From embankment dams is something that has long been noticed and given rise to different questions. The most serious question is if the sludge is a result of inner erosion through the dam, and thus consists of material transported from the dam. Concerns have also been raised whether the sludge could interfere with the systems drainage capacity and thereby lead to high pore pressure in the dam, or if the measurement of seepage is disturbed, as the measuring is usually made via Thomson weirs, which could risk being blocked. The result of this investigation shows that the sludge is a result of the oxidation of iron by iron bacteria, and to the greater part consists of these oxides as well as the bacteria?s own structures. The iron oxidizing bacteria, FeOB, oxides ferrous iron to ferric as a part of their metabolism, and thereby create large quantities of iron(oxy)hydroxides.

Sweden has long had access to low electricity prices due to the wide availability of hydro and nuclear power. This has now changed because of today's rising electricity rates resulting in increasing heating costs for properties, especially in the properties with electric heating systems."Ankaret" is a parish for "Svenska Alliansmissionen", which is located at "Gullbrannagården".The parish has installed electrical radiators and an exhaust ventilation system that makes the energy demand high due to the large ventilation flows. The building was built as the price of electricity was still low and would reduce energy use today by combining its heating system with an air/air heat pump. The heat pump delivers more heat into the room than the electrical energy that it uses. This lowers the electricity needs.

Akademiska hus is a real estate company that specializes in providing Swedish universities with housing facilities for educational and research purposes. The company strives to reduce its use of energy by 40% between the years 2000 and 2025. The aim of this thesis is to determine which measures can be taken to reduce the need of purchased energy in a building that is used by theSwedishUniversityof Agricultural Sciences inUppsala.In order to determine the results of various changes to the building envelope and ventilation system, the building was modelled in the computer simulation program VIP-Energy. Other proposed changes to make the use of energy more efficient concerned water use and lighting. The need of purchased energy can also be reduced by producing electricity or heat on site, using solar energy.Results show that economically viable measures include upgrading windows and faucets, adjusting control systems for ventilation and lighting, and installing roof mounted solar panels for power production.

In game development, performance is everything and the Playstation 3 provides a unique platform for utilizing parallelization of code to achieve extremely high performance. In this master?s thesis the issue of animation with smooth skinning is migrated from being a GPU process to becoming a parallelized and 358% faster process. This method is incorporated in an existing commercial game engine and integrated in a currently in development title for the Playstation 3. An in-depth study covers parallel processors, the CELL processor, used in the Playstation 3, and how contemporary industry leading game developers are utilizing the same unique architecture to increase their own games? performance..

Ronneby Miljö- och hälsoskyddskontor ville genom undersökningen få information om nitrathalter ienskilda dricksvattenbrunnar inom kommunen, med bakgrund av den nya miljökvalitetsnormen.Riktvärdet för nitrat är 50 mg/l. Halter som överstiger detta bör inte ges till barn under ett års ålder pågrund av risk för methemoglobinemi. Jämförelsen skulle ske mellan områden präglade av jordbrukrespektive skogsbruk, samt mellan grävda och borrade brunnar. Jämförelsen skulle även ske över tiden,mellan 1975-1990 till 2005. Urvalet av provtagningspunkter baserades på en sammanställning frånbefintligt arkiv samt efter en annons i dagspressen.

Aim: The aim of this thesis is to through a survey, gain information about the tenant owners knowledge concerning their own and the real estate agents rights and obligations, this to elucidate one of the factors we think play a big part in the general publics dissatisfaction about the real estate agents and the negative picture painted of them in media today. By throwing light on the assumed lack of knowledge in this area we hope to contribute to improve the information communicated to the customers so that they can feel safer when consulting a real estate agent in this matter.Our main question in this thesis is: How much knowledge does tenant owners and tenant owners to be have concerning the division of responsibilities when it comes to selling and buying a tenant owned flat and what problems can the presumed lack of knowledge in this area lead to?Method: We have used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Data has been collected through a survey which we have put together and analyzed both based on the results we got from the survey but also based on the reactions we received from the participants. The results are presented both in text and in diagrams.Result & Conclusions: The results we got from the survey indicate that the knowledge among our participants is much worse than what would be desired.

The practice of landscape architectural involves forming the space in our cities and suburbs, as well as the landscape surrounding. The need of exploiting green environment leads up to, among other issues, flood problem during heavy rain and overfed water environments. The problem is partially caused by the shortage of knowledge, how the environment is responding of the innovations made by the city- urban planning and how to get sustainability. Research and knowledge how to take care of our environment, in a natural way, is increasing. The object of the thesis is to propose control and balance in urban wetlands, and discuss the difference a plant design can do. The thesis deals with discourses in the field of landscape architecture, biological diversity, dam construction, limnology, planting design and management, pollution of the environment and urban design practice.

Investment aid is a part of the Rural Area Programme, which contains support to Swedish agriculture and the countryside. There is a new programme every seventh year and SLU (Swedish University of Agriculture) has the mission to perform the evaluation of the previous programme, which lasted between 2000 -2006. The investment aid's aim is to support investments that, among other things, support the adaptation or conversion to more environmentally friendly production methods, improves the product quality, develops new or complementing activities, and improves the environment and the animal- and working environment. The question is if it's only money that matters for these kinds of investments to be done and what has happened with the money that was paid? This thesis investigates how the investment aid has affected the receivers.

Construction of wetlands in the agricultural landscape may reduce nitrogen and phosphorus transfer to streams, thereby reducing the eutrophication of lakes and seas. The agriculturalstream Lillån, a tributary to stream Sagån, ends up in Lake Mälaren and is transporting large amounts of these plant nutrients. The aim of this study was to estimate how hypothetical wetlands of different size and location may reduce nitrogen and phosphorus load from stream Lillån. Estimated nutrient retention in several small wetlands was compared to retention in a single large wetland based on existing data from the agricultural stream and from a nearby smaller stream. Retention in the stream was suggested to decrease along with the nutrient concentration in the water.

Det svenska kulturlandskapet har förändrats radikalt under de senaste 200 åren från ett varierat och heterogent landskap till ett mer monotont, homogeniserat landskap som följd av att olika former av mänskligt resursutnyttjande har effektiviserats. Detta har lett till en fragmentering av livsmiljöerna för flera av kulturlandskapets arter. Kraftledningsgator kan tänkas hysa naturtyper som påminner om vissa av de nu försvunna eller fragmenterade livsmiljöerna (t ex betad skogsmark och vissa typer av ängsmarker) och skulle kunna ha en viktig betydelse som reträttplats och/eller spridningskorridor för dessa arter.I en fallfällsinventering i Köpings och Strängnäs kommun i Mälardalen undersöktes förekomst och abundans av marklevande evertebrater i kraftledningsgator, skog och betesmark. Jämförelser i förekomst och abundans gjordes mellan dessa marktyper (d v s kraftledningsgator, skog och betesmark), samt mellan positioner inom kraftledningsgator (centrala och distala delar) och närliggande skogsmark. Jämförelserna innefattade dels analyser av artantal (eller snarare antal taxa) och flera olika biodiversitetsindex och dels analyser av likhet i artförekomst och individantal med "likhetsindex" (similarity index).

The numbers of natural disasters caused by extreme weather are increasing through out the world. A large majority of the research concerning the climate shows that this is a trend that can be expected to continue. At the same time the urbanisation is increasing more than ever and for the first time in history more than fifty percent of the population lives in a city. How we build these cities will have a crucial importance for our adaption to the new climate. In Sweden, our capacity for an adaption are high because of our economic situation as well as our rather well built society.

It is important to construct or recreate different types of wetlands and study their retention of nutrients, since knowledge of their effectiveness in this matter is poor. In 2003 a wetland was constructed on an old meadow on the western shore of Lake Bornsjön in central Sweden. The main purpose of the wetland was to reduce the amount of phosphorus entering the lake, which is the back-up water supply for Stockholm when the city cannot obtain water from Lake Mälaren. Large areas around Lake Bornsjön consist of agricultural land and the nutrient concentrations in the inflows to the lake are usually relatively high (approx. 1 mg/l total nitrogen and 0.05-0.1 mg/l total phosphorus).

Företag investerar idag väldigt mycket pengar på att säkra sina fysiska och logiska tillgångar med hjälp av tekniska skyddsmekanismer. Dock är all säkerhet på något sätt beroende av den enskilde individens omdöme och kunskap. Hur går det avgöra att organisationen kan lita på individens omdöme och kunskap? Hur går det avgöra om en organisation har en god kultur kring säkerhet? Genom att utvärdera säkerhetskulturen kan organisationer få ett utökat underlag i riskhanteringsarbetet samt en bättre förmåga att hantera det som hotar verksamhetens tillgångar. Den forskning som finns idag på området säkerhetskultur är både oense kring vad som utgör god säkerhetskultur men framför allt hur kulturen ska utvärderas.

The company Sol & Energiteknik wanted to examine the possibility to make a standardhouse totally energy independent. Based upon this I have, during the spring of 2007,examined the possibilities available at the market today through litterature studies, contactwith several companies and reading reports at the internet.The first thing to examine has been to determine the energy consumption for a standardhouse, and find out if there are better technologies to be used for energy conservation.My conclusion in this matter is that there are possibilities today for building a house moreenergy efficient.When I had reached the point at which my design for the house was decided, I also hadto choose the different products to use to produce energy as well as to store that energy.To produce heat and electricity to the house I decided to use a wind turbine and a solarwater heater.The most difficult part of designing a house that is energy independent is that theproduced energy must be stored somehow. Storing the heat is relatively easy beacuse theheat can be stored in a large water tank. The electricity is a bigger problem beacuse itmust be stored in batteries, which today are too expensive to be used in a standard house.In the future producing and storing hydrogen might be used to produce electricity, buttoday that technology is both expensive and not tested enough.My final conclusion is that a standard house can not be built to be totally energyindependent today, unless it is very expensive to connect the house to the electricitynetwork. As an alternative solution I came up with a proposal for a house which isconnected to the electricity network and have some amount of own produced energy.This house prooved to be a good investment if you choose to build it today, and it couldbe a very good investment in the long run beacuse energy prices increase every year..

In Sweden, grass is the single largest crop grown. Nearly 1 000 000 Ha grows on the fields, this is primarily used as feed for livestock. To get a good seed, you need to handle the crop carefully from planting to delivery. The part that I have been interested in, is how to dry the harvested seed with out destroying the growth in the small seed. This is very easily done if you aren?t careful during the drying period.