Foot rot is a severe claw disease which occurs among sheep and goats in most parts of the world, with outbreaks in hot and humid weather. It is a contagious bacterial infection caused by Dichelobacter nodosus in association with Fusobacterium necrophorum. Foot rot has a negative impact on both animal welfare and economy.This thesis presents how Australia, Nepal, Norway, Switzerland, Great Britain, Sweden and Uruguay handle foot rot. In the selection of countries the focus was on countries that have control- or eradication programs against foot rot. There are differences in the climate, animal husbandry practices, animal welfare and economic resources in the countries that are presented.

The climate at the labour-market in Sweden today means that students who have recently passed their examinations find it quite difficult to find work. The competetiveness calls for a strategy to find advantages in the employment process. The strategy explored in this thesis is called personal branding. We believe that by building a strong personal brand you can increase the possibilities to influence the decisions of those responsible for recruitments in our society. The question we ask ourselves in this essay is how to build a personal brand with the power to give students a competetive advantage in the employment process.

A severe profitability decline in sugar beet production in all of Europe is one of the consequences of the latest reform of the EU sugar regime. In south of Sweden, sugar beets is the crop that has been the most profitable by far for the last decade. The high profitability has contributed to the high rate of increase in the price of land and has restrained the structural change towards a more effective agriculture. Because of the reform, all sugar beet producers are facing diminishing income and must find ways to compensate this. The aim of this master thesis is to study how Swedish farmers adapt to the sugar beet reform. A questionnaire was sent to 354 randomly selected sugar beet producers.

This study was carried out at a company within the computer industry, a sector that is expanding and is facing scarcity of competent personnel. The purpose was to examine factors that are crucial for being an employer of choice. To get a profound picture of the employees' comprehension of their work situation, a qualitative method with semi-structured interviews with ten of the employees were conducted. To examine factors that are important for future employees a survey was created and handed out to fiftysix civil engineering students majoring in computer science. The results from the interviews showed that the organisation's culture was of great value to the employees.

The design of the building envelope affects the energy consumption of a building. As the energy requirements for new buildings are becoming more demanding, the performance of the building envelope must be improved. Energy efficiency and durability are important attributes to consider.This report includes investigations of the building envelope, moisture and passive solar energy. It is based on the analysis of two different buildings with different designs. These buildings stand as reference for two of the companies who are working on a new, climate smart, residential area in Uppsala, Sweden.Studies and analyses on energy consumption and moisture transportation were made.

Ethanol for automotive purposes is an issue much debated and researchers disagree about the benefits of bioethanol. Converting energy-rich crops into ethanol suitable as motor fuel is a complex process and continuous development and improvements of processes and material used are important steps in the work of developing environmental friendly fuels. Grain is usually preserved by drying which consumes a lot of energy. Alternative storage of high-moisture grain in airtight storage systems reduce the energy required to produce bioethanol and studies have also shown that ethanol yields are increased more than 10% in ethanol fermentations of moist grain compared to dry. Airtight storage is often not perfectly airtight so biocontrol agents are necessary in order to preserve the grain.

Lattelement AB in Ornskoldsvik is one of the leading companies in Sweden in composite elements in walls, floors and roofs in particular. The company supplies elements to buildings located with a wide geographical variation, which means that the products are subjected to very different climate with regard to snow, wind and humidity. This places high demands and requires the elements to withstand large variable loads.The elements are made of lightweight beams with flanges of structural timber and beam webs made of OSB. These are bound together by nogging pieces with the same kind of structure. On top of the beams a nailed and glued plywood is added to absorb compressive forces and on the underside of the element a sheet of steel is added for tensile absorption.These elements are then attached to the building framework in different ways depending on the particular element height, loads and the structual supporting material of the frame work.

During recent decades several studies have investigated how different social roles and socialization processes between women and men affects our attitudes, values and priorities to environmental problems. Many empirical studies among the general public, indicates that women tend to show a greater environmental concern than men, because of women?s different health- safety- and risk perception. Even though the results are well established among the general public, when investigating if elected women in public offices tend to express a higher environmental concern, than do men, the results are not that clear. By using a dataset covering all the 290 municipalities in Sweden, this study aims to investigate if there is any correlation between the amount of female representatives in the municipality and the amount of emissions of CO2e per capita.

Large companies in today?s business environment are to a great extent depending on their credit score by rating institutes like Moody?s and Standard & Poor?s. There is however indications that these big institutes are not always rating companies accurately. This is why this thesis aims at developing a new credit rating model, CRITA-Score, with the objective of determining a company?s financial health more accurately.

This study has investigated how urban vegetation can be used in a multifunctional way to support ecosystem services in urban environments. Nacka municipality is in the start-up phase of building what is to become Nacka city. This provides a unique possibility to study and analyse what role the vegetation play in making the city a healthy living environment and how it needs to be adapted in order to be resilient against changing climate conditions and how the effects of those changes can be regulated. The study further investigates how airborne pollution, caused by urbanization processes, can be regulated or reduced by vegetation or species selection. Methods used in this study were a combination of qualitative interviews and literature studies, seeking to answer the questions: Which specific ecosystem functions are needed in the urban environment and which aspects will influence the ecosystems ability to deliver the functions in demand? And which plant species have the right mechanisms needed to deliver those functions? These questions have been studied and analysed in a local based context where the local conditions ands site specific needs of Nacka define criteria for plant selection.

The global climate-change means increasing mean-temperature and higher precipitation in Sweden, which leads to shorter periods of frozen ground in the forest. At the same time the harvesting machines are getting bigger and more powerful. The forest industry aim at an even wood flow, and the ground damage has to be as low as possible. The two biggest causes for ground-damage is the bearing capacity of the forest ground and the ground-pressure of the harvesting machines. The aim of this study was to find out some rules for the machine choice considering ground pressure, when harvesting on ground with low bearing capacity.A field study, using a Valmet 890.3 forwarder, was carried out where different ground pressures and their effect on the ground were tested on two different types of ground.Additionally, an inventory of damaged harvesting grounds was made.

The aim of this study was to examine how two integrating social enterprises relate to and combines social, ecological and economic sustainability and how they work with sustainable development in the field of social work. The study has been focusing on three questions: What are the values underpinning ?Macken? and ?Vägen uts? approach to sustainable development? What motivates these companies to work with ecological sustainability in the creation of new jobs? How do these companies combine social, ecological and economic sustainability? To answer our questions we have been interviewing nine employees through semi-structured interviews combined with observations and this study was analysed through a symbolic perspective. The conclusion of this study showed that these companies worked with specific themes to reach social sustainability. Recurring themes in the study was empowerment, recovery and the employee?s own experience of exclusion.

Effects of climate change, urbanization and global homogenization are resulted in the degradation of land and losses of natural habitats. Ecological design integrates nature into urban environment by respecting natural ecological principles and processes and creating resilient urban biotopes which also can be used by local urban communities. The aim of the thesis is to answer the research questions: How ecological design principles can be applied for re-design of Toledo Riverfront (with requirements of the design competition)? and What is the ecological design in landscape architecture? I participated in the USA design competition with the aim to create a vision and redesign of Toledo Riverfront in Ohio State, USA. The site is located in the south point of Lake Erie. As a result of a long industrial activity, riverfront of Toledo had been transformed into inaccessible and abandoned brownfields. In my proposal I applied ecological design principles on three scales: the city of Toledo by reinforcing of ecological connection and creating green corridors along the river; the intermediate scale by suggesting public parks along the river front and on the fine level by proposing detailed design including remediation of the site and use of dredged material.

A fauna passage is a way for animals to cross roads separated from the traffic. In Sweden, there are an unknown number of passages with different functions and appearances. These passages would, with the question ?Which fauna passages can be found in Sweden, and how well do they work?? as a base, be compiled in a comparable way. This would be done with a number of questions asked to the different regions of Vägverket.

Purpose: My purpose of this study was to examine the factors that motivate Swedes to travel to Egypt and Thailand. To answer the question, I have used two questions.What are the factors that motivate Swedes to travel to Egypt and Thailand?What is the motive for Swedes choose to travel to destinations such as Egypt and Thailand?Method: The method I am using  is the qualitative method. The qualitative method has been processed through interviews of Swedish travelers, the Swedish travel agencies as well as Egypt and Thailand tourist agencies specializing in trips to Egypt and Thailand via phone and e-mail.Theory: The theory I am using are motivators and push-pull factors in achieving an understanding of the factors that influence choice for Swedes to travel to destinations such as Egypt and Thailand.Empiricism: The goal was to get a much more qualitative data from the response from the Swedish travel agencies, Egypt and Thailand tourist agency and Swedish travelers who have traveled to both of these destinations.Result: What I have come up with in my study is that the factors that motivate Swedish travelers to travel to Egypt and Thailand, is the warm climate, sun and sea, culture, variety, the cheap price situation and that there are activities for different age groups. This has led to the heat in both Egypt and Thailand has attracted Swedish travelers to travel to both destinations.