The aim of this study is to examine what preschool teachers within Reggio Emilia inspired early childhood education express as important regarding the physical Indoor environment in preschools. The study is implemented with a qualitative method and is based on four interviews with preschool teachers that have been involved in a course on Reggio Emilia. The interviews were complemented with four observations on the departments where the preschool teachers work. A second aim of this study is to examine how the relationship between the teachers statements correlate with the environment they have created at their preschool. The collected material was gathered and then categorized.

The purpose of the study was to determine the attitudes of the teachers of Reggio Emilia inspired preschools concerning the science work with children between the ages of one and three, as well as their opinions on how the physical preschool environment and the choice of materials influence their scientific work. The study was conducted in three departments of two different kindergartens. Although both kindergartens called themselves Reggio Emilia inspired, their working methods and their environments differed largely. None of them were originally built as Reggio Emilia inspired preschools. One of the kindergartens strived to design their Indoor environment the same way as the preschools of Reggio Emilia are constructed, there for they were setting up different stations where the children themselves have the opportunity to explore various scientific areas.

VAV (Variable Air Volume) system has been studied in a newly constructed office-building. The goal for the study has been to evaluate how the ventilations system work in practice, if adjustments can be made to achieve an more energy efficient system and to evaluate if other alternative ventilation systems is to be preferred in the further.The degree project has been executed at Helenius Engineering Firm who is working with the environment, media systems, HVAC and energy in buildings. The building that has been studied is owned and operated by Akademiska hus.Literature studies, visits at site, inventory, review of system documentation, energy analyses, interviews, key figures, LCC, sand energy- and indoor climate simulations has been made to study the building. Where appropriate some tools from Six Sigma have also been used.How to achieve an energy efficient system and a pleasant indoor climate is studied with human health and well-being as base for the indoor climate requirements. Technical support systems such as ventilation systems have to be designed so that an acceptable indoor climate can be achieved.

This study deals with teachers ideas about the physical environment of a mobile preschool and how it affects children?s learning. The essay describes how the preschool bus is decorated and how a normal day works in the mobile bus. The survey was based on the following questions:Are there disadvantages and advantages in terms of physical environment in the mobile preschool from an educator based perspective?What are the teacher?s thoughts about the impact on children?s learning in terms of the physical environment on the bus?Summary: To answer my questions I have participated in activities during the day and I have used the interviews to find out the teachers thoughts.

Today, individual indoor stalls and individual outdoor paddocks are the most common way to house horses in Sweden. The way that we manage, house and feed the horses are not optimal for the species natural basic behavioural needs. However, the awareness of this grows in the context of research and the emergence of alternative housing systems. One of the alternatives to the traditional format in individual boxes is called group housing. Group housing systems allow horses to live in herds and they can choose how they want to distribute the hours of the day between movement, resting and foraging. The purpose of this study is to examine how frequently the young horses in a group housing system use the indoor lying area.

This report evaluates various methods that can be used to position a smartphone running the Android platform, without the use of any special hardware or infrastructure and in conditions where GPS is unavailable or unreliable; such as indoors. Furthermore, it covers the implementation of such a system with the use of a deterministic fingerprinting method that is reasonably device independent, a method which involves measuring a series of reference points, called fingerprints, in an area and using those to locate the user.The project was carried on behalf of Sigma, a Swedish software consulting company..

This thesis has been carried out on behalf of IV Produkt AB and intends to set an average ratio of thermal energy losses in apartment buildings that were built during the 1960-1990. This shall be derived by analyzing the total district energy consumption that has been divided into three parts: heat energy losses (the actual heating requirements), the heating of domestic hot water and heating energy consumption for the controlled ventilation.Three different residential areas that were built during the years 1962-1966 and one that was built in 1993 has been analyzed. All residential areas are located in Växjö urban and contains between four and six apartment buildings.The analyzed objects have a mechanical exhaust ventilation systems and district heating as the heating method. No own laboratory work or experiments have been done in this thesis, the calculations have been done on the basis of parameters from VEAB, interviews with property managers, and literature studies. By calculations, we have got a result that is reported in Chapter 6.

The projects goal was to make an already existing indoor positioning system useful forthe average smartphone user. This was achieved by creating an Android applicationwhich, along with a running server, continuously presents the user with all the currentneeded information. It uses the graphics engine andEngine to create the graphical userinterface. The application was created in the development environments Eclipse andAndroid Studio..

People who live in northern part of the world spend much more time indoors than those who live in warmer countries. In addition that home should be safe, it should also protect one against heat, cold, sunlight and pollution. The Indoor environment is affected by installations, material and how the building is formed. Those anomalies that are visible, felt or smelled can be noticed and be rectified. But it?s much more difficult if these abilities are missing.

There are many different recommendations on how to keep pelargoniums over winter, but most of the recommendations suggest ?the higher the temperature, the more light and water the pelargonium needs?. The purpose with this paper is to try to explain the best and the worst results that are achieved with different storage alternatives of zonal pelargoniums. The results are based on an orientating investigation carried out in January-February, and a questionnaire that members of the Swedish Pelargonium Society answered to. Both the orientating investigation and the questionnaire showed that zonal pelargoniums are best stored light and cold but frost free. They should be irrigated according to their needs which is when the soil is dry, about every second to third week. Zonal pelargoniums are very resistant to drought and can survive without water for at least 44 days, both when kept under light and cold as well as under light and warm.

Mechanical ventilation is the most common type ofventilation in newly constructed office buildings. Therehas been an interest to utilize natural ventilationinstead of mechanical ventilation among architects andHVAC consultants in recent years. This is due to thesize of mechanical ventilation systems, which arespace consuming. The mechanical ventilation system isalso complex and requires maintenance. Furthermore,the fan uses a considerable amount of energy.

Wireless communication is becoming more common, a relatively new technology within the area is Bluetooth Low Energy. It?s been developed to be energy efficient and in regard to compatibility. Alongside the growth of wireless technology, scientists and companies are looking for new areas of use. One of these is localization, which means to determine the position of a moving device with the use of stationary devices, an example of this would be GPS.This report means to evaluate indoor localization using Bluetooth Low Energy and was made for Combitech AB in Jönköping.

The purpose of this study is to examine some after-school teachers? perceptions about the outdoor stay at the after-school care centre in the schoolyard and in the leisure- environment.Five semi-structured interviews were conducted with the after-school teachers at five after-school care centres in the Stockholm area.In the theoretical part presents the leisure- governance and ongoing research on outdoor learning, research on the school playground and kindergarten local environment affects children in their development and learning, and after-school teachers? professional identity.The theoretical foundation is based on the phenomenographic approach.The questions are:? What is outdoor education according to the after-school teachers?? According to after-school teachers, what educational opportunities are provided by the schoolyard and the local environment?? How do the after-school teachers use the schoolyard and local environment?The result shows that outdoor education can be a knowledge invigorating complement to the indoor teaching and a way for the after-school centre to supplement the compulsory schoolday. The play outdoors can help to increase children's social development, creativity and imagination. The after-school teachers used the schoolyard and local environment for various purposes which may be due to different circumstances, knowledge and experience to carry out educational activities outdoors. But it may also depend on whether the after-school teacher focuses on the regular school day or in the afternoon at the after-school care centre..

This report consists of two parts, out of which the first deals with the planning and designing ofa small house in the Swedish city of Huddinge, using the weather conditions of the Swedish cityof Malmö. The house has to be in accordance with the Swedish building- and constructionregulations, as well as with the limitations in energy consumption given.The house itself has to consist of at least two bedrooms, and blueprints of the house, variousconstructional elements, ventilation, sanitation and electricity have to be drawn. Calculations ofthese aspects also have to be made, to ascertain that the different parts function as they should,and that the dimensions are sufficient.The second part is called ?Allergy free home?, and investigates how indoor climate affects us,and whether it has changed during the last few decades. It also makes an effort to see whetherthe increase of allergies and asthma is correlated with possible changes in indoor climate, andwhether technical solutions might help to handle or even decrease the issues arisen.

Embedded Systems Lab at Umeå University is currently part of a research project with the purpose to examine the behavior of dairy cows inside a barn. Each cow needs to be tracked with a precision of 50 cm, and since GPS-technique has poor functionality at Indoor environments, an indoor positioning system needs to be developed.Embedded Systems Lab has already developed an indoor positioning system using IR-light and radio, but since this system demands extensive infrastructure and is rather expensive, an alternate positioning system using ultrasonic pulses and radio is being examined.In this report the range, beam angle and current consumption of ultrasonic transmitters- and receivers are investigated. Three different driver stages for the transmitter is tested, and two amplifier solutions for the receiver. The report also describes how the length of the transmitted ultrasonic pulse affects the received signal, accessibility of a ?shadowed? signal, and the effect of different sound frequency..