This EEF-project is a part of a larger project at SLU, Division of Reproduction, Dept of Clinical Science, with the intention of developing and evaluating new methods for the assessment of stallion semen quality. Over the last 10 years there has been an increase in the use of artificial insemination with cooled semen in Swedish horse breeding. At the same time, foaling rates have decreased. This has lead to a need for new and better methods of assessing the quality of stallion semen. This EEF-project was based on an objective method to calculate motility, with QualispermTM, in fresh and cooled stallion semen, and after selection. Today sperm motility evaluation is mainly done subjectively by visual assessment with a light microscope, and the correlation between these motility results and fertility have varied.

Today it is common to spray against most weeds by using very expensive weed-killers. The goal for every farmer is to have as low costs as possible for their use of machines and weed-killers. Therefore it is in everyones interest to find other methods to fight the weeds. Finding a way to reduce the rise and growth of weeds already at the preparation of the soil would lower the number of laps over the field and also decrease the amount of weed-killing dose. Tests show that by harrow in the dark it is possible to reduce the population of weeds with up to 60%, but the normal reduction would be about 20-30%. To verify the results above we made tests by using two different methods of preparing the soil. We tested ploughing and harrowing in daylight and during night. Later we checked the number of different weeds in areas prepared in daylight and during night. By studying the results from the different methods used we found a considerable reduction of some kinds of weeds in areas prepared during night..

This thesis compares four relevance feedback methods. The Rocchio and Ide dec-hi algorithms for the vector space model and the binary independence model and Okapi BM25 within the probabilistic framework. This is done in a custom-made Information Retrieval system utilizing a collection containing 131 896 LA-Times articles which is part of the TREC ad-hoc collection. The methods are compared on two grounds, using only the relevance information from the 20 highest ranked documents from an initial search and also by using all available relevance information. Although a significant effect of choice of method could be found on the first ground, post-hoc analysis could not determine any statistically significant differences between the methods where Rocchio, Ide dec-hi and Okapi BM25 performed equivalent.

Quadrotor UAVs are self-stabilizing, autonomous flying machines that has recently become more popular than ever. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have their roots in the military, where they were developed for use in reconnaissance and combat. During the last few years, advances in the fields of electronic sensors, electric motors and microcontrollers have enabled smaller designs and autonomic flight control even for private use. The quadrotor, which is the particular kind of UAV we are looking closer at in this paper, has 4 rotors in an X-like formation. This configuration has many advantages such as good lift capacity, non-complex mechanical structure and serviceability.In this project we aquired a current overview of the domain and determine whether it is possible to construct a quadrotor UAV designed for use in a WISENET sensor network on a low budget and short time schedule.Based on existing community project AeroQuad, a quadrotor is constructed with a budget of about 500 euro.

Modern agriculture equipment are more computer based today, and many equipments use a terminal in the tractor where the driver have the opportunity to make adjustments to the equipment. This is the reason why ISO developed a new standard called ISOBUS. It is a communication standard based on CAN specially adapted for griculture equipments. The purpose of the standard is that it should be ossible to equip a tractor with a standard terminal called Virtual Terminal that can be used to control the equipment. The use of the terminal should be independent of the manufacturer of the tractor as well as of the equipment.The purpose of this report is to ?nd a solution of how to use CC Systems on-board computer, CCP XS, as a Virtual Terminal.

The Anybus CompactCom modules are today using the Anybus NP30 processor. These modules are used for communication between industrial machines and larger network protocols. The communication loads on these systems are increasing every day and the limiting factor for the system is the processor.HMS, the company that develops the Anybus CompactCom, has shown interest for a benchmark test between the old processor and a new processor, ARM Cortex-M3. This project includes that benchmark. To be able to get results that reflect reality a test environment was created to simulate Anybus CompactCom conditions.

Stronger demand has been put on forestry to show environmental considerations during harvesting. This is especially for crossings of brooks with sensitive elements and great care should be observed when they are to be crossed during harvesting by logging machines. For that reason Hultdins has constructed a portable bridge that can be used for those occasions. The bridge has been developed in accordance with wishes from SCA forest, since they have a great deal of brooks in their forests and in private forests from where they buy part of their wood supply. The aim for this report is to investigate if this portable bridge can be of interest for the forestry market. The research has been made at SCA skog in Medelpad and Norrskog in Medelpad.

This report examines the industrialization of a newly developed household machine on behalf of Technogarden Engineering Resources in Karlstad, Sweden. The report is a part of the final course in the Bachelor Program in Mechanical Engineering at Karlstad University and takes place in spring 2014.An innovator, an investor and a engineering consultant firm have through collaboration developed a new type of gruel machine. The product is in its final stage of construction and is planned to be manufactured in a production located in Sweden, autumn of 2014.To compete against today?s trend in outsourcing manufacturing to low cost countries for better profitability, the industrialization of the gruel machine must be done with a minimum amount of resources in order to become successful, which also describes the problem of this study. Using pre-study material in form of Lean production literature, visiting a successful production site and gathering data from involved engineers a specification was developed which describes what this industrialization must achieve and which requests can be accomplished.

Oxochlorates are anions with a partially naturally occurrence in nature but are also spread by human activities, including the paper industry. These compounds are harmful to both nature and humans, which makes it necessary to find a good way for their degradation. There are two different kinds of bacteria that can use oxochlorates as electron acceptors in their metabolism, bacteria that break down perchlorate and bacteria that break down both perchlorate and chlorate. A bacterium that can break down chlorate under anaerobic conditions is Ideonella dechloratans which holds the genes for chlorite dismutase and chlorate reductase which are enzymes for the degradation of chlorate. Gene expression and enzyme activity of chlorite dismutase are induced under anaerobic conditions, which makes it interesting to find out how this regulation functions in order to better exploit these bacteria in biological wastewater treatment.

En av Glimek AB:s mest förekommande maskiner är SD-180 som används för degavvägning. Den finns i flera olika varianter. Den enklaste har enbart start- och stoppknapp och en potentiometer för att ställa hastigheten och en mer avancerad variant har en operatörspanel där olika möjligheter till inställningar finns.Konstruktionen på denna maskin hade inte uppdaterats på många år och behövde en uppdatering av användargränssnitt, programvara och elkonstruktion. Arbetet har framförallt koncentrerat sig på användargränssnittet till panelen.En del av arbetet var att undersöka om det var möjligt att utesluta PLC ur konstruktionen och använda en mer avancerad programmerbar frekvensomformare. Eftersom det blev problem med lanseringen av programvara till frekvensomformaren och enbart en mindre bra fungerande demoversion fanns tillgänglig så var detta tyvärr inte möjligt.I arbetet har olika varianter på operatörspaneler utretts.

In this report female farmers use of technical equipment is investigated. There is little research made on this subject in Sweden, therefore this report can be seen as an explorative study. Research makes it clear that machinery, throughout history and even today, has been seen as a male area. Heavy machines are often associated with the same attributes as masculinity. Force, power, efficiency and control are some examples.

The problem of separating a non-rectangular foreground image from a background image is a classical problem in image processing and analysis, known as matting or keying. A common example is a film frame where an actor is extracted from the background to later be placed on a different background. Compositing of these objects against a new background is one of the most common operations in the creation of visual effects. When the original background is of non-constant color the matting becomes an under determined problem, for which a unique solution cannot be found. This thesis describes a framework for computing mattes from images with backgrounds of non-constant color, using Bayesian statistics.

This Bachelor of Science thesis was carried out at Metso Panelboard AB, located in Sundsvall, Sweden. The work lasted for 10 weeks and began at the end of February 2007. Metso Panelboard is one of the leading suppliers of complete lines, single machines, engineering knowledge and after-market services to the fibreboard industries. The task involved building a 3D-model of a dryer cyclone in the CAD-program Pro/ENGINEER. A dryer cyclone is the part where the tree fibres are dried in the process of manufacturing fibreboards. Currently, it takes about two weeks to draw a dryer cyclone. By creating a 3D-model of it, which should have the functionality to be generated to different sizes, the goal is to decrease the drawing time to about 20 hours and to increase the quality of the work. This report includes the fundamental theories behind the manufacturing of fibreboards with focus on the dryer cyclone.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate possible links between short selling and the stock market movements using econometric test models. Methodology: A quantitative study carried out on the time series stock lending and OMX Stockholm 30 index. Information is gathered through qualitative interviews with specialists in the field of stock lending, and studies of relevant newspaper articles and reports. Theoretical approach: The theoretical frame of reference is a further consideration of supply and demand theory. The empirical study is implemented by the simple linear regression model and a vector autoregressive model (VAR).

In this report female farmers use of technical equipment is investigated. There is little research made on this subject in Sweden, therefore this report can be seen as an explorative study. Research makes it clear that machinery, throughout history and even today, has been seen as a male area. Heavy machines are often associated with the same attributes as masculinity. Force, power, efficiency and control are some examples.