Excerpt: The Islamic State Organization (ISO) will be defeated. That defeat will occur sooner rather than later. The nature of this terrorist organization suggests that preparations should now be made to minimize the carnage, loss of irreplaceable life, and cultural treasures that may without sufficient preparation accompany the final days and aftermath of ISO.

One of the key features of the hypokinetic dysarthria associated with Parkinson disease is dysprosody. While there has been ample research into the global characterization of speech in Parkinson disease, little is known about how people with Parkinson disease mark lexical stress. This study aimed to determine how people with Parkinson disease modulate pitch, intensity, duration, and vowel space to differentiate between two common lexical stress patterns in English: trochees (strong-weak pattern) and iambs (weak-strong pattern), in two syllable words. Twelve participants with mild to moderate idiopathic Parkinson disease and twelve age- and sex-matched controls completed a series of speech tasks designed to elicit token words of interest in prosodically-relevant speech tasks (picture identification (in isolation and lists) and giving directions (spontaneous speech). Results revealed that people with Parkinson disease produced a higher overall pitch and a smaller vowel space as compared to controls, though most lexical marking features were not significantly different. Importantly, the elicitation task had a significant effect on most dependent measures. Although lexical stress is not significantly impacted by Parkinson disease, we recommend that future research and clinical practice focus more on the use of spontaneous speech tasks rather than isolated words or lists of words due to the differences in the marking of lexical stress in the latter tasks, making them less useful as ecologically-valid assessments of prosody in everyday communication.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilka förändringar börsnoterade företag upplever efter konvertering till IFRS 15. Studiens vetenskapliga metod är kvalitativ forskning där datainsamlingen sker genom intervjuer. Studiens urval består av åtta respondenter från åtta olika börsnoterade företag. De utvalda respondenterna valdes på grund av sina kunskaper om IFRS 15 samt erfarenhet av FRS både före och efter implementeringen av IFRS 15. Vidare består den teoretiska referensramen av fyra organisatoriska förändringar i form av system och rapporteringssystem, interna kontroller, upplysningskrav samt kontraktsutformning. Uppsatsen har även institutionell teori som bas då den förklarar hur institutionella krafter influerar företag till att utföra förändringar. I studiens teori nämndes arbetsuppgifter som en indirekt påverkan på företag. I studien togs därmed med arbetsuppgifter som en femte förändring i den empiriska datainsamlingen. Resultat och slutsatser påvisar att majoriteten av respondenterna upplever förändring och merarbete gällande nya upplysningskrav enligt IFRS 15. Dessutom visar studien att en minoritet av respondenterna infört nya system samt interna kontroller efter konverteringen till IFRS 15. Med anledning av att samtliga företags nuvarande system och policys överensstämmer med IFRS 15, har majoriteten av respondenter upplevt att kontraktsutformning samt arbetsuppgifter förblivit oförändrade i samband med övergången till IFRS 15. / The purpose of this study is to investigate what changes listed companies experience after a transition to IFRS 15. The study's scientific method is of qualitative research where the data collection is made through interviews. The study's selection consists of eight respondents from eight different listed companies. The selected respondents were chosen because of their knowledge of IFRS 15 and experience with IFRS both before and after the implementation of IFRS 15. Furthermore, the theoretical reference framework consists of four organizational changes as in systems and reporting systems, internal controls, disclosure requirements and contract design. The study has also chosen institutional theory as the basis because it explains how institutional forces influence companies to make changes. In the theory of the study, work tasks were mentioned as an indirect impact on companies. The study therefore chose to include work tasks as a fifth change in the empirical data collection. Results and conclusions show that the majority of respondent’s experience change and additional work regarding new disclosure requirements according to IFRS 15. In addition, the study shows that a minority of respondents introduced new systems and internal controls after the transition to IFRS 15. Due to that all the companies' current systems and policies are consistent with IFRS 15, the majority of respondents’ have experienced that contract design and work tasks have remained unchanged after the transition to IFRS 15.

The Internet with its World Wide Web feature opened up a whole new frontier for language-culture learning that foreign language textbook authors have integrated into their programs. Designing tasks that progress beyond promoting learners' passive consumerism and reiteration of facts remains a goal and a challenge. Thus, three research questions characterized this study that sought to examine the on-line tasks associated with six current Spanish textbook programs. The design focused on an analysis of these tasks in light of prevailing culture learning concepts and other pedagogical paradigms posited by reputable foreign language educators to determine if they filled the gap left by textbooks in facilitating second culture acquisition. The first question asked for evidence that learners were encouraged to recognize their own cultural conditioning. Evidence was present only to a miniscule degree. The second question sought to determine the extent of opportunities provided to learn about the target culture - Hispanic - as they mirrored the objectives of the perspectives on culture learning. Low-level thinking skills and a predominance of tasks concerning products, in contrast to those concerning behavioral practices or perspectives, characterized the extent of target-culture learning. The third question sought to discover if learners were engaged in process-based tasks, whether they were prompted to identify authentic problems, suggest solutions, and apply new vii knowledge. Evidence for these situations was minimal. Additional findings revealed factual information questions to be a majority with a few tasks inviting learners to respond to hypothetical and creative situations. Results indicate that in this early stage, the World Wide Web remains an authentic venue for culture learning; however, future directions ought to include expanding the scope of adjunct tasks as they complement the multiple presentations of culture in the companion textbook chapters.

<p>This thesis examines and measures differences in effciency between L1- and L2 language use for solving referential problems. Quantitative measures used in the study were time and error frequency. Qualitative measures, such as how the tasks and the participants own performance were experienced, were measured by an post interview and two questionaires. </p><p>Two different tasks, a sorting task and a construction task, in which each informant was given the role as a constructor or instructor, were used for data gathering. A total of 20 dyads, divided in two language groups (English and Swedish) participated in the study. </p><p>The results show large differences between the two language groups in respect to time for solving the two tasks. For the construction task, these were mainly due to different communication strategies used for error handling. In the sorting task a clear learning effect can be observed for the L2-groups which, in effect, makes the L2 users solve the sorting task almost as fast as the L1 groups, after an initial learning period. However, the informants in the L2 groups generally referred to the objects used in this task by describing peripheral characteristics of these objects. They also showed more signs of uncertainty and hesitation in the actual dialogue situation. However, no differences in error frequency could be found between the two language groups. </p><p>Differences in role-taking between the language groups were also made apparent in the study. These differences became especially clear for the L2 groups in the construction task.</p>

<p>Research and development on vehicle safety has lately started to direct its focus towards how to actively support the driver and make it easier for her to drive safely through letting Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have effect on how the driver interacts with the vehicle and the surrounding traffic. This requires research on both how the driver and vehicle perform in different situations, in terms of psychology, cognition and individual differences. In addition, physical limitations and requirements of the driver and the vehicle must be taken into account. Therefore scenarios for evaluation of these systems are required. In the area of user-centered design a rather new method, Personas, is being adopted. This thesis tries to explore if the Persona method is a viable tool for creating scenarios for such evaluations. Experiences after completing this work imply that personas indeed is a viable way to include aspects and raise issues concerning individual variability and situational context in ADAS scenarios.</p>

<p>The question as to which language should be used as a medium of instruction in schools in multilingual societies is a controversial one. In South Africa, the question is often posed in binary terms: Should the medium of instruction be a familiar local language such as Xhosa or a language of wider communication like English? This study is an attempt to answer the above question. The study profiled the writing abilities of Grade 4 and Grade 7 pupils at Themba Primary, a school located in Khayelitsha in the Western Cape, in both their mother tongue, Xhosa, and in English, their official medium of instruction at school since Grade 4. Three written tasks, which consisted of a narrative piece of writing, a reading comprehension exercise, and an expository piece of writing, were administered to the pupils in English and Xhosa. The purpose of the exercise was to examine some of the implications for educational language policy of the differences in performance in the two languages. All the tasks were authentic, in that they were based on aspects of the pupils&rsquo / curriculum and written in the formal academic language pupils were expected to be exposed to in their respective grades. All the tasks were graded systematically under controlled conditions.</p>

Titel: Förklaringar till varför ersättning till VD och styrelse är olika - En studie om ersättningars form och funktion. Bakgrund: Ersättning till VD är generellt sätt högre än den ersättning en styrelse erhåller. Vi ämnar studera varför ersättningarna mellan organen skiljer sig åt i den utsträckning de gör och vad det kan bero på. Syfte: Förklara varför ersättningarnas form och funktion skiljer sig åt mellan VD och styrelse. Metod: Utgå från tidigare forskning och genomföra statistiska analyser av kontrollvariabler, för att sedan studera hur resultaten i testerna förändras när vi tillför våra egna variabler, som mäter skillnader i uppgifter hos VD och styrelse, och observera ifall signifikanta samband till ersättningarna kan utläsas. Resultat: Utifrån våra statistiska tester erhöll vi ett positivt signifikant samband med hur VD:ar har yttrat sig i VD-breven i årsredovisningarna, och VD:ns rörliga ersättning. Vilket visar på att en specifik uppgift för VD genererar en högre ersättning till denne. Detta tyder på att en skillnad i uppgifter mellan organen VD och styrelse, kan förklara varför det finns nivåskillnader i ersättningarna till de båda organen. Vidare kunde inga empiriska samband till VD:ns fasta ersättning, eller styrelsens fasta ersättning hänföras till våra variabler som mätte skillnader i uppgifter. Slutsatser: Vi kan konstatera att VD:ns rörliga ersättning påverkas av hur denne uttalat sig i VD-breven i årsredovisningarna. Vi kan från vår teoretiska referensram, härleda att detta beror på en skillnad i uppgifter mellan organen VD och styrelse. Våra teoretiska modeller konstaterar att VD och styrelse har differentierade uppgifter, vilket i sin tur påverkar hur ersättning till respektive organ kan skilja sig i utformning och nivå. / Title: Explanations as to why compensation to CEO and board of directors are different – A study about the compensations form and function. Background: Compensation to a CEO is generally higher than that of the compensation witch a board of directors receive. We intend to study why the compensation between the agencies differ in the extent that they do, and the reasons for that difference. Purpose: Explain why the compensations form and function differ between the CEO and the board of directors. Method: From existing research, we aim to execute statistical analyses of controlvariables, then study how the results of our tests alters when we insert our own variables that aim to measure the differences in functions of the CEO and the board of directors, and observe if significant relationships are to be found. Results: Based on our statistical tests, we obtained a positive significant relationship with the CEOs discloser in the CEO letters in the annual reports, and the CEOs variable compensation. This shows that a specific function of the CEO generates a higher compensation to such a position. This suggests that a difference in functions between the agencies, CEO and board of directors, may explain why there are different levels of compensations to both agencies. Furthermore, no empirical relationship of the CEOs fixed compensation, or of the board's fixed compensation could be related to our variables measuring differences in functions. Conclusions: We can conclude that the CEO's variable compensation is affected by how the CEO has expressed himself or herself in the CEO letters in the annual reports. We can, from our theoretical framework, deduce that this is due to a difference in functions between the agencies CEO and board of directors. Our theoretical models conclude that the CEO and the board of directors have differentiated tasks, which in turn can affect how the compensation to each agency may differ in form and level.

The attachment system is activated when a threat is perceived in the environment. Attachment style differences moderate the levels of this activation. Whereas anxiously attached people are more hypervigilant to attachment-related stress, avoidant people have an ability to suppress their attachment related thoughts under stressful conditions. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the subliminal presentation of threat and attachment figure primes interfere with the cognitive task performance of participants with different attachment styles. It was hypothesized that anxious participants would perform worse than secure and avoidant participants under both conditions of attachment-related threat and attachment figure primes. Avoidant participants were expected to perform poorly only when a threat prime is followed by an attachment figure prime. The securely attached participants were expected to perform better than the other attachment groups. University students (N = 225) filled out a questionnaire package including the measures of attachment figure names (WHOTO), attachment anxiety and avoidance (The Experiences in Close Relationships, ECR) / and they were administered computerized Signal Detection and Stroop tasks representing cognitive attentional performance in the laboratory. The results showed that attachment avoidance was a significant predictor of decreased cognitive performance, and attachment anxiety makes people vulnerable to cognitive performance decline only under certain circumstances of attachment system activation. Attachment security was identified to make individuals immune to the effects of threat or attachment figure availability priming on cognitive performance. The findings were discussed considering previous work and implications for cultural differences.

In 1988 Information Power: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs (IP1) was published. Ten years later an updated version, Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning (IP2) was released. The purpose of this study was to determine if school library media specialists' perceptions had changed since 1996 and if respondents' familiarity with IP2 was a factor in the development of those perceptions. Further, 37 items that were clustered based on the three primary threads of collaboration, leadership and technology developed in IP2 were used to assess changes in perceptions. An electronic survey was developed and disseminated to the population of school library media specialists in Florida. A total of 454 completed surveys were received; representing a 17% return rate. The results of the current survey were then compared to a 1996 job task analysis study. Analysis of the results showed that 60% of the respondents had never attended an in-service on IP2. Statistically significant changes in perceptions about the importance of those 37 job tasks resurveyed were also identified. Changes were identified in 10 of the 14 collaboration items, 12 of the 13 leadership items and 9 of the 10 technology items. Changes in perception were also found for tasks that the respondents considered not a part of job. For the 37 job tasks, there were 11 statistically significant positive changes and two statistically significant negative changes. The environmental variable that correlated with the largest number of the 37 job tasks related to the principal making encouraging comments to classroom teachers about using the resources of the school library media center in the planning of their curriculum units. This variable correlated significantly with 24 of the 37 job tasks. The study revealed a need for additional research in the leadership roles and traits of the school library media specialist. Further, additional research related to the effect of administrative support could inform the profession in its efforts to solidify the school library media program as an integral part of the instructional program.