I detta examensarbete har energieffektiviserande åtgärders påverkan på hyresgäster och fastighetsägare undersökts. Syftet var att sätta sig in i de boendes situation och få en bättre förståelse för deras upplevelse av inomhusklimat och komfort. Därav skulle fastighetsägarens och hyresgästens gemensamma vinning kunna ses. Huvudsakligen utfördes litteraturstudier för teoretisk inhämtning av kunskap. Inledningsvis bedrevs faktamässig påläsning kring vad inomhusklimat är, hur komfort kan mätas samt hur kundnöjdhet fungerar. Detta adderat till en sammanfattning av Rekorderlig renovering, ett gemensamt bostadsprojekt i syfte att minska energianvändningen och förbättra inomhusupplevelsen för hyresgäster, gav en tydligare förståelse för åtgärder, vilka borde studeras. Beräkningsmässigt gjordes kalkyler för att utläsa tendenser som fanns för operativ temperatur och PPD. Dessa behandlade förbättringar av fönster, tilläggsisolering samt lufthastighet. En modell skapades även i VIP-energy för enklare beräkningar vilka simulerades så att energibesparingar kunde erhållas. I övrigt studerades åtgärders påverkan genom teoretiska fakta. Slutligen diskuterades komfortdelar i förhållande till åtgärder och detta visade att största effekt på inomhusklimat och komfort torde vara ventilation och fönster. Fönster kunde enskilt ge den största förändringen i upplevelse för hyresgästen. Det visades på störst skillnad i operativ temperatur av fönster, dock gjordes inga konkreta beräkningar på dess påverkan på exempelvis kallras. Slutsatsen drog således på att fönstret kunde generera påverkan på flest olika faktorer. Dock kunde ventilation möjligen ha en större total positiv verkan på kundnöjdhet, men torde dock ha en svårare genomförbarhet för fastighetsägaren. Rent energibersparingsmässigt visade emellertid LED-belysning och frånluftsvärmepump på störst skillnad. Svårigheten av olika fördelar baserat på olika intressen knöt an till rapportens idé om att kunna ena dessa. / In this project the impact of energy efficiency measures on tenants and property owners was examined. The purpose was to familiarize oneself with the situation of the residents and gain a better understanding of their experience of indoor climate and comfort. Hence, the common profit of the property owner and the tenants could be seen. Mainly, literature studies were conducted for theoretical acquirement of knowledge. Initially, informational reading was conducted about what indoor climate is, how comfort can be measured and how customer satisfaction works. This added to a summary of “Rekorderlig renovering”, a common housing project aimed at reducing energy use and improving the indoor experience of tenants and gave a clearer understanding of what measures, to study. Simple calculations were made in order to see tendencies for operative temperature and the predicted percentage disatisfied. These managed improvements to windows, additional insulation and air velocity. A simpler model was also created in the building simulation program VIP energy for calculations of energy savings. The impact of measures was further studied through theoretical facts. Finally, comfort aspects in relation to measures, were discussed and this showed that the greatest effect on indoor climate and comfort would be ventilation and windows. Windows could individually give the biggest changein experience for the tenant. It was shown that the greatest difference in operative temperature came from windows. However, no concrete calculations were made of its impact on, for example, cold air convection. Thus, the conclusion was made that the windows could generate an impact on most different factors. Ventilation could also have a great overall positive effect on customer satisfaction, but may be a more difficult implement for the property owner. However, in pure energy savings, Led lighting and exhaust air heat pump showed the greatest difference. The difficulty of various benefits based on different interests was in line with the idea of the report of being able to unify these.

No description available.

Abstract Agriculture is the main source of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), which are the nutrients accelerating the eutrophication of waters in Finland. Hence, mitigation measures are needed to reduce the nutrient loading from the arable land. Since Finland's accession to the EU in 1995 and the subsequent adaptation to its agri-environmental policy, constructed wetlands (CWs) have been one of the mitigation measures for which farmers may receive agri-environmental subsidies. The aim of this study was to find out how efficiently such CWs are able to retain the loading and how they should be designed and dimensioned in order to optimize their performance. Particular attention was paid to CW hydrology and hydraulics, since the dynamics of the water flowing through a CW is the major factor governing retention. Water quality and flow measurements were made in three CWs located in agricultural watersheds in southern Finland during 1999-2002. Hydraulic properties were examined in 2 of the CWs by simulations with 2-dimensional hydrodynamic and water quality models. According to the calculations of material fluxes, the maximum annual retention was 72% for solid material (TSS), 67% for total P and 40% for total N. The lowest retentions were slightly negative, because the CW with the smallest CW-to-watershed area ratio (0.5% in the Alastaro CW) sometimes acted rather as a source than a sink of nutrients. The highest percent retentions were found in the Hovi CW with the largest CW-to-watershed area ratio (5%). In terms of mass per CW area, the Hovi CW retained 25 kg of total P and 300 kg of total N per one hectare per one year. In the Hovi CW also dissolved reactive P retention was high (49% in situ and 34% in laboratory microcosm experiments), obviously due to high contents and low P saturation of Al and Fe oxides of the CW soil. The basic underlying reason behind the high retentions of both dissolved nutrients and particulate matter in the Hovi CW was the long water residence time coupled with high hydraulic efficiency. In the deep part of the Hovi CW, near-bottom increase of dissolved O2 was found in phase with diurnal temperature changes. The oxygen transport by this kind of convective circulation of CW water inhibited near-bottom anoxia and thus decreased the risk of P desorption. According to the hydrodynamic simulations coupled with simulated tracer tests made for the Hovi CW, a 40% improvement in hydraulic efficiency was achieved by baffles directing the main flow to optimally exploit the CW area. The rectangular, elongated shape of the Alastaro CW also showed fairly high hydraulic efficiency. Hydrodynamic simulations were also coupled with a sediment transport model, which proved to be a useful method in predicting the change of TSS concentrations in CWs. Hourly datasets of inflow and outflow revealed high attenuation of runoff peaks in the well-designed and -dimensioned Hovi CW. The hourly outflow modeled with the reservoir routing method corresponded to the observed with a reasonable accuracy. When carefully designed, painstakingly implemented and wisely located, CWs may – even in cold climate – efficiently contribute to agricultural water pollution control.

Branch Prediction is a key task in the operation of a high performance processor. An inaccurate branch predictor results in increased program run-time and a rise in energy consumption. The drive towards processors with limited die-space and tighter energy requirements will continue to intensify over the coming years, as will the shift towards increasingly multicore processors. Both trends make it increasingly important and increasingly difficult to find effective and efficient branch predictor designs. This thesis presents savings in energy and die-space through the use of more efficient cooperative branch predictors achieved through novel branch prediction designs. The first contribution is a new take on the problem of a hybrid dynamic-static branch predictor allocating branches to be predicted by one of its sub-predictors. A new bias parameter is introduced as a mechanism for trading off a small amount of performance for savings in die-space and energy. This is achieved by predicting more branches with the static predictor, ensuring that only the branches that will most benefit from the dynamic predictor’s resources are predicted dynamically. This reduces pressure on the dynamic predictor’s resources allowing for a smaller predictor to achieve very high accuracy. An improvement in run-time of 7-8% over the baseline BTFN predictor is observed at a cost of a branch predictor bits budget of much less than 1KB. Next, a novel approach to branch prediction for multicore data-parallel applications is presented. The Peloton branch prediction scheme uses a pack of cyclists as an illustration of how a group of processors running similar tasks can share branch predictions to improve accuracy and reduce runtime. The results show that sharing updates for conditional branches across the existing interconnect for I-cache and D-cache updates results in a reduction of mispredictions of up to 25% and a reduction in run-time of up to 6%. McPAT is used to present an energy model that suggests the savings are achieved at little to no increase in energy required. The technique is then extended to architectures where the size of the branch predictors may differ between cores. The results show that such heterogeneity can dramatically reduce the die-space required for an accurate branch predictor while having little impact on performance and up to 9% energy savings. The approach can be combined with the Peloton branch prediction scheme for reduction in branch mispredictions of up to 5%.

Camera Sensor Networks (CSNs) have emerged as an information-rich sensing modality with many potential applications and have received much research attention over the past few years. One of the major challenges in research for CSNs is that camera sensors are different from traditional scalar sensors, as different cameras from different positions can form distinct views of the object in question. As a result, simply combining the sensing range of the cameras across the field does not necessarily form an effective camera coverage, since the face image (or the targeted aspect) of the object may be missed. The angle between the object's facing direction and the camera's viewing direction is used to measure the quality of sensing in CSNs instead. This distinction makes the coverage verification and deployment methodology dedicated to conventional sensor networks unsuitable. A new coverage model called full-view coverage can precisely characterize the features of coverage in CSNs. An object is full-view covered if there is always a camera to cover it no matter which direction it faces and the camera's viewing direction is sufficiently close to the object's facing direction. In this dissertation, we consider three areas of research for CSNS: 1. an analytical theory for full-view coverage; 2. energy efficiency issues in full-view coverage CSNs; 3. Multi-dimension full-view coverage theory. For the first topic, we propose a novel analytical full-view coverage theory, where the set of full-view covered points is produced by numerical methodology. Based on this theory, we solve the following problems. First, we address the full-view coverage holes detection problem and provide the healing solutions. Second, we propose $k$-Full-View-Coverage algorithms in camera sensor networks. Finally, we address the camera sensor density minimization problem for triangular lattice based deployment in full-view covered camera sensor networks, where we argue that there is a flaw in the previous literature, and present our corresponding solution. For the second topic, we discuss lifetime and full-view coverage guarantees through distributed algorithms in camera sensor networks. Another energy issue we discuss is about object tracking problems in full-view coverage camera sensor networks. Next, the third topic addresses multi-dimension full-view coverage problem where we propose a novel 3D full-view coverage model, and we tackle the full-view coverage optimization problem in order to minimize the number of camera sensors and demonstrate a valid solution. This research is important due to the numerous applications for CSNs. Especially some deployment can be in remote locations, it is critical to efficiently obtain accurate meaningful data.

Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Michael R. Langemeier / The objective of this thesis is to examine differences in labor efficiency and to find what is driving those differences among Kansas farms. The results provide a quantified understanding of the variation in labor productivity and labor efficiency relating to three categories of variables: farm characteristics, financial performance, and specialization. This research uses regression estimates from a data set of 1,145 Kansas farms to quantify how farm characteristics are related to labor productivity and labor efficiency. There are two main models. Labor productivity, expressed as value of farm production divided by the number of workers, is regressed on three categories of variables: farm characteristics, financial performance, and specialization. Labor efficiency, expressed as labor costs divided by value of farm production, is also regressed on the same categories of variables. The research found that farm size, managerial ability, and age were the most influential and significant variables in the labor productivity model. Farm size, managerial ability, and land tenure were the most influential and significant variables in the labor efficiency model. Farm size is a variable important to both models, and when evaluated at $100,000 of VFP, labor productivity has a value of 152,122 and a labor efficiency value of 0.271 (all else constant). When evaluated at a VFP of $500,000, labor productivity and labor efficiency improve to values of 217,914 and 0.246, respectively.

Master of Science / Department of Animal Sciences and Industry / Robert D. Goodband / A study was conducted on a commercial sow farm to determine the effects of parity and stage of gestation on growth and feed efficiency of gestating sows. These data were also used to model changes in composition of maternal weight gain and products of conceptus throughout gestation. Feed intake and BW were measured daily from d 5 to 112 of gestation for 712 females. From d 5 to 39 of gestation, ADFI was lowest for parity 3+ sows compared to the other periods of gestation. Parity 2 sows, although provided the same feed allowance, had greater ADFI during the first period than parity 3+ sows. Average daily gain was lowest and G:F was the poorest from d 5 to 39 for each parity group compared with d 40 to 109 of gestation. Parity 1 and 2 sow ADG increased following d 39 of gestation but decreased from d 75 to 109. Parity 3+ sow ADG increased in each subsequent period of gestation. Parity 1 sows had the greatest ADG and G:F in comparison to parity 2 and 3+ sows in each period of gestation. Energy available for maternal growth was estimated after accounting for the energy needed to meet the sow’s maintenance requirement and the energy required for the growth of the conceptus. Following d 39 of gestation, energy available for maternal growth decreased at the expense of maintenance and conceptus requirements in each subsequent period of gestation for each parity group. After accounting for the weight of the conceptus, maternal ADG decreased from d 39 to 74, and increased d 74 to 109 of gestation, regardless of parity. Maternal G:F was greatest for parity 1 sows in most gestation periods. In conclusion, parity and stage of gestation impact sow feed efficiency and maternal growth with parity 1 sows having the greatest weight gain and best feed efficiency.

The objective of this study is to analyse and evaluate the current system of procuring Building Contractors for public sector building projects in Botswana. The study further seeks to find strategies to recommend for improving the current system of procurement. The analysis and evaluation is carried out by first dividing the main problem into sub-problems. The sub-problems help to form the questions for the interviews and the questionnaire. Chapter one introduces the reader to the main problem and defines the scope of the problem and the delimitations. The second Chapter is a review of the related literature and a brief outline of the procurement process and the relevant legislation. The analysis and evaluation of the information and data collected is carried out in Chapter three. This is a very important Chapter since it addresses the questions raised by the main problem and the sub-problems and states the extent to which the hypotheses are affirmed or not affirmed. Chapter four is dedicated to the recommendations and strategies for improving the procurement system. The last Chapter summarises the main findings and outlines and recommends areas for further study. This treatise comprises some important findings and can form a useful initiative towards developing strategies for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector system of procuring building Contractors in Botswana. / Thesis (MSc (Project Management))--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Construction Economics / unrestricted

South Africa is a water-stressed country where water availability is an important constraint to economic and social development, and will become even more so in the future if this scarce resource is not managed effectively. In order to manage this scarce supply of water, we need to value it. This study focuses on the value of water in the agricultural sector, in particular the marginal revenue of water for six irrigation commodities namely avocados, bananas, grapefruit, mangoes, oranges and sugarcane. A quadratic production function was fitted with an SUR model specification in a panel data study from 1975 to 2002 to obtain marginal revenue functions for each of the six commodities. We found that mangoes are the most efficient commodity in its water use relative to revenue generated (marginal revenue of water equals R25.43/m³ in 2002) and sugarcane the least efficient (marginal revenue of water equals R1.67/m³ in 2002). The marginal revenue of water is not an indication of the true “market” price. Neither is it an indication what the administered price should be. The marginal revenue of water is rather a guideline for policy makers to determine which industries or commodities within an industry can generate the largest revenue per unit water applied. / Dissertation (MCom (Econometrics))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Economics / unrestricted

Zambia ranks as one of the lowest cost producers of sugar. However, Zambia’s domestic sugar price has been high and volatile and is substantially higher than the world price. This has raised concern among stakeholders and further raises questions about the efficient functioning of the market. The study sought to determine and explain efficiency and integration in Zambia’s sugar value chain by analysing price spreads, price formation, and price transmission through a price transmission and partial equilibrium model. The study hypothesised that the Zambian sugar market is both inefficient and it is not integrated with the world market. This was tested through the price transmission and partial equilibrium models. Price transmission is conceptually premised on the Law of One Price (LOP) which postulates that in a frictionless undistorted market, the difference between markets spatially separated should only be explained by transaction costs. To test the hypothesis long-run equilibrium between prices was tested through a series of cointegration tests and an Error Correction model (ECM) was built for cointegrating price series. Model simulations were run and tests for asymmetry for cointegrating price series were conducted. A partial equilibrium framework was developed to determine price formation for Zambia’s sugar market from a number of behavioural equations. The study establishes cointegration in the spatial price transmission (between world sugar prices and Zambia’s wholesale prices) and vertically (between the domestic wholesale prices and sugarcane prices). The ECM for the spatial price transmission reveals low integration and efficiency evidenced by the low speed of adjustment, the Error Correction Term (ECT) of -0.09 and the model simulation, which shows that it takes approximately 3 years for the markets to revert to long run equilibrium after experiencing a price shock. The study also establishes that the spatial price adjustment is asymmetric. The vertical price transmission analysis reveals that it is relatively more integrated and efficient as it has a higher speed of adjustment (ECT of 0.199) which is twice that of the spatial price transmission. The model simulation reveals that it takes about 1 year and 6 months to revert to long run equilibrium after experiencing a shock. The vertical price adjustment is also found to be symmetric. A negative short-run elasticity of -0.29 is found for the spatial price transmission while the long-run transmission is found to be inelastic (0.91 ) which is close to unitary elasticity. The short-run vertical transmission is found to be very inelastic (0.009 ) while the long-run transmission of 0.94 is similar to the spatial transmission (inelastic but close to unitary). Farm to Retail Price Spreads are found to be widening with growing volatility owing to the volatile nature of the Retail Value. While the Farm Value has been increasing, recent spikes experienced in the Retail Value have resulted in an overall widening of the Farm to Retail Price Spread. The partial equilibrium analysis indicates that the price formation in Zambia’s sugar market is determined by the world price through the export parity price, domestic demand, supply conditions as well as policy. The elasticity between Zambia’s sugar price and the export parity price is found to be unitary (1.09). The price space analysis reveals that although Zambia’s domestic price is correlated with the export parity prices it is trending closer to the import parity price. This suggests that there are distortions in the sugar market, which may include high transaction costs, high concentration in the market structure as well as inappropriate policies such as high taxation, high interest rates and a policy requiring fortification of all sugar with Vitamin A, which are driving the domestic price upwards to exceed the export parity price. The sugar baseline for Zambia is generated for 2012 to 2015 based on a number of assumptions in the exogenous variables. Sugar production domestic use and exports are on the rise while the domestic price rises in 2011, falling between 2013 and 2014 then rising in 2014 to 2015. Model simulation of the removal and/or modification of the policy requiring sugar fortification reveals that there is an increase in the flow of imports to about 25,000 tons per year. This results in a 3.2 per cent loss in production and a 6.1 per cent gain in exports while the domestic sugar price falls by 23.9 US Cents/kg (18.8 per cent). Thus Zambia gains in terms of increased consumer welfare and producer welfare because production losses are offset by revenue gains through exports since the world price also increases. The study recommends that transaction costs which include transportation costs, energy, taxation which are pushing the domestic price upwards need to be lowered. The study emphasises the need to promote investments in the sugar industry especially for smaller emerging sugar mills by lowering interest rates and taxes as well as a need to strengthen competition laws governing the industry which will protect consumers,would-be- investors and cane producers from uncompetitive pricing. It further recomments the lifting and /or modification of the barrier on imports of unfortified sugar but stresses that government can allow raw sugar imports which can be fortified in Zambia. A more open and undistorted sugar market in Zambia will result in a competitive, efficient and integrated market governed by market dynamics. Copyright / Dissertation (MSc(Agric))--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / unrestricted