In a school for children from 6-9 years in a small town in the southeast of Sweden, is areading activity program in progress since 8 years. The original purpose of this program wasto enhance the student?s reading interest. All of the students read at least one book a week andthen they review the book in front of the class.The purpose of the present study was to examine vocabulary, word retrieving, narrative skillsand grammatical abilities in children in this school. The objectives were to investigate if thechosen language abilities in these children were different compared to normative data andearlier studies in children at comparable ages.

Public participation is a key aspect in the planning of Swedish municipalities. It is probably the most important tool of them all in the planning towards a sustainable future within the cities and the municipalities as a whole. Participation from the public can take on several different forms. In this paper I focus to research and discuss in and around the usage of a web-based 3D platform called City Planner. The tool allows the user (the public) to view the municipalities planning in a fairly new (but quickly growing) environment.

This study examines the use of building modeling and energy simulations in the design process  of  a  building.  The  take-off  point  is  the  notion  of  energy  simulations  being needed early and throughout the building design process, and that the lack of energy simulations may be explained by the fact that they are time consuming and therefore often too expensive. A greater interoperability between software tools used by relevant disciplines,  such  as  the  architect  and  the  energy  specialist,  would  create  smoother workflows, which would reduce this cost and open up for more frequent and iterative energy  simulation  processes.  The  study  is  an  assessment  of  the  modeling  tool  Revit and  the  simulation  tool  Virtual  Environment  and  whether  they  can  create  smoother workflows, and make leeway for a more frequent use of energy simulations throughout the  design  process.  It  also  investigates  the  limitations  of  what  can  be  examined  by simulations in Virtual Environment. This will hopefully help clarify the future role of energy  simulations  in  design  processes.  The  method  is  a  trial  by  error  approach  of testing the two software tools by building and simulating a model. The results of these tests  show  that  the  workflow  is  not  optimal  (and  therefore  time  consuming)  for frequent  and  iterative simulations  throughout the  design  process,  but  it  also  reveals some  great  possibilities  of  what  can  be  performed  with  these  two  powerful  tools  at hand.  Further  development  with  regards  on  platform  independency  of  the  building information  model,  including  seamless  exporting  and  importing,  seems  necessary  to strengthen the future role of energy simulations..

The purpose of this work is to raise ideas and interest for land that is very much forgotten,unused and neglected in terms of maintenance and usability. Railroads are often seen as adirty and loud intrusion in the landscape and therefore cities turn their backs on them. Theland around railroads is not considered useful despite its often central location and scrublandis common in these areas.The starting point of this work is the restrictions and possibilities linked to the land withinthe security distance 30 meters from the railroad center. Within this security distance thereare numerous limitations and regulations due to the nature of railroad use. These limitationsare counted for in the initial chapter and lay the foundation for the rest of the work.

Problem: Den svenska bankmarknaden befinner sig under förändring. Och i takt med att världen med hjälp av tekniska innovationer blir mindre, blir det också lättare för globala storföretag att etablera sig på nya marknader. Konkurrensen tenderar att öka bland Sveriges banker och det kan leda till att det blir enklare för bankkunder att välja en annan bank. Nu är det upp till bankerna själva att erbjuda tjänster och produkter som motsvarar kundernas krav. Syfte: Uppsatsen ska undersöka attityder samt belysa vikten av relationer och förtroende till personliga rådgivare i banker.

This study has focused on testing the following two hypotheses:? Pest resistant plants have higher levels and/or several different kinds of secondary metabolites. ? Induced defensive systems in resistant plants are activated more rapidly than those of susceptible plants. As a background for the test of the hypotheses a short literature study was performed concerning plant defensive mechanisms in Arabidopsis thaliana.

The forestry companies? operational planning process is these days dependent on reliable, efficient and user-friendly computer-based support systems. This study is an evaluation of Holmen Skog's current computer-based systems. The aim of this study is to: ? investigate the work pattern of the production managers when using the information system to plan the harvesting operation; ? investigate the efficiency and user friendliness of the information system with the different work patterns and to find the strengths, weaknesses and bottlenecks in the current system; ? find out if the type of object, the volume, the area of the harvesting object affects the time and work pattern; ? examine how this type of study is met by the employees and what factors that is critical to avoid feelings of intrusion. The conclusions of the study were: ? there is a large variation between the work patterns of the production managers and the time spend to perform the operational planning; ? the mainframe computer system used by Holmen Skog is clear, has short response times, is robust and conveys relevant information; ? the computer systems are however divided in many subsystems.

This thesis work resulted in a template for how the thermal spray process can be controlled through robot programs. The robots today and their programs need to be replaced, therefore a new structure which can be matched with the new robot systems is needed. The work is limited to only concern structured programming on the new robots on Thermal Spray Centre (TC) with the programming language Rapid. The basic data for the program was retrieved from interviews with concerned personnel at TC, from studies on process parameters for thermal spray and from existing specifications at Volvo Aero Corporation (VAC). The thesis work briefly describes the process thermal spray and the four methods used at VAC.

This project details the process of converting and transferring a turn-based paper prototype to a digital real-time format. The projects goals were to see how well the original feeling could be transferred to real-time and how the transition itself went. The project have been completed with the help of the programmer Mikael Gullberg. The practical part of the project was executed between the dates of 25/4 ? 2/5.

Reading old handwritten documents can be a real challenge for genealogists, especially as some documents in Sweden are written in the old German alphabet that is not used today. Much research has been done on how to enable computers to read old handwritten documents, but computers have so far not reached the level of reading that expert humans have. The focus seems to be on the computers reading the document with or without the help of human experts, with the aim of making the documents available in easily read form. I have, however, not found any research on how computers can help non-expert humans trying to read handwritten documents. In this project I have focused especially on beginning genealogists as reading gets easier with practice, and you need the help more in the beginning. By conducting interviews and observations with genealogists I established that reading is an issue and that there are many factors involved that make it difficult to read.

Eco-design is all about improving products environmental performances throughout the products lifecycle by including the environmental aspect into the product development process. There are a large number of different tools that can be used for this, but there are several factors that can affect which one will be the best to use. Some tools for eco-design takes comprehensive studies and can only be performed by experts, while some tools can be used more time- and cost efficient and with basic knowledge. The choice of tool should be based on the company?s situation.This report describes the research of how the design and furniture company Blå Station could include a tool for eco-design in their product development process.

The Animal Protection Agency was in 2006, commissioned by the Government to: Evaluate how free range animals in the winter, can be kept and managed with special emphasis to animal welfare. The Animal Protection Agency was closed later in 2006 and the commission moved to the Swedish Board of Agriculture. The keeping of free range out wintered cattle, certain basic requirement are needed: by regulation, cattle should have access to a lying hall or other building that gives protection against aversive weather and wind and should offer a dry and clean lying area. There is a possibility for farmers that get an exemption from this regulation. But cases regarding farms which have had difficulties for this exemption has led to a discussion about if the animals can get the same protection in the nature which is comparable to a lying- hall.

The aims of the study were to investigate the prevalence and antibiotic resistance of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli in chicken and chicken products, and to investigate farmer awareness of antibiotic resistance development. The study was conducted in the Can Tho province in Vietnam during six weeks in October to November 2008. Ninety-six samples from raw chickens were collected from twelve market places and analysed for the presence of Campylobacter. A total of 96 cloacal swabs from 20 farms were obtained and analysed for the presence of Campylobacter. Farmers were asked to answer eight questions concerning the housing of the chickens, modes of handling sick animals as well as use and knowledge of antibiotics and resistance development to antibiotics.

The aim of this study was to, using previously collected data from self-declared antisocial behaviour questionnaires, examine if the crime frequency has been different between adolescents that have either been referred to two different forms of open care in social service, child and youth psychiatric inpatient care or have been sent to Homes for Specialised Supervision. The criminality frequency and the most common crimes committed were compared between the study groups and further between genders in each particular study group. Statistical significance testing was used and the results of the survey revealed that juvenile delinquents that had committed severe criminal acts were represented in all four groups. The study group with adolescents in national care was the most different from other groups. These youths seemed to have had a lower crime frequency than the other groups with the exception assault and robbery.

The thesis was performed at Forsmarks Kraftgrupp AB in the department ofmechanical engineering, FTCM. Forsmark nuclear power plant has had problems with cracks in some of the controlrods which are placed in the reactor at Forsmark 3. To investigate the cause of this,material samples were taken from five of the damaged control rods. This sampling ofthe rods resulted too short rods to be transported in the shipping container to theinterim storage facility for used nuclear fuel in Oskarshamn. Control rods are crucial components in a nuclear reactor, regulating the reactoreffect by blocking or unblocking fuel rods. Control rods which have been in thereactor are always handled under water in order to protect against the radiation theyemit. The task was to design a control rod adapter that extends the control rod sotransport can be performed from Forsmark. The goal of the work was a complete setof blueprints so the control rod adapter can be manufactured and mounted on theshort control rods and then be transported to the interim storage facility. The work began with mapping of how control rods normally being handled from thereactor to the interim storage facility.