Half of Sweden?s 140 000-150 000 sows are culled and replaced by 75 000 gilts annually. Culling of old sows is necessary and allows new breeding material to enter the herd. However, many of the culled sows are young, and have not yet become profitable at the time for culling. Therefore, it is an important question for the pig industry, how to raise gilts to sows with a high and sustainable production level.

The study of medicinal plants is a popular subject that, at least in the archaeological sciences, has met a lot of criticism due to the lack of physical data. It is problematic to distinguish the medicinal plants from local flora since many herbs that were used often could be found in the nearby vegetation.  The purpose of this essay is to archaebotanically analyze samples from the medieval town Nya Lödöse and compare the data with a previous analysis from the site and a literature study. The herbs meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), lady?s mantle (Alchemilla sp.), sweet gale (Myrica gale), hop (Humulus lupulus), common tormentil (Potentilla erecta), St. John?s wort (Hypericum perforatum), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), catnip (Nepeta cataria) and motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) have been selected for closer analysis since they occur with frequency in the historical medicinal texts and in previous analysis made on the site.

Transboundary protected areas are a fairly recent concept that have been increasing in popularity and are increasingly being integrated into large international organizations? environmental policy making. This essay examines the phenomena through the cooperation between two national parks, Parc National des Pyrénées in France and Parque Nacional Ordesa Monte Perdido in Spain. The theoretical framework used in this essay is based upon border theory, focusing on the different factors that influence the behavior of the border dweller and how the different social conceptions of nature influence the way it is managed. The results in this study result from researching published and private documents from the national parks and interviews carried out with staff from the park administrations from both countries.

AbstractThis report describes our ten week long thesis work which is the last task in our education in mechanical engineering at Linköpings University. The project has been performed at Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery AB?s service department. The company which is located in Finspång produces, sells and provides service for steam and gas turbines around the world.The purpose of this project is to help Siemens develop their maintenance programs for two of the auxiliary systems which are a part of the complete steam turbine system. These are lube and control oil systems.The project is restricted to two of Siemens maintenance products, No Stop Check (NSC) and the annual Safety Inspection (SI).

This thesis assignment at C-level is focused on calculation models and prediction methodswhish can be used in the stage we call ?prospecting? of possible windmill locations. Thelocation is southeast of Halmstad at the Farm ?Stjernarpsgods?. The rapport has two mainareas directed towards this task.

One of the most discussed archaeological subjects is the neolitisation, and the start of a neolithic lifestyle which is characterized by several significant events. The traditional view has been that settled people were cultivating and breeding, but this picture has been questioned and changed in later years. The development is principally based on two models; that already neolithic people immigrated and took over, or that the new lifestyle gradually developed out of the existing cultures. Southern Scandinavia was characterized by a settlement pattern with permanent settlements which were complemented by temporary special settlements, but in time more domestic settlements originated. On the British Isles the settlements didn´t consist of permanent agricultural settlements but instead did the people here move freely between several short term settlements.  .

Herbicide resistance is the result of an evolutionary process where a population gradually changes from being susceptible to being resistant to an herbicide. The resistance mechanism is usually a change in the biochemistry of the weed, but in some cases changes in morphology or growth rhythm. The change is caused by random mutations. Two resistance mechanisms are found in black-grass; target site resistance and metabolic resistance.Black-grass is a tufty, winter annual grass weed, which is mainly found in milder climates. Black-grass is a big problem in Southern Europe.

According to the Board of Forestry, in Västerbotten, many natural regenerations of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) carried out on privately owned forest in the middle of 1990 in Västerbotten have rendered a bad regeneration outcome and will provide a low future forest production. The Board of Forestry believes that the negative result can be explained by the fact that the regeneration has been carried out in wrong locations and that scarification failed to work as planned. In order for an accepted rate of regeneration the guidelines of the Forrest Act require, not less than 10 years after final cutting at natural regeneration, that there should be at least 1300 (site indices 16 m) - 1700 (site indices 20 m) main crop stems per hectare. Main crop stems are defined as stems according to the place of growth and appropriate tree type, in addition with regard to quality, stage of development and damage risk have a prospect of succeeding. In addition main crop stems should be separated by surface so that the proportion sample plots with 3 meters radius, and lack main crop stems, are not more than 10 % of site indices 14 meters or higher.

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.

Genetic parameters for four leg conformation traits in dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) are in this literature review summarized to investigate whether selective breeding could be useful to improve purebred dogs´ health and welfare. The four traits are leg length, leg weakness, hip joint and elbow joint conformation. When summarized, the genetic parameters are compared with genetic parameters affecting in pigs (Sus scrofa). Of the four traits, hip and elbow conformations were mostly studied in dogs. However, these traits were not widely studied in pigs.

The aim of this essay is to make clear, whether or not, textile research is visualised in a wider archaeological discussion today. The aim is then to discuss what the archaeological and textile technological research situation in Scandinavia looks like today, and how that relate to what has happened in these two research fields during the years. This essay also has a purpose to find out if there is a need of visualising textile research more in future archaeology, how that shall be done, and what that can possibly supply to our general picture of the prehistory.The head questions are discussed in the light of three investigations. The first is a study of literature used in archaeological education at five Swedish universities. The other two consists of a study which is aimed to find out how textile research results are published, and one in which archaeologists and textile researchers have answered questions about how they experience the relation between archaeology and textile research.There has also been done a comparison between interpretations of the archaeological material from the site of Löddeköpinge in west Scania.

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.

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).

The purpose of this report is to outline the development of a dynamic Microsoft Silverlight application, which will be able to present products and be administered in a simple manner. The project has been carried out at Incordia AB, a company that specializes in e-commerce, situated in Helsingborg, Sweden. Although the Silverlight application is customized for a particular site, forMicro AB (an ongoing project at Incordia), the template and the classes that are used to manage information, are developed so that they can be used in future projects for Incordia AB..

The purpose is to understand the planning process for residential buildings and toinvestigate the consequences of the choices made in the process. The project will alsoprovide broader knowledge in the design and development under the current law andpractice.The goal is to present a proposal on how a city near the site where water can bedesigned from a sustainable perspective. How can a residential neighborhood be anenvironmentally sound and sustainable region? New systems and techniques havebeen presented previously in terms of sustainable environments and these are intendedof being used in the project Quarter Water-mirror.The project has been implemented on the computer program ArchiCAD in whichdrawings and visualizations have been carried out. These drawings are included asannexes to the report.For information, calculations and drawings, laws for physical planning and Swedishstandard have been followed.Residential buildings have been designed on a site, which is 2, 5 hectares.