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.

Urban forests are important for people to get at break and be able to relax in a stressful world. Several studies show that we feel better through being out in the forest and historically this was the normal environment for us. As a result of population growth and urbanization we tend to spend less time in nature nowadays than before. Due to this development urban forests have become a central role in our society as a place where people can fulfill their needs and interests. The management of the urban forest is therefore important, especially for municipalities that own forest which is supposed to be of benefit to local residents.Falköpings municipality owns approximately 260 hectares of forest in the popular and most visited recreational area along Mösseberg?s southern slope.

The main purpose of this study was to translate Stuttering Severity Instrument 3 and to evaluate its reliability and validity. Five speech-language pathologists assessed 35 adults who stutter with this assessment tool. Overall the results showed a very high inter- and intrarater reliability. A highly significant correlation between Stuttering Severity Instrument 3 and ratings of severity, made by the speech-language pathologists, strengthen the validityof Stuttering Severity Instrument 3. No correlation was found between the total score of Stuttering Severity Instrument 3 and the self-report measure Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering, whichindicates a lack of social validity in Stuttering Severity Instrument 3.

De senaste åren har marknaden för surfplattor växt massivt samtidigt som Smart-TV?s har kommit fram som en ny produktkategori. Detta arbete är en undersökningen i hur surfplattor tillsammans med Smart-TV kan användas för att skapa en bättre upplevelse för användaren. För detta utvecklades en applikation på en LG Smart TV som sammankopplades med en surfplatta för att visa information om ett pokerspel. Sedan utfördes en undersökning med intervjuer där hybridapplikationen jämfördes gentemot att bara spela på surfplattan.

Normally when purchasing a trip, an airline, a travel agency and a traveler is included in the purchasing process. Mostly a travel agency acts as an intermediary between the airline and the traveler. The travel agency is not considered to have any major part to the contractual relationship, usually the purchase agreement is considered to be covered by the airline and the traveler as the main parties. This is essentially the view shown from a legal perspective on the specific area. The application of legal provisions on the travel agency?s legal status may nevertheless bring a certain amount of ambiguity in the interpretation.

Data retrieved from airborne laser scanning represents a new source of forest data. Today, the technology has matured so that it can function in an operational environment. The aim of this study was to compile areas of application of laserdata in forestry. Moreover to analyze costs and accessibility of laserdata. The goal was to provide private forest owners information to support assessments of possible benefits of laserdata.

Every year about 210 000 tones dry weight of sewage sludge is produced in Sweden. Most of the sludge is applied to agricultural land, plantsoil and landfill cover. Sewage sludge contains essential nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Nitrogen is limiting growth on solid ground in Sweden and can therefore be used as fertilizer to increase productivity. In order that the sludge can be spread to forest land it requires first a conversion of sludge to pellets, to make it more manageable.

The mission was to create a prototype of a menu system for the companySystem Andersson AB. The instructions were that it has to be as interesting andmodern now as in 20 years. We had to look at technology from the cutting edgeof development to make our prototype survive in the future. WindowsPresentation Foundation (WPF) was the technique we focused on. There areonly a few applications that take advantage of WPF today, but it is predictedthat WPF will be the next generation method for developing applications to theWindows platform.To make our menu visually appealing, easy to use and at the same timefunctional, we followed the clear path and guidelines that are available ininteraction design.

Social media is a relatively new phenomenon that has had a huge impact in the way we communicate in recent years. Today it is used daily by almost everyone and has become a billion dollar industry where corporate existence is increasing by every day. But there is not entirely safe to work with social media since customers and visitors can make comments and investigate what others are writing about the brand and form their own opinion. The purpose of this study is to explain the potential advantages and disadvantages for organizations in vulnerable industries with a focus on insurance companies who works with Facebook. The paper takes its starting point in the convergence culture that explains a cultural shift where consumers are encouraged to search for new information and combine content from different media.

Nowadays naval units are participating in international missions, where new and in many cases tougher conditions will affect their propulsion. This essay deals with some of the now developed nanostructure coatings and gives a presentation of how the coatings could function on some exposed parts of the naval powertrain. The essay investigates the possibility that the coatings can be used as a protective layer that will reduce or prevent wear on selected parts of the naval powertrains. As a basis for the essay, nanotechnology is described, as well as different reasons that wear occurs and application techniques for coatings The conclusion is that nanostructured coatings can be applied and provide a much better result on hardness and wear resistance as of naval powertrains compared to micro-structural coatings, both for manufacturing and renovation. The essay presents a few examples of the military utility of the nanostructure coatings as well as suggestions for further research..

Today Holmen Skog finds and selects suitable thinning stands using data on upper height and basal area. These figures are often based on basic forest data that has been updated with the help of growth prediction models. The problem is that these figures are not always correct. The aim of this study was to investigate if a combination of data from a profiling laser and a digital camera for low elevation photography, can be used for collecting data on number of stems per ha, tree species mixture as well as basal area weighted mean height and upper height for stands. The possibility to use these data to assess the need for thinning cutting was also investigated.Laser data and aerial photographs were collected from a helicopter operating at an approximate height of 100 meters.

The Russian operation on the Crimean peninsula has been referred to as a victory enabled by the operationalization of the concept of New Generation Warfare. According to some military theorists, this concept and its operationalization cannot be characterized in terms of the traditional wars waged up to this point. It is, however, also argued that this new generation of warfare is primarily a new approach to strategy, a new way of applying traditional methods to achieve political goals. The purpose of this study is to discern whether Russia employed strategic deception in its operation in Crimea and if this is the case; what methods and principles were used and if these can be explained using a traditional view of deception. The application of theories on deception by Michael Dewar and Barton S.

The aim of this masters thesis, based on discourse analysis and organization theory, is to study how individuals in different Swedish cultural organizations- and agencys are working with disaster preparedness.The purpose of this is to examine whether organizational structures affect different persons work, cooperation and practical application concerning disaster preparedness in collaboration with both external and internal organizations.The research shows that disaster preparedness are affected by priority issues as well as financial resources causing consequences for future work concerning this kind of issues.Another problem which is also examined and discussed in this thesis are the problematic approach to personal initiative which today is the leading operation for the organizations to deal with disaster preparedness instead of creating professional titles for the persons handles these complex issues..

The study aims to reduce energy consumption in apartment buildings where individual metering and charging of heat is applied. The aim is to develop planning and design for individual metering and charging in apartment buildings.The study is based on literature review, interviews and case study that include analysis of existing documents. Interviews were carried out with the property developer and the involved consultants who planned the apartment building Yasuragi. To investigate the differences the condominium association has noted in heat consumption between flats, the debit values of the heat were used to discern which houses that were furthest from the average consumption. On these flats there were temperature measurements and thermal photo shoots made for discriminating behavior and possible construction techniques which could be the explanation for the heat spread.Boverket shows that the consumption of heat can be reduced by 10-20% after insertion of individual metering and charging in an apartment block.

The purpose of this thesis is to create opportunities for an efficient interchange of information between humans and technology, especially for the skilled user, and put the designprincipal for informative structures and features into practice. Informative structures and features in a large number of information items helps the peripheral visual system to automatically capture knowledge through logical patterns.A field experiment was done to evaluate if informative structures and features, implicate efficient human information-processing, even in a small study. The results was ambiguous because the quantitative part of the investigation didn?t show any significant differences, whereas the qualitative showed that people prefer a dynamic document with a high degree of informative structures and features over a dynamic document with a low degree of informative structures and features. Even if this study was inconsistent, probably because to few subjects where used, the implication of the research that?s behind it is solid.