The Third International Assessment of Educational Progress (TIMMS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) during the last decades regarding the results of mathematics teaching shows that China have a better performance than Sweden?s.Swedish teacher-guidelines focus on developing student?s individual interest and confidence for mathematics. In the Chinese teaching-guidelines for Mathematics Curriculum Standards, Ordninary Senior Secondary, the focus is given on: Elevate their mathematics literacy necessary for future citizenship and Development of citizen´s qualities (s.3).Teachers are the primary factors that impact teaching and learning of mathematics. Two teachers from Sweden and two from China were interviewed and their methods were compared in my study. The aim of my study was to understand mathematics teaching in China and Sweden.

The mobile revolution is here to stay, and today most people have (at least) one cell phone at home. Some even a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant)as a complement for the simpler tasks at the office, e.g sending e-mail, word processing, browsing the Internet etc. Many business have also given the employees the opportunity to do some of the business tasks inbetweeen customer visits with the help from a cell phone or PDA.Despite all this, the so called Internet connected mobile revolution is often mentioned as a big failure. Maybe because the people in general tended not to use the new technology as much as the companies predicted. This could be because they still haven't learned how it works, or just don't seem to have the need for services provided.After a couple of failures in the development process, almost every cell phone has support for mobile Internet today.

With numerous applications in both military and civilian life, the demand for accurate 3D models of real world environments increases rapidly. Using an airborne laser scanner for the raw data acquisition and robust methods for data processing, the researchers at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) in Linköping hope to fully automate the modeling process.The work of this thesis has mainly been focused on three areas: ground estimation, image segmentation and classification. Procedures have in each of these areas been developed, leading to a new algorithm for ground estimation, a number of segmentation methods as well as a full comparison of various decision values for an object based classification. The ground estimation algorithm developed has yielded good results compared to the method based on active contours previously elaborated at FOI. The computational effort needed by the new method has been greatly reduced compared to the former, as performance, particularly in urban areas, has been improved.

Reflections är en stämningslampa som med hjälp av invävd fiberoptik lockar fram nya visuella och taktila uttrycksvärdeni en textil. Under arbetets gång har jag utforskat mängden ljus som fiberoptisk textil sprider längsmed fiberlängden samt undersökt naturfiberns egenskaper när den vävs samman med fiberoptik.En stor utmaning var att hitta balans mellan tekniska begränsningar och det uttryck jag sökte. Lampans formspråkär min reflektion över dagens stadslandskap där arkitekturens geometriska former möterfordons strömlinjeform. Med stämningslampan hoppas jag att hitta och inspirera till nya användningsområdenför fiberoptisk textil.Reflections is a mood light using interwoven fiber optics witch brings out new visual and tactile expressionvalues in a textile. During the work, I have explored the amount of light fiber optic textile spreads along thefiber length and examined properties of nature fiber when it is interwoven with fiber optics.A major challenge was finding a balance between technical constraints and expressions I was looking for.

Syftet med arbetet är att undersöka hur musiklärare tolkar målen i kursplanen i musik och hur de applicerar dessa tolkningar på sin undervisning. Syftet är även att ta reda på hur musiklärare använder sig av läromedel för att nå dessa mål. Bakgrunden till ämnet är tankar som jag har haft angående musikundervisningen på grundskolans lägre stadier och huruvida denna undervisning är likvärdig över hela landet. Skulle det vara möjligt att ett läromedel i musik, skapat utifrån de nationella målen i kursplanen, åstadkommer en sådan likvärd utbildning? Mina forskningsfrågor syftar till att kartlägga användandet och behovet av läromedel i musik och dessutom till att förstå hur målen i kursplanen för musik kan tolkas av olika lärare.

I have done a qualitative literature study, in which the data consisted of descriptions of drug abuse in ten social inquiry text documents (that also are applications for institutional care) concerning teenagers. Social welfare secretaries representing two social welfare offices in Malmö, has written the text documents. The purpose of this essay was to examine thedescriptions and, if possible, try to make out and describe stereotyped themes and patterns depending on gender. To obtain the purpose of this essay I searched for answers of the following three central questions:- What appears to be the social welfare secretary's purpose in describing the teenager's drug abuse?- How is the parameter gender related to the descriptions of drug abuse in the social inquiry text documents?- How are other possible gender-stereotyped descriptions of the teenager related to the descriptions of drug abuse?In the analysis of the descriptions, which where the foundation of the study, I found patterns in describing drug abuse depending on gender.

Forestry in Sweden is currently conducted in a manner aiming at equating the production objectives and the biodiversity. To ensure that biodiversity is maintained, patches that are considered to be valuable now or in the future is saved in final fellings. How the tree retention areas will grow into the future forest stands is yet unknown.The purpose of this study was to visualize how different scenarios of natural consideration taken at final felling will evolve in a long term perspective, for two rotation periods. Projections of the forest conditions were executed with the decision support system Heureka and its applications PlanStart and PlanWise. The information about the projected forests was then used for the visualizations which were created in the software Visual Nature Studio.

The development of defoaming additives is steadily progressing and there are therefore always new and improved additives on the market. Some modern additives provide the desired defoaming effects by themselves, in contrasts to previous additives that needed to be used in combination with other additives. The task of this bachelors thesis was to evaluate the possibility of using these improved defoaming additives, with the aim to find alternatives that give the system better defoaming attributes while, at the same time, using less of the primary products. The tests were carried out in the coating type Teknocryl Aqua Combi 2780. The coating is a waterborne air drying acrylat-latex/alkyd based coating that can be used for both single coat painting and primer.

Dyslexia is a disability faced by an extensive amount of students in the current educational system. No medical alternatives have been found to improve the cognitive processing challenges presented with dyslexia. Therefore today?s educators are required to make instructional adjustments in their schooling, to ensure dyslexic students an academic future. The purpose of this qualitative study was, firstly, to discover how teachers work with dyslexic students, and secondly, to find out which practices are being used in this field.

We have done a qualitative and quantitative study about math problems on second­ary school students. The study is based on the diagnosis, treatment and training of teachers, about students who have math difficulties. The aim of this work is to obtain teachers ?perceptions about students? diagnosis, treatment / improvement and continuing education for students who have math difficulties. By having interviewed various teachers through surveys we have received answers to their concerns about the diagnosis, treatment and the importance of continuous training of teachers on students? mathematics difficulties.

The essay deals with adult education from a local perspective more specifically that ofthe IOGT lodge Leon Garnbetta in Varberg. The material that has been used covers a limited period of time, which stretches from 1883 to 1926.This temperance lodge was founded in 1883 and is still active. The essay provides a historical survey of the temperance movement in Sweden and depicts the ideas behind adult educa­tion, but it also gives a more general historical account of the town of Varberg and its popu­lar movements.By studying handwritten records from the lodge it is possible to establish a picture of its work, activities, discussions, its striving for democracy, educational activities and the principles behind these and finally the lodge's own library which was started at an early stage. All these aspects are then treated in a historical and a political context..

The term Temporary places could be used to describe a wide range of shapes, functions and not least different time sets . In this thesis, however, the intention of temporality should be seen as the main definition regarding this subject. This thesis is based on a literature study and the aim is to explore temporary places, their values and their functions. Furthermore, the purpose is also to highlight temporary places as a method to be used by urban planners, in order to create more flexibility in the city planning of today. The thesis describes the underlying factors and conditions creating an increased interest in flexible planning. Furthermore, a number of tactics and applications are presented, all drawn from current research on the topic.

The purpose of this thesis is to reach a deeper understanding of the context of teachers? information seeking. Research in the role of the library in a learning perspective is in demand. To reach our aim we investigate what teachers say about their experiences of the user training during their studies and what effect it had on their information seeking as teachers. We interviewed four teachers and analyzed the transcripts of their sayings about their experiences of their information seeking during their education and a teaching profession.

The population growth and urbanisation in low-income countries bring issues of poor living standards and miserable sanitation conditions onto the agenda. If well-functioning waste management systems were developed, this could master some of the problems. The already existing local informal waste handling system that is common in many low-income countries, needs to be developed with proper sorting and composting solutions to decrease the environmental burden and improve the overall situation in the dense cities. This master?s thesis project is performed with the intention of developing functional decentralised waste management units in the city of Pune, India.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how teachers choose to work with the teaching of reading and writing skills, how teachers justify their choice of teaching method and how the documentation of student development is being used. This paper also discusses the definition of reading and writing, phonological awareness and how different reading- and writing educational methods can be combined. The gathering of information has been done through a literature review in which I have looked at past research on reading and writing. I have also conducted qualitative interviews with teachers involved in literacy learning. The result of my research shows that it is not possible to determine which literacy learning methods that are most effective.