Present essay aims to introduce the reader to central topics regarding Rhododendrons of subgenus Vireya. As a result of a donation, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, received a collection of Vireya from a local amateur grower, Kurt Myllenberg. Since the subgenus Vireya is uncommon in Scandinavian horticulture, the study tries to establish conditions for successful growing. The subgenus Vireya differ from the other Rhododendron species through mainly three characteristics: the presence of two tails, attached to each end of the seed; the ovary-style junction is tapering and the pedicels arises directly from a dome-like base and form an umbel and not a raceme. The subgenus is distributed mostly in the islands of Indonesia and New Guinea, but also from Malaysia to Nepal and in Australia. Since Vireya species mainly grows as epiphytes in the tree canopies, they need high drainage and not too much water.

The loss of such great wetlands, which has arose in Sweden the last decades, has created a situation that threats both the function and the biological diversity within the wetlands. Many ecological niches can be found in the wetlands and it is one of the habitats where most different species exist. In the 17th Century people started to ditch damp environments, such as bogs, to create a productive cultivated ground. Further ditches were made when the forestry gave large economical profits. The wetlands were impoverished from both groundwater and nourishment, and this led to a great loss of species.In a corporation with WWF and Skogsstyrelsen in Arvika, the University of Karlstad has participated in the Laskerudproject, a hydrological restoration-project in a forest landscape.

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.

Old hollow trees of oak contain a large amount of wood mould. Unfortunately, these trees have in the last century been greatly reduced in numbers. It has resulted in that species that depend on these habitats, saproxylic species, have become at risk to decrease in numbers or die out regionally. Previous studies have shown that the volume of wood mould is an important factor for occurrence and population size of saproxylic organisms. The aim of the present study was to examine how the volume of wood mould varies among ash (Fraxinus excelsior), lime (Tilia sp.), maple (Acer platanoides), aspen (Populus tremula) and oak (Quercus robur).

This Master's Thesis describes the design of a new system where a digital signal processor has been added to an existing imaging system consisting of field programmable gate arrays. The new system will offer a higher degree of flexibility by considerably shortening the design time and make it possible to implement more complex algorithms than the existing ones. The choice of system architecture and a test implementation are discussed. The test implementation consists of a program for the digital signal processor and VHDL code for one of the field programmable gate arrays. The code for the digital signal processor was designed for testing on an evaluation board from Texas Instruments.

Two species of bees in the genus Apis, real honey bees, has long been of interest for man. These two are the European honey bee, Apis mellifera, and the Asian honey bee, Apis cerana. In Vietnam, beekeeping is of great importance, both with A.cerana and A.mellifera. The aim of this project was to investigate if the introduction of the European honey bee in Asia has affected the Asian honey bee, and whether different pathogens from A.mellifera have been transferred to A.cerana. Totally 40 samples, 20 from every species, were analysed for 8 different viruses.

The Savi?s Warbler (Locustella luscinioides) is a recently established bird species in a few reedy shallow lakes of southern Sweden and has only been found nesting for the last twenty years. Little is known about the species' habitat preferences, breeding biology and demands for specific territory structures at breeding sites in Sweden. Knowledge of a newly established species? habitat requirements is essential to maintain a viable population and design action plans.

Studies have shown that air pollution, as well as bark fissure depth and sun exposure of a tree can have an effect on lichen growth as well as abundance of lichen species. The aim of this study was to find out the relative importance of these factors. 211 oaks in south eastern Sweden were surveyed for presence of 17 lichen species, as well as the total number of lichen species. Half of the trees were situated in urban areas and half in the countryside. For each tree the bark fissure depth was measured and the sun exposure of the trunk was estimated.

Many species of amphibians are threatened both in Sweden and globally. The causes are many and a main factor is habitat alterations which often results in populations being isolated. Changes in the agricultural landscape have among other things resulted in small water bodies being filled and dried out and that has severely affected the Swedish amphibians. Swedish amphibians are depended upon small water bodies for their reproduction. Wetlands have been constructed to reduce the impacts of the eutrophication in the Laholm bay.

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 paper describes the work done trying to diminish the noise present in the signal from an IR-detector. The project was aiming towards two different kinds of applications; heat protection and presence detection. The hypothesis was that the signal-noise ratio would decrease if a filter and a proper installation were used for the detector. Some experiments were executed to determine what kind of filter were the most suitable for each application and how these could be installed. After executing the experiments and evaluate the results we recommend to use a specific filter for each application.

Vole populations in northern Scandinavia vary in cycles with peaks every third or fourth year as described by the National Environmental Monitoring Programme of small mammals (NEMP). Some vole species have declined in population numbers since the NEMP started in 1971, especially the grey-sided vole (Myodes rufocanus) which is nearly extinct in the forested region. Since small mammals are an important food source for several avian and mammalian predators, the decline in vole numbers is expected to have consequences for the whole food chain, especially if other vole species start to decline in numbers. This study tried to test the hypothesis that presence and abundance of M. rufocanus (a specialist species) and Myodes glareolus (a generalist species) can be predicted by patch size and connectivity of forest patches >60 years old with a minimum of 15% pine >100years old.

Tropical rain forests only cover around six percent of the world?s land area and contain around 70 % of the world´s animals and plants. Tropical rainforests have been, and still are, negatively affected by human activities. These activities lead to forest degradation which has negative impacts on production and biodiversity. Between 1970-1980 forests in Borneo, Sabah, Malaysia, was subjected to intense logging.

Theory has concluded that consumers evaluate advertising not only based on what the advertiser's message aims to communicate, but also how the message is communicated. As the most popular activity on the world's largest social media channels is to upload and share photos, it has become crucial for advertisers to define strategies that maximize the reach of photo posts. Two observed variations of images used in posts are graphical images and digital photographs. The aim of this study is to investigate which of these two strategies that generate most positive impact on the sender and its brand. 230 users of the Chinese Facebook and Twitter counterpart, Sina Weibo, were exposed to manipulated Sina Weibo posts after which they answered a survey.

The main purpose of this report is a first step to cover the scarcely investigated subject of interspecific competition between roe deer, Capreolus capreolus, and fallow deer, Dama dama. The report focuses on the distance between individuals of roe and fallow in the study area as well as which factors that is affecting the variation in distance depending on fallow deer group size and changing population density over time and in two areas. For additional information the history of the populations, such as harvest and distribution, is also investigated. The report came to the conclusion that interspecific competition between the species do occur. The elevated distance between individuals of the two species is clearly significant. The most important factor affecting the distance seemed to be the size of the fallow groups.