AbstractThe intension with this paper was to describe the understanding students in third grade had about mathematics and how these students, based on their previous mathematics experiences, apprehend the coming national tests in mathematics. After the test period the student was interviewed on how they experienced their participation in the test. The choice of method was the qualitative case study where the data was collected from interviews and observations. In the result that was found, the interviewed students described mathematics as counting. Students preferred easy math work and to solve routine tasks in math books instead of more demanding work.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate how some teachers make use of the results of the national tests in mathematics to plan their teaching. The questions are how they plan their teaching in mathematics and if they use the results of the national tests to compare with their own teaching.   Five teachers in mathematics has been interviewed. I have used unstructured interviews with open-ended questions, and I have been able to ask follow-up questions based on their answers. The analysis of the survey is made from a systems theory approach.  The result of the survey shows that teachers make use of student performance to look at their own teaching of the current group of students. However, there is not enough time to rehearse and repair the deficiencies discovered in the national tests, which for some is perceived as a stress factor.

AbstractThe research project Liberation, supported by the European Commission under the Environment and Sustainable Development Programme (Fifth RTD Framework Programme) aimed at developing a decision support system for ecological risk assessment of contaminated sites has proposed a tiered system including the triad method. This method integrates contaminant chemistry and bioavailability analyses with observed ecotoxicological effects in soil and groundwater. In this study the triad method was used to perform a risk characterization of a former surface treatment and metal industry, now used for the student union buildings of the Mälardalen University in Eskilstuna, Sweden. On the site, high concentrations of copper, zinc and nickel have been detected in the soil in a preliminary investigation of contaminant levels with XRF. For performing the risk assessment of the site according to the triad method, contaminant bioavailability, soil metal concentrations and soil toxicity were determined and an ecological assessment was carried out on four selected soil samples (one reference soil and three samples with low (B), medium (C) and high (D) contaminant levels). Contaminant bioavailability was measured through leaching (ISO TC 190/S7) and biouptake tests (DGT).

Increasing attention is being given to acid sulphate soils wherever they occur. The problems that leaching sulphate soils gives with significant lowerings of pH and mobilization of heavy metals influence large spectra of our society from fisheries to agriculture to construction. Mapping these soils is consequently of great importance and the methods of doing this is very much lacking in function and precision. This study was therefore carried out to investigate whether conductivity in running water can be used as a simple instrument to identify acid sulphate soils in the catchment. 31 coastal streams in the county of Västerbotten were analyzed for different catchment properties such as occurence of marine sediments and basic water chemistry including conductivity and sulphate.

Most of the city of Uppsala rests on postglacial clay with a varying content of sulphur. The sulphur occurs naturally in the clay in reduced form as sulphide and the clay is for that reason usually called ?sulphide clay?. Excavation during construction activities gives rise to large amounts of excavation material, of which the sulphide clay is a considerable part.When the clay is exposed to air and water, an oxidation of the sulphides occurs which may produce an acid leachate and the mobilisation of heavy metals bound in the clay or underlying material. The aim of the work has been to improve our understanding of the behaviour of sulphide clays and produce a basis for risk assessment in the future handling of excavation material with high sulphide content.

There is no standardized test to control the appropriate physical ability in the Swedish ambulance service. The county in question does not perform annual physical tests. A project has been going to develop science-based physical tests, designed for the ambulance service. The research has resulted in the Aasa-test.Objective: The aims of this study were to examine the ambulance staff perception of the Aasa-test relevance, introduction of annual tests and the importance of their own physical training in relation to ambulance work.Method: A quasi-experimental study with a comparative design has been conducted. Aasa-tests were conducted in 41 randomly selected staff at an ambulance station in central Sweden.

This master thesis encompasses an inventory of the older industrial community of Gimo. Investigations of the contamination situation for each industrial area were done. A risk classification according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency?s ?Method of Surveying Contaminated Sites?, phase one, followed. The risk classification was done on areas of Iron Work, a rockwool industry and a landfill. Gimo have had iron manufacturing from 1615 until 1945. Gimo have had two blast-furnaces and two smithies periodically.

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.

When performing studies that test the reactions of horses in different situations, important information may be available about the horse?s reactivity level. With information from these tests, accidents and dangerous situations may be prevented. When the behaviours from tests are compared with race performance it may be possible to evaluate if some behaviours are more desirable at the race track than others. The aim of this study was to see if behavioural responses correlated with physiological parameters (heart rate, cortisol), the trainer?s opinions and actual race performance.

In this thesis tests has been performed on the pull strength of screws glued into glulam beams.The experiment is based on the already approved method whereby the diameter of the drilled holes is the same as the screw outer diameter of 1 mm or bigger. The screws strength class shall not be less than 4.6 (EN ISO 898-1:1999, 1999).The difference in the experiments that were performed where that the drilled diameter were 1 mm smaller than the outer diameter of the screw so that the screw thread was worked into the wood.In the tests the gluing where made on M8 glulam beams. The screws where drilled at and angel of 90°tangental to the fiber direction with a diameter of 7 mm. The gluing of the screws where made in three different depths and where later exposed to pulling forces. The results showed both pulling breaks and screw breaks when they reached their maximum capacity.

Our aim in this study is to explore if the schoolchildren?s written language differs from the?National tests? in Swedish and from Facebook. We specifically want to see if we candiscover words and expressions mainly from the English language or other languages in the?National tests? in Swedish written by the schoolchildren in the ages between 18-20 yearsold. The methods that we used to discover the results in this study was; to interview threeteachers, have 30 schoolchildren answer a questionnaire survey, analyze 30 written ?Nationaltests? in Swedish by the schoolchildren and finally analyze two Facebook walls from twoschoolchildren.

The emphasize of this study is to evaluate security issues for home users having a personal computer connected to the Internet. It focus on the usage of advantages and disadvantages when using a firewall while connected to the Internet. The hypothesis is that it gives a better protection to install and use a firewall compared not to do so, due to security flaws in the operating system. The prediction was tested on a home user's personal computer. The testwork was divided into two major tests, each of them performed with, respectively without, a firewall. These major tests were divided into five smaller semi­ tests. The first semi­test without a firewall suffered from a virus or worm attack resulting in loss of data and log files.

The emphasize of this study is to evaluate security issues for home users having a personal computer connected to the Internet. It focus on the usage of advantages and disadvantages when using a firewall while connected to the Internet. The hypothesis is that it gives a better protection to install and use a firewall compared not to do so, due to security flaws in the operating system. The prediction was tested on a home user's personal computer. The testwork was divided into two major tests, each of them performed with, respectively without, a firewall.

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.

This study describes the intellectual ability of a cohort consisting of 120 young women in compulsory care at a SiS institution in Sweden, tested and analyzed between January 2001 and May 2005. The women have been tested with the intelligence tests WISC-III or WAIS-R, as well as the personality trait tests BCT, CMPS and SCL-90, and the personality disorder test SCID-II. This material has been analyzed to investigate how these women's intellectual ability relates to other factors. The analyses show that the main difference between the women of this study and the normal population is their level of intelligence and presence of personality disorders. The IQ level of these women is statistically proven on an average one standard deviation lower than the normal population.