In the middle of Australia there is a city called Alice Springs. The city has one of the highest amounts of daily sunshine hours and sun irradiation in the world. The Australian Government runs a project called Solar Cities, and Alice Springs is one of the participators. The main part of the goal with the Solar Cities project is to increase the amount of electricity generated by solar power and by doing that lower the impact on the environment. This thesis examines the possibilities for construction of a large scale solar power plant in Alice Springs. This is done to determine the potential of creating a more sustainable energy system in the city.

Systems development methods has always been an important part of the systems development process. It affects not only the product, but also the organization itself. Today more and more companies are abandoning the more rigid traditional methods for the more flexible agile ones. A transition like this is bound to affect the product and the organization, but in what ways? Is it a difficult transition to make, and how does it affect social environment and dynamics? Does it change how people communicate information to each other? This study was conducted at a local branch of a larger international IT-company.

Insufficient intake of vegetables is a reason for micronutrient deficiencies and malnutrition in developing countries. With urbanization, globalization and a growing world population it is of major importance to secure sufficient food supply for the world?s population. Part of the solution to increased food security among the world?s poor could be the introduction of vegetable home gardens, plots for small scale vegetable production which can provide households with sufficient vegetables as well as serve as an extra income source. The study Improving peri-urban home gardens aims at examining the existence of vegetable home gardens in the peri-urban areas of Hyderabad, India.

This essay examines how a group of five youths? self identities are affected by unemploy-ment, contact with the social services and by labour market interventions. In Sweden youth employment has been regarded as a social problem. Arbetslinjen that could be translated into the work model or the work line influences and is a necessity for the Swedish welfare system. With a hermeneutic scientific philosophical position the method used to examine this has been to interview the youths, in the age of 18-25, individually.

This essay analyses the use of history in the video game Assassin's Creed 2. How have the developers used history in their game? The paper also analyses how the game can stimulate, arouse and mobilize the historical consciousness of the player. The essay presents a theoretical analysis of the uses of history and historical consciousness. This analysis is then linked with the results.

Deep litter is a system for animals kept in separate stalls, loafing and bedding in wind shelters. The litter can consist of different bedding, like straw and peat. The system is allowed to build over and to ensure optimal proportions it is necessary to add new straw regularly and to have good conditions. Important conditions are aerobic state, humidity, amount of organic substance and acceptable temperatures in the litter. The micro organisms are depending on temperature for their living conditions and to get the bottom layer in the litter to start burning.

This study shows how to plan a pond with an ecosystem which although it will have turtles living in it will not need to be cared. I will also demonstrate how this pond would be designed to work in the natural landscape on Mallorca. The background to the study is that I am interested to investigate how plants that we in Sweden are using as indoor plants are growing in their natural landscape and how to build a land-scape with them. The study highlights different cleaning-systems that can be used to clean a pond in a natural way. A comparison will be made between the conditions of an exterminated turtle-species which will live in this environment and a species that is easier to care for.

In Sweden, the demand for bio energy has increased in recent years due to the current energy and climate debate. In 2008, the energy supply of Sweden was 612 TWh, biofuels accounted for 123 TWh of these. Stumps have been highlighted as a potential fuel in recent years and the Swedish Forest Agency expects a technically and biologically feasible potential of 20.7 TWh annually between 2010 and 2019. The idea of utilize stumps is not new. During the 19th century stumps were used for tar production and during the 70?s and 80?s attempts were made to use stumps in the pulp industry.

Smallholder farmers in Uganda suffer from declining productivity. With a rapidly increasing population, marginal land is taken into production and the current land management leads to loss in soil fertility and escalation in soil erosion. There are studies indicating that the use of agroforestry increases soil organic carbon (SOC) compared to systems without trees. Soils which are high in carbon have many advantages, for example better water holding capacity, which can reduce stress on crops during drought. The aim of this study was to determine the effect agroforestry has on SOC concentration in small-holder farming systems in Uganda. The intended system to study was farms practicing agroforestry methods or not in intercropped plantain (cooking banana) fields.

Hemmasittare is a new term for children and youths with a history of long term truancy. As the term indicates these youths spend most of their time in their homes. This often results in them being socially alienated and the loss of their earlier social network. The consequences of hemmasittande and social alienation are many and include not only a deficient social network but also psychological and physical problems. Research has shown that many of these problems follow on through into adult life.

Intercropping involving trees is called agroforestry and makes it possible to get higher production for every area unit. The trees can function as food, fodder, fuel, medicine; prevent mark erosion and much more. Agroforestry can also be combined with animal husbandry. The aim of this study was to document the animal production systems used by rural small-scale farmers maintaining ruminants and using agroforestry in the northern province of Rwanda. The farmers using agroforestry is expected to have higher milk yield than average due to homegrown protein. The method used during the study was semi-structural interviews with booth open and closed questions. In order to get in contact with farmers that matched the criteria; small-scaled rural farmers with ruminants and using agroforestry, the ?Vi Agroforestry Programme? (Vi-Life) in Kigali were contacted and the staff worked as supervisors, translators and contact with the farmers throughout the study. During the study nine individual farmers, two cooperatives breeding sheep and one group interview were conducted.

Media has in the last year been dominated by news about the current financial crisis around the world. For the banking system in Sweden the crisis began to show in the beginning of 2008 and there where a lot of speculations about how serious the crisis would be and it?s consequences. In several aspects, the banks' situation in the current crisis, are linked to the banking crisis in the 1990s. Although these crises have had different break-out reasons, there are several parallels between these crises to be drawn.

The primary purpose of this degree project was to investigate teachers conceptions about education for sustainable development and their education within the area. Teachers from Sweden and California have taken part and one of the aims with this study was to look if any differences could be found depending on what country the teachers came from. Therefore, this study has used a qualitative approach where conception maps and interviews have been used to get a result. Furthermore, the result showed that none of the differences that was found can be linked to the participants home country. The study also showed that several of different teaching traditions and educations philosophies was represented.

Linux is a growing operating system in embedded systems. Today, Linux is not only in heavy servers but also in cell phones, PDAs, cameras and other devices running on battery power. While current technology is more energy efficient, more and more technologies are implemented into a single unit resulting in an overall increase of power consumption.Low power consumption is an increasingly important feature of a system today. Lower power consumption means lower costs, less environmental impact, and longer life for applications that runs on batteries.This work compiles methods to reduce power consumption of Linux systems. The work includes examining whether the available opportunities are platform-specific or of a more general nature.

This master thesis was performed at Scania Research & Development. The given mission was to see where the department Systems Development should focus to improve their development work. Thus the purpose was to map the product development processes in which the department works today and within them identify improvements. To fulfil the purpose a theoretical study of relevant terms, such as improvement work, product development and processes, initially was formed. The mapping method used is called "walk trough" and meant to let the people working in the processes be guides in their own process.