Allanblackia is a tree genus native to humid forests in West, Central and East Africa. Its fruits contain large seeds from which edible high-quality fat can be extracted. In order to create a sustainable supply chain of Allanblackia seeds, a domestication program has been initiated with the purpose to enable smallholder farmers to grow the tree as an agroforestry component and cash crop. More knowledge is required to understand the tree?s biology and possible symbioses involving soil microorganisms with plant growth enhancing poten-tial.

The main purpose with this study was to investigate whether the tree growth differs or not in prescribed burnt areas compared to mechanically scarified. Together with the result from the main purpose, answers of whether it's possible or not to combine nature conservation with tree production in prescribed burnt areas was presented. In these areas the regeneration were analyzed to see if there was enough tree plants to comply with the Swedish Forestry Act regulations terms for approved regeneration. A field survey was conducted at 6 objects, three objects for prescribed burning and three for mechanically scarification. All objects were planted within the same year.

Chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons (CAH´s) were used widely within dry cleaning facilities and for metal degreasing until their toxicity was discovered. PCE is still used as dry cleaning liquid. Today CAH´s are found in soil environment at places where they have been used in the past. The CAH-concentration in trees growing on contaminated land has quite recently received attention as a cheap and effective way of assessing the extent of a CAH-contamination. The method has however, not been put into use in Sweden.The aim of the study has been to investigate whether the CAH-concentration in tree cores could be used to delineate the spread of CAH in a soil environment under Swedish conditions in different seasons.

Tropical rain forests only cover around six percent of the world?s land area and contain around 70 % of the world´s animals and plants. Tropical rainforests have been, and still are, negatively affected by human activities. These activities lead to forest degradation which has negative impacts on production and biodiversity. Between 1970-1980 forests in Borneo, Sabah, Malaysia, was subjected to intense logging.

The aim of this work was to study if the edge of the forest is more resistant to heavy winds than the trees located further in from the edge, and how this edge effect changes between different types of tree species and site types. The data was collected from an electric power line going from the north to the south of Sweden. The mean value of the clearcutted area around the power line was 120 meters. The main direction of the storm in January 2005 was west-southwest and thus the power line was a perfect place for gathering a large data set. The main parameter studied was the damage frequency at the edge of the forest compared to the trees located further in from the edge (up to 100 m from the power line). Tree species mixture, soil moisture class, soil type, topography, stand height, stand height of the stand on the other side of the power line and wind exposition was estimated. The results showed a distinct edge effect. The edge of the forest had clearly lower damage frequency for all tree species. A marked difference was observed between tree species and damage frequency.

The aim of this study is to examine the investment decision process for investments that arise due to strategic changes and are of strategic importance to the company. At the foundation of this study is the previous research in this area, done by King (1975) and Bower (1970), which examines the investment process on a more generic level. At the core is the investment decision process pertaining to Projekt X, an investment performed by NordiCorp. Having conducted a case study including six interviews with employees from various parts of the organization, combined with a large number of internal documents, the process regarding the investment decision was carefully illuminated. The results show that in many regards, this process follows the more generic investment process.

Booth for operational planning of harvesting and for long term planning, data is today collected manually. Intensive objective field inventories are usually too expensive. To enhance optimisation of timber flow from forest to industry Moore efficient methods for measuring tree stems of standing trees are needed. The performance of terrestrial laser scanners have improved and these could possibly be used within forestry in the future. The objective of this study was to validate how a terrestrial laser scanner could be used to measure stem diameter, and to test how the errors depend on distance from the scanner and tree species. Two plots (one pine and one spruce) were used for this study.

The purpose of this paper has been to follow how a decision made has developed within anorganization. We have intended to find underlying causes for the development in order to contribute to the understanding of the lifecycle of decisions.The decision we have chosen is Gröna Skolgårdar (Green School Yards) within the city of Västerås. This project has aimed to make the school yards in Västerås more green, more beautiful and more useful for teaching.We have used Grounded Theory Method as our foundation, complemented with decisionmaking theory.The work with this paper has led to the conclusion that Gröna Skolgårdar changed over time, and did not turn out as first intended. This has had several couses such as how resources wasdistributed, political changes, and different views of the project.We have learned that over time a decision can take unexpected paths, and we have contributed with an example of how this can happen..

Many organizations utilize decision support systems in order to handle different tasks and tosupport the decision-making process. Decision support system is a broad term used to referto several different types of systems. These types of systems can handle a wide range ofoperations within the organization. Consequently this will have an impact on differentoperations within the organization. The main aim of this study was to create a betterunderstanding regarding the impact of decision support systems on the various operationswithin the City Council's procurement units which in turn will increase effectiveness.

Background: Previous studies have shown that intuition occurs in decision making in small enterprises. However, these studies have not illuminated which decision attributes leads to intuitive decision making.Purpose:The purpose with this study is to contribute with an increased understanding of which decision attributes leads managers in small enterprises to use intuition in decision making and why these decisions attributes have an impact on the role of intuition. The follow-ing research question will be answered in our study: Which decision attributes leads to intui-tive decision making in small enterprises, and why?Method: To answer the research question we have conducted semi structural interviews with managers in small enterprises to achieve a deeper understanding of the role of intuition. We have also used a method called Visual Card Sorting as a complement to the semi structural interviews.Result/conclusion: The result of our study indicates that the relevance and the uncertainty of a decision have the greatest significance in the use of intuition in decision making in small enterprises.

Background: Previous studies have shown that intuition occurs in decision making in small enterprises. However, these studies have not illuminated which decision attributes leads to intuitive decision making.Purpose:The purpose with this study is to contribute with an increased understanding of which decision attributes leads managers in small enterprises to use intuition in decision making and why these decisions attributes have an impact on the role of intuition. The follow-ing research question will be answered in our study: Which decision attributes leads to intui-tive decision making in small enterprises, and why?Method: To answer the research question we have conducted semi structural interviews with managers in small enterprises to achieve a deeper understanding of the role of intuition. We have also used a method called Visual Card Sorting as a complement to the semi structural interviews.Result/conclusion: The result of our study indicates that the relevance and the uncertainty of a decision have the greatest significance in the use of intuition in decision making in small enterprises.

Background: Every patient and each situation is unique. Therefore the nurse has to act in a flexible intervention and still keep an ethical perspective. Aim: The aim of this studie was to illuminate nurses? different aspects of decision making in emergency situations. Method: The result is based on nine scientific articles.

A purchase decision can be seen as a multifaceted context that raises many unanswered questions. Understanding the consumer's evaluation of alternatives is complex and should be studied at a deeper rather than wider scale. There is a problem for retailers to understand how the consumer manages a purchase decision in a retail setting with durables goods that generates a higher effort. The aim is to describe the decision rules used by the consumer and how they are expressed in this context. A better understanding of which ones they use and how they are conveyed will help retailers to create effective marketing solutions that generate positive outcomes as increased profitability and customer satisfaction.

Background: High demands are today placed upon Swedish elderly care nurses as more elderly live with multimorbidity while the hospital bed capacity is becoming lower. Aim: The aim of the study was to explore nurses? perception of decision-making in situations with acutely ill patients in nursing homes and which factors may influence the decision about transferring patients to the emergency department or not. Method: This is a qualitative study with a phenomenographic approach. Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with 11 nurses working in nursing homes. The data analysis was based on Dahlgren and Fallsberg (1991) data analysis. Result: Three different description categories were presented, which describes variations of the nurses? perceptions.Feeling comfortable in making the decision; which involved the nurses feeling confident in the decision-making about transferring patients to the emergency department or not.Hesitant in making the decision; which described how nurses perceived the decision-making as problematic, with regard to transferring patients to the emergency department.Many wishes to consider in taking the decision; which explained how nurses? decision-making was influenced by requests from the patients or from people close to them.Conclusion:  The study reflected how  supporting and aggravating factors could influence how nurses in nursing homes perceived the decision-making and how nurses have to take in consideration different opinions concerning the decision making process of transferring patients to the emergency department or not.

Forestry in Sweden is currently conducted in a manner aiming at equating the production objectives and the biodiversity. To ensure that biodiversity is maintained, patches that are considered to be valuable now or in the future is saved in final fellings. How the tree retention areas will grow into the future forest stands is yet unknown.The purpose of this study was to visualize how different scenarios of natural consideration taken at final felling will evolve in a long term perspective, for two rotation periods. Projections of the forest conditions were executed with the decision support system Heureka and its applications PlanStart and PlanWise. The information about the projected forests was then used for the visualizations which were created in the software Visual Nature Studio.