The purpose with this report was to compare three commonly occurring methods for measuring plant available nitrogen in soils. The methods Extraction, incubation and Plant root simulator (PRS) probe - an ion exchange membrane (Western Ag Innovations, Inc., Saskatoon, Canada) method were used and comparison between these methods were conducted. A full factorial experiment were set up in northern Finland with the treatments excluding herbivores, warming and fertilization to see how the inorganic nitrogen content in the soil was effected by the treatments. Soil cores were taken and from them a subsample was incubated for 18 days and thereafter analyzed for inorganic N in laboratory. PRS- probes were in the ground for 1 month.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how to reduce the high, and every decade raising, pre-clearance cost. The pre-clearance is today carried out with a brush saw and paid per labour hour. All small trees not suitable for pulpwood are removed to simplify the later work of the harvester. The study compares the economic results from thinning of four parcels each treated differently regarding harsh or light pre-clearance and Extraction of only pulpwood, or both pulpwood and fuel wood. In this type of spruce stand the study indicates that a lighter pre-clearance, followed up with both pulpwood and a fuel wood Extraction, has a much better economy than the traditional method of hard pre-clearance and only pulpwood Extraction..

Clopidogrel is an antiplatelet substance that prevents blood coagulation in the arteries. It is an inactive pro drug that becomes activated after first-pass metabolism by the liver. The active metabolite of clopidogrel is 2-oxoclopidogrel, which is unstable therefore pharmacokinetic data is obtained by measuring the inactive metabolite clopidogrel acid in plasma. Clopidogrel is taken orally in tablet form. The aim of this project was to develop a LC-MS/MS method for quantification of clopidogrel and its metabolite in plasma. The method has been developed by optimizing the sample preparation.

 Genotyping can be used to link genetic variation among individuals to certain diseases or conditions. Some known disorders and states that are dependent on single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) are lactose intolerance, venous thrombosis, hereditary hemochromatosis and the difference in sensibility among people to metabolise drugs.In this project a new kit, TaqManÒ Sample-to-SNP KitÔ for Extraction of DNA and preparation of the extract for genotyping with real-time PCR and allelic discrimination, was evaluated. QIAamp® DNA Blood Biorobot® MDx Kit was used as the reference method.The purpose of the comparison was to find a method that makes DNA Extraction from blood samples cheaper and faster, but with the same reliability as the reference procedure.The results of the evaluation showed a complete agreement of the genotype results between the methods tested, which means that the new method was as reliable as the reference method. The costs of reagents and material would be reduced with 52% if the new method is adopted, that alone would result in a cost reduction of 144 000SEK a year with a sample volume of 650 samples/month. The time for DNA Extraction would also be reduced with the new procedure. .

Deposited waste material degrades within a short period in anaerobic environments. The methane gas that is formed provides a harmful contribute to the greenhouse effect, 23 times larger impact than carbon dioxide. It is therefore desirable to minimize the emissions of methane gas from landfills. This may be achieved by drain the landfill of gas. In this thesis the amount of produced methane gas at the landfill at Örebro has been calculated. Estimations have also been made of the amount of methane gas that might be produced in the landfill in the future.

Stands where pre commercial thinning has been ignored or inadequate often tend to have high stem density and low average diameter when they reach heights of thinning. In such stands, it can often be expensive to do a conventional pulpwood harvest as a first thinning. This study investigates the development of the stands and the economic outcome of forest fuel Extraction, or a combined harvest as alternatives to the ordinary pulpwood harvest. Simulations in Heureka StandWise were performed for two thin and dense stands, which were constructed by data from the Swedish National Forest Inventory. The simulations show that the Extraction of forest fuel in first thinning at an early stage can provide higher net revenue compared to conventional pulpwood harvest at the same time or later.

The present research examined both automatic and controlled processes in newpapers ability of priming racial stereotypes via the portrayals of people of foreign Extraction. The automatic process were examined through articles which; a) involved an illegal act or b) the act was not illegal but morally questionable. Swedish-born subject?s explicit opinions against foreign people were also measured through ?The Modern Racial Prejudice Scale?. In the experiment participants read four different articles which included; Swedish person/noncrime, foreign person/noncrime, Swedish person/crime and foreign person/crime.

Identification of fungi is based on macroscopic observations of morphology and microscopic characteristics. These conventional methods are time-consuming and requires expert knowledge. For the past years Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry has been used for routine bacterial identification in clinical laboratories but not yet in the same extension for fungi. In this study three preanalytic preparation methods for fungi were evaluated in order to shorten the processing time in routine laboratory performance.Clinically relevant strains (n=18) of molds and dermatophytes were cultivated on agar plates and prepared according to the different preparation methods for protein Extraction. Each strain was analyzed in quadruplicate by the MALDI Biotyper and the database Filamentous Fungi Library 1.0.The results showed that the genus and species identification rates of the least time-consuming direct Extraction method were 33% and 11% respectively.

The present research examined both automatic and controlled processes in newpapers ability of priming racial stereotypes via the portrayals of people of foreign Extraction. The automatic process were examined through articles which; a) involved an illegal act or b) the act was not illegal but morally questionable. Swedish-born subject?s explicit opinions against foreign people were also measured through ?The Modern Racial Prejudice Scale?. In the experiment participants read four different articles which included; Swedish person/noncrime, foreign person/noncrime, Swedish person/crime and foreign person/crime.

Aligning parallell terms in a parallell corpus can be done by aligning all words and phrases in the corpus and then performing term Extraction on the aligned set of word pairs. Alternatively, term Extraction in the source and target text can be made separately and then the resulting term candidates can be aligned, forming aligned parallell terms. This thesis describes an implementation of a word aligner that is applied on extracted term candidates in both the source and the target texts. The term aligner uses statistical measures, the tool Giza++ and heuristics in the search for alignments. The evaluation reveals that the best results are obtained when the term alignment relies heavily on the Giza++ tool and Levenshtein heuristic..

Aligning parallell terms in a parallell corpus can be done by aligning all words and phrases in the corpus and then performing term Extraction on the aligned set of word pairs. Alternatively, term Extraction in the source and target text can be made separately and then the resulting term candidates can be aligned, forming aligned parallell terms. This thesis describes an implementation of a word aligner that is applied on extracted term candidates in both the source and the target texts. The term aligner uses statistical measures, the tool Giza++ and heuristics in the search for alignments. The evaluation reveals that the best results are obtained when the term alignment relies heavily on the Giza++ tool and Levenshtein heuristic..

This report is a thesis work for a B.Sc. in Forestry exam at the School for Forest Engineers, SLU. The work was an assignment from Sydved Energy AB. The aim of the work was to compare the operational productivity between two kinds of forwarders for Extraction of harvesting residues, one forwarder with a special compression device and one ordinary, slightly modified forwarder. Two sites were studied for each forwarder. The study shows that the annual production was about 11,000 m3 higher for the traditional forwarder. The cost for the traditional forwarder was SEK 0.9 lower per m3.

Background Calprotectin is a protein expressed in the cytoplasm inside the neutrophile granulocytes. During inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the neutrophile granulocytes are involved in a complex interaction at the inflammatory area where they die and release their content into the intestinal lumen. Therefore, calprotectin in stool is a suitable marker for diagnosis and measurement of the disease-activity in patients with IBD. The most commonly used method to detect calprotectin in stool is ELISA, but the process of manual preparation of stool samples is time-consuming.Aim The objective of the study was to evaluate an Extraction method that could replace manual preparation of fecal samples and to compare different methods for measuring Calprotectin in stool using two ELISA-methods from two manufacturers and one rapidtest.Methods For Extraction of calprotectin from stool samples we used sample collector tubes from Epitope Diagnostics and fecal preparation kits from Roche. Two different ELISA-kits for measuring calprotectin concentration in stool were compared.

The main aim of this study was to investigate and compare different methods for the Extraction of forest fuel from environments close to an archipelago. The study was based on relevant literature and published reports as well as personal communications. Forestry has traditionally been characterized by intense efforts to rationalize and mechanize the cutting technique used for timber and pulpwood. In line with the increasing importance of forestry, more concentrated efforts can be expected in the area of techniques and methods, especially for the above-mentioned product lines. In Sweden, forestry is of major importance and the Swedish economy and standard of living have mainly been created based on the revenues generated from it. Thus, it is vital that Swedish forests are harvested in an efficient and responsible manner. The demand for biofuel is growing and today accounts for 15% of total Swedish energy production, a share that will probably increase. This study is based on three research questions, which are described under the heading of Aim. The results reveal that the most profitable method for handling forest fuel is the traditional one, which is also the most commonly used method in southern Sweden, namely the stockpiling of logs in a clearing by means of forwarders followed by splintering at the place from where they will be distributed. Today, the high cost of barge transport required for the Extraction of forest fuel in an archipelago environment renders such operations unprofitable.

Total protection is often the option chosen when protecting forests with high environmental values. An alternative to total protection is application of management regimes that do not interrupt continuity of tree cover. This study focuses mainly on continuous cover forestry (CCF) in forest stands already protected. All objects are situated in the county of Jämtland in northwest Sweden. The purpose of the study was to attain a greater knowledge about CCF practices.