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 purpose of this literature review was from dairy cows? behaviour and welfare point ofview describe how feed bunk and cubicles in a loose house system should be designed. Todaydairy cows in Sweden and in the world have high demands because of a high milk production,stress and higher risk of being afflicted with diseases. Through selection in breeding the bestquality can be performed, but high demands of the environment for the dairy cow is above allalso important for a good welfare and for a good milk production. Feed bunks and cubiclesare just some parts to be designed in the best way for a good animal welfare.

The thesis aims to investigate the farmer?s perception of currency hedging and interest rate bonds and to investigate the farm size of companies categorized by number of acres, has no effect on this. The work also aims to gain an insight into what active farmers consider to be important what to consider when they choosing a bank and a personal banker. The work is based on the survey and has been supplemented by a literature review on the subject. For the survey were selected out randomly 50 farmers with Agriculture and Rural Management education. The requirement of the farmers was that they should be farmers by profession, and also made sure that the farmers of various sizes came with. We got a total of 32 responses within the set response time we said, which was better response than we expected. When the final result came we ranged the farms in a size range. We found out that all farmers in the study diligently follow the market and are easy to assimilate new ideas, providing opportunities to profitability of their business with the different instruments that are available on both the financial level and farm level. The investigation revealed that the major in favor of having a personal banker. They think it´s good to have a special plug to turn to who has knowledge and experience of how the agriculture sector operates.

Stockholms vattenskärning AB in Kungsängen has through the acquisition of a company begun to design and produce aircraft heaters whose origin is early 1970s which follows a high inefficiency in terms of energy consumption and size.The aircraft heater, which is sold worldwide, serves its purpose for customer satisfaction and has done so ever since it was developed in the 70s.Stockholms vattenskärning AB is now investigating the possibility in making the aircraft heaters more efficient, both in terms of energy consumption but also on a more efficient design with the belief that it would lead them to an edge in the market. The aircraft heater consists of several main components whose function altogether is to keep passenger aircrafts warm while they are on the ground.This project has been limited to the further development of the heat exchanger package which accounts for the conversion of the hot medium to the fresh air being carried in to the aircraft cabin. Work has been divided into different phases in order to create a better understanding of the project range and to make it easier to divide the various elements in the time available, 10 weeks. These phases are literature review, situation analysis, concept generation, CAD, concept comparison and writing reports.After the initial literature review was made, a fundamental theory was written which is essential in understanding the remaining parts of the project.With the theoretical part as support, measurements and calculations were made on the current heat exchange package in a situation analysis to ensure its operation and efficiency.In the concept generation phase, the collected facts from the literature review was used as the basis for creating a matrix. The purpose of the matrix was to indicate the two most suitable types of heat exchangers to develop four new concepts out of.In the CAD phase the four concepts was drawn up and then described with text and images.The last phase is the concept comparison where a concept selection matrix is used to function as a decision basis for further production at Stockholms vattenskärning AB. The four concepts have been developed based on the current heat exchanger and is gradually changed into a design of a cross-flow heat exchanger constructed out of stainless sections. The purpose of this is to have gradual upgrading of the heat exchanger as an option, in order not to saturate the market..

The objectives of this research were to determine whether the natural rattan resources in Sulawesi, Indonesia can cope with the strongly increased harvesting pressure that has occurred over the last centuries. I was furthermore looking for patterns in the rattan population dynamics that might give a hint on how the harvesting system could be improved to ensure a maximum sustainable yield. To answer these questions, I developed an individual-based model to analyse the dynamics of rattan growth in connection with rattan harvests by locals to identify sustainable levels of rattan harvests around villages in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Scenarios with different harvesting intensities were run to compare the change in harvest amount. For a given harvesting pressure, scenarios with a high number of harvesters and a low harvesting frequency had the same effect as scenarios with high harvesting frequencies and a low number of harvesters.

Through a case study, I wanted to find out what advantages and disadvantages local companies consider with scrum and what they think about its future. To find out what scrum is, I read the literature and scientific articles and then wrote surveys based on my thoughts. Further, I also wanted to find out if it?s possible to use scrum in a school environment and therefore I visited a high school class who used scrum in one of their projects. The result was good but could have been better as it requires more training of scrum to understand everything.

The main intention with this study was to explore how parents, employed in three Swedish small- and medium-sized companies, experienced their combination of work and parental leave. The investigation was carried out by a questionnaire, and the 21 participants estimated the attitude from and the treatment by mainly the management and the colleagues. The answers were analyzed both from a perspective of gender and in the aspect of high- and low utilizers of parental leave. The results showed that although both men and women generally estimated the attitude from the management and the colleagues towards parental leave to be positive, the parental leave was divided traditionally and unequally between the parents..

The purpose of the study is to examine, describe and analyse how a selection of parents to children with Asperger syndrome understand, experience and cope with their parenthood. To attain this purpose we focused on these following questions;How does the respondents view their parenthood?; What kind of strategies does the respondents use to cope with their parenthood on the basis on their child with Asperger syndrome?; How does the respondents experience the mesosystem interact with them regarding situations contenting strenuous and stress?We chose to do a qualitative study by conducting separate interviews with eight parents to children with Asperger syndrome. Then we analyzed the answers using an abductive research, we tested the empirical data against our choice of theoretical perspectives. The results shows; that several of the parents in the study have experiences of high strenuous and stress in combination the several roles their parenthood contained.

This report discusses a method to detect divers in harbour environments usingpassive acoustic detection. The goal was to achieve as high detection as possiblewithout having too high false alarm rate. A short execution time was also desirable.By using the characteristic of an inhalation a band-pass filter was applied to the signalto improve the signal to noise ratio. After the filtering an energy estimation of thesignal was made. This energy estimation was later used in a frequency analysis, whichcould tell us if there were enough energy in the frequencies that correspond to adivers breathing frequency.

My essay deals with a problem in our society which, in my opinion, has been neglected. Even today in 2011, the quality of schools and preschools is extremely varied. This has been a problem for a long time and not nearly enough attention has been paid to it.In my essay I have tried to understand what it is that causes these differences in quality between preschools. With help from literature and research studies I have examined what quality in preschool really means.My starting point is an account of my own experience at the preschool where I currently work and a description of a study visit I made to another preschool which operates in a very different way to the one where I work. I wanted to investigate what the consequences are for children who grow up attending preschools of different quality.

This paper has its aim to investigate in which way the theory about the dynamic of the triadic nexus, presented by Brubaker, needs to be revised. In the first place this theory is presented and after then applied on the triad formed by: the Hungarian national minority in Transylvania, Romania and Hungary. Through the empirical evidences, that are presented here by following up the political relations and its dynamics over time between the three fields, is shown that the theory is usable for the case in question. Further as we approach the more actual development of the political life in the triad appears a need to deal with one more field which would be for example the NATO or/and EU.This means that Brubakers theory has to be revised so it would take in account a forth field and that of an international organization/institution. The arguments for this needed change is put forth through empirical evidences on the political relations that the two states has with NATO or/and EU and the huge influence these have on the states..

In the year of 2011, the new CEO of AB Volvo announced a major reorganization. This reorganization was a contributing factor to the start-up of this thesis.Volvo Group Logistics Services (VGLS) is Volvo Group?s global logistics partner, which designs, manages and optimizes all of the group's incoming and outgoing logistics flows. With the reorganization, VGLS started a project regarding responsibilities around railway flows. Within the project a demand to collect logistics requirements occurred.

Abstract: Elite soccer in combination with education is a unique and demanding task. The path towards a glory career in sports takes hard mental and physical training. The objectives in this study are 6 elite focused high school students studying high school education programs in combination with football profile. They are 3 of each gender. The purpose of the study was to find out more about their perspective of motivation and what makes them keep going towards a career in football in beside their education.The study is of empiric hermeneutic survey used qualitative method and interviewing to collect data.

LRF Konsult is a big consulting-firm with offices located all over Sweden. The corporation offers a wide range of services and a lot of the customers are small businesses active within the green sector. An analysis of the corporation made in 2006 showed that one of LRF Konsults weaknesses is that many customers are unaware of the wide range of services that LRF Konsult offers. The internal communication is believed to play a big role in marketing these services. Therefor, the objective of this thesis has been to investigate why the transfer of customers between accounting consultants and business advisors is not greater and how this can be improved.

The Multispectral Canopy Reflectance Model (MCRM) by Kuusk (1995) has beenused to simulate the reflectance of a sugarbeet canopy. The simulated reflectancevalues show high absorptance in the VIS area, compared to field measurements, andhigh reflectance values in the NIR area. The errors may be due to overestimation ofclorophyll content in the sugarbeet leaves and scattered light during fieldmeasurements. The estimation of the clorophyll content where carried out using thePROSPECT-model by Jacquemoud & Baret (1990).During the vegetation period, the state of the canopy moves towards a closed canopy,with sparse vegetation in spring. The MCRM-model was used to perform a ?spring?simulation, which was compared to the original simulation.