Selenium (Se) is an essential trace element that is involved in several physiological functions in mammals. Mostly, Se is bound to proteins, many of them with enzymatic functions. A group of seleno-depending enzymes, glutathione peroxidases (GSH-Px?s), are important as antioxidants and protects against free radicals. The activity of GSH-Px is strongly regulated by Se storage in the liver.

For many years, the construction industry in Sweden has not developed much of an integral approach for design across disciplines. The sector?s impact on society, economics and environment is huge. To make the interactions within the construction industry more efficient, a relatively new concept called BIM (Building Information Modeling) has been introduced. The idea with BIM is that the different actors of the construction industry will work through intelligent CAD software, with common file formats and more cooperation between different actors during the various steps of the building and construction process.The technical consultancy company WSP Sweden is working actively to implement BIM within the frame of its activities.

Latvia has been an independent state twice, the first time during the years 1918-1940 and the second time from the year 1991 and ahead. During these two periods Latvia has been a destination for tourists. The aim of this study is to describe how Latvia as a destination has developed during the years of independence. One further aim is to compare what Latvia?s tourism industry looked like during the same periods to descry similarities and differences.

My main purpose for this paper was to find out what the four teachers I interviewed thought about the design of their classroom and how they linked that to pedagogy, pupils learning and policy documents. I also wanted to find out if classroom design were something they discuss and reflects on in the college.My questions for this study were: What do some teachers who work in the early ages in the school think about the classroom design? Do these teachers link the classroom design to policy documents or pedagogy? Do these teachers consider classroom design to be something that should be discussed in the same way as other factors (for example teaching aids, resources etc.) within the college?My method was to make qualitative interviews with four teachers, analyze their answers and link them to my main theories and research in the area of the study. My main theories were multimodal communication, which means that there are several systems of signs in communication, which all have an essential function for the meaning of the communicated. It also means that learning happens both individually and socially and that school is a social construction, and that the system of opportunities and boundaries in which it takes form is mediated within our multimodal systems.

Pets like dogs and cats have a considerable importance for humans and research demonstrate a variety of positive economic and social effects in society due to our pet companions. The presences of pets are increasing on a global scale with correlation to economic development in low- and middle income countries. For example dogs have doubled in India over a five year period. The feed industry for dogs and cats is also the fastest growing sector in the food industry and certain pets have a significant animal protein intake which, depending on the choice of resources may provide a high ecological footprint. Examples of environmental effects with distribution and manufacturing of pet food are increased greenhouse gas emissions, waste, use of water and energy.

Forest enterprises have always searched for ways to improve efficiency. For the past few years there has been an emphasis on stock-keeping levels. Increased demand for fresh round timber and the need to decrease the amount of tied-up capital has made the forest industry reduce its inventory levels. This has brought on a higher demand on the timber supply from the forest management districts concerning both delivery in time and assortment output. As a result, the flow of timber has fluctuated a lot with serious consequence for the timber supply during 1994.

The aim of this Master thesis was to examine how libraries at Swedish colleges and universities make Open Access journals in physics available to users. We examined if, where, and how the 50 Open Access journals that are listed in the Directory of Open Access (DOAJ) under the heading Physics (General) were made available to the public at 19 Swedish colleges and universities. We also examined possible patterns regarding qualities in the Open Access journals and to what extent the libraries made them available. For this descriptive statistic was used. The selection of library portals that were included in the study were those Swedish colleges and universities that teach physics.

This report describes the creation of an interactive text system for storing, retrieval and publishing of texts, ITS.My task was to create a GUI together with a database capable of handling text, commenting of texts, references between texts, and the capability to associate images with texts.After enough texts have been inserted into the database, there shall be an ability to generate a report out of them.The report describes the methods used when the GUI was implemented, how the database was modelled and implemented, and how the security aspects where solved.The entire project is created with the help of Java, MySQL server, Connector/J and OpenSSL.Furthermore the functions of the GUI and the future of ITS is described..

Feedback tools support electricity users within the Swedish residential sector to increase their knowledge of electricity and the electricity market as well as to become more aware of their electricity consumption, which in turn encourages a reduction and an increased flexibility of electricity use. The primary aim of this study is to identify and analyse how existing feedback tools can be improved, to ensure that they contribute efficiently to the achievement of the EU objectives congruent with a more sustainable energy system in 2030, emphasizing: greenhouse gas reduction, increased energy efficiency and an increased share of renewable energy. In order to reach the primary aim of this study, existing feedback tools have been identified and mapped and interviews with feedback tools providers have been conducted. The study is limited to three research areas: the practical functions of feedback tools, available technology and the use of feedback tools.The use of more efficient feedback tools will provide an increased success rate for energy management, which includes both behavioural changes and energy efficiency. According to the results from the interviews conducted for this study, an increased use and user frequency is important to utilise the energy management potential.

This work is a quick look at the overall quality of the teaching program at Växjö University and how the program is viewed by the students, future teachers, who attend it. This work aims to deduce how Växjö University uses it's resources to improve the overall quality of the teaching program..

During the last decade a number of studies have been published that investigate how the most fundamental aspect of political organization, the regime type, affects population health. The results unanimously show that citizens of democracies live longer and healthier lives than citizens of non-democracies. Many explanations for this have been suggested, among these are that democracies redistribute more and invest more in salutogenic resources, and that the tendency of dictatorships to control the media negatively affects the ability to spread information crucial to public health. When these mechanisms are controlled for, however, it turns out that democracy has a large residual correlation with for example life expectancy, which suggests that other mechanisms are also involved.In this paper two new mechanisms regarding the possible psychosocially mediated health effects of the regime type are investigated, namely political repression, and the possible negative effects this might have on the levels of chronic stress, and autonomy, which connects to a large previous literature in social epidemiology. In the paper an ecological cross-country design is used and country-level data, provided mainly by the World Bank and Freedom House, is analyzed with a simple multiple OLS-regression model.

Swedish dairy production has during the last decades undergone considerable structural rationalisation and the number of dairy herds has decreased to less than 7000. At the same time the average herd size has increased and a large proportion of those investing in new buildings today choose automatic milking (AM). During 2008 more than ten percent of the Swedish cows will be milked with AM. The development has been faster than expected and the need for consulting has increased rapidly. This study aims to evaluate whether a check list originating from the FRISKKO (?healthy cow?) programme can be a useful tool when assessing how well the herd functions in various areas.

Organising knowledge in a corporate environment : a case study at the development departments of Ecophon ABThe purpose of this master's thesis is to investigate how three development departments of a technical firm could organise their collection of documents and information resources to improve their management of information. Three sets of questions have been posed: 1) How does the target group of engineers deal with information, and what problems can be identified in this process? 2) What does their collection of resources consist of, how is it organised, and what problems are apparent? 3) How can principles of knowledge organisation be applied in a corporate environment?The investigation has been carried out as a case study. Three main methods of collecting empirical data have been used: surveys, unstructured interviews and collection observations. The results of the study have highlighted three major problem areas: the collection's lack of structure and searchability, the absence of policy regarding how employers should deal with information, and the inadequate knowledge among staff on how to search for, use and disseminate information.By looking at previous research on knowledge organisation, we have been able to draw conclusions regarding how the target group could organise and manage its information and knowledge in order to achieve greater efficiency in dealing with information and carrying out work tasks.

The main point in this diploma work lies to a beginning on analysis of the existingmodel of WoodEye scanner. The analysis aims to forming a view and understanding ofhow the scanner is designed and how it functions, and certain conditions around thescanner. On the basis of the result from the analysis and obvious criteria, has a numberconcept proposals been put forward. The concept proposals has then been evaluated andbeen compared with current concept, obvious criteria and compared to each other. Thebest proposal has then been developed far to a completed concept..

Families with limited financial resources risk social exclusion in today?s consumption-based society, where status and identity are tied to items like clothing, gifts and activities. Limited financial resources can therefore often lead to social isolation because consumption is central to social participation, something that can rarely be prioritized in poor families. In preschool, unclear policies on extra costs can negatively affect families. The purpose of the study was to investigate how socioeconomically vulnerable families experience and are affected by the preschool and its requirements, as well as how preschool teachers work to reduce the economic gap among families in the preschool context.