AbstractThis essay concerns a qualitative case study seeking to understand six boys? reading habits and to investigate why it is that some boys who do not like reading nevertheless display good reading comprehension according to the results achieved for that skill in national tests. The study shows that the boys? perception of reading has a lot to do with the contact they have with books when they are small. Whether or not there are adult role models in the home and whether the early encounter with texts in school is a positive or negative experience is significant for the boys? later attitude to reading.

Several studies have shown that people misjudge and fail to correctly combine probabilities. An explanation for these tendencies is the conjunction fallacy. Basically, the conjunction fallacy refers to violations of the conjunction rule, which states that the probability of a combination of two independent events (A & B) cannot exceed the probability of neither event (A or B). In connection with the growth of the Swedish gambling market and the fact that betting is an everyday-event containing well-defined probabilities, it is considered to be both up-to-date and relevant to study whether the conjunction fallacy also occurs in betting. Previous studies have shown that people fall victims of the conjunction error, however, only in controlled laboratory settings.

My aim is to find out about teachers? perceptions of methods concerning learning and assessment of oral proficiencies. My questions are: What perceptions are there among teachers concerning assessment of oral proficiencies? How do teachers describe their ways of promoting and assessing oral proficiency? In order to answer my questions and obtain data I have accomplished two focus groups interviews with seven language teachers. The result shows that teachers are concerned with several factors regarding assessment of oral proficiency.

The goal with this master thesis has been to evaluate and to examine the stationary resistance bridge. The resistance bridge uses a 4-point measuring to determinate the resistance, which is used in the manufacturing of the conductor. It is then used when the resistance is to be decided for coarser aluminium conductors. A conductor has to fulfil certain demands to be able to move forward in the process. One of these demands is the resistance in ohm/km, which has demands that the measure values of the resistance bridge are as true and precise as possible.

The purpose of the study is to investigate how board structure influences CEO compensation for companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 2004. The theoretical frame of reference is based upon the corporate governance theory, the principal-agent theory and previous empirical research in the area. A cross sectional regression analysis is used, where a number of control variables are included and significance tests are conducted. The study is based on information regarding CEO compensation, and possible factors affecting the compensation, from 267 companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange A- and O-list in the year 2004. We find that the board structure has no significant effect on the CEO compensation.

The task in this thesis is the steering of one of Saab Bofors Dynamics robots using Sliding Mode Control, a method they never used before. The robot constitutes a system which in addition to perturbations and uncertainties due to modeling imprecision, hold the difficulty of being highly time variant. In order to be able to keep required performance with uncertainties and modeling imprecision present, the use of robust control methods like Sliding Mode Control is necessary. SMC is based on the states of the system being forced to stay on or in the direct vicinity of a hyper plane in the state space which is chosen in a way that gives the system dynamics desired properties. Other advantages with sliding mode are reduced order dynamics on the switching surface and total insensitivity to some uncertainties and perturbations.

Blood-borne infectious diseases such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)and Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) spread when the addicts share needles and injecting equipmentwithin contact networks. A quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted in Winnipeg,Canada in December 2003 - September 2004. Through a special questionnaire, respondentswere asked to answer questions about themselves and about their contacts, about relationshipsand how they shared syringes and other injection supplies. Blood tests were used to identifywhether they carried any blood-borne infectious diseases. We selected some variables from theoriginal data set.

The purpose of this project has been to redesign an already existing cook-book. The title of the book (directly translated), ?Season in food ? the year around with herbs and spices?, contains what the headline imposes: spices, herbs and food. But when the author tries to entwine these parts and communicate it to the reader it is not working all to well due to a poor and inconsistent graphic design.I have followed the theories and values of information design when I redesigned the book layout with the intent to simplify the communication between author and reader. In the progress to make a complete dummie of the book I did multiple literature studies, book analysis, tests and a vast number of drafts.In this report I will describe the whole process from start to finish.

Ever since ABB has begun diecasting their rotors instead of permanent mold casting it,variation in the quality of the cast has arisen. Diecasting is performed in three differentmachines, M1, M2, M3 with 400, 660 respectively 800 tons of die locking pressures.The aim of this thesis is to answer the following questions:What is the ?right? cast quality? How is the right quality achieved?For sizes 160-180 solutions will be proposed that consider eccentricity between thelaminate and the short circuit ring as well as elimination of the thin Al film that appearson the outer periphery of the rotors.Through considering the statistic material the most often diverging rotor type has beenidentified and one of the actual rotors has been sent to a laboratory to be analyzed inorder to establish the current defects. The result of the analysis shows that there areplenty of gas- and oxide-porosity.It has been proved that every time the dies temperature decreased below 120°C thecontent of gas porosity increased. It is due to rapid solidification of metal that flowsthrough the ?cold? laminate.It has confirmed that enhanced porosity in squirrel cage causes high impedance in therotors.

Den här uppsatsen är baserad på en enkätundersökning samt intervjuer med gymnasielever angående deras tankar kring djurförsök. Jag har intervjuat studenter från två olika naturbruksgymnasier. Båda har inriktningen djurvård men det är endast en av dem som ger en specialiseringskurs inom forskningsdjur.Min frågeställning är att undersöka om elever som läser kursen i försöksdjurskunskap har en annan inställning än de elever som endast läser djursjukvård. Som resultaten visar så är de eleverna som läser specialiseringskursen mer positiva till både djurförsök och att jobba med försöksdjur. De har också en mer korrekt bild och större vetskap om hur verkligheten ser ut för försöksdjuren.

If you have access to wood, a wood burning boiler is a cheap way to heat your home, but it is certainly not the most convenient option. Wood requires many operations and management, which takes time. One way to reduce this workload is to have a modern boiler with automatic ignition. Enertech/CTC has a desire to create an accessory with automatic ignition to a modern wood burning boiler. Today there is no boiler on the market that can ignite firewood automatically without the introduction of paper and sticks.

The goal with this master thesis has been to evaluate and to examine the stationary resistance bridge. The resistance bridge uses a 4-point measuring to determinate the resistance, which is used in the manufacturing of the conductor. It is then used when the resistance is to be decided for coarser aluminium conductors. A conductor has to fulfil certain demands to be able to move forward in the process. One of these demands is the resistance in ohm/km, which has demands that the measure values of the resistance bridge are as true and precise as possible. The stationary resistance bridge had been examined through various kinds of measurements to be able to see how stable the system is and how to obtain a measure value as optimized as possible.

The last few decades the development in the field of electronics has been huge. The components performance gets better at the same time as the manufacturing cost decreases. Many of the design moments that have to be done, are done automatically today, but it can get better. Especially for analog circuit design.At Electronic System in Linköpings universitet, research is in progress to develop a tool that can design analog circuits in reasonable time. It means that it has to size the components (transistors, resistances, capacitances etc), so that the circuit can fulfill the performance requirements.

This thesis studies whether private equity owned firms within the Swedish welfare sector distinguish themselves in terms of tax planning and short-termism from a control group consisting of other privately owned welfare firms. For the first time, the comparison is made on the entire welfare sector, between 14 matched pairs within education, health care and elderly care. We use financial metrics associated with tax planning and short-termism in sign tests to examine whether the private equity owned firms differ from our control group. The financial metrics tested are actual and paid tax rates, level of interest, book-tax gap, investments, personnel expenses per employee, and cash earnings. We find that the private equity owned firms in terms of tax planning only differ in the level of interest, while no notable differences are found in terms of short-termism..

This report describes the development process of a pipe clamp used on exhaust system for cars. It is made based on the manufacturers desire to improve and make the clamp easier to manufacture and to reduce its price to their customers. This should be done either by manufacturing the clamp in one piece without an expensive and work intensive welding process, or by generating ideas of how to develop a brand new type of clamp. Investigating the market for similar products was done to eliminate intrusion of other manufacturers? patents but also to generate ideas.