Horse-hair lichen Bryoria bicolor is a red-listed lichen species in the category Vulnerable. It is an oceanic lichen and it is often found on boulders and cliffs in a semi-open environment with a high humidity in the agricultural landscape. The species can also be found as an epiphyte on trees, mostly in boreal forests in the provinces of Dalarna, Härjedalen and Jämtland. In the agricultural landscape, there has been indications on that B. bicolor show a decline, and this studie aimed at examining the extent and causes of this decline.

Research in solar energy is taking big steps in both solar heating and solar electricity. It´s not only the technologies alone, but also the combination of both solar electricity and solar heating which is what is called a solar hybrid. The idea of a solar hybrid is that a solar cells efficiency decrease with increased temperature and can with help from a solar collector be cooled and the heat can be utilized. This thesis report compares heat production and electricity production with respect of, in first hand, a solar hybrids geometry in the cooler. The theory chapter describes solar heating and how different solar cell technologies work and their environmental impact at the production and how compatible these technologies are for the solar hybrid.

Brämhults Juice AB is one of Sweden?s leading producers of fresh fruit juices and drinks. The fruit drinks last 3 days once opened and when stored in a refrigerator kept at 7°C. Since factors that shorten the drinks? best before date are usually not noticed until the entire batch has expired, it would be advantageous to find a way to accelerate the drinks? natural deterioration, so that an unusal short best before date is noticed before more products are shipped off to the stores.

Distillers? grain is a by-product of ethanol production. Corn, wheat and barley are the grains that are generally used in the distillery process. Distillers? grain is rich in protein and phosphorus.

The high level of energy consumption that the industrialised countries have reached and thepollution that this brings has long been a cause for analysis and debate, development and usageof so called renewable energy sources is therefore more important than ever. The energy in theelectromagnetic radiation from the sun is an interesting alternative. One way of harvesting thisenergy is by using solar cells, devices that generate DC current when exposed to electromagneticradiation.The goal of this master?s thesis was to design a solar powered power supply to Syntronic AB?sMidrange platform. The envisioned application is a stand-alone distributed embedded system,for example a node-based temperature monitoring system.

In this bachelor thesis a complete prototype of an industrial vibration measurement platform has been developed. By measuring a number of variables such as acceleration, temperature and speed conclusions can be drawn on machinery health. The aim is to evaluate hardware and software solutions for a possible future product. Based on a requirement specification a proper hardware design has be developed. The hardware consists of a four-layer PCB with an ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller and about 250 other components. The PCB was designed, assembled, tested and finally housed in a box.

SAMMANFATTNING Sedan lång tid tillbaka har hangrisar kastrerats för att undvika ornelukt, en fekal-urinliknande doft som uppkommer i galtkött vid tillagning. Kastrationen är smärtsam och forskarna letar nu efter alternativ till det kirurgiska ingreppet. I denna litteraturstudie har jag valt att fokusera på hur man kan hindra produktion och upplagring av orneluktsämnena androstenon och skatol i subkutant fett genom att förändra grisarnas miljö. Stallhygienen har visat sig ha betydelse för ornelukt där smutsiga grisar har betydligt högre halter skatol i subkutant fett än rena grisar. Även ljus och temperatur har en inverkan på orneluktsämnena. Höga temperaturer och korta ljusperioder ger ökade halter av androstenon och skatol.

Organic animal husbandry has received a lot of criticism lately. The aim of this literature review was to examine if the rules and principles of organic pig farming give better or worse welfare in comparison to the conventional systems in Sweden. Health, physiology and behaviour have been used as indicators of welfare in this study. This is due to the importance of using more than one indicator in welfare assessments. Studies have shown that organic pigs have more remarks on joints when slaughtered, but these remarks can be reduced by vaccination against erysipelas.

There is considerable variation between stallions in semen quality and fertility due to the fact that selection of stallions for breeding is not based on fertility or semen quality but on performance. The increasing use of cooled semen for artificial insemination has resulted in decreasing pregnancy rates. Therefore the equine breeding industry needs new methods for evaluation and development of sperm quality and fertility. This study is a part of such a project and is performed by SLU in cooperation with Flyinge AB. Ten stallions at the Flyinge National Stud were used in the study and three ejaculates were collected from each stallion.

The global climate-change means increasing mean-temperature and higher precipitation in Sweden, which leads to shorter periods of frozen ground in the forest. At the same time the harvesting machines are getting bigger and more powerful. The forest industry aim at an even wood flow, and the ground damage has to be as low as possible. The two biggest causes for ground-damage is the bearing capacity of the forest ground and the ground-pressure of the harvesting machines. The aim of this study was to find out some rules for the machine choice considering ground pressure, when harvesting on ground with low bearing capacity.A field study, using a Valmet 890.3 forwarder, was carried out where different ground pressures and their effect on the ground were tested on two different types of ground.Additionally, an inventory of damaged harvesting grounds was made.

The scope of this investigation is to decide how and to what extent the energy consumption of apassive house is affected by the users? knowledge and habits. To achieve this a literary study hasbeen made and as a complement the planning of a passive house was completed.The result of a primary study of the rules and regulations that effect passive houses in Swedenshows that the user?s influence on passive houses is a completely unregulated area. Even thoughthere is no regulation, a need for some general knowledge of the passive house concept has beenexpressed.To further investigate how the users? knowledge and habits affect the energy consumption and ifthere is a difference between different households? energy consumption , three main factors havebeen identified.

Wood pellets are an upgraded product of residuals from several wood processing industries, for example saw mills and pulp industries. The pellets are produced by pressing the milled and dried sawdust to cylindrical units with a higher density than the initial raw material. Pellets have great benefits compared to the raw material: high energy per volume, good transport and storage properties and homogeneity. Several parameters collaborate in the whole process, which makes it complex. Wood is a heterogeneous material, chemically and structurally dependent on wood parts, habitat and storage procedures.

Det här arbetet syftar till att återinföra frågorna om samhällelig nytta och estetik i debatten kring, och byggnadsprocesserna för vattenkraftverk. Det argumenterar att vår omgivning spelar roll både för vårt psykiska och fysiska välbefinnande och att genom att öppna upp verksamma industriområden till att bli en integrerad del av samhället kan en spännande ny plattform skapas där det finns plats för lärande och förståelse av industriella funktioner samtidigt som helt andra aktiviteter och funktioner också kan finnas. Från att vara en exkluderande plats med bara en funktion går industriområdet till att vara en välkomnande multifunktionell plats. Transparens och deltagande är ledord. Sedan modernismen har industriella miljöer blivit allt mer åtskilda från de städer och samhällen som de ingår i eller gränsar till. Genom funktionsseparering har nya industriella områden tillåtits bilda introverta enklaver som gör sitt bästa för att hålla människor både fysiskt och visuellt uteslutna.

This thesis has been carried out in cooperation with a company which develops mobile sensor platforms. The sensors measure different types of data such as temperature, pressure etc.. They will communicate through the internet with a server that stores data in a database. This system will be controlled and monitored through a web page. The project's aim has been to develop this system and to implement a server, a database, a website and a client application that simulates sensor signals.

The Annexin-V/propidium iodide (AV/PI) assay detects early membrane changes in spermatozoa and viability using flow cytometry. It is an objective method that evaluates a much larger number of single spermatozoa compared with the usual estimation of motility, the most commonly used method for routine sperm evaluation. In the present study four ejaculates from four stallions were used in a split-sample design to investigate whether and how the number of intact spermatozoa is affected over time and after incubation at different temperatures, either those recorded during shipment of stallion semen for AI (9 or 5°C) or room temperature (20°C). The Annexin-V results did not reflect the motility results that were monitored in parallel. While motility decreased over time, the number of spermatozoa with intact membranes (viable) remained unchanged for at least 21 hours following a short period of initial instability.