Abstract Title:                       Grades at Primary School ? A study of local politicians' arguments in                       connection with the division into grades at Swedish primary schools.Author:                       Annie LinderUniversity of KalmarC-essay in Social StudiesAutumn 2011 The study aims to investigate local politicians' decisions since municipalities took overSwedish primary education in 1990/91. The arguments put forward in support of how stages are organised have been studied, likewise whether municipalities have acted rationally when making their decisions.Six municipalities are included in the survey. They were divided into three educational categories: lower, middle and high level schools; previous and recent schools and F9 schools with pre-schools and primary schools integrated.Minutes from politicians' and civil servants' meetings have been studied and categorised according to arguments for and against. The most common supportive arguments are about economy and organisation, others concern school premises, trends and the wish for a comprehensive compulsory school.

The purpose of this thesis was to help the company Medius AB with optimization of selected parts in an existing system to minimize the execution time by implementing multithreading. The idea was to manipulate the code so that calculations could be executed at the same time. The main work in this thesis consisted of three optimizations. The first one was to reconstruct a big ?for-loop? so it would execute every loop's work in an own thread. The second optimization also was a reconstruct of a ?for-loop? so it could execute the work in different threads. The third and last optimization consisted of reconstructing a stored procedure on the database, so different parts of it each could be executed in an own thread to create data at the same time. To implement the optimizations Visual Basic .NET and its support for multithreading and connection-pools was used. The result of the optimizations meant that one of the modules could be executed more efficiently and it was 12 % faster. The other modules execution time was more efficient by 25 % faster. The meanings and requirements for this thesis are fulfilled by now letting the system make use of its resources in a better way..

Simulation of different systems can be done using a graphical model description of the system based on block diagrams. The simulation software Matlab/Simulink offers a lot of possibilities to describe a huge number of systems, which can be linear as well as nonlinear. The simulation using Matlab/Simulink is done by integration based on different kinds of numerical methods.When nonlinear Simulink-models are simulated, it is often interesting to apply a Kalman filter to handle the noise that may occur within the process as well as corrupting the measurement. However, application of such a filter leads to an extensive time-consumption despite using fast computers. The reason is that the existing Matlab functions are not constructed for time optimal evaluation.

AbstractSwedish tuition for immigrants (SFI) is a public adult education program in Sweden that was created in order to provide the immigrants with basic skills in Swedish. People with different backgrounds speaking different languages learn together how they should communicate in Swedish, both orally and in writing. For those who teach SFI it is important to know which factors have positive effects on the Swedish language acquisition. One of the questions to be asked is if the learning materials´ genre has any effect on the SFI students´ proficiency, in particular, oral proficiency. Scientists as von Franz, Vygotskiy and Bettelheim argued that fairy tales, as a genre consciously or subconsciously recognizable by all the people, present texts that are easy to acqiure.

In the early nineties leisure-time pedagogic establishments moved in to school. The aim of the study is to try to find out how leisure-time pedagogues, who have been working for a long time, experience the moving of their establishment in to school and how this affect their practical work and their profession.The study is based on interviewes with four leisure-time pedagogues, who all have been working before?and therefore have experienced the time before?during and after their establishment moved in to school.These interviewes were recorded and later fully transcribed in preparation of analysis. Data was analysed with the help of the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu as a basis. Findings of the study suggest that the leisure-time pedagogues find it positive to be able to cooperate with teachers and other professional groups working in school, they explain how it enabels themselves to see pupils from a different angle and for others working in school to see pupils from a leisure-time pedagogue angle.Some of the pedagogues explain that they find it hard to work with big groups of pupils, or in small surfaces, which they did not have to do before their establishment moved into school.

Denna studie syftar till att belysa undervisningsmoment utöver musikalisk och sångteknisk träning som i yrkesförberedande sångundervisning förbereder sångeleven för yrkeslivet som professionell sångare. Detta för att främja arbetstrivseln hos professionella sångare. Studien har sin teoretiska utgångspunkt i hermeneutiken och socialpsykologin och har utförts med kvalitativ intervju som metod. Fyra professionella sångare har använts som informanter.I bakgrundsavsnittet presenteras litteratur och tidigare studier kring musikerns yrkessituation, arbetstrivsel, yrkesförberedande sångutbildningar, pedagogens möjlighet till påverkan på musikstudenten och för musikern vanliga yrkesrelaterade hälsonedsättningar.Studiens resultat stödjer tidigare forskning då flera teman är överensstämmande. Denna studies resultat är dock specificerat till sångarens livsvärld till skillnad mot den tidigare forskningen som mer generellt beskriver musikerns yrkessituation.

A new curriculum, entailing news for teachers as well as students, was implemented in 2011. Among other things History has been given a more prominent position in that every student will now study the subject. Can this decision lead to history being used more in the future?The aim of this thesis is to study the new curriculum, Gy11, as well the Lpf94 and Lgy70, based on Klas-Göran Karlsson´s typology where the use of history is divided into seven different categories. I will analyze the curricula, looking at what different uses of history that can be discerned as well as what changes have been made over time.

The usage time is an important part of the specification for products powered bybatteries. The usage time is affected by a number of different elements; technical,environmental and how the product is being used. The method to determine theusage time is intended to define how measurements and calculations are to berealized along with influencing factors to keep in mind. With support from thismethod the intention is to gain control on how well the established usage time canbe expected to cohere with the real value and what affects the value.The study is done specifically for hearing protectors with battery powered built inelectronically functions. The functions can be level dependent function forambient hearing, 2-way radio communication, Bluetooth or FM-radio.The first chapter of the report describes the literature study performed in theproject.

Abstract Title:                       Grades at Primary School ? A study of local politicians' arguments in                       connection with the division into grades at Swedish primary schools.Author:                       Annie LinderUniversity of KalmarC-essay in Social StudiesAutumn 2011 The study aims to investigate local politicians' decisions since municipalities took overSwedish primary education in 1990/91. The arguments put forward in support of how stages are organised have been studied, likewise whether municipalities have acted rationally when making their decisions.Six municipalities are included in the survey. They were divided into three educational categories: lower, middle and high level schools; previous and recent schools and F9 schools with pre-schools and primary schools integrated.Minutes from politicians' and civil servants' meetings have been studied and categorised according to arguments for and against. The most common supportive arguments are about economy and organisation, others concern school premises, trends and the wish for a comprehensive compulsory school.

This essay will focus on the significance of gender in toys´ portrayed in children books for the age 3-5years. The aim for the essay, partly, is to highlight how gender stereotypes can come forth and affect children through the way toys are illustrated within children?s books. The essay will address books from two different time periods, the first period being the 40-50- 60's and the other being the 00´s. The questions to be addressed in this essay is; what type of toys? children play with in the books used in the analysis, and if a change can be detected between the different time periods in terms of gender awareness in what type of toys are presented in the books.The main method used in this essay is an iconological image analysis in which the first step is mapping, other methods used is analysis and interpretation.

During the years 2005-2007 several cases of abnormal bleeding were seen after surgery in Bengal cats on veterinary clinics and animal hospitals in Sweden. In this study we have examined if the observed bleedings are due to an inherited defect of the coagulation cascade. Ten Bengal cats were tested for activated partial thromboplastin time (P-APT-time) and one-stage protrombin time (P-PK), and nine of these cats were tested for fibrinogen quantity (P-fibrinogen). Four of the tested cats had shown signs of an abnormal bleeding after surgery, and five of the cats were genetically related to these cats. One cat had a small bleeding wound at the internal base of the right auricle.

The aim of this project was to quantify the total sleep time in modern dairy cows during24-hour periods and to investigate whether the total amount of sleep as well as timespent in different sleep stages varies between the dry period, early- and peak lactation.The distribution of sleep time between night and day was also examined. Furthermore,correlations between sleep and lying time, fluctuations in body temperature and heartbeat were included in the aim. Eight dairy cows of the Swedish Red breed were used inthis study, which was carried out between June and September 2010. In order toquantify sleep non-invasive electrophysiological recordings were performed.Simultaneously with collecting sleep data, body position and body temperature werealso recorded. No heart rate data was obtained due to difficulties of maintainingelectrodes for heart beat measurements attached to the skin.

During the 20th century Sweden faced an increased proportion of workers registered as part-time unemployed, especially in the care sector. However, due to many valuable efforts, aimed at solving the problem of part time unemployment and political decisions, the number of people who are part-time unemployed has declined since the late 20th century. We have investigated part-time workers preferential right to extending their working hours. According to Section 25 a of the Employment Protection Act, part-time employees who have submitted an interest in increasing their working hours has a preferential right to increased working hours, with the assumptions that full-time employment with the employer will meet a labor need that the employee has sufficient qualifications for.Qualitative interviews have given us information about how Karlstad Community and a private care company deal with part-time unemployment and their workers preferential right to extending their working hours. We have found that people who work for Karlstad Community have an opportunity to choose their number of workings hours, thanks to a political decision made in Karlstad Community, aimed at solving the part time unemployment in the care sector.

This addresses the problems when a film doesn?t easily fit in to one specific genre. Using No Country for Old Men as an example the study analyses the film from a Western perspective. Is it possible to say that it is a western? To determine that, I compare a number of acknowledged westerns, on the basis to list a number of generic conventions.

A mobile testing application using Unity was developed to analyse what impact button sizes and button layouts has on the accuracy of touch as well as the time to finish a labyrinth. This was tested on a Nexus 4 phone. 28 users navigated a small object through a labyrinth in which they collect keys to open the door to the exit. Each participant did the test 6 times with different combinations of button size and button layout each time, done in a random order. Hits, misses, completion time, order of button size and order of button layout was collected and then visualized using R.