During 2004 to 2008, The United States Marine Corps (USMC) executed counterinsurgency operations in Anbar Province with the purpose to stabilize one of the most violent areas in Iraq. The Marine Corps successfully managed to suppress the insurgency as violence dropped dramatically in late 2007. What did the marines do in order to suppress the insurgency? Why did violence drop in the province? The Marine Corps approach and procedures have been examined earlier through theories of organizational learning and adaptation. However, there is an absence of studies aiming to analyse the Marine Corps? counterinsurgency approach through the analytical lens of counterinsurgency theory.

Denna uppsats avhandlar 1st Marine Division och deras väg in i Irak under operation Iraqi Freedom. Syftet med uppsatsen är att verifiera om det var konceptet manöverkrigföring som 1st Marine Division använde sig av under invasionen? Det har sagts att amerikanerna använde sig av manöverkrigföring i denna operation. Jag ställer mig mer frågande om det verkligen var det konceptet som de använde sig av.För att svara på frågeställningen har jag först beskrivit vad manöverkrigföring är, därefter har jag gjort en fallstudie på 1st Marine Division och deras agerande under invasionen av Irak 2003. Vi följer divisionen från utgångsgrupperingen i Kuwait tills divisionen är inne i Bagdad.

This thesis project explores technologies that enable people to experience the world through animals' senses in order to spark interest in and awareness about the marine environment and its inhabitants. The project is carried out as part of a planned ocean themed science center. The purpose is to explore how a greater understanding of the marine environment can be achieved using interactive technologies. The thesis is based on a theoretical framework consisting of academic works on experience, learning in a museum context and sensory perception. Our proposed designs are a series of, primarily, wearable devices that translate sensory experiences and principles from the marine world to humans.

The search for antibiotic compounds from the natural environment has been going on for seven decades, ever since penicillin entered the market and antibiotic treatments became routine. The evolutionary pressure put on the pathogenic microorganisms induced a rapid spreading of naturally occurring resistance genes, leaving only the option of finding new antibiotics to treat the resistant pathogens. Microorganisms have been extensively mined for their biosynthetic abilities to produce biologically active compounds. To date, more than 23 000 microbial natural products have been discovered. The Actinomycetales are ubiquitous bacteria that have been used for antibiotic discovery for more than half a century, and over 10 000 natural products have been identified from the order.

The essay circulates around the technological analysis of flint material from four localities around the Baltic Sea basin. The analysis was created to investigate the question of where the first Gotlandic settlers originated from and to give clues about the colonization process. The investigated material was collected during the fall of 2011 and a correspondence analysis is used to analyze the collected material. The purpose of using a correspondence analysis is to test the method as a tool for investigating Mesolithic flint technologies. The essay also discusses marine hunter-gatherers, their economy and how their archeological remains differ from terrestrial hunter-gatherers..

The aim of this paper was to investigate whether or not it is possible to keep bottlenose dolphins and killer whales in captivity while maintaining good animal welfare. Today, many zoos and aquariums claim that their primary function is to conserve species and educate people about conservation and threatened species. The keeping of wild animals is justified by conservation programs and by the information spread to the zoo visitors. This does however not seem to be the case for Marine mammals such as bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.) and killer whales (Oricnus orca) since these species are not threatened in the wild and neither of them are listed as threatened in IUCN's Red List. Bottlenose dolphins and killer whales are entirely aquatic carnivores and are distributed in all coastal and pelagic waters from the Arctic ice in the north to the Antarctic ice in the south.

Environmental chemicals are transported to the Arctic through the air and oceans, once within the Arctic they spread through rivers, lakes and other watercourses. Polar bears and sledge dogs in-gest high concentrations of environmental chemicals since many of the chemicals are fat-soluble and their diet mainly consists of Marine mammals. The aim of this study is to describe how environmental chemicals spread in nature, how they reach the polar bears, and finally how they affect the animals reproduction, with reproductive hormones and genitals in focus. The animals are exposed to a cocktail effect which complicates the assessment of the chemicals impact on the reproduction. Studies show that the genitals can decrease in size or become malformed, sexual maturation can be affected and the reproductive hormones can be disturbed.

Biodiversity can be described as the total variation of life forms, where diversity ranges from gene level up to the ecosystem level. The diversity can be calculated in a number of ways, and this study use one of these methods. In this study empirical food webs have been used and analyzed, where eleven characters are defined and used as parameters to calculate the Euclidean distances between food webs that describe the variation that may exist within classes of terrestrial, marine and freshwater habitats. The class who stood out and showed the greatest diversity at the ecosystem level was the marine food webs, which showed a high value of the average euclidean distance. The other networks were not as distinctive and the average of the euclidean distance in these classes was comparatively low..

AbstractOne opinion among people who are experienced in hand rearing newborn mammals is that goat milk is more suitable than cow milk if the young needs a milk replacer. The purpose of this literature review was to find out if there is scientific evidence that goat milk is a better milk replacer for piglets, rat pups and foals than cow milk. The milk is essential for the newborn animal, as its only source of nutrition until it has learned how to eat solid food. In this literature review, the composition of goat milk and cow milk is compared with the nutrient requirements after birth in piglets, rat pups and foals. The nutrient requirements and the milk composition are partly determined by the newborn mammals activity level and suckling frequency, which also is described.

The Island of Öland has one of the best wind climates for land based wind power in Sweden. An objective for the Island is to become self sufficient using electricity from renewable source of energy such as wind. There is currently 55 MW capacity installed on the Island and it is estimated that grid congestion will occasionally occur if more than 135 MW was installed.The aim of this thesis is to investigate he possibilities for load management by smart charging of electric vehicles, EV. The definition of smart charging is that the charging is done to some extent with an ICT-system, (information and communication technology) that correlates wind electricity generation to the charging of electric vehicles. The purpose is to avoid grid congestions on the sub-sea cable that connects Öland to the mainland because that in turn would curtail wind energy production.

Epizootier som drabbat marina däggdjur och lett till storskaliga dödsfall har uppmärksammats runt om i världen de senaste decennierna. Höga halter av persistenta miljökontaminanter såsom DDT (diklordifenyltrikloretan) och PCB (polyklorerade bifenyler) har uppmätts hos djur som drabbats. Detta har lett till tankar om att miljökontaminanter, i den nivå de finns i våra akvatiska ekosystem idag, kan vara en bidragande orsak till den ökade mottagligheten för infektioner och den ökade mortaliteten hos marina däggdjur. I denna litteraturstudie sammanställs resultaten från försök, både på laboratoriedjur och marina däggdjur, som tyder på att kontaminanter med fokus på PCB kan orsaka immunosuppression och därmed vara en bakomliggande orsak till allvarligheten i dessa epizootier. Resultat från studier visar på att PCB kan orsaka immunosuppression genom att ge nedsatt proliferativt svar hos T-lymfocyter under stimulering med mitogener, minskad aktivitet hos NK-celler, nedsatt antikroppsproduktion, minskad antigen-specifik proliferation och minskat DTH (delayed-type hypersensitivity) svar.

Increasing attention is being given to acid sulphate soils wherever they occur. The problems that leaching sulphate soils gives with significant lowerings of pH and mobilization of heavy metals influence large spectra of our society from fisheries to agriculture to construction. Mapping these soils is consequently of great importance and the methods of doing this is very much lacking in function and precision. This study was therefore carried out to investigate whether conductivity in running water can be used as a simple instrument to identify acid sulphate soils in the catchment. 31 coastal streams in the county of Västerbotten were analyzed for different catchment properties such as occurence of marine sediments and basic water chemistry including conductivity and sulphate.

The thesis examines the crisis that the Swedish-flagged merchant marine underwent in the 1990s, that resulted in a narrow market for the Swedish-flagged fleet. In order to save the industry, the TAP- agreement was created, consisting of three parties, government- market and interest organizations.  Purpose in this thesis, is to exam how the TAP-agreement was carried out in relation to the parties, and how it correlates in relation to how the global political economy affected the Swedish maritime politics. Two questions are presented. Is the TAP agreement an expression of Swedish corporatism?  Which aspect of Global Political Economy is characteristic for the TAP agreement? A case study is preformed in three steps. The different parties of the TAP-agreement have been interviewed.  A comparative study of two Swedish crises has been performed, in order to establish the correlation between them, in regards to corporatism.  A survey, with the aim to pinpoint which aspect of Global Political Economy is characteristic of the TAP agreement. Findings in this thesis are that the TAP-agreement was designed through corporatism, and that the most important aspect of all, the Swedish flag was worth saving, for all parties. .

Vole populations in northern Scandinavia vary in cycles with peaks every third or fourth year as described by the National Environmental Monitoring Programme of small mammals (NEMP). Some vole species have declined in population numbers since the NEMP started in 1971, especially the grey-sided vole (Myodes rufocanus) which is nearly extinct in the forested region. Since small mammals are an important food source for several avian and mammalian predators, the decline in vole numbers is expected to have consequences for the whole food chain, especially if other vole species start to decline in numbers. This study tried to test the hypothesis that presence and abundance of M. rufocanus (a specialist species) and Myodes glareolus (a generalist species) can be predicted by patch size and connectivity of forest patches >60 years old with a minimum of 15% pine >100years old.

Most of the sea areas within the European Union are overfished and the catches are estimated to be up to five times lager then the amount to achieve a sustainable fishery. In doing so, the management of EU's marine resources comes to be questioned. The purpose of this study was to analyze EU's administration of marine fisheries and to explore which steps that can be undertaken to counteract the negative trend. The questions of the study were: How does the EU administrate today?s marine fishery recourses? And: How can the problem whit overfishing be discouraged? To answer these questions a comparative analyses were used to compare and evaluate administrative systems.