An overwhelming majority of all male piglets are castrated without anaesthesia when they are very young. In Sweden this means that approximately one and a half million piglets are castrated every year. The reason the piglets are castrated is the strong and unpleasant smell and taste, the ?boar taint? that the meat from intact boars sometimes exhibits. Boar taint is chiefly cause by androstenone and skatole, two compounds that are mostly produced by sexually mature boars and are accumulated in the subcutaneous fat.

Heart failure is a condition where the heart is incapable of providing adequate blood supply to different organs in the body. The underlying causes of heart failure is some kind of disorder in the heart function, and require careful diagnostics. The basic symptoms that arise from heart failure is difficulty in breathing, that aggravate when lying down, and fatigue. The patients? symptoms and impaired quality of life can be in different stages depending on the severity of the heart failure.

In order to optimize calf welfare and health it is important to know the behavior of cattle in free ranging conditions. When the cow is about to give birth to a calf she will leave the heard about 12 hours before. It is then rather obvious that isolating the cow about calving time in a single pen is imitating the cows? natural behavior. To save space and minimize building cost it?s common that the farmers build calving pens for four of five cows especially at larger farms.

The large number of surrendered and feral cats is a big animal welfare problem all over the world. Populations of feral cats arise through a large number of unwanted cats which can lead to surrender of these, through cats allowed to roam free outside which can lead to the owner losing these and through the reproduction that occurs amongst these surrendered or lost cats. One aim of this study is to give an account of this problem. It is however difficult to draw general conclusions about these populations of cats since studies all over the world has been carried out on different types of populations, during different conditions and different periods of time. The welfare of many of these cats is presumably low because they are exposed to risks as disease, starvation, climate, traffic, other animals and humans.

SammanfattningArbetets art: Uppsatsarbete omfattande 15 högskolepoäng C, inom ämnet ArbetsterapiSvensk titel:   Arbetsterapeuters användning av energibesparande metoder förpersoner med kronisk obstruktiv lungsjukdom ? En kvalitativ intervjustudie.Engelsk titel: Occupational therapists use of energy conservation methods for persons with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Handledare:   Margot FriskDatum:           2011-05-02Antal ord:      7993 ord Sammanfattning: Syftet med studien var att undersöka på vilket sätt och i vilket syfte arbetsterapeuter använder sig av energibesparande metoder som åtgärd för personer med kronisk obstruktiv lungsjukdom. Kronisk obstruktiv lungsjukdom (KOL) är en långsamt progredierande sjukdom som påverkar andningen negativt. Den påverkar även individens aktivitetsförmåga vilket leder till mindre självständighet i de vardagliga aktiviteterna. Arbetsterapi som profession är en resurs i rehabiliteringen av personer med KOL.

In some coastal areas in Sweden water shortage sometimes appears because the withdrawal of groundwater is greater than the groundwater recharge. It creates a situation where the available groundwater is insufficient to support residents and businesses with drinking water. The high withdrawal of groundwater also creates a risk for saltwater intrusion to drinking water wells. The problem most commonly occurs during the summer when the groundwater recharge is low, but the population is high, due to tourism and summer residents.The purpose of this study was to investigate how local water supply in areas affected by water shortage can be solved as sustainable as possible. The work was divided into three parts where the first part comprised of a literature review on water systems in which four different options were investigated: artificial groundwater recharge, rainwater harvesting, desalination and water reuse.

Background: A health damage that has been specifically related to nursing is pressure ulcers. Pressure ulcers are a complication caused by disease, care and treatment and can result in great suffering for the patient. Pressure ulcers can affect people both physically and psychosocially and is experienced, by most patients, as a serious and unnecessary complication of care. Today there are hundreds of identified risk factors for pressure ulcers described that can be divided into patient and care-related risk factors. A successful pressure ulcer prevention and treatment is to reduce or eliminate the underlying causes for the development of pressure ulcers, prevent deterioration and to treat existing ulcers.

The pathogenic fungus Rhizoctonia solani causes major economic losses for potato producers in Sweden. The producers, as well as advisors, have reported possible increases in severity of R. solani when free-living plant parasitic nematodes are present and active. There are several examples in the literature of interactions between pathogens where one, or both species, support or increase the damage made by the other organism. These complexes are important to investigate and to be able to forecast, since even low incidences of fungi or nematodes may result in an interaction of significance.

Chlamydia is a sexually transmitted infection. The infection rates have increased in the last decade. During 2008 the trend rates declined in all counties and regions in Sweden. Chlamydia infections have a geographical spatial pattern differences. This is seen from the national surveillance data report from the Swedish Institute for infectious disease control (SMI).

This thesis is a queer masculinity reading of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?s short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894). The analysis focuses on the dissonances, tensions and queerness that reside within the text itself. This has been done from my problem statement: How is Sherlock Holmes and John Watson?s sexuality and masculinity portrayed within the boundary of the text? What is being said, what is hidden, and what is dealt with silently? To reveal these queer parts this analysis has been focused around five themes: the late Victorian male, the Woman, countertypes and decadence, the homosocial sphere and sexuality.

The Pallas cat is a small cat living in central Asia. The cat is approximately the size of a domestic cat but the Pallas cat is more stocky build and has a much thicker fur that enables the cat to live in a climate with temperatures plummeting to -50°C. The thick fur is one of the reasons this cat has been a popular game for hunters in the past. Nowadays there are other threats to the Pallas cat. One of the major threats today is the reduction of food sources.

Sahlgrenska Academyat University of GothenburgDepartment of Internal Medicine and Clinical NutritionAbstractTitle: Effects of isoflavone supplementation from soybeans on LDL-cholesterol levels in adultAuthors: Malin Blomgren Alegria and Ruut ReivaaraSupervisor: Lena HulthénExaminer: Frode SlindeProgramme: Dietician study programme, 180/240 ECTSType of paper: Examination paper, 15 hpDate: 2013-04-08Background: One of the most common causes of death in Sweden is due to cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke. Hypercholesterolemia is one of the risk factors for cardiovascular disease. In Asia, hypercholesterolemia is less common than in the Western countries. In Asian countries, soy products are consumed in larger quantities than in the Western world, which has led to implemented research with the intention of examining soy's potential effect on cholesterol levels.Objective: To investigate whether there is scientific evidence that isoflavone supplementation from soy bean may have a lowering effect on LDL-cholesterol.Search strategy: The databases used for the systematic literature search were PubMed, Scopus and Cochrane. Keywords used were cholesterol and 9 versions of this, and isoflavones and 11 versions of that.Selection criteria: RCT articles, on humans, written in English, published from 2011 onwards, that focused on interventions with isoflavones from soybeans and its effect on blood cholesterol, the participants were over 18 years old and the study time was at least 24 weeks.

Att genomgå en amputation kan upplevas som en stor livsomställning där patienten behöver acceptera förlusten av kroppsdelen för att kunna gå vidare med sitt liv och uppleva en god livskvalitet, trots en kvarvarande grundsjukdom. Patienten genomgår en transition och lär sig hantera sin nya situation och finner mening och begriplighet. Genom en känsla av sammanhang kan patienten få en ökad livskvalitet. Syftet med denna litteraturöversikt var att belysa faktorer som påverkar patientens livskvalitet efter en amputation av nedre extremitet på grund av diabetes eller kärlsjukdom. Artiklarna söktes i databaserna PubMed och Cinahl, där inklusionskriterierna var amputation av nedre extremiteter som genomförts på grund av diabetes eller kärlsjukdom.

Infektion med hjärtmask (Dirofilaria immitis) är endemisk bland hund och katt i stora delar av världen, bland annat södra Europa och de flesta delstater i USA. I Sverige anses det i nuläget inte finnas risk för inhemsk smitta. Faktorer som klimatförändringar och förflyttning av sällskapsdjur inom Europa kan öka risken för spridning till tidigare fria områden. Denna litteraturstudie ger en översikt över hur smittspridning av Dirofilaria immitis sker samt hur dess förutsättningar ser ut i Sverige. För att smittspridning av Dirofilaria immitis ska kunna ske krävs närvaro av mikrofilaremiska hundar, myggor som fungerar som mellanvärdar och vektorer, samt ett klimat som tillåter utveckling av mikrofilarier till det infektiösa stadiet L3 i mellanvärden.

The cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is one of the big feline species kept in zoos worldwide. The wild populations are quite small and therefore the captive population make up an important part of the total population of the world. Although life in the wild is not always easy and a captive environment provides shelter and food it does not come without problems. In captivity cheetahs become chronically ill and also develop stereotypic behaviours. Neither of these are problems in wild populations and both can be linked to stress in captivity.