The resting area is the most important place in the barn for the dairy cow, sometimes called the heart of the free stall system. Inadequate design of the lying area, and lack of or poor quality of bedding materials may reduce the hygiene of the stall. Poor management regarding the cleanliness of the resting area may lead to poor animal hygiene and increased bacterial growth. This in turn will lead to increased risk for environmental mastitis as well as impairing milk quality through contamination with spores. In this literature study the most commonly used bedding materials; straw, sawdust, wood shavings, clean sand, recycled sand, peat and recycled manure solids, are compared to one another with regards to their ability to resist bacterial growth. Effects of adding hydrated lime to bedding materials have also been studied. Most bacteria need humidity and prefer a quite high water activity to be able to grow.

This study has been carried out as a part of the EC funded project, SMARTDOC IST-2000-28137, with the objective of developing application components that provide highly interactive visualization and collaboration functionalities. The low-level components from the graphics library AVS OpenViz 2.0 are used as the development basis. The application components can be inserted into electronic documents that allow embedded controls such as web documents or Microsoft Word or PowerPoint documents. Instead of displaying results as static images, a SMARTDOC component provides the ability to visualize data and interact with it inside the document. Although the principal goal of the SMARTDOC project is to create components in a number of different application domains this study concentrates on developing a medical imaging application component in collaboration with the project partners AETmed and professor Alan Jackson at the University of Manchester.

Since the turn of the millennium a sharp increase in the interest for bio energy has been observed. Important reasons for this growing interest can be due to the fact that fossil fuels are a finite resource. A net discharge of greenhouse gases occur when fossil fuels are burned. The discharge of greenhouse gases are considered to be the main reason to the greenhouse effect. Means of control to increase the use of bio energy has been introduced and, as intended, the use of bio energy has increased. As a result of the legal provisions the ability to pay for bio energy has increased, which the forest industry view as a problem.

Background: The consumers of today have the possibility to choose from a wide range of products and services. Consequently, the ability to differentiate the products is essential for the brand owners. If a brand owner does not manage to differentiate its product, it can be difficult to make the consumers realise the benefits of the product and convince them to buy it. One way to differentiate the product is to create a distinguished brand identity. However, it is not enough to create a strong brand identity, the brand owner must also be capable of communicating the brand identity successfully.

This master?s thesis concerns the performance of professional children?s theatre in public libraries. With qualitative interviews I have looked into how four children?s librarians and two theatre consultants appreciate professional children?s theatre, and furthermore I have looked into their view on the importance of theatre for children. My intentions have also been to investigate their views on the function and status of children?s theatre in public libraries and also the relationship between library and theatre activities for children.

The purpose of this study was to explore the use of a blog in the classroom. This paper describes why the teacher created the blog and how the blog is used by teachers and pupils in and outside the classroom. The study also describes teachers? thoughts regarding future use of the blog. Seven primary school teachers were interviewed and the material was analysed using a multimodal design theoretical perspective on learning (Selander & Kress 2010).The conclusion of the study was that the teachers created and designed blogs to give parents, pupils, relatives and others an opportunity to have an insight into the pupils? school day.

The purpose of this master's degree thesis was to develop an understanding of how hospital management, in the case studied, worked to achieve changes in an organization influenced by differing professional cultures. To gain insight into the conditions that may have contributed to nurses and physicians developing appropriate attitudes and behaviours, which may have affected the organization's ability to achieve the Swedish Quality Award 2012. A qualitative single case study was conducted at Karlskoga Hospital, with focus groups as well as individual depth interviews. The results of the case study showed the following conditions provided nurses and physicians the potential to develop appropriate attitudes and behaviours, which may have influenced the hospitals ability to achieve the Swedish Quality Award:  Responsibility and influence over the development processes.Participation in management teams and quality development groups as well as individual fields of responsibility.Training programs that have given insights and skills in quality management related to clinical practice.Nurses and physicians as key individuals gave legitimacy to development process, and served as management advisors.Collaboration between all kind of employees and responsibilities.Committed management.    .

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of an intervention that focuses on phonics, decoding, reading speed and phonological awareness for 8-9 year old children in reading difficulties. Participants were selected on the basis of screening test results in grade one (decoding and reading comprehension). The participants were divided into two groups, an intervention group (A1, n=10 children) and a control group (A2, n=10). A1 received 30 minutes of intense reading instruction every day for six weeks from special educational needs teachers on top of their usual classroom based reading instruction. The control group received only their usual classroom-based reading instruction.

Theory of mind involves the ability to take another person?s perspective in thought, emotions and intentions.  There is today a lack of instruments to assess children?s development of Theory of Mind (ToM) in Swedish. ToM is considered by many scientists to be the basis for development of pragmatic competence. The relationship between these two abilities is complex and not fully resolved. Both abilities are important components for the development of social skills.    The purpose of this study was to compare 4 and 5-year olds ToM-ability measured with a Swedish version of Wellman and Liu?s ToM-scale, Sally Anne and Social Emotional Test with estimated pragmatic competence measured with the Children?s Communication Checklist (CCC).

This master?s thesis deals with integrating simulations using Agilents Electronic Design Automation tool ADS with customized Matlab scripts, for solving complex analog and digital radio architectures. In particular, it addresses predistortion, realized in the digital domain, of power amplifiers, modeled in the analog domain. The former is implemented in Matlab while the latter is implemented in ADS. Two versions of integrating the two systems have been tested: 1) Iterative approach on sample basis and 2) Scheduled batch solution by matrix inversion.

The ability to handle potentially dangerous and hostile situations on a military vesselrequires that the equipment works effectively with the personnel that use it. It is importantthat this equipment can be used by different people. An operator on a military vesselshall be able to handle information about hostile threats, navigation and the steering ofunmanned vehicles. A operator console should therefore be constructed in such a waythat the operator can handle a large flow of information. And the information given bythe technical system should be displayed correctly to facilitate the operators ability tohandle and interpret the information correctly, in order for the operator to make thecorrect decision at any given moment.

To understand the modern leadership you have to gain a lot of experience to attain the right competence through which you are able to know what kind of leadership is most suitable to use in the current situation. Leaders agree that every kind of leadership is more or less successful depending on the situation and different organizational factors, for example the co-workers and the environment. Every leader should have a strong willpower and driving force to bring motivation to the organization and to make it more efficient. Another quality that represents a modern leader is the ability to lead and divide the co-workers and the organizations different strengths. The organizational communication is an important factor of how you, as a leader, answer to your co-workers and also how you will be received.

Title: Kreativ reklam. En bra idé? (Creative advertising. A good idea?)Author: Evelina KarlssonTutor: Larsåke LarssonCourse: Bachelor Thesis: Media and CommunicationPurpose: The purpose of this study is to, through qualitative studies inquire creative prized advertise in Sweden to see which influence creativity have on both creative director and the audience.

Reading difficulties is the most common learning difficulty in the western world and it is common that people with reading disabilities also exhibit arithmetic difficulties. Different theories about the cause of the relationship exists, one theory describes the importance of good phonological ability in reading as well as in arithmetic, while another theory describes the importance of a reliable number system and that only a subgroup of students with reading disabilities also have difficulties with arithmetic. The purpose of this study is to investigate how students with reading difficulties (RD), without any known mathematical difficulties, perform on mathematical tasks relative to a control group. The study was theoretically grounded on the Triple code model (Dehaene, 1992), which is a model for numerical information processing that describes how various numerical and arithmetic tasks are processed through three distinct representation systems in the brain, a verbal and a visual representation system and a quantity system. Reading skills, phonological skills, arithmetic skills and number processing skills were examined in 61 students through a variety of tests.

To understand the modern leadership you have to gain a lot of experience to attain the right competence through which you are able to know what kind of leadership is most suitable to use in the current situation. Leaders agree that every kind of leadership is more or less successful depending on the situation and different organizational factors, for example the co-workers and the environment. Every leader should have a strong willpower and driving force to bring motivation to the organization and to make it more efficient. Another quality that represents a modern leader is the ability to lead and divide the co-workers and the organizations different strengths. The organizational communication is an important factor of how you, as a leader, answer to your co-workers and also how you will be received.