Preschool has a long tradition of using picture books, both as entertainment and as a resource for educational activities. In science there are two main application areas. The first one is science concepts and the second is to teach basic science process skills. These skills, observing, communicating, inferring, classifying, measuring and predicting reflects the methods used by scientists. Picture books potential to put science concepts and activities that promote the use of science process skills in a meaningful context, recommends using picture books for this purpose.

AbstractThe purpose of this thesis is to analyse the basis of Russian diplomacy, and by doing that develop the analytical instruments available, in order to improve the comprehension between the parties in negotiations. Descriptions of the national characteristics of Soviet and Russian diplomacy are made by an analysis of memoairs and other examinations of their negotiating behaviour. To ensure the result of the characteristics two case studies of the non-nuclear proliferation negotiations are made, followed by a comparation between the Soviet and Russian diplomacy. From these results, I analyse the groundworks of russian diplomacy, using three theories about how ideology, national identity and prevailing self-image can affect the national negotiating behaviour. The results show that there have been changes in only some parts of the negotiating behaviour and that there is a need for all three theories to explain different parts of the complex system of Russian diplomacy which is based on the plurality of culture, ideology, language, ideology and history..

Previous research on Twitter use among nonprofit organizations has been centered on the US, thisessay Nonprofits on Twitter: a content analysis of Swedish nonprofits working for gender equalityseeks to expand that research to include nonprofit organizations operating in Sweden. By studying tenSwedish nonprofits all working to achieve gender equality this study can begin filling a gap in theexisting research. Focusing on both what kind of messages the organizations publish, and what kind ofmessages engage the organizations? followers. This is achieved by quantitative content analysis:categorizing messages into the categories Information, Community and Action, and measuring whichof these categories got the most shares, comments and likes.

This is an analysis of the music in the television-series The Tudors (2007 ? 2010). The opening credits and how death is portrayed musically in the last episode are analyzed. My question is what functions the music has. The method used is Michel Chion?s masking-method.

The aim of this study is through a policy analysis to illuminate the decisions that the EU has taken to respond to the terrorist attacks in the US, Madrid and London and through this analysis try to explain the problem of each decision and find out if these decisions might risk the individual rights of the European Union?s citizens.In order to reach this purpose the following questions are to be answered: In what way has the EU?s decision-making process, regarding its fight on terrorism, been affected by the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London? What consequences may the EU?s decisions against terrorism have on the individual rights?The method that has been used is qualitative studies of literature and the main material is overarching policy documents from the EU.The conclusions are that the bombings in Madrid and London have increased the speed of the decision-making process and more areas have been included in the union?s fight against terrorism. If individual rights are at risk by the union?s decisions there are reasons to be concerned. But my conclusion is that the European Union has to have strong and effective instruments to answer to the threat of terrorism..

Quality was earlier only an issue for the company?s quality departments but today is the entire organization involved in quality- and improvements work. With the customers in focus, both external and internal, quality and improvement work should be integrated in the daily activities. The management shall state goals and visions together with a policy. Through participation the correct requirements for a successful work are created.With SPC, statistics process control, there is an opportunity to perceive variations in the process and with the correct tools make it stable.

To measure losses in a transformer with today?s methods is either slow or insecure. There s a new method developed by Alstom that hasn't been actualize in to a test-system and that has been the assignment in this project. The idea is built on a switched system and a CLR- circuit in the resonant frequency. The test-system has a calculated power-loss that make the efficiency to be as high as 99,8% and in reality over 95%.

Background: Budgets has always been a main factor for the management of organisations. Yet, lately has the role of budgets been increasingly questioned. But how is an organisation managed without budgets and what other alternatives can be used? And can these instruments work more effective?Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to describe how non-budget management distinguish compare to traditional management and how to design an effective non-budget system of management. Furthermore we intend to explain the reasons to such management and to present a model for how such a management can be performed.Research method: Empirical material has been performed based on seven interviews with persons within Svenska Handelsbanken.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine the discourses of concepts related to diversity and ethnicity in Swedish cultural policy. It focuses on how the society is presented in different contexts and how people with a different ethnic origin than the majority, are represented in the cultural policy of the Swedish State. The study is restricted to concern immigrants. Six governmental cultural policy documents, reaching over a time period of eight years 1995-2003 are examined as follows: Which key terms are used in the presentations? Which contexts and discourses can be distinguished? Have the discourses changed over the time period examined, and if so, how? The theoretical starting point in the thesis is the discourse perspective of Laclau and Mouffe.

The control of indoor temperature must be able to handle large time constants and both measureable disturbances like outdoor temperature, and non-measurable disturbances, like waste heat from appliances. Due to cheaper microcontrollers (small computers with designated tasks) with better performance, more advanced and computation-demanding methods for control can be used.In this thesis, Generalized Predictive Control (GPC) has been implemented and tested on a theoretically derived model of a house. GPC states that a model of the system is estimated in every sample, and the control is carried out simultaneously, based on predictions of the model. Disturbances like solar radiation can be estimated and used in the control as well. The control signals are determined by quadratic programming, which makes it possible to consider conditions, for example limitations on the control signals.GPC requires a number of parameters to be defined, like model order and control signal penalty, but is relatively robust for variations in them.

AbstractThe aim of this review was to describe how quality of life is experienced among patients with diabetes type 2. Literature search was made in Medline and the keywords used were ?diabetes mellitus type 2? and ?quality of life?. Twenty studies were examined and categorized into four sections: Quality of life during complications due to diabetes type 2, quality of life during various treatments, quality of life during depression and quality of life and aspects in relation to the individual as well as social aspects. The designs of the studies were of a varying kind: randomized controlled studies, comparative studies, correlative studies and descriptive studies.

Hedge funds? importance within the financial system has during the most recent years increased dramatically. These special funds are unique instruments that differ from traditional mutual funds in a variety of ways, however especially in how they expect returns. Due to the fact that hedge funds are able to hold short positions they possess the possibility to become market neutral investment vehicles.Because of this possibility to sustain positions neutral to market fluctuations, the concept of absolute returns became a unique selling point for hedge fund managers and promises of stable returns unchallenged by market conditions was assured. This research paper aims to examine the theory of absolute returns in hedge funds by examining hedge funds from the Nordic region during the last years of economic turmoil that has occurred by  analyzing the results from their strategies, partially by quantitative measurements as well as qualitative.  The results show that none of hedge fund strategies managed to deliver absolute returns over the chosen period..

It is well proven that physical exercise has an impact on our bodies as well as our minds. The aim of this study is to examine if this impact also affects economic behaviour. Three hypotheses regarding the impact of acute exercise on overconfidence, risk enhancement and well-being have been tested by collecting questionnaires from 364 participants at Friskis & Svettis, Kungsholmen who all were asked to answer the questions either before or after exercising. The differences between the before and after group were analysed, indicating small increases in all three test areas after exercising. These increases were, however, not large enough to reject any of the null-hypotheses of zero effect on the given five per cent significance level.

The purpose of this investigation is to see if there is any difference in how long pupils are staying in the activity of the music- and culture schools in the country. I have compared this with how large the teachers engagements are in average at each school, how many teachers each school holds and if one teacher is teaching within different areas, e.g. on different instruments. Thru mail contact with the headmasters at the music- and culture schools I have gathered data concerning the length of which the pupils are staying at the schools, the number of teachers at each school, the size of the teachers services and in how many different areas each teacher is teaching.It has been hard to get to any results in the investigation since the music- and culture schools don?t compile statistics on how long their pupils are staying at their schools.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to analyze the relation between the discursive formation and the optical formation in the public library-apparatus. An ongoing individualization process in the library field and in society at large is used as a backdrop in the analysis. Discourse analysis is used as a method to explore the main Swedish library periodicals Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i Samhälle and DIK-forum. All issues from the years 1999 and 2009 have been used as material. The main analytical instruments applied in the analysis of this material are Michel Foucault's terms dispositive, apparatus and diagram.