In Automatic Milking Systems (AMS), cows are kept in a free stall barn equipped with one or several milking units (MU). The cows? activities in the system are called cow traffic. There are three types of cow traffic systems: guided, partly-guided and free. Free systems have no gates, allowing the cows access to the feeding and resting areas at any time.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

A today common soil reinforcement method is the installation of lime-cement columns. Lime-cement columns have been used since the 1970?s and have been a useful method for stabilizing soil at great depths. It is mostly used for stabilizing road and railway embankments because the method is economically viable and the columns are easy to install. The total costs for the installation of the lime-cement columns is dependent on the numbers of installed columns, what percentage of lime and cement that has been used and the pattern in which the columns has been installed.

The supply of raw materials has always been an important issue in the Swedish Forest industry. Buying timber from local suppliers is important. To ensure raw materials to their industries the forest company must offer good prices and good business deals to their suppliers. The aims with this work are to find out how the contact between private suppliers of raw materials and how the forest company can be developed. To be able to do a complete study of the problems connecting with this subject a quality interview study has been done.

Sweden is a member of the European Union since 1995. The European Union issues directives that cover different areas. Member states must implement these directives into their national legislation. The European council issued in 1993 a directive that took action on the organization of working time, also known as the working time directive. The full name is: Council directive 93/104/EC of 23 November 1993 concerning certain aspects of the organization of working time.

In the early 80s, several new synthetic materials have come to be used in the treatment of canvaspaintings, among them Plextol D 360, Plexisol P 550 and Beva 371. Today, many conservatorsfind the information about the long term sustainability of these binding mediums to beincomplete. Evaluation of synthetic materials is mostly done through clinical research, sometimesartificial aging is simulated. The correlation between artificial and natural aging is however notestablished, useful information can therefore be gained through evaluations of actualconservation treatments. The intention of this study is to find out more about how thementioned products perform over time in normal museum conditions.

The use of artificial insemination (A.I.) as an alternative to normal mating in dog breeding in Sweden are controlled by regulations from the Swedish Board of Agriculture and by ethical rules assigned by the Swedish Kennel Club. Only veterinarians, who have a specific certificate and are specially trained and educated, are allowed to perform inseminations in dogs. Each artificial insemination must be documented and reported to the Swedish Kennel Club (SKK) which, on the behalf of the Swedish Board of Agriculture, yearly presents statistics concerning the use of A.I. in Sweden. The objective of this study was to illustrate the use of artificial insemination in dog breeding in Sweden for the last decade, using the yearly reports from the Kennel Club during the period of 1995 to 2004.

Dimensional stability is an important aspect of fuel mechanical design and licensing of new fuel designs for nuclear power plants. Dimensional changes within the reactor can affect the safety margins against overheating of the cladding and the pellets, therefore it is crucial that the dimensional changes are kept to a minimum.The profits per produced kiloWatt hour continue to decrease for the Swedish nuclear power plants. Some reactors are even operated with a calculated loss. To reduce fuel costs and thereby improve the profit some reactors are operated with higher uranium enrichment, so that the assemblies can reach a higher average burnup. This increases the neutron fluence to the pellets, cladding an spacers.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes glaciers as the best land-indicator of climate change. A variety of studies have concluded, using both modeling and field studies, that above all climate parameters precipitation, particularly winter precipitation, and summer temperature controls the change in glacier mass balance. With global warming almost all glaciers on Earth are losing mass. In this study, the summit-glacier constituting Kebnekaise's south summit (called the Southern-summit henceforth), Sweden's highest point, is studied to see how it is affected by winter precipitation and summer temperature during the period 1968?2013.

The aim of this study is to have a deeper understanding about the motivations and the obstacles of an immigrant?s language learning. I have studied the problem with focus on integration and language learning. The study is principally based on deep interviews with Turkish immigrants. I have studied the question by means of a socio-cultural perspective of learning; Mead?s conceptions I, Me and the generalised other; Scheff?s conception, the social bonds and Freire?s conception, dialog and Asplund?s conception social responsiveness.

The economical and judicial cooperation that EU constitutes results in that there is an increasing amount of international disputes arising. These international disputes in turn result in questions concerning private international law. The principle of mutual trust is not only an important principle in the entire judicial cooperation but especially important in the area of private international law. The principle means that the member states have to trust each other and the different legal systems. The aim of the principle is to ensure a well functioning internal market that is permeated by free circulation and freedom of establishment.

The rise in prevalence and severity of obesity and related diseases imposes increasing costs on society. The objective of this thesis is to discuss and estimate the possible effects of a so-called fat tax as a tool for minimizing these costs. Two alternatives for differentiation of the value-added tax (VAT) on food are compared. The first alternative is an increase of the VAT levied on food containing saturated fatty acids. The second alternative is a subsidy on fruit and vegetables in the form of a VAT at zero percent, instead of today?s twelve percent.

En stor del av Trafikverkets budget går till att reparera och underhålla våra broar. Underhållsåtgärder orsakar också trafikproblem med stora miljöutsläpp och samhällskonsekvenser som följd. Eftersom broar vanligtvis dimensioneras för en lång livslängd på 120 år är det viktigt att planera för långsiktiga lösningar och förutse konsekvenserna av kommande underhållsåtgärder. Genom att använda mer underhållsfria material finns möjligheten att minska kostnaderna och koldioxidsläppen.Målet med examensarbetet är att ta reda på hur stora besparingarna är genom att svara på frågan: ?Vilka fördelar erhålls av att använda mer underhållsfria material i broöverbyggnader ur kostnads- och miljösynpunkt??.

Haemophilia is an inherited disease which causes increased bleeding due to defect clotting factors VIII and/or IX. There are two forms of haemophilia, A and B, which both are X-linked and due to mutations of the genes of factor VIII and factor IX respectively. This study focuses on Haemophilia A and thereby factor VIII.The drugs that are available on the Swedish market today for patients with haemophilia A include Factor VIII(FVIII), which has been purified from human plasma and recombinant factor VIII(rFVIII). The main goal of this study is to gain a better understanding of the effects of treatment of haemophilia A with either purified plasma factor VIII or recombinant factor VIII on reducing or preventing bleeding and on side effects.  The study was designed as a literature review and searches were carried out in PubMed at the Linnaeus University library.  The criteria for selection of articles were: patients with haemophilia, treatment with plasma derived and/or recombinant factor VIII as well as clinical studies.

Mechanical relays are more and more being replaced with semiconductortechnology. In this thesis it is investigated if and how the larger loads couldbe controlled by transistors. The main part of this work aims to create andverify a solution that can control the starter motor, as well as protect it incase of any failure. The different malfunctions that the solution protectsagainst is high current, too high peak current, low current, maximum cranktime and minimum cool off time. The timers also protect indirectly againstoverheating of the starter engine.The transistors used are BTS555, from Infineon.