain aswell as an increase in resonant voice and a significant decrease in F0 meanand median.

In the constitution of Sweden everyone has the right of common access in the nature. Toprotect these rights, as well as the nature, in areas close to shores the environmental law ofSweden (miljöbalken) protects areas within 100 meters from the waterline. Due to amendmentin this law, Swedish municipalities have to present countryside development areas close toshores. Within these areas, which are to be displayed in the municipality?s comprehensiveplan, it will be possible to get exemptions from the protection if the planned measure willbenefit the development of the region.

Thesis completed by Johan Arvidsson, Alex Rasooli and Pontus Winroth, students at master program Product development and Design at the School of Engineering in Jönköping Sweden. The project comprises 30 ECTS credits and was carried out during the semester in the autumn of 2007.It was carried out in cooperation with Eksjöverken AB, subcontractor within the truck industry with special knowledge within the area of complicated machinery construction work. Job initiators at Eksjöverken were Mats Svanberg and Kjell Nygard. Dag Holmgren was acting as a tutor from the university. The task was to develop tools for trucks, primary toolboxes but in case of time also under run protection.

This master?s thesis presents experiences from an evaluation of AdApt, a multi- modal, conversational dialogue system, using PARADISE, PARAdigm for Dialogue System Evaluation, a general framework for evaluation. The purpose of this master?s thesis was to assess PARADISE as an evaluation tool for such a system. An experimental study with 26 subjects was performed.

Society is facing rapid and continuous change. In order to participate in the development, organizations need to take advantage of all the knowledge and skills available in the labor market. Women leaders in top positions are still in the minority but do as good a job as their male colleagues. She brings different dynamics and a new dimension in the work culture but is nevertheless excluded from the mightiest rooms. The purpose of this study is to elucidate the organizational factors that determine and facilitate for women to take on leadership positions.

Internal working models of attachment are claimed to be unconscious structures operating outside the conscious awareness. Existing measures of attachment are almost exclusively explicit, either self-reports or interviews and it is questionable whether these instruments are able to tap into unconscious attachment attitudes. The main purpose of the present study is to develop Implicit Association Test (IAT) tools for assessing adult attachment and to examine their construct validity. Two sets of implicit attachment measures, based on the two-dimensional attachment model (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991), were developed. Convergent validity was assessed by examining (1) the relationship between implicit model of self and implicit self-esteem and (2) the relationship between the implicit model of other and implicit sociability.

This paper investigates the relationship between the two modernist writers Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf. The two authors had a frail and complicated friendship that influenced their fiction and fictional characters more than the general public knows. My paper investigates how Woolf can have found her fictional story ideas direct from their friendship. With a comparative theory I?m finding and giving examples of how their friendship is reflected in their fictional stories, and I?m backing up my examples with citations from their own diaries, letters and notebooks.

My thesis is based on a qualitative study in which I have selected six professional teachers in a school in Greater Stockholm, and their views on the phenomenon of conflict management. My questions were the following.How teachers perceive the phenomenon of conflict in the world of school?What strategies do teachers use to resolve conflicts with students?In order to analyze my informants, I have chosen different books that deal with conflict man-agement, policy documents and books on the teaching profession meaning. Through my investigation I found that some teachers used tools and strategies through expe-rience and reflections, and resolve conflicts together or individually. My informants described that there are some teachers how choose to hide and pretend not to see the problem.