My work has resulted in an interactive search engine for plants that can be found at www.plantit.se. In the work process I have searched for which search criteria is most important when doing searches on woodland plants. I have done this by an analysis of existing databases and with an survey where leading plant expertise answered questions about woodland plants. I analyzed three search pages that are on the internet today Havenet.dk, Backyardgardener.com and Den virtuella floran. I concluded that there are several flaws but also many positive aspects that I have used when developing the interface of my page. The survey resulted in the basis for my search criteria the answers listed the most important factors when planting woodland plants. From this information I developed a system with five values on every criteria.

This study is about how changed light conditions induce dormancy in plants. It is divided in two parts. First a literature study where quantification of light, the concept dormancy, photoperiod and light quality are discussed. Second an experimental part, where the importance of light for sprouting capacity in root buds of perennial sow thistle (Sonchus arvensis L.) is investigated.In the science in how flowering in plants are induced the concepts short day/long day plants and light dominant/dark dominant are well-established. These concepts can also be applied to how light induce dormancy in plants.

The obesity problem in the world is growing bigger and today even our companion animals are becoming heavier. In this paper the importance of a balanced diet for the companion animal is emphasised. There are many disadvantages for the animal and for the owner if the animal becomes obese and it is important to stress the facts on what the consequences might be. There are several medical conditions connected to obesity and a short summary of these will be discussed. It is often easier to prevent obesity rather than loosing the overweight and some ideas of how to do this is looked in to. In many veterinary clinics today, the veterinary nurse is the first and sometimes the only person to see the animal.

The aim of this paperisto find out which plants the Cistercian monks might have cultivated in Sweden during the Middle Ages and which types of plants it would have been practical to grow inside or outside of the Cistercian monastery precinct. Archaeologicaland archaeobotanical studies have been consulted to find out which plants were available in Sweden during the Middle Ages. Examples, mainly from Scandinavia, but also from the continent, are used to show that the monasteries were large institutionsthat had to feed a large number of people and that there would not have been enough space to cultivate everything needed within the monastery precinct.Secondary sources have in the main been used to gather this information, except in the case of the Swedish monastery of Nydala where F-Topo, a database developed by the County Museum of Jönköping,has been used to analyse the amount of land and the types of properties owned by the monastery.The conclusion is that for practical reasons the monks would have cultivated plants that needed to be close at hand, that were rare or delicate, that could not be stored for long periods and that were used in small quantities within the monastery precinct. This would include medicinal plants, herbs for cooking and some vegetables like lettuce, spinach,and similar,that do not keep well. Most other items, grains, cabbages, root vegetables, peas and beans could equally well be cultivated outside the walls.

The purpose of this report is to examine the possibilities to decrease the number of insects and other pathogens in a crop of pak choi (Brassica rapa), grown with different types of cover and living mulches. Included in the report is a study of literature where amongst others, a summary on the vegetable pak choi and theories of living mulches and different kind of covers are to be found. To examine the amount of predators in the field, traps were used. During the autumn 2002 the tests were conducted in Alnarp. The pak choi and the living mulches were planted/sawn at the same time, the different covers were also applied at this time. The total experiment was divided into six different treatments (plus control) of which three were with covers and three were with living mulches. Once a week the number of leaves, the height and damages were read on ten of the plants from each parcel.

Problems: How does Volvos CE: s four Swedish plants work with investment appraisals? Does the work differ between the plants? If differences exist, what can be improved in order to make the work more uniform?  Purpose: To map the work with investment appraisals at Volvo CE: s four Swedish plats, to analyze differences in work between the plants and give proposals to a more homogenous working.Method: A method of qualitative nature. The study mainly contains raw data from semi structured interviews. Secondary data, such as internal policy documents and documentation of completed investment projects, has supplemented the raw data. Analysis: The mapping shows significant differences in work with investments between Volvo CE: s Swedish plants.

Discharge of inadequately treated waste water containing nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen as well as organic matter and bacteria is associated with a risk of eutrophication and contamination. The Swedish government has decided upon several Environmental Quality Objectives aiming to reduce the emissions of nutrients to water bodies.In Sweden, there are between 675 000 to 1 000 000 on-site sewage systems. Recent studies have shown that the function of small sewage treatment plants is in many cases insufficient. To prevent this regular service and supervision by a professional is needed. The focus of this study are small sewage treatment plants which use a technique where mechanical, chemical and/or biological reduction of pollutants is being used in the same facility to reduce nutrients in household wastewater.The aim of the study is to investigate how different municipalities ensure that small sewage treatment plants fulfill the requirements and reduce pollutants as efficient as the manufacturers claim.

The purpose of this study was to compare naturally regenerated Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris (L.)) against seeded Scots pine in terms of benefits and differences. An inventory was performed at a number of different sites, 4 ? 6 years after soil scarification and data on the number of new established plants, their height growth as well as ground-line diameter was collected. Information about site conditions such as altitude, quarter exposure and frost risk was also collected. A review of previous studies was conducted in addition to the field study.

What makes a Swede betake himself into the Chinese wilderness? How does the Rio Convention influence a plant collector? And who will crack the nut positioned 12 meters up in the crown of a tree? There are many secrets behind the act of collecting plants. In many regards, the documentation of the collection of plants for a Swedish purpose has been unsatisfactory. The focus of the publications is on what plant species that have been found rather than information on how these plants have been collected. Only few results of experimental cultivation are available. There is no doubt that there exists knowledge that has not been publicised yet.

In the Kolmården area, northeast of Norrköping in south-central Sweden, it was discovered that shoots of spruce Picea abies, plants to a seemingly large extent had been browsed by deer. The area inhabits a dense red deer population, alongside with moose and roe deer, and red deer is thus suspected to cause the damage. The main purposes of this study are, however, to estimate the extent of the shoot-damage and to investigate what factors that may affect the browsing of shoots. For each stand information was recorded about the age of the plants, area for the stand, height over the sea for the stand, site productivity, type of plants and stand-history. The study was done in three areas: Simonstorp, Stavsjö and Valinge. At Simonstorp and Stavsjö, respectively, 10 stands were chosen for study and on Valinge six stands. In each stand, 10 plots were sampled.

Today 70 percent of the world's sand beaches are under recession due to erosion. The global warming may have the effect upon the sea level increasing and the erosion increasing on the sand beaches. To save these sand beaches, the erosion must be prevented. Coast erosion shelters like gabions and sea walls are functioning extremely well to protect the land behind the sand beach, but due to the wave reflections, created in front of these so called hard erosion shelters, the erosion of the front beach is accelerated. During the last decades, artificial sand supply (beach nourishment) has been the adopted praxis.

This thesis investigates the overall risks of flooding over the Design Basis Flooding Level (DBFL) at the Swedish nuclear power plants (Oskarshamn, Ringhals and Forsmark), using statistical data and methods, but also considers historical events which might affect the overall risk of flooding at the specified sites.Considering the nuclear accident which happened in Fukushima in conjuction with the earthquake and tsunami which struck eastern Japan on 11 March 2011, operators and licensors of nuclear power plants all over the world conducted reviews and investigations on the overall risks posed to the plants from external events. One important such event is extreme water level.One part of the thesis includes an extreme value analysis (using Generalized Extreme Value distribution and Generalized Pareto distribution) of water level data from SMHI (Sweden's Meteorological and Hydrological Institute) measured at stations close to the Swedish nuclear power plants. The results of the statistical studies indicate that considering the return period used in the thesis (100 000 years), the water levels at the Swedish nuclear power plants are not expected to exceed DBFL.The other part of the thesis consists of a historical study of extreme weather-related events. The results of this study indicate that no historical events seem to have occured which would indicate a higher risk of flooding than the one suggested by the statistical study. .

System based models of plants rely on descriptions and assigned functions of genes, and currently 50% of the genes in Arabidopsis thaliana has either no assigned function or a function based on homology only. Mitogen activated protein kinases (MAPK's) are key players in cell signalling and are conserved among eukaryotes, though their targets are highly diverse. A recent study has described a small Arabidopsis protein (80), without homology to any described protein, as a phosphorylation target of the MAPK's MPK3/6. Further work established ?-glucan phosphorylase (PHS) as interacting with 80 and described a delayed senescence phenotype for 80 knock-out plants.

A plant's defensive ability against herbivore attack can be influenced by many different factors, one of them being domestication. During human selection to improve the yield of plants, the resistance against herbivore attack can have been lowered, due to a trade-off for use of resources between these traits in the plants. In this thesis I investigated the effect of domestication on resistance against herbivorous insects in cotton plants. I used different varieties and species of wild and domesticated cotton in three different experiments. A feeding assay was conducted, the mortality, development time and pupal weight of larvae of the Egyptian cotton leaf worm Spodoptera littoralis was studied. In a second experiment the preference of the root-feeding beetle Agriotes spp.

Delia flies (Diptera: Anthomyiidae) are economically important pests in several horticultural crops. The control is commonly relying on chemical insecticides, though there are possibilities with biological control from the natural enemies in the field. An important natural enemy is the parasitic wasp, Trybliographa rapae Westwood (Hymenoptera: Figitidae) that lays eggs in the Delia fly larvae. The parasitoid larva and the host larva have a parallel development until the host dies within its puparium and an adult parasitoid emerges. The aim of this thesis was to understand the attraction to host- and food-associated plant volatiles of T. rapae, in order to enhance the effectiveness of the parasitic wasp as a biological control agent.