L'analyse et l'approximation de solutions des Equations Differentielles Stochastiques (E.D.S.) possédant des coefficients discontinus est un sujet qui n'a pas ete traité de facon pleinement satisfaisante. Ce problème devient particulierement motivant lorsque l'on cherche à approcher, par des méthodes de Monte-Carlo, les solutions de certaines Equations aux Derivées Partielles (E.D.P) qui font également intervenir des coefficients discontinus. C'est par exemple le cas, bien connu en Physique, des E.D.P.s avec opérateur sous forme divergence (O.F.D.) dont les coefficients sont discontinus et que nous étudions dans ce mémoire : les discontinuités traduisent alors les irrégularités du milieu dans lequel évolue le système étudié. Cette thèse propose de nouveaux résultats pour l'analyse et l'approximation de solutions des E.D.S. qui sont reliées à un O.F.D. dont les coefficients sont discontinus. Les aspects statistiques des modèles en jeu sont également étudiés.

<p>Institution: Halmstad University/School of Teacher Education (LUT)</p><p>Course: C-level paper, 15 credits</p><p>Term: Spring 2010</p><p>Title: Two Sides of the Same Coin - A study of EFL-teachers knowledge regarding the divergences between British and American English; and the challenges which arise from having more than one accepted variety of English in EFL teaching.</p><p>Pages: 41</p><p>Writer: Linda Jensen</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to ascertain if Swedish EFL teachers have sufficient knowledge regarding the differences between BrE and AmE, the two major varieties of English. Furthermore, I aim to examine what challenges are created when two models of English, BrE and AmE, are accepted in upper secondary schools in Sweden.</p><p>Method: A quantitative web-based survey.Material: Questionnaire filled in by 59 EFL teachers in upper secondary schools in Halland, Sweden.</p><p>Main results: Upper secondary EFL teachers in Halland, Sweden do appear to have a basic knowledge of the differences between BrE and AmE and as such a majority placed themselves in the correct category. However, there is a lack of consistency and all the teachers mixed the two varieties to some extent. The challenges that arise from having two accepted varieties in Swedish schools are amongst other things the question of the consistency rule, dealing with the value system associated with British and American English and the question of whether Mid-Atlantic English should be accepted as a third educational standard.</p><p>Keywords: British English, American English, Mid-Atlantic English, divergence, EFL, consistency, challenges, value system.</p>

<p>The purpose of this study is to research into the role of the citizen and the educational system in Sweden throughout periods of time based on previous theoretic works, and also to deepen the understanding of students with special needs in Swedish education focusing on the primary school years. This shall be carried out by illustrating the different points of view and choices within the educational system that are at hand for students with concentration difficulties and social difficulties.</p><p>I will analyze these points through a cultural and social perspective on contemporary society in order to contribute towards today’s discourse on the norm. The result of this empirical investigation presents a dilemma existing in the democratic educational system of today. Nationally and internationally, the educational system has been structured around a normative system containing both rights and duties that effect everyone working within it. It is not seldom that the rights of the individual collide with collective duties within the school.</p><p>This study shows that the educational system, and society at large, is founded upon a norm shaping the way people exist, behave and act within its boundaries. When an individual cannot live up to it’s ideals society perceives this as a fault that needs correcting. The students that cannot live up to the standards and the ideas of the system become marginalised in society. These students become exposed to various tests performed by the school’s professionals as a means to redefining the individual in question</p>

<p>This study deals with the phenomenon of European integration and its impact on national party programs in Poland, a current member state of the European Union. The author will argue that the question of European integration has left a mark on the political party programs of two mainstream domestic parties on opposite sides of the ideological dimension, in the form of a certain degree of convergence regarding the “European issue”. Relating the result of the analysis to the theoretical structure of Europeanization and sociological institutional change, the essay will attempt to show a possible link between them. Although this trend does not seem to indicate any dramatic effects of the membership per se in the programs (the national arena seems, in most cases, be of more value for party activities) there is an indirect effect in the form of the presence of Europarties and a pronounced incentive for social and economic adaptation.</p>

<p>This PhD thesis consists of an introduction and five papers, dealing with statistical methods in phylogenetics.</p><p>A phylogenetic tree describes the evolutionary relationships among species assuming that they share a common ancestor and that evolution takes place in a tree like manner. Our aim is to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships from aligned DNA sequences.</p><p>In the first two papers we investigate two measures of confidence for likelihood based methods, bootstrap frequencies with Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Bayesian posterior probabilities. We show that an earlier claimed approximate equivalence between them holds under certain conditions, but not in the current implementations of the two methods.</p><p>In the following two papers the divergence times of the internal nodes are considered. The ML estimate of the divergence time of the root is improved if longer sequences are analyzed or if more taxa are added. We show that the gain in precision is faster with longer sequences than with more taxa. We also show that the algorithm of the software package PATHd8 may give biased estimates if the global molecular clock is violated. A change of the algorithm to obtain unbiased estimates is therefore suggested.</p><p>The last paper deals with non-informative priors when using the Bayesian approach in phylogenetics. The term is not uniquely defined in the literature. We adopt the idea of data translated likelihoods and derive the so called Jeffreys' prior for branch lengths using Jukes Cantor model of evolution.</p>

Two experimental projects involving perovskite manganese oxide compounds are presented. The first involved dielectric and transport studies of the insulator-metal transition as a function of charge-carrier doping in La1-xCaxMnO3 (0 < x < 0.15) bulk samples. The results provide new insight into the role of competing magnetic, lattice and Coulomb energies in determining the insulator-metal transition near x=0.22. The second project involved the growth, structural characterization, and resistive anisotropy of a-axis oriented Nd0.2Sr0.8MnO3 thin films with thicknesses t in the range 10 nm< t < 150 nm. Thicker films develop regular crack arrays which are the origin of a highly anisotropic in-plane electrical resistance. These cracks form parallel to the crystallographic c-axis on films with tensile strain deposited on NdGaO3 (100) and La0.3Sr0.7Al0.65Ta0.35O3 (110) substrates. Films grown under compressive strain on LaAlO3 (110) substrates have no cracks.

Individuals within a single population can vary widely in their phenotype e.g. in their body shape. These differences are an important source of biodiversity and they can precede evolutionary divergence within a population. In this thesis we use the biological invasion of the zebra mussels into Swedish lakes to investigate which processes create or maintain phenotypic diversity within populations of the two native fish species perch and roach and the mussel itself. Both fishes have specially adapted body shapes that depend on whether they feed in the near-shore or open-water habitat of lakes. This habitat-specific divergence was more pronounced in lakes with zebra mussels, probably because resources in both habitats were in higher supply due to the mussels’ effects on the lakes. Divergence in perch body shapes between habitats was also higher in lakes with a higher water clarity, suggesting that visual conditions can affect the resource use and thus also the expression of a habitat-specific body shape. When investigating the diversity of body shapes in the mussel itself we found that mussels from one lake changed their shell shape when exposed to different predators: fish predators induced a more elongated shell shape while crayfish predators induced a rounder shell. These specific shell shapes probably serve as two alternative predator defenses protecting the mussel from predation. We conclude that the availability and use of distinct resources is an important source of diversity within populations. Abiotic conditions can play a previously underappreciated role by promoting or impairing the use of the distinct resources thus affecting the divergence. The diversity of shell shapes we found in the zebra mussels complements our study by demonstrating that not only consumer responses to resources but also resources’ responses to predators can generate phenotypic diversity.

This PhD thesis consists of an introduction and five papers, dealing with statistical methods in phylogenetics. A phylogenetic tree describes the evolutionary relationships among species assuming that they share a common ancestor and that evolution takes place in a tree like manner. Our aim is to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships from aligned DNA sequences. In the first two papers we investigate two measures of confidence for likelihood based methods, bootstrap frequencies with Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Bayesian posterior probabilities. We show that an earlier claimed approximate equivalence between them holds under certain conditions, but not in the current implementations of the two methods. In the following two papers the divergence times of the internal nodes are considered. The ML estimate of the divergence time of the root is improved if longer sequences are analyzed or if more taxa are added. We show that the gain in precision is faster with longer sequences than with more taxa. We also show that the algorithm of the software package PATHd8 may give biased estimates if the global molecular clock is violated. A change of the algorithm to obtain unbiased estimates is therefore suggested. The last paper deals with non-informative priors when using the Bayesian approach in phylogenetics. The term is not uniquely defined in the literature. We adopt the idea of data translated likelihoods and derive the so called Jeffreys' prior for branch lengths using Jukes Cantor model of evolution.

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Institution: Halmstad University/School of Teacher Education (LUT) Course: C-level paper, 15 credits Term: Spring 2010 Title: Two Sides of the Same Coin - A study of EFL-teachers knowledge regarding the divergences between British and American English; and the challenges which arise from having more than one accepted variety of English in EFL teaching. Pages: 41 Writer: Linda Jensen Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to ascertain if Swedish EFL teachers have sufficient knowledge regarding the differences between BrE and AmE, the two major varieties of English. Furthermore, I aim to examine what challenges are created when two models of English, BrE and AmE, are accepted in upper secondary schools in Sweden. Method: A quantitative web-based survey.Material: Questionnaire filled in by 59 EFL teachers in upper secondary schools in Halland, Sweden. Main results: Upper secondary EFL teachers in Halland, Sweden do appear to have a basic knowledge of the differences between BrE and AmE and as such a majority placed themselves in the correct category. However, there is a lack of consistency and all the teachers mixed the two varieties to some extent. The challenges that arise from having two accepted varieties in Swedish schools are amongst other things the question of the consistency rule, dealing with the value system associated with British and American English and the question of whether Mid-Atlantic English should be accepted as a third educational standard. Keywords: British English, American English, Mid-Atlantic English, divergence, EFL, consistency, challenges, value system.