Listening has proved to be a difficult skill to teach in the language classroom. Research has shown that pre-listening activities, or those activities done with students prior to listening, can have an effect on listening comprehension outcomes. This research addressed the effectiveness of two types of pre-listening activities: top-down and bottom-up. Volunteers from intermediate level courses taught at Brigham Young University were divided into two treatment groups and a control group. The treatment groups followed a mixed models design by each going through a top-down and bottom-up pre-listening activity, followed by listening to a passage in Mandarin Chinese and taking a multiple-choice test. The bottom-up activity chosen for this research was a vocabulary preview activity, with an advance organizer being chosen for the top-down activity. Results showed both treatment groups significantly outperformed the control group for both the top-down and bottom-up activities (p=0.0123 and p=0.0181 respectively). No significant difference existed in scores between top-down and bottom-up activities (p=0.9456). It was determined that both the vocabulary activity and the advance organizer helped to increase the listening comprehension of intermediate level students of Mandarin Chinese.

A problem with the city is that urban development, for the last decades, has neglected the human scale. Since capitalism and modernism the focus has shifted towards the modern man, a new rational being separated from nature rather than nature being an ever present part of life. Adopting an architecture where form follows function. Focus is on designing for the market and economy which has generated a culture of consumption and capitalist cities plagued by environmental issues and social inequality and cities are not fulfilling essential needs of a big portion of the people living there. Our culture and cities have ecological ramifications that extend beyond its borders disrupting the very basic needs of human life.  Architecture must be designed for the collective rather than the ego. Rather than the few designing for the many, people should be a part of the making and remaking of the city and society. Design and architecture should rediscover our place in ecosystems and learn from nature how to adapt and be transformable. It should be inclusive, participatory and comprehensive to improve resilience.  Building laboratory explores how design and architecture can become mutalistic by including, teaching and learning from the inhabitants. Constructing by using simple strategies and local material.

It has been widely acknowledged that environmental damage and changes in the global climate can be attributed to human activities. In their attempt to deal with these issues, current top down approaches to mitigate climate change not only have limited efficacy, but also fail at changing people’s behaviour. In this thesis, we argue that bottom up initiatives can be more successful at engaging people in pro-environmental behaviour change and action than the current top down strategies. The potential of bottom up actions to encourage such change and action is first assessed in literature. A more specific perspective of bottom up initiatives is looked at in which pro-environmental behaviour is encouraged and observed through the lens of urbanism. A practical event on sustainability, co-organized by the authors of this paper at KTH Campus, is then taken as a case study to test and verify if bottom up actions can bring about change in behaviours and generate public engagement in public spaces. The results show that bottom up actions have great potential to reach the community and engage people into sustainable practices. As it was positive and solution-oriented, but also accessible, participative and fun, the event easily attracted people’s attention and interest. The stimulating environment then facilitates the process of sharing and learning information and consequently, it also increases the chances of influencing behaviour change and action.

Background: The traditional view of leadership focuses on the role and responsibilities of the superior. This becomes problematic as sustainable leadership should focus on a shared process. Furthermore, the focus is often on economic sustainability before ecological and social sustainability. Over time, however, the focus has shifted more to the leadership process where both superiors and subordinates are in focus and where a holistic perspective of all three dimensions of sustainability has become important. However, the knowledge of bottom- up influence needs to be developed to gain a further understanding of the subject in its whole. This study is a further step towards this changed focus and contributes to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of influence. Research question: How do subordinates influence superiors in a sustainability context from a superior and subordinate perspective? Aim: The aim is to describe the bottom-up impact that exists within a sustainability context from a superior and subordinate perspective. Method: To answer the research question, an inductive research approach and qualitative method have been used. A comparative case study of a collective case of three superiors and a collective case of six subordinates has been conducted. The empirical data has been collected through qualitative interviews. Conclusions: The conclusions that this study arrives at are shown in model 4.3 where we get a description of how “leadership with a focus on sustainability” can be achieved. Furthermore, model 4.3 creates an understanding of how superiors can open up for a bottom-up influence and how subordinates can make it possible to be able to influence. Above all, through the relationship between superiors and subordinates, but also based on subordinates' knowledge, the possibility of a bottom-up influence is created. The study shows the importance of the interaction between superiors and subordinates and serves as a complement to previous research on leadership, influence and sustainability. / Bakgrund: Den traditionella synen på ledarskap fokuserar på den överordnades roll och ansvar. Detta blir problematiskt då hållbart ledarskap bör fokusera på en delad process. Vidare ligger fokusen ofta kring en ekonomisk hållbarhet före en ekologisk och social hållbarhet. Med tiden har fokusen dock gått över mer till ledarskapsprocessen där både överordnade och underordnade är i fokus och där ett helhetsperspektiv av alla tre dimensioner av hållbarhet har blivit viktigt. Emellertid behöver kunskapen om nedifrån-upp påverkan utvecklas för att få en förståelse för helheten. Denna studie är ett ytterligare steg mot denna ändrade fokus och bidrar till en djupare förståelse av fenomenet påverkan. Forskningsfråga: Hur påverkar underordnade överordnade inom en hållbarhetskontext utifrån ett överordnad och underordnad perspektiv? Syfte: Syftet är att beskriva den nedifrån-upp påverkan som finns inom en hållbarhetskontext utifrån ett överordnad och underordnad perspektiv. Metod: För att besvara forskningsfrågan har en induktiv forskningsansats och kvalitativ metod använts. En komparativ fallstudie av ett kollektivt fall av tre överordnade och ett kollektivt fall av sex underordnade har genomförts. Empirin kopplat till fallen har insamlats genom kvalitativa intervjuer. Slutsatser: Slutsatserna som denna studie kommer fram till visas i modell 4.3 där vi får en beskrivning av hur “ledarskap med fokus på hållbarhet” kan uppnås. Vidare skapar modell 4.3 en förståelse för hur överordnade kan öppna upp för en nedifrån-upp påverkan och hur underordnade kan möjliggöra för att kunna påverka. Genom framför allt relationen mellan överordnade och underordnade men även utifrån underordnades kunskap så skapas möjligheten för en nedifrån-upp påverkan. Studien visar vikten av samspelet mellan överordnade och underordnade och fungerar som ett komplement till tidigare forskning av ledarskap, påverkan och hållbarhet.

The initiation, bloom, and bust of harmful Cyanobacteria and algae blooms (HAB) in lakes are controlled by top-down and bottom-up ecological controls. Excess phosphorous and nitrogen inputs from anthropogenic sources are primary to blame, but eukaryotic grazers may also promote or curb Cyanobacteria dominance. We tracked shifts in bacterial composition, lake chemistry, and eukaryotic grazing community weekly or bi-weekly through spring and summer and modeled the causes of specific Cyanobacterial species blooms and busts across three lakes in Utah, USA, with differing lake trophic states. Regardless of trophic status, all three lakes experienced blooms of varying composition and duration. Aphanizomenon strain MDT14a was the most dominant species in every bloom on Utah Lake, comprising up to 44.16% of the bacterial community. Utah Lake experienced a total of 18 blooms across all sites ranging in duration from one to six weeks. Phormidiaceae sp. (8.5  6.1%) and Microcystis sp. (9.7  4.7%) were the most abundant species in the Deer Creek bloom. Deer creek experienced one bloom at the beginning of fall. Nodularia sp. (9.7  2.1) dominated Great Salt Lake bloom. The Great Salt Lake experienced four separate blooms during the summer months that lasted one to three weeks. Phosphorous concentrations on Utah Lake varied across site and season. Nitrate concentrations on Deer Creek increased over season with a ten-fold increase in concentration. We characterized Cyanobacteria blooms as either bloom communities (growing populations of Cyanobacteria) or as bust communities (declining populations of Cyanobacteria). Using these designations, we modeled the growth and decline of the Cyanobacteria populations across season with top-down and bottom up-controls. Based on generalized least-squared modeling, eukaryotic grazing does not affect relative Cyanobacteria abundances as much as nutrient limitations. Aphanizomenom strain MDT14a was positively correlated with temperature (P < 0.028) and the concentration of K (P = 0.007) and negatively correlated with increases in conductivity (P = 0.0088). Microcystis was positively correlated with increasing levels of SRP (P < 0.001) and negatively correlated with higher Ca concentrations (P = 0.008) and PP (P = 0.008). Busts of Microcystis were related to decreases in nitrate (P = 0.06) and lower total lake depths (P = 0.03). Phormidiaceae sp. relative abundance was negatively correlated with higher levels of TDN (P = 0.01-0.001) and Mg (P = 0.01) and positively correlated with higher S concentrations (P = 0.007). Our findings suggest that micronutrients and more bioavailable forms of P may potentially allow Cyanobacteria to break dormancy and proliferate HAB communities.

Sample preparation is the most critical step in proteomics as it directly affects the subset of proteins and peptides that can be reliably identified and quantified. Although a variety of efficient and reproducible sample preparation strategies have been developed, their applicability and efficacy depends much on the biological sample. Here, three approaches were evaluated for the human milk and plasma proteomes. Protein extracts were digested either in an ultrafiltration unit (filter-aided sample preparation, FASP) or in-solution (ISD). ISD samples were desalted by solid-phase extraction prior to nRPC-ESI-MS/MS. Additionally, milk and plasma samples were directly digested by FASP without prior protein precipitation. Each strategy provided inherent advantages and disadvantages for milk and plasma. FASP appeared to be the most time efficient procedure with a low miscleavage rate when used for a biological sample aliquot, but quantitation was less reproducible. A prior protein precipitation step improved the quantitation by FASP due to significantly higher peak areas for plasma and a much better reproducibility for milk. Moreover, the miscleavage rate for milk, the identification rate for plasma, and the carbamidomethylation efficiency were improved. In contrast, ISD of both milk and plasma resulted in higher miscleavage rates and is therefore less suitable for targeted proteomics.

Material flows in Urban Metabolism play a key role for the purpose of building urban areas and growing the economy. There is lack of standard method for accounting of material flows within and across the boundaries of urban systems. This thesis aims to assess the Urban Metabolism of small-scale urban area through the application of the Economic Wide Material Flow Analysis and enhance the scope of the method by adding water flows, which could potentially become a basis for the development of the method in the future. First, the application of the Economic Wide Material Flow Analysis in urban areas was studied through a literature review and then the enhanced Economic Wide Material Flow Analysis was applied to Stockholm Royal Seaport using bottom-up data. Using bottom-up data resulted in detailed information, however, full comparison between urban areas was not possible due to data gaps. The results showed the importance of the method for enhancing Urban Metabolism analysis and amending resource management. Spotting available secondary and recycled resources in the socioeconomic system as a part of application of the method is beneficial to sustain the natural resources use. Since still the method is developing for small-scale urban areas, a mixture of this method and other recommended methods by having focus on data collection is suggested for integrating databases and comprehensive analysis. / Under de senaste decennierna har stadsområden expanderat snabbare än tidigare. Genom att öka människors tendens att bo i stora städer kommer naturresurser att behövas för att tillgodose stadsområdens växande behov. Materialflöden i stadsmetabolismen spelar en nyckelroll för att bygga miljövänligt och växande ekonomin. Det saknas en standardmetod för redovisning av materialflöden inom och över gränserna för stadssystem. Denna avhandling syftar till att utvärdera stadsmetabolismen genom att använda tillämpning av bred ekonomisk materialflödesredovisning och förbättra metodens omfattning genom att lägga till vatten- och genomströmningsflöden som potentiellt kan bli bas för utvecklingen av metoden i framtiden. Först studerades tillämpningen av ekonomiskt bred materialflödesredovisning i urbana områden genom litteraturöversikt och sedan tillämpades den förbättrade analysen av ekonomiskt bred materialflöde på Norra Djurgårdsstaden med hjälp av bottom-up data. Att använda bottom-up-data resulterade i detaljerad information, men fullständig jämförelse mellan stadsområden var inte möjlig på grund av dataklyftan Resultaten visade vikten av materialflödesredovisning för att förbättra urban metabolismanalys och ändra resurshantering. Att hitta tillgängliga sekundära och återvunna resurser i det socioekonomiska systemet som en del av tillämpningen av metoden är fördelaktigt för att upprätthålla användningen av naturresurser. Eftersom metoden fortfarande utvecklas för småskaliga stadsområden föreslås en blandning av denna metod och andra rekommenderade metoder såsom, livscykelbedömning, genom att fokusera på datainsamling för att integrera databas och omfattande analys.