Following the accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl in 1986, great volumes of137Cs were distributed over large parts of the former Soviet Union and Europe. Over Scotland,radiocaesium was deposited as wet deposition. Due to the relatively long physical half-life of30 years, there are still measurable activity concentrations in the natural environment. Thisstudy was made on two organic soils, Knockandy Hill and Rora Moss, situated in the easternpart of the central highlands of Scotland. At these two sites, studies on migration and transferbetween soil and plants were conducted.

Abstract The aim of this study was to explore and describe the pupils' thoughts on seed and its development into seedling. Twenty nine Swedish pupils at the age of 7 and 10 years old were interviewed about their knowledge of seeds.It turned out that pupils often have so-called everyday belief to describe the natural science phenomenon by connecting their explanations to phenomena in everyday life to which they are familiar. To describe the process of seed developing into seedling is something that most of the pupils believe to be difficult and this resulted mostly in the answer ?it is growing.? Children have some knowledge about what seeds need in order to germinate but they do not mention the importance of oxygen as a component of seed to be able to germinate and grow. They mean instead that it is sufficient with soil, water and sun.The older pupils, however, are more often than the younger pupils able to connect their reflections to a more scientifically correct description based on terms belonging to the phenomena, though these terms sometimes are wrongly used.

The commercial real estate market makes up a large part of Sweden's property portfolio, as well as other open, free markets in the real estate market it is regulated by supply and demand. There are several factors that affect the supply and demand in the commercial real estate market, for instance the price, type of real estate and the condition of the real estate. In order to achieve success in the commercial real estate market it requires that real estate agents have a certain expertise and flexibility in their thinking to adapt commercial real estates to supply and demand. Active investors on the commercial real estate market are for instance private real estate agents, their knowledge and experience will help increase the value of commercial real estate in the long run. In order to provide the market flexibility in its real estate portfolio, vacancy is a factor that can be used.

This study is based on AgroSeas business idea from environmental problems to valuable resource, with the objective to optimize a method to purify the already eutrophicated Baltic Sea by harvesting water plants, mainly reed. The nutrients will then be recirculated to arable land through residues from biogas production. The amount of nutrients that can be removed by harvesting the biomass depends on the amounts of biomass and the nutrient content of it, which in turn is strongly dependent on the nutrient concentration of the surrounding water. Vegetation suggested in the study for an effective nutrient uptake is helophytes: reed, cattails, reed canary grass, reed sweet grass in shallower water and lemnoideaes: duckweed and nymphaeids in the deeper parts. Competitive species has high purification ability but requires regular maintenance to avoid channeling and overgrowth. Regarding time and method of harvest, effectiveness may be improved by: harvesting plants above the water level and after flowering, a border is kept, harvesting twice a season, a bigger machine and a regular maintenance. This literature has illuminated a major environmental problem and it has been suggested optimizations for a method for cleaning the Baltic Sea through harvesting water plants, but to get a definite answer for the optimal method for each site tests should be carried out, this because many factors determine to what is suitable for each, specific environment. .

The purpose of this report was to investigate to which extent local presence of large herbivore mammals (Alces alces, Cervus elaphus, Capreolus capreolus, Dama dama and Sus scrofa) covaries with small rodents (Myodes glaerolus, Apodemus flavicollis and Apodemus sylvaticus? The hypothesis was that high abundance of wild ungulates would inhibit the density of small forest rodents. The data was collected during field work within FoMA (Environmental Monitoring Assessment)/SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Science). The Ungulate dropping inventory and rodent trappings, which is the base in this report, where performed 2012 ? 2014 in Gnesta/Nyköping municipalities (G/N) with a relatively high density of wild ungulates and Vetlanda/Växjö municipalities (V/V) with relatively lower wild ungulate density.

Hemoglobin is an oxygen binding protein in erythrocytes. Hemoglobin is composed of four polypeptide chains. During the fetal stage the type of hemoglobin called fetal hemoglobin (HbF) dominates. After birth HbF is replaced by adult hemoglobin (HbA). HbF persists in concentrations less than 1%.

A uniform environmental rating system for green buildings is demanded in today's society, where the requirements of the energy consumption for real estate are increasing. There are several different systems around the world used to rate buildings, all with different assessment criteria and starting points, which make it difficult to compare environmental rated buildings with each other.The purpose of this paper is to acquire knowledge about the differences between the Swedish environmental rating system Miljöklassad Byggnad and the American LEED, to discover which system is most advantageous. We also examine whether environmental rating affect the value of a property.Miljöklassad Byggnad is relatively simple structured, which makes it possible for private individuals to rate their property. LEED is better structured on the other hand in the case of environmental classification of commercial properties, because there are manuals for among others hospitals, schools and retail. The rating system for Miljöklassad Byggnad is good since the system seeks to fix the number of errors and deficiencies as soon as possible.

Finanskrisens inträde i mitten av 2008 utsattes Sveriges ekonomi för kraftiga påfrestningar. BNP-tillväxten mattades av och vi har till och med sett en negativ tillväxt för första gången sedan krisen i 90-talets början. Samtidigt har både hushållens konsumtion och näringslivets produktion rasat vilket har bidragit till kännbara effekter och en osäker tid för båda parter. Till en följd av detta har många företag tvingats avveckla sin verksamhet helt medan andra fått se över sina kostnader. Detta har i sin tur bidragit till att arbetslösheten ökat med cirka tre procentenheter mellan 2008 och 2010.

The last hundred years humans have drastically changed the amount of available nitrogen in nature. Today human activities release twice as much available nitrogen as all natural processes are doing together. We also have degraded nature´s possibilities to take care of nitrogen through the draining of wetlands and straightening of rivers. In order to regain the potential of nitrogen retention in the water systems there now requires a reshape of the landscape we live in. A planned expansion of the mining activities in Garpenberg, Dalarna, would double the content of nitrogen in the waters below the mine.

Today evidence exist that environmental chemicals deteriorate male sperm quality and that testicular cancer is increasing. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical with estrogenic effects used in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastic and are found in, for instance, plastic boxes, feeding bottles and food containers. Much of the research on how men's reproductive ability is influenced are performed on rats. This review article complies how male rat reproduction is affected by BPA as a model for humans. Studies have investigated how sperm are affected, hormonal changes during reproduction and how reactive oxygen species (ROS) affects sperm.

In this study it was investigated if the adoption of a new routine for quality control could improve the precision of the dimension measurement obtained by harvesters. Data was collected from three different harvesters. First, a reference data set was collected before the new procedures had been incorporated, and then when the new methodology was implemented another data set was collected by the harvester operators, allowing the two data set to be compered. The results indicated that following the implementation of the new procedures, the reliability and the precision of the measurements has increased. All harvesters included in the study had improved regarding most of the controlled factors such as standard deviation, systematic difference and hit rate within ± 2 cm for length and ± 4 mm for diameter..

Since the 1990?s Open Access has developed into an alternative model for scientific publication. Today an increasing political interest in promoting Open Access is commonly channeled through the implementation of policies by research funders. However, in the scientific community the uptake and acceptance of the model has been of notably different character.This Master?s thesis examines the understanding of and attitudes towards open access among eight senior Swedish researchers and how these have been affected by the implementation of the Swedish Research Council?s Open Access-policy as implemented in 2010.

The primary goal of this study was to investigate how the radial growth of retained trees responds after thinning-from-above. The National Board of Forestry which initiated this study, was interested in whether there were differences in the growth-response between the tree species Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) and Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.). Another question of issue was if there were differences in the growth response between trees of different sizes. It is within the framework of the National Board of Forestry?s, Continuous Forests Project that these urgent questions are to be answered.

Pharmaceuticals that are found in marine ecosystems are a threatening environmental concern, which is known to harm both animal and plant life. One of the reasons for this problem is that the waste water treatment techniques are not optimized to clear waste water from its pharmaceuticals contain. In this master thesis four Swedish treatment wetlands were studied, and their ability to reduce numerous pharmaceuticals in waste water. The four treatment wetlands that were studied were those in Oxelösund, Trosa, Nynäshamn and Eskilstuna. Two ecotoxicological tests and chemical analysis were used.

The research work performed in this thesis has been carried out at the Production Tech-nology Centre where the Thermal Spray research group of University West has its work-shop and labs.This research work has been performed in collaboration with the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), Hyderabad, India.First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to my supervisors Dr. Nicolaie Markocsan and Dr. Nicholas Curry for their guidance, great support and valuable suggestions without which this work could not have been possible. I would also like to thanks Prof. Per Nylén for keeping faith in me and providing me an opportunity to work at PTC, which is a great place to perform research.