Cultural relict plant species from the Nordic countries have been collected by the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen) for the purpose of conservation. To ensure high seed vitality in store, regular germination tests need to be conducted. It is important to get a correct viability status, but the knowledge of seed dormancy in the cultural relict plants is often poor. The objective of this study was to investigate how seed dormancy is affected by cold stratification. The study includes 31 accessions from 28 species with the purpose of establishing germination protocols.

When constructing a building, a number of aspects must be harmonized in order for it to fulfill requirements ? a building must fulfill requirements such a load-bearing, conservation of energy and a good indoor environment by means of, among other things, moisture proofing .Moisture problems in buildings can affect health negatively. As we are increasingly staying in indoors, demands on a good indoor environment are higher.This work starts with examining moisture problems in slab-on-ground solutions, and then links the various scenarios to moisture problems in a concrete slab of a real building. The building with moisture problems is located in Årby by in Borlänge and moisture damage was found in the slab at an apartment adjoining wall.By reviewing literature written within the field of moisture problem, making hand calculations and modeling in the program Comsol Multiphysics, judgments are made to find explanations as to why the rise of moisture occurred in the building in Årby by.Generally, the following guidelines may be used to reduce the risk of moisture problems in slab-on-ground constructions:Drying of construction moisture before laying the floor material.Using draining layer beneath the slab, to prevent capillary suction.Using insulation under the slab, partly for comfort and to establish the temperature difference between the ground and the concrete slab.Avoid direct contact between the wood and concrete, due to degradation and fouling smells that normally occurs.If necessary, use additional vapor barrier.In addition to the above, there are various methods for moisture-proof and moisture-monitoring by design or by the method ByggaF suited for the entire construction process various events..

With the prospect of future construction on the Skutskär Pulp Mill property, Stora Enso Fine Paper has initiated an investigation of soil contaminants and a risk assessment of these contaminants. A soil and groundwater investigation has therefore been conducted on an open area of about 16 000 square meters, situated between the current wood room and digester house. To be able to integrate this study into an investigation for the whole industrial property, the study has been carried out as a phase 2 study according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency?s Methods of Inventories of Contaminated sites (MIFO).The site investigation has involved soil and groundwater sampling, together with the analysis of heavy metals and organic contaminants. The degree of hazard posed by the contaminants, the level of contamination, the potential for migration of the contaminants, as well as the degree to which protection of human health and the environment is required in the area, have been weighed together for an overall risk assessment of the area with regard to human health and the environment.The investigated area was built up by filling in the coastal waters.

The climate changes and the global warming have a great impact on the Arctic environments. This partially depends on that the albedo is getting lower when snow and ice is melting and exposes more and more dark surfaces of the land and sea. This leads to a feedback effect; the melting accelerates because dark surfaces attract more sun radiation. Because of the heating the glaciers in Arctic retreat. The purpose of this report is to obtain an eventual change in elevation on the glacier Lomonosovfonna that is located on Svalbard by comparing elevation data collected by NASA and GPS data from 1996-2012.

In recent years, existing solutions for cooling personal computer CPUs have been supplemented by a new product category, factory sealed water cooling loops. These systems, consisting of a water block with an integrated pump, a fan and a radiator, perform well compared to the air cooling solutions but are less effective than larger, custom-built water cooling systems.This project aims to explore the most important aspects of a factory sealed system and to identify possible cost-effective enhancements of the performance.The most significant differences between the different groups of water cooling loops are the block design and the pumping power. The performance of both categories is also largely dependent on the fan power, but increasing fan power has a large negative impact on the noise level.Both radiator size and fan model choice appear, in tests, to be relatively unimportant, presuming that the noise level is kept constant. The position and direction of the fan, however, has significant impact on both the temperature and the sound level.Water blocks can be designed in several different ways, both regarding the heatsink design and the flow direction. In simulation, flow with the inlet centered above the heatsink result in considerably lower pressure drop and slightly higher temperatures than flow through the block, for heatsinks with fin arrays.Creating a competitive product in this product segment certainly seems possible, as there are performance-increasing changes to be made that seemingly has little impact on the production cost.

Sweden recently changed the national regulation of chimney sweeping. This study has two purposes. The first purpose is to evaluate the effect of this reform to see if the new regulation has led to an effect in terms of increased chimney fires in single-family houses and for the wood-burning and oil-burning stoves, respectively. The second purpose is an updating of a previous study (Mattsson 1994) of analysis of society´s benefits and costs of different alternative sweeping frequencies for wood-burning and oil-burning stoves. This study also has a secondary purpose to examine the extent to which the local sweeping rules vary with climate conditions.  Mattsson, based on his results, proposed that the sweeping requirements for oil-burning stoves should be reduced from twice a year to once every second year and for wood-burning stoves the sweeping should be reduced from four times to once each year.

This thesis examines the environmental benefits resulting from the choice of environmental certification scheme, with focus on energy. This was carried out by studying the measures that were implemented as a result of the certification of Sweco's three largest office buildings in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. The office property in Stockholm has been certified with the Swedish Environmental Building, Gothenburg with the British BREEAM and Malmö with the U.S system LEED.The results from the study indicate that an environmental certification can reduce the energy consumption by up to 59 percent and the water consumption by 20 to 66 percent. However; the interviews, literature study and simulations in MATLAB indicate that the size and scope of these environmental benefits depend on several identified factors: the type of building and its conditions, system selection, grade level, the choice of indicators, the ambition of those involved and when in time the certification process begins. The comparison between Environmental Building, LEED and BREEAM showed that Environmental Building for the office property in Stockholm gave the largest environmental benefit in terms of reduced energy consumption thanks to several large measures.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the presence of arterial insufficiency in patients undergoing CABG surgery and whether arterial insufficiency is a risk factor for postoperative wound infections in the harvesting leg. Patients who had CABG surgery were enrolled consecutively. A total of 144 patients participated in the study. During their hospital stay demographic data was recorded, as well as pre-, intra-, and postoperative tests and risk factors. The patients answered a questionnaire regarding postoperative wound infections 30 days after surgery patients answered a questionnaire regarding infections.

Betongplattor på mark är en ofta använd grundläggningsmetod. Trots detta är sprickbildning ett vanligt problem där kraven på maximala sprickvidder ofta inte uppfylls. De sprickor som bildas i plattorna uppkommer bl.a. till följd av dess uttorkning, och då olika fuktförhållanden råder på var sida om plattan utvecklas en krympning som varierar med en gradient över tvärsnittet. Vid dimensionering av armeringen för denna inre last och sprickbildningen den orsakar, finns endast otillräckliga analysermetoder att tillgå i normer.

Colobus angolensis palliatus is a small old world monkey inhabiting southern coastal Kenya to southern Tanzania. The species activity budget is known to vary between seasons and areas, probably due to differences in group sizes, diets, predatory presence and resource competition. The variations between male and female activity budgets are reckoned to be a result of pregnancy and lactation. The aim of this study was to investigate potential differences in behaviours between morning and afternoon periods and between males and females. The study was carried out in two forest fragments in Diani Beach on the south coast of Kenya.

The idea behind this project came from a feed study executed two years during the lambing season. Both years wool loss was experienced. Low temperature in combination with shearing was believed to cause the wool loss the first year, while protein deficiency was believed to be the cause the second year. In the literature many causes of wool loss are described; mechanical wear, telogen effluvium, bacterial dermatitis, external parasites, wool break, scrapie, genetic causes and nutritional deficiencies are some examples. The aim of this thesis was to study causes for wool loss and how common wool loss is in Swedish sheep herds.

Envirotainer builds containers that are specialized in transporting of temperaturesensitive products these containers are customized for airplanes. The containers arethen leased to other companies, most often to pharmaceutical companies.Envirotainer are based in Lagga, Knivsta. It is also here where the production of thecontainers is held. The container RAP T2 was designed in the early 80ies. The RAPT2 contains a fleet of about 1220 containers spread all over the world.

When constructing a building, a number of aspects must be harmonized in order for it to fulfill requirements ? a building must fulfill requirements such a load-bearing, conservation of energy and a good indoor environment by means of, among other things, moisture proofing .Moisture problems in buildings can affect health negatively. As we are increasingly staying in indoors, demands on a good indoor environment are higher.This work starts with examining moisture problems in slab-on-ground solutions, and then links the various scenarios to moisture problems in a concrete slab of a real building. The building with moisture problems is located in Årby by in Borlänge and moisture damage was found in the slab at an apartment adjoining wall.By reviewing literature written within the field of moisture problem, making hand calculations and modeling in the program Comsol Multiphysics, judgments are made to find explanations as to why the rise of moisture occurred in the building in Årby by.Generally, the following guidelines may be used to reduce the risk of moisture problems in slab-on-ground constructions:Drying of construction moisture before laying the floor material.Using draining layer beneath the slab, to prevent capillary suction.Using insulation under the slab, partly for comfort and to establish the temperature difference between the ground and the concrete slab.Avoid direct contact between the wood and concrete, due to degradation and fouling smells that normally occurs.If necessary, use additional vapor barrier.In addition to the above, there are various methods for moisture-proof and moisture-monitoring by design or by the method ByggaF suited for the entire construction process various events..

The purpose of this report is to investigate the possibilities with drain water heat recovery (DWHR) in residential buildings. Information and relevant theory has been collected and summarized in this report. Calculations have been done for given scenarios to evaluate profits. DWHR heat exchangers use simple technology and have long life-time. The heat exchanger is connected to outgoing drainage pipe and incoming cold-water supply so countercurrent flow is accomplished.

The surface finishing technique called black oxidation is currently being used on thetool holders made of low alloyed tool steel produced by Sandvik Coromant. Blackoxidation isn?t considered a sufficient technique because it doesn?t make the toolholders look like the quality products that they actually are. The reasoning behind thisis that the tool holders can show signs of corrosion after prolonged storing times orin countries with high humidity and temperature. The corrosion doesn?t decrease thetool holders performance, but the customers might believe otherwise.