Cattle used for meat production can be held outside all year round and due to the legislation they should have access to shelters or other buildings for protection against the elements giving them a dry and clean bedding. There are different opinions concerning their need of protection and the question about necessity of shelters for cattle is of current interest due to a less profitable economy in meat production and the investment costs for shelters. The aim of this study was to acquire more knowledge about the natural behaviour of cattle concerning their use of shelters. The basis of the study was a series of questions regarding when animals choose to stay in shelters, if shelters were used less when they had access to protecting vegetation, how temperature and weather conditions affected the use of shelters and the influence of distance between shelter and feed. Behavioural studies was conducted at five different farms where six groups of suckler cows and heifers of following breeds and crossbreeds were observed; Aberdeen Angus, Charolais, Hereford, Scottish Highland Cattle, Simmental and the Swedish breeds SKB and SRB.

The main purpose of this project was to make a survey of the steam and electricity consumption at Akzo Nobel Functional Chemistry AB and give suggestions of how to minimize them. These three different areas were focused on. First to make a survey of all the most important consumers, second to find the electricity consumption of the air compressors and the amount of waste heat produced from them. The third area was to calculate a model of how much fresh water that is used during a cooling sequence in the water based heating/cooling system of the reactors and give a suggestion of a suitable reuse for this water.The main result is a total survey of the energy consumption in steam and electricity. The survey shows that the second largest group after drying is heating of ventilation which gives big potentials of reducing the total steam consumption if there is a way of being self supporting in ventilation heat.

During the period called Little Ice Age (1400 ~ 1900) the climate of northern Europe was in an annual year-basis overall colder than it was before and after that period. The numbers of short, cold and rainy summers and long, bitter-cold winters where often repetitive under the approximately 500-years the period lasted. In Scandinavia, the coldest time during this period is estimated to have started around the end of the 16th century and lasted to the beginning of the 18th century. Trees growing at the tree-line are limited by temperature for their annual growth and hence showing differences of growth during changes in the climate,  a method called dendroclimatology. The variations of growth can be read in the tree-rings either by analyze the width of the ring or by look into the density of the wood and is used to reconstruct past climates.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the possible effects of an unstable ventilation system and its influence on energy use and thermal comfort. The report also explores how qualified personal working with HVAC view and handles system control.In order to meet the requirements in energy efficiency and a comfortable indoor climate control regulation is a prerequisite. With optimized increased complexity of the climate systems, it becomes more challenging to control the system and the risk of unstable control increases. No previous studies about what affect an unstable system can have on energy use and thermal comfort have been found.The report is based on several tests were the controlling variable has been increased until the system becomes unstable. Two different types of unstable systems have been investigated.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the possible effects of an unstable ventilation system and its influence on energy use and thermal comfort. The report also explores how qualified personal working with HVAC view and handles system control.In order to meet the requirements in energy efficiency and a comfortable indoor climate control regulation is a prerequisite. With optimized increased complexity of the climate systems, it becomes more challenging to control the system and the risk of unstable control increases. No previous studies about what affect an unstable system can have on energy use and thermal comfort have been found.The report is based on several tests were the controlling variable has been increased until the system becomes unstable. Two different types of unstable systems have been investigated.

The trend towards increasingly large farming units raises questions regarding how to better monitor production. Larger units make the impact from possible errors more severe, which increases the pressure on management supervision. To cope with management issues, prevent errors and handle increased demands on traceability and documentation, the Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) concept is making its way into various parts of agriculture. In sectors outside agriculture, RTLS are already being used successfully to track and locate items through nodes at different levels of accuracy, such as room level or the relative or absolute position. Empirical data can be received in real time from the nodes.

Swedens membership in the European Union have resulted in an internationalcharacterized labour market. The construction sector is the area who employs mostposted workers among the 7400 employees who monthly enters the market. It?s alsothe sector where a big part of the work-related deaths occurs. The purpose of this studyis therefore to contribute to a greater understanding of the regulation regarding postedworkers, their work environment and the consequences of it.

Predation is one of many factors that form the structure of the macroinvertebrate community in lakes, wetlands and watercourses. Earlier studies lack an examination concerning how fish- and waterfowl predation affect macroinvertebrates during shorter periods in the spring. I performed an exclosure study in the shallow eutrophic Lake Tåkern which is located in the western part of Östergötland County, Sweden. The experiment was performed during a three week period (1-21 April 2012) when the water temperature was low and the density of migrating diving ducks was high. The experimental cages used included three out of four different treatments; general predation (open cages), bird exclusion (net with mesh size 90*45mm) and no predation (net with mesh size 1*1mm).

The focus of the thesis is: how conditions for agriculture in the Republic of Macedonia today may form the basis for development of the agricultural sector towards conditions needed for future accession into the European Union. The method for investigating this question has been to look at newly available farm monitoring system (FMS) data from Macedonia. Also to look at the latest government policies created in the country for the agricultural sector and rural areas in relation to the requirements for EU accession. Articles and empirical studies published by other authors related to the questions which arise in this study have been reviewed and presented herein. Trade relations, trade patterns and national economic and agricultural trends are displayed to provide a background overview for the study of the agricultural sector.

The aim of this report was to investigate the economy of passive houses. The work was focused on economy in total and on the economy of different components such as windows, insulation, heat exchanger and the air tightness of the climate shell. No attention was paid on the comfort factor or to the impacts on the environment.Two houses, aspiring to be passive were chosen; A big one and a small one. Hence, comparisons considering the size of the building have been possible to do as well.The comparisons were made by calculating ?break even? between two concepts; passive and BBR- concept.

Thesis in project management, D-level by Chris Baldebo & Anders Persson spring semester2011. Tutor: Lennart Ljung. ?Project Manager's Psychosocial Work Environment in thePublic Sector ? A Qualitative Study in the Värmland County Council?.The purpose of this study is to examine how project managers in the public sector perceivetheir psychosocial work environment in a public organization. Therefore we have formulateda hypothesis based on the assumption that there exist differences in how project managersperceive their psychosocial work environment, depending on whether they work in public orprivate sector.Based on the objective, one research question has been formulated: How do projectmanagers active in the Pegasus program experience their psychosocial work environment? Tobe able to say something characteristic about the project managers psychosocial workenvironment our approach has been to interview five project managers.

The aim of this report was to do a case study at a geothermal heating system which has been in operation for about 5 years, and study if its performance has changed during this period of time. A literature study about the processes involved was also done in purpose of background knowledge.The tenant-owner?s association Duvan at Petterslundsgatan in Uppsala installed year 1999-2000 a geothermal heating system. The purpose of this installation was that they hoped it would lead to a smaller usage of district heating which would lead to a reduction of the heating expenses for their buildings. The geothermal heating system consists of 19 energy wells and 4 geothermal heat pumps, and it is one of the first systems of that size in the region of Uppsala.

Agricultural drainage is widely used to manage the amount of water in the ground in order to improve conditions for cultivation. However the effects of drainage companies on water regimes are considerable leading to runoff changes such as altered stream flows, peak flows and water levels. In a greater extent this could imply an increased risk for floods along affected watercourses. This study analyzes the extension of agricultural drainage within the drainage basin of Trosaån in Sweden by ArcGIS mapping. In a statistical analysis, historical variation in streamflow in relation to mean precipitation and mean temperature are investigated for the study area.

Swedens membership in the European Union have resulted in an international characterized labour market. The construction sector is the area who employs most posted workers among the 7400 employees who monthly enters the market. It?s also the sector where a big part of the work-related deaths occurs. The purpose of this study is therefore to contribute to a greater understanding of the regulation regarding posted workers, their work environment and the consequences of it.

Outdoor housing of horses? best fulfils the horses? need for physical activity and it is an alternative to the more cost and energy demanding indoor housing in stables. Furthermore, if outdoor housed horses have access to shelter they can generally cope well with adverse weather conditions such as high or low ambient temperature, heavy rain or strong winds. In this study, the daytime shelter-seeking behaviour of three groups of horses housed outdoors was studied during the summer. The aim was to evaluate whether shelter use is related to weather variables (e.g., ambient temperature and wind speed) and insect harassment. The shelter-seeking behaviour was studied for three different groups of horses: Group 1) eight individually housed horses in paddocks that had access to three different shelter types (C: closed on three sides with roof, R: open on three sides with roof, W: closed on three sides without roof), Group 2) 25 group housed mares with foals on pasture with access to shelters C, and Group 3) ten mares without foals on pasture without access to shelter. Each group was studied for eight days.