Wood pellets are an upgraded product of residuals from several wood processing industries, for example saw mills and pulp industries. The pellets are produced by pressing the milled and dried sawdust to cylindrical units with a higher density than the initial raw material. Pellets have great benefits compared to the raw material: high energy per volume, good transport and storage properties and homogeneity. Several parameters collaborate in the whole process, which makes it complex. Wood is a heterogeneous material, chemically and structurally dependent on wood parts, habitat and storage procedures.

There are two species of potato cyst nematode (PCN), the yellow, Globodera rostochiensis, and the white, Globodera pallida. Each of them can appear in different pathotypes. These are separated by testing the nematode ability to multiply on a number of potato cultivars with different resistance properties. The aim of this project was to examine the virulence of Swedish and foreign PCN populations and to compare two test methods. Biotests are today the only available tests used to study virulence.

People live longer. There is a growing need to increase the knowledge of aging and of the need among the elderly for medical care in the near future. As a step towards meeting this need, a survey among the elderly in Skåne is made by the division of Geriatric Medicine in Malmö University Hospital. This survey is called Gott åldrande i Skåne, GÅS. A frequent decease among the elderly is Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI).

By examine plastic craniums from eight different hominids I wanted to find morfological characteristics that agreed with those of modern humans. The species that were selected had a plastic casting of its cranium in the laboratory at Gotland University. My focus was on species from the family Australopithecius and Homo and only working with their craniums. And this because the cranium and the theeth shows the most visible morfological characteristics between the different hominids. I also wanted,in a small part of the essay, to write about the differences in now living primates and humans skulls.Except from analysing the plastic castings I also studied surveys written by other scientist on the same subject.

This thesis work is the last part of the Master of Science education inmechanical engineering at KTH, Stockholm.The aim of this project was the development of a Multi-zone modelfor NOxformation in Diesel engines. Because of the stringent emissionlegislations, great effort is made to decrease the fuel consumption and theharmful emissions of internal combustion engines. Computer simulationsplay a decisive role in this context because they substitute the expensiveand time-consuming laboratory tests.The model is based on a multi-zone approach and uses the wellknownExtended Zeldovich Mechanism which gives a relation to calculatethe NO formation rate using the concentration of different gas speciesinvolved in the process.All the most important phenomena involved in the Diesel combustionhave been modelled. A special attention is then paid to the equilibriumconcentration calculation; this is a significant part of the model whichstrongly influences the following steps.A Simulink model has also been developed. This second version isbased on the previous model and it is made especially to allow theconnection with other external softwares, GT-power in this case.

The development of quantitative, real-time PCR (qPCR) combined with the mapping of the canine genome opens new possibilities in veterinary medicine. This method provides a quick and accurate quantification of the expression of a specific gene at a given point in time and thereby also information of how the gene expression for a certain protein is influenced by various conditions and diseases. One possible area of application is identifying bio markers for cancer. Recently the protein serglycin (the core protein of an intracellular proteoglycan) was found to act as a selective marker for the disease acute myeloid leukemia in humans (Niemann et al, 2007). Serglycin is produced by most hematopoietic cells, although mast cells account for the largest amount of serglycin.

The purpose of this study is to analyse how the local governments have implanted the new public health policy, which Sweden adopted in April 2003. The new health policy stakes out a new direction for national public health policy. Instead of focusing on diseases the new public health policy focus in factors that determine health.Important factors to study are the role of central steering from the central government. The method used is a case study of three Swedish local governments. The main material used is interviews and different policy documents within the area of public health.The conclusion of the study shows that the local governments are fairly satisfied with the steering of public health policy by the central government.

An increasing number of scholarly publishers are beginning to make their journals available electronically. At the same time there is a growing amount of exclusively electronic journals freely accessible on the Internet. These are facts that librarians have to take into consideration.This master's thesis aims to describe the electronic journal and its role in Swedish academic libraries. In a review of current literature about electronic journals, the authors discuss their strengths and weaknesses, and their impact on scholars, publishers and libraries. To investigate the situation in Sweden, a questionnaire was sent out to 43 academic libraries.Questions were raised about the selection and acquisition of electronic journals, access, technology and economy.The results show that almost half of the 35 responding libraries offer electronic journals to their users.

Benthic diatoms are used in Sweden for monitoring water quality in run-ning water; the method is also frequently used in other countries in Europe. One of the problems of the diatom method is the need for sedimentation of the fresh sample, to be able to decant the over standing water and add alco-hol as a preservations solution. To my knowledge, no results have been published about how long the settling time must be to ensure that the ben-thic diatoms really have settled down to avoid a loss of the diatoms when decanting the over standing water. The aim of my investigation was to improve the Swedish method where the benthic diatoms are used for water quality monitoring. I wanted to find out the appropriate time necessary to wait until all diatoms have settled down before decanting the over standing water. First, fresh benthic diatom samples were taken in the river Fyrisån and the lake Mälaren on different days. After arriving in the laboratory, I waited three different times (30 min, 60 and 180 min) for the diatoms to settle.

BakgrundArtros, som är en degenerativ ledsjukdom, är en av de vanligaste sjukdomarna i Sverige. Sjukdomen är vanligare hos äldre än hos yngre och det är fler kvinnor än män som utvecklar artros. Normalt sker en nybildning av brosk kontinuerligt i alla kroppens leder, men vid artros bryts brosket ner utan att någon nybildning sker. Artros kan förekomma i alla kroppens leder, men det är framför allt knä, höft och fingerleder som drabbas.Smärta är oftast det första symtomet på sjukdomen. Smärtan behandlas i första hand med paracetamol eller non steroid inflammatory drugs (NSAID).

Crypreservation of oocytes is recently being considered to be a valid choice in infertility treatments.Low survival and fertilization rates due to inefficient slow freeze protocols have been the outcome ofmany previous studies done in the field. However, introduction of the vitrification technique and itsapplication in reproductive medicine and to some extent new improved slow freeze protocols haveshown that oocytes can be cryopreserved with successful outcome.In this project the survival rate of oocytes after vitrification with MediCult Vitrification andWarming Media has been studied. Also, a comparison of the carriers Cryoloop (an open system) andCryopette (a closed system) has been performed.A total of 43 oocytes were vitrified and warmed according to MediCult's protocol, of which 21oocytes with Cryoloop and 22 with Cryopette. The cells were post-thaw incubated in a physiologicalenvironment for 24h. During that time the morphology and viability were observed and noted after 2h,over night and after 24h.

Cancer is one of the most feared diseases in veterinary medicine today, and the incidence is higher than ever due to the fact that our companion animals live longer then they did ten to twenty years ago. Cancer is also one of the most common causes of mortality in older companion animals. This literature review will be about two of the currently most common form of cancer treatment of companion animals in Swedish animal hospitals, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. There will also be a section of general nursing care for cancer patients. The section of chemotherapy will describe the indications for choosing chemotherapy, the way to administrate chemotherapeutic drugs, describe specific chemotherapeutic drugs, potential side effects of chemotherapy, and how to handle and store chemotherapeutic drugs safely. The section of radiation therapy will describe the current devices for delivering radiation therapy, describe the indications for choosing radiation therapy and describe potential side effects that radiation therapy may cause.

The aim of this study was to map out the quality of the treatment in the forensic outpatient care unity in Malmoe from a patient point of view. This target group, seriously mentally disordered law-offenders, has been neglected in the scientific research. This investigation will hopefully contribute to a positive change in this subject. To achieve a good understanding of this field a methodological triangulation was conducted which included an observational study, a pilotstudy and semistructured interviews. 14 patients and 10 staff members were interviewed.

SAAB Aerotech division FGR in Arboga builds and develops equipment and components used in both military and civilian applications. To build a test system for a specific project that SAAB is responsible for requires a simple signal generator that can provide a pulse modulated signal. The need to buy a new advanced signal generator for example from Agilent is not as profitable as the instrument is expensive and contains features that SAAB does not require in their applications and test systems. That was the reason why SAAB offers two students a thesis where the goal is to construct a signal generator in accordance with what SAAB requests.This thesis contains several different phases. The first step was a meeting with our supervisor Mats Bergman and by reading the data sheets for components to be used in the project, with these information and specifications that we have received from SAAB we started to construct the signal generator.What we did during the construction work was to simulate and draw a schematic to be able to design the circuit board.

The analysis of acute phase protein serum amyloid A (SAA) has recently been brought into clinical use in veterinary medicine. Some of the difficulties with incorporating the SAA method in clinical practice have been the expensive and rather large equipment required for the method. Due to these difficulties only larger clinics can afford to use the SAA analysis.The company Equinostic has recently developed a smaller instrument that costs one-tenth of a larger instrument. The instrument is named EVA1 and has so far only been used to analyze SAA in horses.The aim of this study was to investigate if the EVA1 instrument could be used to analyze SAA in cats. This study included 24 serum samples from cat, which were first analyzed twice on the EVA1 instrument and then sent to the Strömsholm Referral Animal Hospital in Sweden where they reanalyzed the samples using a validated reference method.