Species that have a high degree of specialization and poor dispersal ability can be more prone to extinction than more generalist species and good dispersers. How these species traits affect the viability of populations is dependent on landscape factors,such as isolation and connectivity. Additionally, interactions between species (e.g. symbiosis), and how these interactions vary spatially and temporally can have a large impact on populations. When the range and habitat areas of a species continuously decrease, management strategies are often needed if the species shall be able to survive.

Over the past one hundred years, there has been an increasing globalization and industrialization of the food systems. As a result, the distance between the production and the consumption of food has increased, both in time and space and in the minds of people. There is also an increasing concern for the environmental effects of industrial farming and the long distance transportation of food. Sustainable agriculture and efforts to build more sustainable food systems has emerged in opposition to the global food market. The definitions of sustainability usually include environmental, social and economical aspects. To build more localized food systems is seen as one way towards increased sustainability.

BAE Systems Hägglunds has a long history of producing high performance terrain tracked vehicles (mostly for military applications), and they are now aiming at developing a tracked forwarder with similar techniques.The forwarder will be of series hybrid type where a diesel engine via a generator will power the motors (one for each drive wheel). Thanks to individually controlled motors and the gentle rubber tracks, this forwarder is calculated to have a considerably higher average speed in the terrain and to be more gentle to the soil. The forwarder with a weight of 11 metric tons and a load capacity of 15 metric tons is specified to have an average working speed of 7-10 km/h, a top speed in terrain of 15 km/h and a top speed on roads of 40 km/h.This master?s thesis aims at developing a conceptual design of the forwarder?s drive module which includes electric motor, gear unit, brake and drive wheel.To investigate if the requirements can be fulfilled a study of the dimensioning loading scenarios has been carried out. The resulting needs regarding the torque has been considered in order to determine the required gear ratios for different motor options.

Abandoned and unused railway structures often possess great potential if they are reclaimed and reused for new purposes. The thesis focuses on the global trend of restoring and revitalizing these areas, converting them into park areas, rail trails and green corridors in the city landscape, while preserving their ecological, social, esthetic and historic values. These rail areas were often abandoned when industries moved out from the cities, either to industrial areas or abroad. The use of railways for transporting industrial goods was also replaced to a large extent my motorized road vehicles in the mid 20th century, leaving the rails under-utilized. Because of their location and intrinsic values, they can be reused for important functions, such as green areas in the city environment, providing space for recreational activities and exercise and social meetings and interactions. I have closely investigated the three park areas High Line in New York, Promenade Plantée in Paris and Schöneberger Südgelände in Berlin, which have all gone through this transformation in recent years. I have summarized my conclusions in three key concepts to consider: design for social values, preserve the architectural history, and leave room for future evolution. The final part of my work is a design program for an abandoned railways area in Stockholm: Eriksdal railway area.

The streetscape is a complex environment with a lot of different parts and users. If you look at the streetscapes main parts you have floor, walls, roof and furniture. The floor in the streetscape, the street, consists of the ground and the paving. It can be made of a lot of different materials with both architectonic and practical functions. The walls usually consist of the houses. They have a big influence on the streetscape depending on architecture, heights and widths.

To be a farmer and have suckler cows is a difficult combination especially considering the economy. Because of the increased feed costs, the margins have become tighter. The meat price from beef cattle has increased a little when this text is written (spring, 2008), but not so much that it covers the cost for feed etc. I have a small suckler cow production on approximately 30 cows and 2 bulls plus followers as a part-time business. The herd is tied in the old dairy stable built in the late seventies.

This work applies intersectionality to five Somali women self-narratives and focuses on their identities and positions in Swedish society, but also their relation to Somali society. Since people constructs in relation to the environment, this work studies the impact of environmental confirmations of their own self. Intersectionality is brought into the social work with an operational attempt, and shows how critics of power and interplay between theories and empirics can provide new knowledge. Intersectionality also demands some alterations of the social constructionists? idea of the ego.

SammanfattningUnder en relativt lång tid har det inom samhällsplaneringsdebatten framhållits vikten av att verka för en utveckling som tar oss från funktionsseparerade, segregerande och trafikalstrande stadsbyggnadsstrukturer till den funktionsblandade attraktiva staden som erbjuder närhet, jämlikhet och minskat biltransportbehov mellan dess väl sammanlänkade och integrerade stadsdelar och funktioner.  En tydligt rådande trend och utveckling inom stadsplanering är också den ökade fokuseringen på att hitta modeller och verktyg för att kunna bedöma och utvärdera stadsutvecklingsförslag ur holistiska hållbarhetsperspektiv, vilket bl.a. märks i utvecklandet av hållbarhetscertifieringsmetoder för stadsdelar samt krav som ställs på holistiska delanalyser och redovisningar i dessa.Hur problem, förutsättningar och innebörden av olika strukturella lösningar framställs kan ha en stor betydelse för vilken lösning som väljs samt hur väl den valda lösningen bidrar till en önskad stadsutveckling. I detta sammanhang kan det vara av värde att i planeringsprocesser att ha bra verktyg för att kunna analysera och beskriva olika förutsättningar och förändringsförslag.Trafikverket publicerade i 2011 rapporten "Integrering av handel i städer- Metoder, strategier och exempel" (2011:050). I rapportarbetets senare delar utvecklades förslag till en metod/modell för att kunna mäta och i ett samlat i sammanhang redovisa olika beståndsdelar som bedöms ha betydelse för en ökad fysisk strukturell och funktionell integration. Metoden som föreslås, den s.k.

The aim of this study has been to make clear the conception of ?The Garden City?, and also to investigate why and how the garden city has come to be a more frequent and attractive form of settlement in our Swedish community. The essay is supported by a literature study about the garden city from its beginning (1890?s) to present time. To make a distinct explanation of the garden cities progress over time, I have studied the idea behind two garden cities of today, Tullinge and Vistabergs garden city.

AbstractDuring the last five years there has been a considerable immigration from the Netherlands to Värmland in Sweden. INVA, Invest in Värmland, wanted to highlight this phenomenon and therefore contacted Karlstad University to make a survey about how extensive the immigration is and what consequences it brings for the business life and municipalities in Värmland. We were luckily chosen to perform this research and the main focus in this study has been the following questions:? Why do the Dutchmen choose to buy their house in Värmland?? What are the main reasons for leaving the Netherlands?? What consequences does the immigration cause for the business life in Värmland?? How do the Dutchmen experience the contact with Swedish authorities?To answer the questions we designed a questionnaire that was sent to 200 Dutch house purchasers. The ambition was to survey all the Dutch house purchasers in Värmland, but with the time constrains and the municipalities having problem to find complete data, we limited the survey to 200 households.

Individual trees can act as carriers of meaning. When a person attributes deep meanings to a specific tree, a relationship between the person and the tree is created. To avoid conflicts between users and planners, increased awareness is required of how important individual trees may be to a person. The objective of this study was to elucidate persons? relationships with individual urban trees.

This essay is an introduction to the intentions and purposes of the british play writer Sarah Kane (1971-1999). Her own voice is presented both via quotations linked to her work and by an explanation of her connections to the surrealist poet and actor Antonin Artaud. The main focus is on Kane?s second play, Phaedra?s Love, first performed in 1996. The play is analyzed in co-relation to La volonté de savoir, the first volume in Michel Foucault?s trilogy Histoire de la sexualité.

This is a thesis about design of young stands of trees. A big source of inspiration has been Västerskog and Tor Nitzelius Park in Alnarp which both consists of a structure of squares. I wanted to examine if this type of planting could be valuable from an aesthetic and recreational point of view. One problem today is that many people believe that we have to wait for decades for a planting to grow up so that we can enjoy the ?ready result?.

There was a silence surrounding homosexuality in the People's Republic of Poland. One can almost get the impression that same sex love, and same sex relationships, did not even exist there; that the communists had successfully removed homosexuality from society. The roots of this silence can be found in the Communist Party´s disdain for anything deemed individualist and deviant, and also in the conservatism and religiosity of the Polish society.In my thesis I study when and how gays and lesbians found a way out of the silence that surrounded their sexuality. Gay men did so by creating subcultures, which found refuge in parks, public bathrooms and a few bars in larger Polish cities, and offered a sense of belonging for them. Lesbians, on the other hand, lacked this access to semi-public spheres, which made it even harder for them to find each other and create a space for their sexuality.

The purpose of this study is to analyse and compare how religious and non-religious world views are described and represented in three Swedish textbooks. The main question of this study is: How do three textbooks for the first stage of religious studies in high school represent non-religious and religious world views based on the text analysis tools: ethos, modality and transitivity?The three textbooks that are being analysed and compared were produced in the years of 2000, 2002 and 2009. The textbooks are used when teaching the first stage of religious studies in Swedish high school. The text analysis that I´ve chosen to use in this study is a part of Norman Faircloughs critical discourse analysis.