The level of increased central government that we have experienced during the last decades in school, for the purpose of increasing equality and to adapt the Swedish school to a certain international standard, clearly shows that increased control scarcely leads to improvement.The aim of this paper is to examine whether teachers believe that national tests contribute to equivalent assessment and increased goal attainment. Furthermore the teachers? attitude towards and work with national tests is described. The paper is written from a school improvement perspective, where good examples from current research on what creates increased quality in school meaning increased goal attainment and equivalent assessment are related to research on school effectiveness and increased testing in schools. The study builds upon a quantitative survey among teachers in upper primary - and secondary school in a medium-sized municipality in Sweden.The result shows that the teachers have a somewhat more positive than negative attitude towards national tests, as a whole.

The client, Senselogic, had noticed an increased demand for an e-commerce system integrated into its product, SiteVision, something that did not previously exist. Senselogic wanted to integrate a third-party system to manage e-commerce. The problem was that there were very many e-commerce solutions to choose from. In order to select the best system it was necessary to evaluate the e-commerce systems and compare them to each other. To identify the elements that has to be included in an e-commerce system a study of literature was conducted.

The purpose of this study was to compare reading development assessments with writing assessments to create an understanding about the relationship between the reading and writing ability of children. Another aim of the study was to look at other factors that cohere with the ability to read and write, such as background and socio-economic status. Our hypothesis was that explicit instruction in writing is necessary to develop good writing skills. We chose to conduct a quantitative study containing an inquiry, a dictation and a writing task. We compared our results with reading assessments based on a reading development schedule (LUS).

Many people believe that the analogue picture book is a dying media due to the increase of digital media. Contrary to popular belief, the publishing of children?s book in Sweden is continually increasing, which makes mapping the field quite significant. But to regulate the creation of a children?s picture book is problematic, because one does not want to impede the personal style of the writer or the illustrator of the children?s book.If the children?s book creator has an understanding of how to better communicate with children, the children?s book might have a grater impact on the child.

The purpose of this study is to survey and evaluate if the individual contrast sensitivity and preferences for horizontal and vertical lighting level correspond to the values that standard SS-EN 12464-1 recommends for the workplace- and surrounding light levels.This study examines if lighting should be adapted after the individuals? need or if a general value can be found that will cover every individuals? need for a workplace and surrounding light level. This study also examines if parameters like sex, age and/or glasses/lenses have an effect on the amount of lighting that the test subjects need. Lastly we compared the values concerning the relationship between workplace- and surrounding light levels with standard SS-EN 12464-1?s recommendations.The study is carried out with an experimental design that surveys 220 test subjects who were chosen by a selection of convenience.

Since January 1 2005 all companies listed on a regulated stock exchange within the EU are required to present their consolidated accounts in conformity with IFRS. Among many other consequences goodwill will no longer be amortized over its useful life but instead annually tested for impairments in accordance with IFRS 3. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the impairment test of goodwill as outlined in IAS 36 and analyze its implications. We conclude that the impairment test will probably lead to the recognition of internally generated goodwill in the consolidated accounts. We also conclude that the impairment test on highly aggregated levels will probably hasten the pace of this recognition since internally generated goodwill is used to shield acquired goodwill from impairments.

In his recent article Professor of International Affairs Charles Kupchan claims that Party Politics has become increasingly important for American Foreign Policy since the end of the Cold War. This assertion makes it valuable to assess how the substance of the Foreign Policy differs between the two American parties in various cases and if this difference is characterized by consistency or by change. In this thesis I examine these Party positions in relation to the European Security Policy.In order to examine this I compare the positions of the Democratic and Republican Parties? policy concerning both the European Defence Community (EDC) and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The purpose of this thesis is to examine the hypothesis that the Democratic Party to a higher extent than the Republican Party is more concerned to maintain good relations to Europe respectively EU.The results show that there are small indications that my hypothesis concerning the two parties is valid.

The Royal Library (KB) of Sweden harbours great collections of different objects through a special law from 1661. This master degree paper is exploring a part of KB?s digitisation of those collections. It deals with the questions about what the KB had chosen for digitisation, why those choices were maid and who is responsible for making these decisions. The paper will also for example seek out different patterns and trends in the information.

During test flights SAAB uses the data acquisition system COMET 16. The part of the system that receives the signals from the sensors and converts them is called KSM 15. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a data acquisition module on stacked PC/104 modules with a lower production cost. Our work has been divided into one part about analog signal conditioning and a second part with digital filtering and memory management of the sampled data. The analog part, designed of regular components like instrument amplifiers, voltage references, operational amplifiers and multiplexers, adjusts the sensors signal levels for the ADC?s that converts the signals.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the possibility of integrating an item tracking systemwith a monitoring system currently under development at Fifth Generation Technologies (P) Ltd.A literature study of RFID technology and the networks ZigBee and MiWi was done. Based onthe literature study a concept for a distributed system was developed.The concept is to have several RFID readers placed in the area where tracking is to be performedand allow them to communicate with each other through wireless communication. The RFIDreaders shall be able to form zones and filter the data that is forwarded from the zones to theservers and thus perform some of the work that the server would normally have to do. Theconcept has been evaluated by prototype development and testing. The prototype uses an ultrahigh frequency RFID reader and a MiWi network.The test indicated some limitations with the selected technologies.

Purpose of the study was to illustrate how emotional competence can be important for leadership and to explore the possibility of improving emotion perception ability after training. Participants in this study were 40 managers, divided into control and experimental group, within public administration. The participants implemented a data-based emotion perception test, which were done twice at every occasion, with intervention consisting of information or education between test- and retest. The result showed a clear improvement after intervention, in which no difference was found between control and experimental group, which has been discussed on the basis of the likelihood of a training effect occurred between test-retest. Conclusions about emotional competence or leadership ability could not be drawn from the results of the emotion perception test.

This thesis is set out as a testing of the crosscutting cleavages theory on twocontemporary cases. The aim is to test the explanation process of the crosscutting theory applied to the political and social situations in Belgium and Switzerland and furthermore to examine potential conflicts in pluralistic states. Our main questionis: How can the crosscutting cleavages theory explain the different outcomes ofsocial coexistence, even with the states numerous similarities? We have examined the two federal states through their social divisions of language, region, religion and socio-economy. Our findings show that both Belgium and Switzerland possess divisions in the above mentioned variables, which in most cases are cumulative structured.

Goodwill accounting has for a long time been, and with the implementation of IFRS in 2005, has become an even bigger issue. Critics mean that reporting of goodwill impairments is subject to discretion that can be used by the managers. We have applied a study made by Carlin and Finch (2009) on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm during 2006-2012. Our study contains 50 of the 255 public companies at 2012-12-31. The purpose of the study is to investigate if companies use an opportunistic discount rate when testing for impairment in goodwill and if the relation between goodwill and net profit before taxes, goodwill intensity, is an incentive for opportunism.

Inom disciplinen kognitiv ho?rselvetenskap tilla?mpas en integrerad ansats da?r taluppfattning beskrivs ur ba?de ett auditivt bottom-up-perspektiv och ett kognitivt top-down-perspektiv. Studien underso?kte hur taluppfattning varierar med, respektive utan top-down-sto?d och vad de kognitiva fo?rma?gorna uppma?rksamhet, minne och inhiberingsfo?rma?ga hade fo?r inverkan. Taluppfattningsfo?rma?ga utva?rderades med hja?lp av ett Speech-In-Noise-test (SIN-test) som bestod av tre deltest da?r enstaviga ord presenterades i en ofo?rdelaktig miljo? besta?ende av ro?ster som talande i mun pa? varandra.

Headwater streams are affected by anthropogenic impacts at multiple scales. One aspect of human impact is sediment transport associated to the abundance of stream structures as large woody debris and the composition of the riparian zone from forest to agricultural landscapes. Riparian buffer zones and stream structures like dead wood are considered as generally important structures for protection against an increasing amount of sediment particles in the water. Hence, in this study these structures were quantified in thirty different stream segments on land and in the water. To measure the transport of sediment Whitlock-Vibert boxes were used in three different types of landscapes; forest, transition and fields. The boxes were left in the stream segments for three months, the taken up and dried and weighed. The results showed that the transition-land in Frösvidalsån had the highest sediment transport. The second highest transport of sediment was in Blackstaån at the fields.