Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are ubiquitous in the environment today and they have been detected even in remote areas such as the Arctic. PFASs can be transported by the atmosphere and ocean currents but the transport mechanism is not fully understood. PFASs may be harmful to organisms due to their persistence in the environment, bio-accumulation potential and toxicity. Studies have shown that PFASs can cause adverse effects on the metabolism as well as the endocrine- and reproduction systems in organisms. In this study, PFASs were investigated in glaucous gull (Larus hyperboreus) (n=5) and black guillemot (Cepphus grylle) (n=4) from Svalbard.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the cow-level association between acute hoof lesions and the somatic milk cell count in dairy cattle. Cows from three loose-housed Swedish dairy herds were enrolled in the study if they had an acute hoof lesion treated by a veterinarian or professional hoof trimmer during the preceding year, according to farmer records. Studied lesions were sole ulcer, dermatitis, interdigital necrobacillosis and hoof abscess, in each case causing lameness. For each hoof-diseased cow, 0 to 3 healthy cows were included, matched with respect to herd, breed, parity and lactation stage. Cell counts were obtained from monthly test recordings from one month before to three months after the hoof-lesion diagnosis, and log-transformed.

The following study is a discourse analysis of the concept of critical thinking within pre-school teacher education. It considers the following questions: how does the concept of critical thinking appear in policy documents, central to the pre-school teacher education, and which possible conceptions of critical thinking are conveyed by students and teachers active within the education. Additionally, the study seeks to discuss, as well as suggest a possible relation, between the findings of those two questions. In reviewing the material (consisting of five semi-structured interviews with students and teachers, and of a selection of policy documents central to the education), I argue the existence of a sort of project within the education, which presents critical thinking as a higher value. At the same time, I argue that the concept is not defined or concretized. This project, however, as I suggest while drawing upon Foucault?s ideas of discourse and government, involves a rather high degree of control.

Agricultural drainage ditches are links between fields, lakes and oceans, having the potential to transport e.g. sediment and nutrients. When in a good condition, drainage ditches can act as sinks for e.g. phosphorus and sediments and prevent eutrophication downstream. The aim of this study was to determine the condition of one agricultural drainage ditch and to come up with suggestions for appropriate measures. The aim was also to determine which of the ditch?s properties that were possible to evaluate visually, which processes they represented as well as which properties required complementary physical analysis. This in order to contribute to the work of developing a method for determining the status/condition of agricultural drainage ditches.

In October 2010 it was discovered that leach water had been released from a waste deposit directly into a ditch during a period from March until October 2010. The river Dalhemsån runs close to the waste deposit, just about 10 meters from the ditch. By studying the benthic fauna it was discovered that the environmental status of Dalhemsån is bad in this part of the river, but the discharges of leachate from the waste deposit does not seem to have deteriorated the water further since May 2010..

Calf health is of importance both from a financial perspective and from an animal welfare point of view. Housing system and environment are factors affecting the calves? health. The objective of this project was to make a review of literature on calf health and housing and to perform an observational study on calf health at Nötcenter Viken, Research Dairy Farm, Lantmännen Sweden that changed calf housing system; from a traditional indoor system (Group IN) to outdoor hutches (Group OUT). It was only the housing system that was changed; the routines and feed were the same in both systems.

The purpose of this study is to give a picture of the current status for the recruitment to forest machine operator educations in Sweden, how many the educators are and the outcome of this activity. The three at present different types of education are upper secondary school, polytechnic school and vocational school. The method used for the survey is telephone interviews, pre-broadcast issues were discussed and the responses were recorded. The results are then compiled and presented in linear form. The conclusions one can draw is that education is desirable and important. To get young people interested in forest machine operator education it is very important that the forest industry continues to develop attractive employment..

?The importance of representation and structures to establish influence. A study of the Trade Unions Youth Activities within The Swedish Trade Union Confederation.?-Katrin OlofssonThis essay is studying the importance of representation and structures for the youth to establish influence, within the Trade Unions of The Swedish Trade Union Confederation, LO. More specific it is about the youths influence in each trade union´s executive committee.

Länge har det inom den svenska integrationsforskningen funnits en efterfrågan på kun­skap om kvinnor med utländsk bakgrund på den svenska arbetsmarknaden. Följande upp­sats avser att besvara denna efterfrågan genom att undersöka kvinnor med utländsk bakgrund, deras arbets­status år 1991 samt karriärsmobilitet mellan åren 1991 och 2000. Studien riktar huvudsakligen fokus mot humankapital i form av utbildningsår och dess samband med arbetsstatus för kvinnor med utländsk bakgrund. Med anledning av famil­j­­en som betydelsefullt socialt kapital riktas även ett särskilt fokus mot föräldrars human­kapital och dess potentiella samband med arbetsstatus. Utifrån levnadsnivåundersökningen (LNU) har studien utgått en urvalsstorlek på 5430 individer för undersökningsåret 1991 samt 4395 individer för undersökningsåret 2000. Genom multi­nomiala logi­s­tiska regressioner redogör uppsatsen för de relativa risk­kvot­er­na mellan arbets­status och sociodemografiska faktorer hos kvinnor med utländsk bak­grund respektive svensk bakgrund samt män med utländsk bakgrund.Resultaten visade att humankapital tycktes vara av mindre betydelse för kvinnor med utländsk bakgrund och deras arbetsstatus år 1991 samt att kvinnor av utländsk bakgrund i högre utsträckning än andra befann sig utanför arbetsmarknaden år 1991.

This project was initiated by a desire to improve our knowledge about animal welfare. It is a part of a series of projects involving the way dogs are kept in today?s society. The aim of this project was to investigate the dog?s behaviour when left alone in a parked car.

Prey species make behavioral decisions to reduce the perceived risk of predation and the time spent vulnerable to predation. Behavioral responses to predators are for example selection of specific habitat types and the presence of predators influence individual vigilance. Furthermore, there is a variation in feeding niches with different herbivores focusing their foraging effort on different vegetation types which is also expected to affect the choice of habitat. Behavioral data on anti-predation and foraging behavior at on waterhole is collected from Thomson?s and Grant?s gazelles at Ol Pejeta Conservancy (0°00?N, 36°56?E) located in semiarid bushed grassland in Laikipia district of central Kenya.

Children?s utterances have been studied in different languages; however, only a few studies refer to Swedish. The aim of the present study is to describe utterance types, subordinate clauses and utterance length for a group of three and four year old Swedish children without known functional impairments.The study included 29 children, 17 girls and 12 boys, in a larger city in the south-east of Sweden. The children, all native Swedish speakers, were aged 3;0 to 4;11. Sound recordings were made during a playing session with one of the authors in the children?s day care centers.The utterances were divided into the categories elliptical responses, incomplete and partly unintelligible utterances, imitative utterances and independent utterances.

Könssegregationen på den svenska arbetsmarknaden är stor, av de trettio största yrkena har tre en jämn könsfördelning. Brytprojekt är en del av det arbetsmarknadspolitiska jämställdhetsarbetet med syfte att öka möjligheterna för varje individ att använda sina resurser oberoende av könstillhörighet. Vi har utfört fyra kvalitativa intervjuer med killar som deltagit i ett brytprojekt. Det aktuella brytprojektet är ett samarbete mellan kommunen och den lokala högskolan med syfte att bidra till ökad jämställdhet och bredare rekrytering genom att få fler killar intresserade av kvinnodominerade yrkesområden. Utifrån detta är syftet med studien att undersöka hur killar som deltagit i ett brytprojekt talar om sitt deltagande, samt att studera hur de resonerar kring sina framtida studie- och yrkesval efter deltagandet i projektet.

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.