Eutrophication of the Baltic Sea is a serious problem. A major contributing factor is diffuse losses of phosphorus (P) from agricultural land in surrounding countries. In order to estimate P losses, environmental monitoring of small agriculture-dominated catchments is being carried out in most of these countries. Evaluation of the risk of P leaching to waters is usually based on chemical tests originally developed to quantify the amount of soil P available for plant production. The tests are performed in different ways in the different countries and a number of different extraction agents are in use.

Two different methods for measuring biogas production were used, gas meter and gasbags. The gas meters were electronic and counted each time a certain gasvolume passed through them. The gasbags collected the gas that hade passed through the gas meter until a manual measuring could be done. The two different methods gave the same result for a volume at three liters but for a volume around 0,2 liters they did not. Accuracy and precision for the gasbags was more exact than for the gas meters even if the method was difficult with a lot of different elements that could affect the result.

The electrical grid needs to be changed in the future in order to manage more distributed and renewable generation and also to make it possible for electricity consumers to be more active and aware of their electricity consumption. This future grid is usually referred to as a smart grid. With the transition to a smart grid, new challenges occur. One method to determine those challenges is to perform risk and vulnerability analyses. InStockholm, the new urban district Stockholm Royal Seaport is built.

The question formulation for this work has been "is an ice-hockey audience influenced by music during time-outs in a game?". The method was to observe one period with Färjestads BK and Mora IK, but a recording was also made, together with a conversation with the arena DJ. From the recording, the audience reactions were graded from a given scale. The grades were compilated to a diagram that shows the audience reactions in relation to the time, from the first face-off to the final whistle.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The following project has been made in collaboration with, Denator AB, a biotechnology enterprise. One-dimensional electrophoreses have been used to analyze protein contents of tissue samples. Tissue samples have been either treated according to the company´s newly developed tissue treatment technique or not treated at all and comparisons between these samples have been made. In order to see differences in protein patterns between samples more clearly, a conversion method has been developed where electrophoresis gel visual patterns are used to produce curves, similar to densitometer curves.Denator AB would like to know if the proteins in their treated samples will change visibly over 48 h when incubated at room temperature. This has been investigated using the above mentioned method.

Background: The regulation of banks is increasing in order to stabilize the financial market. Despite this increase in regulation, financial crises still continue to occur. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is gradually increasing the capital requirements for banks, yet the increase in capital requirements doesn?t seem to solve the problem. This raises the question: how does capital regulation affect banks? Purpose: The purpose of this study is, primarily to illustrate the effects that capital regulation has on risk and efficiency on banks within the European Union, but secondary also study the relationship between risk, efficiency and capital regulation.Method: To achieve the purpose of this study, a deductive approach has been used, where the problem is assumed to be due to an agency problem.

Today there are over 100 000 stray cats in Sweden and of these 10 000 are found in Gothenburg. There are several instances that try to reduce the number of stray cats. The problem for stray cats is primarily the suffering they may face in hunger, cold, predators, diseases, parasites, accidents, etc. The cats receive no veterinary care and may die from a simple infection that easily can be cured with antibiotics. Stray cats also can spread diseases to domestic cats, be a sanitary problem and compete with other small predators on prey. Authorities working with stray cats are the Country Administrative Board and the police authority.

The aim of this essay is to bring up and mediate a teacher?s life story and professional history to take part of her experience of an animated pedagogy. As a tool I use the life story method, which is a qualitative interview method which purpose is to put the narrative person?s life history in the centre.One of the goals for an animated pedagogy is to learn how to be. Animated pedagogy is about making teaching living and making it meaningful and exciting.

Gender is one of several factors that affect our society. According to the National Agency of Education and the values of Lpf 94, the school should communicate and counteract gender stereotypes. However, there is no demand for gender knowledge in the syllabus for Civics in upper secondary school.The purpose of this study is to investigate how two teachers work with gender in Civics education, with main focus on working practices. In addition, I wanted to investigate which conceptions students in upper secondary school have about gender in education. The method used is interviews.

Background: At the turn of the year 2004/2005, IAS 19 replaced Tryggandelagen (TrL) and RR 29 as the accounting standard in Swedish concerns. This introduction was associated with a certain apprehension for the possible changes in the companies? pension liabilities and equity.Purpose: To illustrate the difficulties of the introduction of IAS 19 by observing how it differs from TrL, and what kind of problems these differences can cause.Procedure: Individuals who are well up in, and work with pension liabilities have been interviewed. After this follows an example of the calculated pension liability of a company, to illustrate the differences between the calculations according to TrL and IAS 19. To conclude the chapter, a comparison between a number of companies from the Stockholm stock exchange is made to establish their various actuarial assumptions.Method: The essay mainly follows the qualitative research method, since this method is more appropriate when the substance in the matter is based on detailed differences and opinions.Results and conclusions: The introduction of IAS 19 has taken time and been an expensive matter, although the expenses weren?t as great as feared.

Performance of an intersection affects the total travel time in a traffic network. An intersection with good performance can easily be described by its contribution to lower travel time than in a comparable intersection. The travel time is of importance in the cost calculations when a specific intersection is to be chosen and designed. It is important to be able to make correct and precise performance calculations so that the cost calculations will not be incorrect. For that purpose the software Capcal, which is a traffic model for intersection analysis on performance, is used in Sweden.

Incompatibility between donors and recipients can cause fatal hemolytic transfusion reactions (HTR), kidney damage and death and immunization of the recipient. Antigens on the surface of erythrocytes in the ABO blood group system and regular natural antibodies against these in the patient?s plasma must be considered. An individual always has a corresponding antibody of IgM in their plasma. Irregular antibodies acquired by transfusion or pregnancy and active in body temperature also cause the HTR incompatibility.

Chlorinated solvents are common contaminants in soil and water. Under anaerobic conditions microbes are capable of transforming chlorinated solvents into ethylene which would result in a remediation of the contaminated area. In order to use natural attenuation as a remediation method evidence of continuous degradation is required. Furthermore, the degradation must occur at a sufficient rate and continuous monitoring of the site is needed until the demanded levels are achieved. A field study was performed on the basis of data from a dry-cleaning facility contaminated mainly by perchloroethylene.

Dogs presenting with vomiting and abdominal pain, are common patients at the small animal clinic, and the reason for these symptoms can have various aetiologies. One common reason for these symptoms is obstruction of the small intestine caused by a foreign body. Obstruction of the small intestine is best diagnosed by using radiography, contrast-study if needed, and ultrasound. To avoid further examinations, diagnosis from plain radiographs is preferable. One of the signs of illness one can detect from these examinations is a dilation of the small intestine proximal of the obstruction, caused by gas or fluid; ileus.