Magnesium is an essential mineral that is important for several physiologic and biochemical processes in the body. Deficiency of magnesium is mainly associated with grass tetany, but can also appear in cows during the indoor period. Since long it is known that potassium has a negative effect on the absorption of magnesium. Due to the fact that potassium fertilisation leads to a higher potassium content in forage, it is of interest to study interactions of potassium on the magnesium balance in dairy cows. There are few studies about magnesium feeding to dairy cows in Sweden and the purpose of this study was to investigate how much magnesium and from which feed-sources dairy cows in Sweden get their magnesium. Data was collected from seven farms in the northern part of Uppland and from seven farms in Skaraborg in Sweden.

This essay is an analysis of the objects made of bronze found in an excavation Västergarn parish, Gotland, in 2010, conducted by the University of Gotland. The studied material presented in this essay comes from contexts inside, as well as nearby the foundation of a medieval building which purpose is still not certain. The first purpose of this study is to present the bronze-objects found inside and nearby the foundation of house 6, and to see if there are any datable objects. There is also a discussion whether there has been any bronze-crafting in the area. The second purpose is to make a contextual analysis to see if there are any differences between the material found outside and inside of the building, and what conclusions can be made regarding the function and use of the building.

This Master?s Thesis is an evaluation of the software Xilinx System Generator (XSG) and blockset for Matlab. XSG is a module to simulink developed by Xilinx in order to generate VHDL code directly from functions implemented in Matlab. The evaluation was made at Saab Avionics AB in Järfälla, north of Stockholm. In order to investigate the performance of this new module XSG to simulink, a model of a frequency estimator often used in digital radar receivers were implemented in Matlab using XSG.

In cooperation with Hälsoteamet Halmstad a pilot study was made to see if whole body vibration exercise has any effect on muscle strength, movement and experience of pain in people with knee osteoarthritis. Today whole body vibration exercise is a revolutionary exercise method that needs more studies to show the positive and negative effects. Osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease where more cartilage is destroyed than replaced. The most common symptoms are pain, stiffness, restricted movement, muscularly atrophy, tenderness and instability. The cartilage needs pressure to rebuild, it is therefore important that the patient exercise.

In this study, cortisol in saliva and pain related behaviours in calves were used as markers of distress when comparing two different dehorning methods; scoop or cautery. We also investigated the effect of a non steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), meloxikam, on postoperative distress after dehorning with either dehorning scoop or cautery iron. Twenty calves were dehorned on one randomly chosen side by scoop method and on the other side by cautery. Five months later, the effect on horn growth was investigated. Horn production was observed in seven of the calves.

The purpose of our research was to examine whether the acceptance and diffusion of RFID technology among the employees at public libraries in Sweden, follow the classic diffusion of innovation model. RFID or Radio Frequency Identification, is a technology that uses radio frequency and microchip technology to track items, in our case, library books and other library materials. Diffusion is the process by which, in our case, the RFID technology is adopted by the library staff. The purpose of this study was to examine what factors influenced the acceptance and adoption of RFID among the library staff. We used Everett Rogers' Diffusion of innovation theory as our framework.

This report deals with the modeling of a part of the communication system based on the IEEE 802.11a standard which represents the next generation of wireless LAN with greater scalability, better interference immunity and significantly higher speed, up to 54 Mbps. 802.11a uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) where modulation is performed by an IFFT and the demodulation by an FFT. After modeling the FFT in Matlab and C, the FFT implementation has been validated using a soft microprocessor core by Xilinx (Microblaze) and the results were compared..

Tidigare forskning har visat att systematisk självrapportering är en fördelaktig metod för att följa enpersons psykiska mående över tid, och att en digital mätmetod i sin tur skulle innebära många praktiskafördelar jämfört med en analog. Detta är en experimentell randomiserad, kontrollerad studie som medutgångspunkt i personcentrerad vård och spelifiering undersöker 35 personers användarfrekvens ochattityder efter en tvåveckorsperiod där hälften har fått prova att självskatta sitt psykiska mående via enmobilapplikation, och hälften fått göra detsamma via ett analogt stämningsformulär. Resultatet visar enhögre användarfrekvens bland deltagarna i mobilapplikationsgruppen, samt ett uttalat intresse hosbägge grupper för digitala metoder för självskattning av psykiskt mående. Bägge metoderna ansesstärka personcentrerad omvårdnad. The aim of this study is to explore user frequency and attitudes for persons using a mobile applicationfor assessing mental health compared to persons using an analogue assessment method.

The standard housing of farmed mink provides little opportunities for them to behave naturally and abnormal behaviours such as stereotypic behaviour and tail biting may occur. To prevent abnormal behaviours animals in captivity are often provided with different kinds of enrichments. The aim of this study was to investigate what kind of enrichment farmed mink use when they have several kinds to choose from and to observe if abnormal behaviours can be decreased with a larger cage and a more multifaceted environment. Totally 20 silver blue, 10 months old female mink were kept in traditional cages (80x30x40 cm) for 7 days and in larger cages (195x80x40 cm) with several types of enrichments for 7 days. The enrichments were wire net- and wooden shelves, wire net- and plastic cylinders, water bath, plastic ropes, branches, straw and tennis balls. One-zero scan sampling on behaviour and choice of place were performed during 3 hours and 20 minutes prior to feeding during 7 days per treatment in April 2004.

Osteokondros är en vanlig multifaktoriell sjukdom hos stora och snabbt växande hundraser och kan drabba flera leder så som exempelvis armbågs- och bogleder. En lokal störning i den endokondrala benbildningen i epifysen eller metafysens tillväxtbrosk leder till ojämnheter i brosket, som i sin tur orsakar smärta och hälta. Osteokondros påverkar hundens välfärd såväl som människans användning av hunden. Kunskap om sjukdomsförloppet och faktorer som påverkar sjukdomsutveckling krävs för att förhindra uppkomst av osteokondros. Den här litteraturgenomgången syftar till att klargöra huruvida utfodring påverkar utvecklingen av osteokondros hos hund och i så fall på vilket sätt. Litteraturstudien har avgränsats till betydelsen av överutfodring med energi och protein samt över- eller underutfodring med kalcium och fosfor. För att en normal ledyta ska bildas krävs ett intrikat samspel mellan mekanismerna för skelettillväxt, endokondral benbildning samt benremodulering.

It is a well known fact today that suffering due to skin disorders is one of the most common causes to veterinary calls. For the Doberman breed included in the group of working dogs, the frequency and distribution of the different skinrelated diagnoses that causes visits to the veterinary clinics remains undocumented. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the frequency of skinrelated problems causing veterinary visits of Doberman at four different veterinaryclinics in Sweden retrospectively, and compare these results with dogs in general and three other working dog breeds with the help of information collected from Agria - a Swedish animal insurance company. The total amount of veterinary calls that were registered at the clinics in question during the time of the study was 2460 visits. From these, 658 visits were due to skinrelated disorders, which amount to 27%. The most frequent cause to skinsuffering was injury caused by trauma, 15,7% of the Dobermans that were included in the study were affected, the second most frequent cause was inflammatory and infectious skin problems with 12,3% followed by neoplastic changes in the skin with 7% of the Dobermans affected.

The purpose with this study was to analyze the possibilities to produce organic lambs and to hihglight the most common difficulties in such a production system. A description of current organic and conventional lamb production systems was conducted, both from Sweden and from some other countries. The Department of Animal Environment and Health at SLU in Skara performed the project together with The County Board of Agriculture in Västra Götaland and Värmland and The Swedish Animal Health Service. The project lasted from 2002 to 2004. The student report contains the years 2002 and 2003. In the year of 2003 there were 210 000 adult sheep in Sweden, of which 16 400 adult sheep were certified by KRAV. Of the different countries in Sweden, Västra Götaland and Gotland had the largest number of sheep, 14 and 13 per cent of the total number.

The purpose of this study is to give an overview about iron fortification from the view of technique and health. Example of a technical aspect is different iron compounds which are used for fortification like ferrous sulfate, ferrous fumarate and elemental iron. In the aspect of health the big question is if iron fortification can improve the health in reducing the prevalence of anemia. The study focuses on flour fortification with iron in Egypt and Iran and involves a literature study with scientific articles. Also information from WHO (World Health Organization), FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and FFI (Flour Fortification Initiative) are used.Fortification means an intentionally increasing of the content of micronutrient in foods with the aim to improve the food quality and deliver a nutritional benefit to the consumer.

The wild boar was reintroduced to Sweden in the 1970´s from enclosures that they had escaped from and by a government decision in 1988 they were considered a part of the natural fauna again. The purpose with this report is to examine the effects of the wild boars? reintroduction both on their welfare and on other aspects, such as how their population growth affects Sweden. This was done by gathering information from scientific literature and by performing three interviews. Another purpose is to briefly overlook live trapping and other common regulation methods.

Barren rearing environment and early weaning of piglets can lead to a high level of distress, behavioural disturbances and reduction in weight gain. The main aim of this thesis was to study the effects of potential enrichment objects on piglet?s behaviour and weight gain during the pre- and post-weaning period. The second aim was to examine what type of object stimulated the highest frequency of interaction. The study was carried out at the Swedish Livestock Research Centre in Lövsta where a batch of litters from 10 first-parity Yorkshire sows were used.