This master thesis was made to validate hydropower models of a turbine governor,Kaplan turbine and a Francis turbine in the power system simulator ARISTO atSvenska Kraftnät. The validation was made in three steps. The first step was to makesure the models was implement correctly in the simulator. The second was tocompare the simulation results from the Kaplan turbine model to data from a realhydropower plant. The comparison was made to see how the models could generatesimulation result that was similar to the reference power station.

In this thesis the methane gas potential of three different substrates, two algaes Saccharina latissima and Laminaria digitata and biosludge mixed with paper fiber was studied. This was done by batch experiments in a laboratory environment to examine the gas production and composition of the produced gas.Biogas production is a complex anaerobic digestion process in which various microorganisms decompose the substrate in steps and at the end produce biogas and a residue. Many factors affect the production of gas, for example the substrate content, temperature and pH in the digester.The analysis of methane potential were divided into two experiments. In experiment 1 substrates were digested along with inoculum from Växjö waste water treatment plant in a temperature of about 37 ?C.

This report describes the development of a sample loader for my diploma work at Q-linea AB in Uppsala. The sample loader will replace the process of loading fluid samples into Q-linea?s instrument for biomolecule analysis. The earlier process was done by hand and was a time consuming and inefficient task.The work was initiated with a design phase where an overview of the system was created. The sample loader will be receiving text commands from a PC that coordinates all the subsystems like pumps and lasers on the analysis instrument.

The aim of this study is to examine how young people look at and perceive drugs by studying how they discuss and reason about drugs. The essay's main interest is not whether young people use drugs or not. We are primarily interested in how young people talk about drugs. The questions that we want to get answered are:What are the beliefs that young people have about drugs, drug use and drug users? More specifically we seek answers to which images, symbols and attributes that young people links to drugs, drug use and drug users.What is important in young people's construction of beliefs about drugs and drug users? More specifically, which are the information sources and reference groups that young people assigns significance?We used focus group interviews as the research method.

This paper replicates a test performed by Burgstahler and Dichev (1997), which identifies a kink in the frequency distribution of earnings for companies listed on American stock exchanges. Their claim, that the kink is evidence of earnings management, has however been dismissed as a methodical consequence. To address this concern, this paper not only replicates the test in general, but also performs tests on a split sample, where founding family-owned companies are separated from the others, since earlier research has shown that founding family ownership is correlated with less earnings management. The results are in line with the findings of Burgstahler and Dichev, with a significant kink in the frequency distribution in the general test. The findings also show that the significance of the kink increases in the non-family-owned sample, while it disappears in the family-owned sample.

Hematology-instruments that analyze blood cells can at specific cases be followed by manual counting with a hemocytometer. The plastic hemocytometer which has a fixed coverslip and is assigned for disposable use, appears to reduce the problems arising from the use of the traditional glass hemocytometer, for instance coverslip-application difficulty and dust particles. Capillary whole blood sampling may be useful for patients at the emergency department and in addition, a smaller volume of blood is taken compared to venous blood sampling. This study will focus on the platelet- and leukocyte count (PLT and WBC) in venous and capillary blood, in order to compare the plastic- and glass hemocytometers with Sysmex XN-2000 (Sysmex Corporation, Kobe, Japan), and verify if capillary whole blood sampling can be used for the measurement of these hematological parameters. 30 subjects donated both capillary- and venous blood samples and these blood samples were analyzed with glass- and plastic hemocytometers with Sysmex XN-2000 as the reference method.

This study aims to assess the normal inflow of extraterrestrial chromite to Earth. The results from the investigationare compared to earlier studies of middle Ordovician Orthoceratite Limestone in which 1 - 3 extraterrestrial chromitegrains ( >63 ?Êm ) per kilogram limestone were found. These values have been interpreted as evidence of a twoorders of magnitude increase in the flux of extraterrestrial matter to Earth during a part of middle Ordovician.From an early Paleocene marine sedimentary sequence with known sedimentation rate in Zumaia, northernSpain, 90,5 kilogram of condensed limestone, dated to about 63 Ma, was sampled. The limestone was dissolved inhydrochloric- and hydrofluoric acid and the residue was sieved and searched for opaque minerals under the binocularmicroscope.

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether gallop training, rather than regular drive training, is worthwhile for trotters race performance. Another aim of the study was to expand the author?s riding- and driving capacity, and get more practical experience on the impact of interval training on trotters. The sample population in the study was two trotters, one Standardbred, and one cold-blood. Given the small sample population, the results of the study is only indicative on the effects of gallop training on trotters, and not conclusive.

The aim of this paper was to investigate how 40 typical speakerswith Finnish accent, aged 65-84 years, performed in speech assessmentthrough Dysartribedömningen, a Swedish dysarthria assessment instrument.Their results were compared with results of a matched Swedish nativespeaking reference group. Both groups were assessed in areas offunction/structure, prosody/intelligibility and through a survey oncommunication. Results indicated that the performances of the Finnishparticipant group were estimated as more deviant than the Swedish,considering all areas. The Finnish participants were deviant in articulationand they had a significantly lower speech rate in reading. They also hadsignificantly lower scores in intelligibility compared to the reference group.The results of the survey of communication showed that the Finnishparticipants estimated their levels of activity and participation to besignificantly more limited compared to the reference group.

During this master thesis, wear and friction properties for the high-temperature alloy Kanthal APMT were studied. The results were also compared to 253MA. The initial tests showed, among other things, that the surface fineness of the muffle tubes matters in real applications like conveyor belts. A 253MA-sample wear-tested against a 253MA-tube showed lowest wear at 900°C while a pre-oxidized APMT-sample wear-tested against a APMT-tube had the lowest mean value of the friction force at 1100°C, compared to all other tests..

Syftet med denna uppsats är att modellera och prognostisera Sveriges varuexport, varuimport och handelsnetto. Vi använder oss av data från januari 1975 till och med augusti 2010 för respektive serie. Dessa data testas och jämförs i olika ARIMA- och SARIMA-modeller samt skattas även medelst säsongsreningsprogrammet TRAMO/SEATS. För de modeller som bäst passar serierna genomförs därefter in sample- och out of sample-analyser med felmåtten RMSE och MAPE. Modellerna med bäst felmått och som därpå väljs ut för att göra prognoser för serierna till och med augusti 2012 är (3,1,0)x(0,1,1) för export, (2,1,1)x(0,1,1) för import samt (0,1,1)x(0,1,1) skattad i TRAMO/SEATS för handelsnetto..

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether gallop training, rather than regular drive training, is worthwhile for trotters race performance. Another aim of the study was to expand the author?s riding- and driving capacity, and get more practical experience on the impact of interval training on trotters. The sample population in the study was two trotters, one Standardbred, and one cold-blood. Given the small sample population, the results of the study is only indicative on the effects of gallop training on trotters, and not conclusive.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate how academic librarians experience reference work aimed at international students. International students are a growing usergroup in Swedish academic libraries. The study?s main research question is:- How do academic librarians experience reference work aimed at international students?The study was performed with a phenomenographic methodological approach where seven qualitative interviews with academic librarians were conducted.

ABSTRACT: Commercial swab transport systems are used for collection and transporting of fecal and other microbiological samples. This system must maintain viability and contribute to survival of microorganisms during transport to the laboratory. Four swab transport systems have been compared, eSwab, ?- Transwab and fecalSwab, all three with flocked swabs, and Copan Venturi Transystem with rayon swabs. The study followed the recommendations from the Clinical Laboratory Standard Institute; document M40-A for recovery of Samonella, Shigella, Yersinia and Neisseria gonorrhoeae after storage for 0, 6, 24, 48 and 72 h at room- (22-25°C) and refrigerated (2-8ºC) temperature.

The aim of this study was to examine the relations between women?s perceived stress off the job (dependent variable), responsability for household chores, emotional support, number of children living at home, neuroticism and age (independent variables). Comparisons between the present sample and two independent samples from previous research were made with regard to perceived stress and neuroticism. The sample of this study consisted of 186 women working in the fields of health care and geriatric care. The results showed that perceived stress correlated positively with neuroticism and number of children and negatively with emotional support, though the effectsizes for number of children and emotional support were fairly small.