West Pokot County is located in North Western part of Kenya where the previous lifestyle was nomadic pastoralism. However, in recent years the semi-arid county has been under dramatic developments and a sedentary agro-pastoral lifestyle is now growing. This is a major change in production systems and there is a big knowledge gap especially for the livestock based agro-pastoral systems. The main objective of this study was to investigate the current situation of animal husbandry in West Pokot. Twenty farmers were interviewed in Chepareria Division, using semi-structured interviews to investigate if the use of enclosures have had any effect on animal husbandry in West Pokot and if so, how have this method affected the animal husbandry? The results of the study indicated that there is a difference in animal husbandry between farms using enclosures and farms not using enclosures.

Many participants in the Swedish timber market procure raw material from private forest owners. They often also offer forest services to ensure reforestation after final felling. Selling silviculture services can be a part of creating a long term relationship with the landowner for future timber purchases. The Swedish Forest Agency monitors forest rejuvenation results in the entire country. In the latest survey (2006 - 2008) the proportion of approved regeneration area was 78%.

Wildlife is a valuable and renewable resource that promotes economical, ecological and social values. These values are important for developing and maintaining many rural societies. However, growing ungulate populations have led to increased browsing pressure on valuable forest trees and crops. Previous studies have proposed supplementary feeding and gamefields as potential methods for controlling the ungulate foraging and reducing browsing damage by providing other attractive food resources. However, quantitative estimates of potential biomass production of various gamefield crops and browsing pressure on the surrounding forest have been lacking.

This report is a joint venture with SCA Forest, Ångermanlands forest man-agement area. The purpose of the study is that SCA Forest wants to know what the landowners in Ångermanlands forest management area think about SCA Forest and who they deliver their timber to. SCA Forest is the largest private landowner in Europe, with an area of about 2.6 million hectares. Today, SCA offers lumber, wood products, tis-sue and packaging and has factories all over the world. SCA Forest has five forest management areas in the north of Sweden, with the headquarters in Sundsvall. A questionnaire was sent to 265 landowners, where they had to answer 15 questions with possibilities to give comments. The survey was sent out on 21 of February with a response requested by 3 of March 125 landowners responded to the survey, giving a response rate of 47%.

The saw blade producer, Håkansson Sågblad AB, patented in the U.S. a new blade profiledesigned specially to cut fish and meat. The most important advantage of that blade is that its teethare not set, therefore the material lost when cutting is really smaller. The special geometry of thatprofile made that nobody had found a proper way to produce it before.The goal of the outlined work is to develop a machine to produce these new blades in afeasible way.The research approach of the project can roughly be divided into three phases:1.- Invention and development of a proper distribution of blades to produce a big amount ofthem at the same time.2.- Research of the best production process to produce the blades.3.- Main design of the machine to produce the blades.In the Thesis these three points are carefully developed and studied in the form of the startpoint of a really bigger project. Some tests had been done in order to prove all the analytical ideasand the results obtained had been satisfactory enough to give Håkansson the start point of a bigbusiness.

This thesis has been done in collaboration with Peab Stockholm Building 3, which is a region within the Peab Sverige AB. The report is based on a survey and studies of Peab business management systems and production literature. For general information gathering has literature from well-known sources collected in libraries and through the Internet. It shows through the work that Peab has routines for experience feedback in the construction process, but that these procedures work in a small scale and the practical work experience feedback does not work at all. This is also something the construction industry in general also perceived as problematic. The questions in the report are of a wide scale and concerns construction errors cost, how the employees perceive that the company takes advantage of the skills and the mental stress in production line. The goal is to find how Peab Stockholm Building 3 will work on the experience feedback to allow for better productivity. In conclusion, the report author tries to demonstrate what can lead to increased productivity and improved work experience..

With an increasing production of biogas follows an increased amount of digestate. This could potentially be a valuable source of fertiliser with the destruction of weed seeds as a possible advantage. However, there have been some concerns regarding the product still containing viable seeds of weed. In this Bsc thesis the results of previous research on the fate of weed seeds in biogas production is summarized. It is also a comparison of research on the effect of similar processes such as silage, compost or animal passage on seeds. The purpose of this is to evaluate risks of spreading viable seeds, potentially problematic species and perhaps to find out how to eliminate the risks. The literature review revealed that previous research mainly indicates low risks regarding many of the tested weed species, but not all studies show the same result, therefore extended research on the subject is desirable.

In this work I have tried to reconstruct the forest history within Särna-Idre forest common in northern Dalarna from the 19th century until present time. The Särna-Idre region has been an extensively used landscape for a long time. Pollen which indicates grazing has been found in samples orginating from the 10th century. Early travellers from the 18th and 19th centuries seem to have been passing trough a "used" landscape. Burned forests on naked ground are described as common. Also large areas are mentioned as undisturbed with lots of large trees, snags and dead wood.

Traditionell systemutveckling präglas ofta av långa utvecklingsprocesser och en oförmåga attmöta förändrade behov från kunden. Problematik med buggar i mjukvaran och förskjutnadeadlines uppstår kontinuerligt och leder till högre kostnader för företag.För att komma till rätta med dessa problem behövs en systemutvecklingsprocess som belyserproblem direkt när de uppstår och därmed tvingar de inblandade till reflektion över processensom skapar problemen vilket belyser de verkliga bakomliggande orsakerna. Låg kvalitet påmjukvara är ofta ett symptom på djupare organisatoriska problemEtt synsätt som syftar till att möta dessa problem är lean software development. Synsättet harinspirerats av lean production som är en beskrivning av The Toyota Production system vilketi sin tur är det arbetssätt som har tillämpats av Toyota under flera decennier i den traditionellatillverkningen.Mary och Tom Poppendieck har beskrivit sju principer och 22 tankeverktyg som kananvändas för att skapa en metod för lean software development. Studien visar vilka styrkoroch problem som lean software development och lean production beskriver generellt samtvilka styrkor och problem som finns avseende beskrivning av Poppendieck's principer ochtankeverktyg i synnerhet.

Saab Training Systems (STS) in Huskvarna is manufacturing material for educationalpurposes to armies worldwide. They are now implementing parts of the Lean productionconcept in their organisation.One part of the work with Lean production is to eliminate waste. To be able to identify waste,value stream mapping is a good tool and also what we used in our thesis. To gain a betterefficiency in the production of Personnel Detector Device (PDD) flow was one of our goals.The PDD is a harness used during battle training which registers if the user is being hit by itsenemy.Our work with the thesis started up with a short education in Lean production and in valuestream mapping (VSM). The work proceeded with a VSM of the production flow of the PDD,interviews were made and studies of literature were done to gain greater knowledge of thesubject and solve the task.The VSM resulted in five areas which were followed up out of those six we identified.

Hårdgörning av trä syftar till att göra materialet hårdare. Detta går att åstadkomma genom komprimering, det komprimerade materialet tenderar dock att återgå mot sin ursprungsform då materialet utsätts för fukt om ingen låsning sker. Låsningen kan ske mekaniskt i en treskiktskonstruktion som motverkar träets fuktrörelser. Dessa skivor har dock visat sig vara instabila och tidigare försök har uppvisat deformationer i form av kupning. Denna undersökning syftar till att utreda förutsättningarna för att använda komprimerad asp samt att ta fram underlag för framtagning av en kommersiell produkt.Praktiska tester har genomförts för att studera hårdhet, återfjädring och densitet hos det komprimerade virket.

The main purpose of this Master Thesis has been to investigate issues concerning apple fruit quality in orchards of Äppelriket Österlen. The goal has been to develop a document, for future benefit towards growers and company management in the production of high quality apples.In order to investigate main issues of fruit quality, focus has been on statistics concerning apple varieties, age of the apple trees, new planting, orchard size and growers opinions. Nine growers have been interviewed to investigate opinions and contribution of different growing techniques to increased fruit quality. The investigation showed high age of the trees in production and low rate of planting of new trees. Differences in fruit quality were highest between small orchards. Most growers were satisfied with their fruit quality and with their own measures made to improve it.

Watching television (TV) has been given a new meaning, you don?t have to book a specific time, a specific date if you don?t want to miss the program you were planning to see. In Sweden now days we can watch TV in lot of different ways, whenever we choose to do so. In this thesis I attempt to explain and document the process of shaping a tvformat, the development and adaptation to a time when the TV medium is in a change. Plus a look at how the television audiences relate to their use of it.

Production requires the input of capital and labour. Hence, economic growth can be assumed to follow from increased levels of these two factors. Policies aimed at increasing production may consequently successfully be focused on facilitating the accumulation of capital and labour. However, even when an economy has managed to reach the same quantities of input factors as a more prosperous neighbour, the level of the production might still differ. The explanation of this lies in what economists refers to as expression embracing the characteristics of the input factors and the conditions in which they operate.In this thesis a calculation of total factor productivity is carried out, using existing data on the Swedish FA-regions between 1990 and 2005 and the method the economist Robert Solow in the 1950?s.

As for today, a large quantity of protein feeds is imported from other countries to be used in the Swedish dairy production. The main import is soya from Brazil. The soya-production in Brazil results in negative consequences for the natural environment in the area, and the long transport of the feeds requires a lot of energy. The organic dairy production in Sweden is, with the highest probability going to be forced to use 100 % organic feed to the cows in the year 2005, due to new EU-rules. These are some of the causes why there are reasons to look closer at the possibilities to feed Swedish cows with only Swedish feeds. In this study, I have looked at the KRAV-rules for organic feeding, where the goal is feeding with only KRAV-approved feeds.