National and international studies, such as PISA and TIMSS, which are part of the national evaluation system, are carried out continuosly. Skolverket, in collaboration with researchers, are responsible for the implementation, evaluation, and analysis of the studies. National results show an increasing percentage of pupils who do not reach the goals in mathematics. The last completed international studies PISA 2009 and TIMSS 2007 show an impaired trend of knowledge, in international comparison. Moreover, studies also show that the differences between schools and also within the same school in Sweden have increased.

Internet and media have led to companies' operations becoming more visible and transparent to the public during the 21st century. Several notable corporate scandals have led to society placing greater demands on businesses to assume more accountability for their actions. This study aims to examine and develop existing research regarding accountability, by adding dimensions of time and space. More specifically, the study examines the extent to which stakeholders hold corporations accountable after the revelation of an ethical corporate scandal, through a qualitative case study on a pending lawsuit against the Swedish corporation Boliden. Our theory is based on John Roberts' (1991) research presented in the article "The Possibilities of Accountability" and Martin Messner's (2009) research presented in the article "The Limits of Accountability".

The main aim of this study was to investigate and compare different methods for the extraction of forest fuel from environments close to an archipelago. The study was based on relevant literature and published reports as well as personal communications. Forestry has traditionally been characterized by intense efforts to rationalize and mechanize the cutting technique used for timber and pulpwood. In line with the increasing importance of forestry, more concentrated efforts can be expected in the area of techniques and methods, especially for the above-mentioned product lines. In Sweden, forestry is of major importance and the Swedish economy and standard of living have mainly been created based on the revenues generated from it. Thus, it is vital that Swedish forests are harvested in an efficient and responsible manner. The demand for biofuel is growing and today accounts for 15% of total Swedish energy production, a share that will probably increase. This study is based on three research questions, which are described under the heading of Aim. The results reveal that the most profitable method for handling forest fuel is the traditional one, which is also the most commonly used method in southern Sweden, namely the stockpiling of logs in a clearing by means of forwarders followed by splintering at the place from where they will be distributed. Today, the high cost of barge transport required for the extraction of forest fuel in an archipelago environment renders such operations unprofitable.

This thesis has been carried out in cooperation with a company which develops mobile sensor platforms. The sensors measure different types of data such as temperature, pressure etc.. They will communicate through the internet with a server that stores data in a database. This system will be controlled and monitored through a web page. The project's aim has been to develop this system and to implement a server, a database, a website and a client application that simulates sensor signals.

The purpose of this study was to investigate different relations between the damages of falls and background variables as well as the relation between the falls and the weather condition to later be able to use this report to expand the knowledge among workers at VTI about the pedestrian fall injuries. All of the fall injuries in the data that this study is based on have occurred in Sweden during the time period between January 2003 and December 2011.To be able to answer the questions that this report is based on several statistical methods are used. The statistical methods that have been used during the making of this report are multiple linear regression, binary logistic regression, correlation analysis, association analysis and descriptive statistics as well as visual analysis.The results of the study show that women around menopause age have a tendency to get a big increase in the amount of injuries compared to men of the same age. The study also suggests that men on average tend to have a lower level of injury compared to women.Age also seems to affect both the amount of injuries and the level of injury negatively. The study suggests that the most likely reason for this is both that the intake of ?Fall Risk Increasing Medicine?, which is medicine that increases the drowsiness, is higher among older individuals as well as lower estrogen levels among older women and lower amount of testosterone among older men, which causes a loss of bone density in both sexes.The weather seems to have a strong effect on how many injuries occur but also a noticeable effect on the scale of the injury.

Due to increasing regulations regarding new diesel vehicles particulate matteremissions the new Scania truck, Scania Euro 6, has been equipped with a particulatefilter. This component effectively stores the particles in the exhaust gas but must becleaned in order to prevent itself from clogging. The filter is cleaned through aprocess named regeneration which is a thermodynamic process in which thetemperature of the filter is raised through fuel supplied to the exhaust gas.The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the development of improved controlstrategies of the temperature during the regeneration process through thedevelopment of model-based controllers. These controllers are designed in order tohave good performance in stationary as well as automatic regeneration.In order to develop these model-based controllers a model of the system isconstructed. The model is described as a linear thermodynamic grey-box model withflow varying parameters, showing good results in validation.The model provides a simulation environment during the controller design, which isfocused around the development of linear regulators with the exhaust gas mass flowas a scheduling variable whose size determines controllers? mode of operation.

Social exclusion is a problem in today?s society that we feel public libraries can help resolve since they are based on the idea of equality and openness. The purpose of this essay is to examine how public librarians think and reason about the concept ?integration? as well as what role public libraries can play in immigrants? integration process. With Jose Alberto Diaz? theory on the integration process, and Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen?s model for analysis of the local library profile as theoretical framework, we analyzed the responses from two qualitative interviews in small groups of 2-3 librarians from two different public libraries.

Multichannel-shopping has become a wide spread phenomenon in the retail industry due to a significant development of retail channels and formats. Consumers now shop for the same product category in many different retail settings and this trend is increasing. Therefore both the academic world and the retail industry are screaming for knowledge about the multichannel-shoppers. Several studies have focused on the characteristics of different channels and how multichannel strategies should be designed to minimize cannibalization. There is however a lack of research concerning what characterizes multichannel-shoppers and what drives them to shop in several channels.

The average life expectancy and the proportion of elderly are increasing globally and inSweden, causing challenges for the society. Physical activity has proven to bring a number ofpositive benefits in older people, making the promotion of physical activity an important partof healthy aging attempts. The degree of physical activity in Sweden?s elderly population isgreater than in previous generations, making this group a positive exception from a widerperspective. A cross sectional study was made in order to investigate which motives tophysical activity that was considered most important among people above 60.

The pedagogista is a new professional role in Swedish preschools. Some people question the role, which originates from Italy, since it is believed to carry out a pedagogical leadership that belongs to the head of the preschool according to the curriculum and the Education Act. Consequently, there is cause for examining what pedagogical leadership means in an organization with a pedagogista. However, re- search has shown the success of distributed leadership within schools. Hence, it ?s interesting to find out whether the pedagogical leadership of the pedagogista could be understood as distributed leadership and what that would implicate.The purpose of this thesis is to explain and understand the pedagogical leadership of the pedagogista.

Image indexing research today is either conducted on a visual attribute level or on a higher semantic level, forming a semantic gap between the two. There is much to gain if research progress from the two fields is combined. Image retrieval using access points in both visual and semantic significations could improve retrieval and bridge the gap. In social media today, images are often the primary communication agent and the number of images on the web is increasing in an uncontrolled way. New and efficient ways to index and retrieve the images are needed.The purpose of this study is to examine if emotions could be a semantic access point for image retrieval and if folksonomy indexing is useful when searching for images that represent emotions.

Purpose: The purpose of this studie is to map and describe the marketing strategies of professional sport organizations and examine in what extent and how they apply the 7P?s of the Marketing mix.Method: We have used an abductive approach in this study. The research was conducted as a two case study, the studied objects are AIK Ishockey AB and Djurgården Hockey AB. A qualitative method has been used. The empirical content was collected by triangulation in form of interviews, telephone interviews, studie of webpages and participating observation.

Nature´s healing capacity is well known and is today an important asset in the protection against stress. Noise problems in cities and it´s green spaces are increasing which in turn provokes stress and in the long term can lead to cardiovascular diseases. To promote people?s health it is important that natural environments have good soundscapes, research show that visiting natural surroundings and listening to sounds of nature promote rehabilitation and relief stress. The purpose of this essay is to determine the value of rehabilitation in forests in Carlshem and Röbäck.

In course of time the role of the individual being has become increasingly important in the fight against poverty. Through its microcredit programmes, the organization Grameen Bank offers ?aid to self-help? to poor women on the countryside in Bangladesh. The purpose of this essay is to investigate how participation in Grameen?s microcredit programmes can affect these women?s social situation and working situation.

With increasing traffic congestion problems in bigger cities, it is becoming more and more important to provide the traveller with correct information about all transport alternatives. When doing that, the traveller gets the opportunity to make the best decision based on the current traffic situation. Instead of traditional travel planners, where public and private transport modes are presented separately, the co-modal travel planner offers a combination. In order to make the comparison correct and fair, the travel times have to be estimated realistically and on equal basis. This master thesis focuses on how to estimate travel times in the city of Stockholm for journeys by cars, public transport, bicycles and also for walking.An investigation of the available data on maps and travel times shows where the currently used methods are lacking.