The Swedish parliament has decided that Sweden should increase its usage of renewable fuel sources to a level of 50% of the total energy consumption in Sweden by the year 2020. One way to reach that goal may be to increase the usage of stumps as a bio-fuel. In Sweden stump harvesting is possible on about 5-10% of the total harvested area and thus contribute with 1,3 - 2,6 TWh per year. An increase stump harvest doesn't come without its drawbacks for the environment. When harvesting stumps a tracked excavator is used to pry the stumps from the ground and then cut the stumps into smaller pieces.

The aim of the study was to describe parents' experiences of empty nest. The sample consisted of individuals who had experienced one child moving out of the parental home. Data were collected through qualitative semi-structured interviews and were analyzed by using thematic analysis. The thematic analysis revealed four themes, Concerns about the new time in life, Changing roles, Socializing in the family and Testing the relations. Due to the themes participants' stories reveal anxiety facing the time that will come when children takes the step to leave the nest.

As demand for renewable energy is increasing rapidly, the market for biomass pellets is expected to continue to grow in the near future. Most of the new raw materials that are discussed for pellet production have one thing in common; the production costs will increase compared to using traditional raw materials such as sawdust and planer shavings. The aim of this thesis is to investigate to what degree increased use of new raw materials for pellet production will affect the general pellet prices in Sweden and to survey what plans Swedish pellet producers have concerning new raw materials. To investigate the raw material situation of the Swedish pellet producers an industry survey was performed. Literature studies were also made on previous research in the subject field. Calculations of the production costs for pellets were done for the raw materials sawdust, wet sawmill chips and energy wood respectively. New raw materials are already used by the large-scale pellet producers in Sweden.

Sammanfattning Ensilerat vallfoder är ett av de absolut viktigaste fodermedlen för att förmå korna att producera en stor mängd högkvalitativ mjölk. En hake är dock att ensilaget ska vara av god kvalitet och med bästa möjliga näringsvärde, samtidigt som man även vill ha volymmängder. För att få detta gäller det att skörda vid rätt tidpunkt, vilket kan vara svårt att veta när det infaller. Till detta finns ett hjälpmedel som kallas skördetidsprognos. Detta går ut på att man klipper prover i vallen upp till tre gånger innan första skörden för att analysera gräset och därigenom kunna avgöra när bästa tiden är för att skörda för att få den mest optimala kombinationen av mängd och näringsvärde. Syftet med detta arbete är att undersöka hur bra hjälpmedel jordbrukare i norra Sverige tycker att skördetidsprognosen är för att få en ökad kvalitet på ensilaget, samt att jämföra variationen i näringsvärde och mängd biomassa inom och mellan olika fält.

The economic conditions for Swedish dairy farmers are constantly changing. The numbers of producers are declining and the economic conditions for dairy production are weakening debilitating. To improve the economic situation for a farm a hired contractor is a possible solution since previous studies show that machinery cooperation may be beneficial for the farmers. The aim of this study is to examine the possibility for farmers to cut costs by hiring a contractor for harvesting silage. A comparison between using own machinery and hire a contractor is the starting point of this study. Another aim is to discuss the farmer?s decision process when achieving today?s situation and to determinate what factors affect their decisions. The study is based on cases selected from four farms that today have chosen not to or only to some extent, hire a contractor for harvesting silage.

Evaluation of machinery costs is necessary for selecting appropriate farm machinery. Timeliness cost due to untimely operations is an important component of machinery costs. Timeliness costs can be high for crop sprayers, since pesticide application must be carried out within a short time interval. This Master thesis investigated the timeliness cost and the probability of a suitable workday for spraying. Timeliness factors were estimated for four different crops (oats, spring wheat, winter wheat and barley) using historical weed trial data.

In this dissertation I have tried to figure out if it possible to make any money on acid grain to feed cows through a case study. The method is a case study combined with a documentary research. At present the farm sell all grain in connection with harvest and buy it back continuously in the neighbourhood, I have compared that with an alternative where I invest in a construction for to store acid grain on the current farm. I have delimit me to only have a look on acid grain because I think that is one of the cheapest way too store grain in smaller aplenty. Before beginning with acid grain is it important to be versed in how everything works and the risk to keep on with acid grain. One disadvantage is that the acid grain is not possible to store more than 12 months with out acid it once again. It is also easy to get mould in the pasture if it is not acid enough.

Most studies regarding wolf (Canis lupus) predation on moose (Alces alces) have focused on the total annual consumption of moose within a wolf territory but few have tried to describe the spatial impact of wolf predation on a local scale. In this study I have analyzed wolf movement data, wolf predation, moose hunting statistics and moose hunter observations to investigate how wolf predation affects the human harvest of moose in Scandinavia. Since wolves prey on mostly juvenile moose during summer, analysis of their summer movement patterns is crucial to understand its impact on the human harvest later during autumn. In this study both reproducing (n = 45) and non-reproducing wolves (n = 12) reduced their movement range during summer to 66% and 67% of their annual movement range, respectively. Reproducing wolves increased their movement range from early to late summer while non reproducing wolves did not.

The last decades the populations of wild boar (Sus scrofa) has increased rapidly over the species? entire European range, including Sweden. This is followed by increasing human-wildlife conflicts as a result of the wild boar foraging behavior, causing damage to agricultural crop fields due to trampling and feeding. To be able to minimize damage we need more knowledge of where in the fields the risk of damage is high and what features in the landscape that affect this risk. I analyzed damage distribution in relation to the distance to six different landscape features; forest, road, ditch, building, game field and bait station, in the study area, the Island Mörkö in eastern central Sweden.

Competition of spruce fiber raw materials has increased dramatically in the last few years, leading to the fact that transportation costs in the current situation represents a much larger share of the total raw material cost. The Holmen-owned pulp industry Hallsta Paper Mill's location on the coast also constitutes a problem, because of the lack of raw material, which is much larger there, than for a pulp mill located in the hinterland. For a coastal industry it?s therefore natural to import much of the raw material by boat or to buy it from the timber terminals, in order to maintain good profitability. The purpose of this study was to analyze how the size of Hallsta Paper Mill timber supply area, without competition, with competition and with terminal use, affects the company ?s transport costs.

The purpose of this thesis is to map out and investigate how the banking sector affects a customer?s willingness to change bank, and what the switching costs are for a customer when making these changes. A case study was performed through qualitative and quantitative questionnaires and interviews. The qualitative part was carried out to create hypotheses. The hypotheses was tested in a quantitative survey to be able to either accepted or rejected these them.

This thesis has been made in cooperation with Forsheda Stålverktyg AB which develops and manufactures injection moulds and diecasting tools. The main concern has been their Trading-system which provides them with considerable amount of quality lost function.Focus has to however be put on the analysis of the Trading-system due to the fact that this has previously meant various quality issues for the company.This thesis treats quality assurance of the Trading-system, identification of the problems in the process and improvements of these problems.Quality assurance is carried out when a company detects that their quality based costs become too high. Quality based cost are? the costs that would disappear if a company's products and its different operational processes were absolute? (Sörqvist, 2001 p.30, free translation from Swedish). High quality based costs often result in increased quality problems, which can lead to substantial economic loss for the company.This work has resulted in a thorough review of the Trading-system whereupon problems have been identified.

Rapporten beskriver ett examensarbete som utförts som en avslutning på Civilingenjörsprogrammet inom maskinteknik med inriktningen konstruktion på Luleå tekniska universitet, LTU. Examensarbetet utfördes i samarbete med Jama Mining Machines AB av Johan Forslund, delvis på plats i Skelleftehamn och delvis på LTU. Målet är att öka hållfastheten på två av Jama Mining Machines komponenter som återfinns i bommen på skrotaren SBU 8000 med rotator. Detta genom att ändra de specifika komponenternas konstruktion. En grundläggande nulägesanalys av de befintliga komponenterna genomförs för att identifiera vilka förbättringar som är nödvändiga till den nya designen.

Black nightshade (Solanum nigrum L.) is a major problem in gardenpea cultivations contracted by Findus AB, a Swedish food processing company. The main problem is that the nightshade berries contain solanin and, thus, are not tolerated in the marketed product, which is fresh frozen peas. In addition, berries have the same size and color as the peas and cannot be separated at the factory. Black nightshades have the last ten years become a more common weed in field grown vegetables in the southern parts of Sweden. This MSc thesis presents an experiment conducted in 2005, aiming at developing a tool for predicting the need for control of black nightshade in peas.

This paper investigates the internal product costing system in one of the Swedish banks with the purpose to evaluate the quality of its product costs and possible implications on decision making. The study shows that the current system distorts product costs by, among other things, using relative allocation of costs and time and by allocating all costs to individual units of products. We therefore propose an alternative product costing system, which mainly draws on ABC theory but is also adapted to the specific needs of service companies and of the Bank. This proposal is intended as a solution in this particular case and not to be generalized in other contexts. We hope however to add to the understanding of why more complex costing systems, such as the ones based on ABC theory are, according to previous studies, not widely used in practice.