This is a study on individual development plans (IDPs) in pre-school and their relationship with the teaching performed. Skolverket does not mention the IDPs in their steering documents for pre-school, and have in a separate memo discouraged from the use. Yet reports show that many of the pre-schools in Sweden are using IDPs. Teaching in pre-school is expected to be a mixture of care and learning without clear boundaries to the scientific topics pre-school aims to introduce children to. The purpose of this study is to investigate if the use of IDPs affect the teaching in pre-school.

Blekinge Hospital suffers from a budget shortage of 100 million SEK, while the government now requires that hospitals will no longer be running a deficit. Blekinge Hospital will then use their limited resources to survive in the future and the activity must be enhanced in order to keep costs low without having to lay off personnel. The idea is that the organisation should be more efficient with a more efficient resource usage. Performance measurement systems are important tools for achieving the policies set out within an organization, measuring and evaluating performance is a way to see where improvements in efficiency may be necessary in the business. Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is one of several measuring systems, where the focus is on measuring non-financial performances.

Value-at-Risk (VaR) is among financial institutions a commonly used tool for measuring market risk. Several methods to calculate VaR exists and different implementations often results in different VaR forecasts. An interesting implementation is historical simulation, and the purpose of this thesis is to examine whether historical simulation with dynamic volatility updating is useful as a model to calculate VaR and how this differs in regard to type of asset or instrument. To carry out the investigation six different models are implemented, which then are tested for statistical accuracy through Christoffersens test. We find that incorporation of volatility updating into the historical simulation method in many cases improves the model.

As changes occur more frequently in IT- and software development, it is important for the companies to meet the demands and needs of its customer. The companies have to be able to adapt themselves continuously in order till fulfill its customers changing needs in an effective way, which results in big changes of the companies? structures. The more traditional way of working is often replaced with more alternative approaches as a response to the reputable deficiencies of its predecessors. As an effect of the rapid change and development some companies now see big potential in switching to more Agile and flexible methods and some companies have no choice but to change their way of working.

This paper is a literature study on search engine optimization (SEO) considering the leader of the search engine market: Google. There´s an introductory background description of Google and its methods of  crawling the Internet and indexing the web pages, along with a brief review of the famous PageRank algorithm. The purpose of this paper is to describe the major important methods for improved rankings on Google´s result lists. These methods could be categorized as on-page methods tied to the website to be optimized or off-page methods that are external to the website such as link development. Furthermore the most common unethical methods are described, known as ?black hat?, which is the secondary purpose of the text.

The thesis mission is to investigate whether the swiveling laser that Vectura (former Vägverket Konsult) has in use to measure the road areas and straddle measuring can be used to detect differences in the reflective road markings function. This is to increase use of the swiveling laser and get rid of the manual measurements performed today.Currently, the measurement of road markings reflective function is performed with both mobile and handheld measuring instruments. The purpose of this thesis is to develop better methods for determination of road markings? reflective function, in order to facilitate the description and suggestions for improvements of the maintenance of road markings reflective function.The questions that the thesis has been to start with are:Can the swiveling laser detect differences in longitudinal and transverse road markings reflective function?The accuracy of measurement has been sweeping the laser over the reference instrument (LTL-2000)Is it necessary with a conversion factor for swiveling laser data against the reference instrument data?To answer the question 2 and 3, there has been a field work in Värnamo where a road stretch with longitudinal road markings and zebra crossing (transverse road markings) has been investigated with a swiveling laser and LTL-2000.The formulas and calculations contained in the thesis are drawn from scientific reports that are produced by VTI in Linköping. The same formula that was used to calculate the optical measurement data was also used for the swiveling laser data.

The aim of this thesis was to answer a number of questions about the environmental consequences of aircraft de-icing. A further aim was to suggest how the environmental consequences due to the release of de-icing fluids can be measured and reduced.The main impact of the aircraft de-icing on the environment is due to the large oxygen demand for the degradation of glycol based de-icing fluids which are released in the environment. The effect of the increase in oxygen demand depends on where the degradation occurs in the ecosystem. In a sensitive ecosystem, the large demand of oxygen could provide an anaerobic environment which would be harmful for many types of organisms.In order to reduce the negative effects of the applied de-icing fluid, there is some type of collection system at every regular airport in Sweden. The methods of collection can be divided into two general groups, hydrological isolation or vacuum sweeper trucks.

The e-commerce in Sweden has increased each year for the past several years, but still just over half of all the consumers feels worry about payment security. This could be the reason why over half of the consumers just shopped about one time on the Internet during the whole year of 2009. Another reason could be that the many consumers have a lack of trust to the different payment methods that are available during payment on the Internet, because they might don't possess enough knowledge regarding the payment methods and their security. If the consumers were to gain more knowledge about the payment methods and their security, it may lead to that the they would feel more comfortable when shopping online, and do it more frequently. It is this that will be investigated in this paper.The purpose of the paper  is to research if consumers believed knowledge concerning the different payment methods available on the web and their security influence the consumers trust in the payment methods.

I have researched different methods for practicing with the purpose of learning some useful ways to handle my performance anxiety issues, to better understand the phenomenon, and to be able to perform better under pressure. I chose or created nine methods and used each during a decided period of time, each period ending with a performance. Afterwards I analyzed the methods with the help of audio recordings and written concert evaluations to see if it was possible to alter my practicing techniques to be more directly focused on preparing for the concert situation..

A study has been conducted on how organizations in Sweden administer costs of facilities management services internally. There are three main theoretical methods for administering costs. In the first method, costs are maintained on a central level; in the second method, costs are allocated and in the third method, internal transfer pricing is used. The aim of the study is to identify which methods are applied in practice, to evaluate whether the methods fulfill their intended purposes and to study the relationship between the methods used and the cost level of facilites management services. In practice, a large diversity of methods are used for facilities management costs.

Utbildningsförvaltningen fattade 2003 ett beslut om att alla lärare i Stockholm skulle använda mätinstrument för bedömning av elevers läsutveckling. Syftet med denna uppsats är att granska och jämföra de två vanligast förekommande mätinstrumenten i Stockholmsområdet. De båda mätinstrumenten finns beskrivna i böckerna Nya Lusboken och God läsutveckling. En diskursanalys av de båda mätinstrumenten har gjorts och skillnader dem emellan har därigenom kunnat påvisas. Den största skillnaden är författarnas syn på fonologisk medvetenhet.

This report aims at giving you as a reader a basic knowledge in measurement techniques used in the road/land construction and witch instrument and methods that is commonly used. It also tries to shed light on the problem with unfinished or incomplete blueprints, which cause additional work performed by the surveyor. This report is written in collaboration with PEAB Umeå whom has given insight in their work.The goal of this report is to examine what kind of work surveyors has to perform on blueprints delivered by a technical consultant. The reader of this report gets a run-through of the different theoretical measurement techniques used today and a short explanation of different measuring instruments used by surveyors in their day to day work. Computer programs used in the field of construction are briefly explained, and some of the most common file extensions used, for example dwg and Land-xml.The report concludes in a questionnaire that was sent out to surveyors employed by PEAB.

There is no commonly accepted definition of a business method. It ought to consist of a method or a process of doing business. Business methods constitutes a broad category of patents, it is hard to tell exactly what can be interpreted in to the term. Most of the world's legal systems have made an exception from patentability for business methods. In the USA the exception was abolished in a case 1998.

Modern forest owners are very familiar with forest management and forest economics. Therefore they have high demands for quality in forest operations. Guarantee of quality in the shape of self-checking activities is an important tool to guarantee a well managed forestry operation. To meet the forest owners? demands on guarantee of quality and the entrepreneurs wish of an easy method for self-checking, the forest owners association, Södra skogsägarna, has developed a new method for thinning inventory. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the method that is used for self-checking and to find ways to develop and improve of the method. The data has been collected by inventory in a number of stands with circle-area survey and with strip survey, which is method that is used for self-checking. The results show that the strip survey does not diverge more than ±10 % in measuring values of basal area, number of stems, roads share, thinning quotient, outtake of basal area and total volume compared to circle-area survey.

This paper is a literature study on search engine optimization (SEO) considering the leader of the search engine market: Google. There´s an introductory background description of Google and its methods of  crawling the Internet and indexing the web pages, along with a brief review of the famous PageRank algorithm. The purpose of this paper is to describe the major important methods for improved rankings on Google´s result lists. These methods could be categorized as on-page methods tied to the website to be optimized or off-page methods that are external to the website such as link development. Furthermore the most common unethical methods are described, known as ?black hat?, which is the secondary purpose of the text.