Clays are considered as potential host rocks and backfill material for deep geological repositories for radioactive waste. Therefore, profound understanding of radionuclide retention processes at clay mineral surfaces is essential for a long-term safety assessment. This understanding has already been generated in the past for simple chemical systems, in which experiments are easy to conduct and interpretation is straightforward. However, there is still a lack of molecular process understanding when considering complex natural systems (low radionuclide concentrations, high ionic strength, high pH values, multi-mineral solid phases, complex solution composition). This thesis aims to close some of these knowledge gaps, focusing on U(VI) and Np(VI) sorption on clays at (hyper)alkaline conditions. pH values between 10 and 13 can prevail in the near-field of a radioactive waste repository as a result of the degradation of concrete, which is part of the geo-engineered barrier. Existing studies on radionuclide sorption on clays do not exceed pH 10. Therefore, within this work, a comprehensive investigation in the pH range 8-13 was conducted. This included the quantification of radionuclide retention in batch sorption experiments as well as spectroscopic investigations to generate understanding about the underlying retention mechanisms on a molecular level. Beside the pH, additional focus was on the influence of dissolved carbonate and calcium on radionuclide sorption at (hyper)alkaline conditions. Next to two small chapters dealing with the stability and surface charge of Ca-bentonite at (hyper)alkaline conditions (chapter 4.1) and the influence of ISA on U(VI) sorption at high pH values (chapter 4.3), the thesis can be subdivided in two major parts. The first part (chapter 4.2) is a detailed investigation of U(VI) sorption on Ca-bentonite at (hyper)alkaline conditions in mixed electrolyte solutions. Batch sorption experiments were conducted, varying a number of experimental parameters (sorption time, S/L ratio, U(VI) concentration, pH value, carbonate concentration) and assessing their effect on U(VI) sorption. In order to be able to explain the observed sorption behavior, next to U(VI) solubility tests, spectroscopic techniques were applied. The aqueous speciation of U(VI) was investigated with TRLFS, while its surface speciation was probed with ATR FT-IR, site-selective TRLFS, EXAFS and CTR/RAXR. Since the results of this chapter indicated a great importance of the presence of calcium (see below), the second major part of the thesis (chapter 4.4) was dedicated to a careful evaluation of the influence of calcium on An(VI) sorption on clay minerals at (hyper)alkaline conditions. This encompasses the sorption of Ca(II) on Ca-bentonite and its effect on the bentonite surface charge. Furthermore, U(VI) batch sorption experiments with Na-montmorillonite, synthetic kaolinite and muscovite were conducted in 0.1 M NaCl as well as in 0.1 M NaCl + 0.02 M CaCl2 at pH 8-13, in order to quantify the influence of calcium on U(VI) sorption on supposedly Ca-free mineral phases. Site-selective TRLFS was applied with the aim to observe U(VI) sorption species involving calcium. Finally, complementary sorption experiments Np(VI) on muscovite were performed in order to check whether its sorption behavior is analogous to U(VI) under the given conditions. Batch sorption experiments demonstrate that U(VI) retention on Ca-bentonite can be very effective at pH > 10, even in the presence of carbonate and despite the prevalence of anionic aqueous species. Above a certain pH, depending on the concentration of carbonate in solution, carbonate does not play a role in the aqueous U(VI) speciation anymore due to the predominance of hydrolysis. TRLFS measurements revealed a clear correlation between sorption behavior and aqueous U(VI) speciation, showing that retention reaches a maximum at pH 10-12, where UO2(OH)3− is the predominant aqueous species. This raised the question whether the strong retention can be achieved by adsorption of an anionic species to the negatively charged mineral surface or rather by precipitation of uranates. By in situ ATR FT-IR and CTR/RAXR experiments the formation of U(VI) precipitates on the mineral surface was observed at U(VI) concentrations of 2×10-5 M and 5×10-5 M, respectively. However, solubility tests at sub-micromolar U(VI) concentrations, which were also applied in the batch sorption experiments, showed that the observed complete U(VI) removal at pH 10-12 cannot be attributed to precipitation of (earth) alkali-uranates from the solution. In order to unambiguously distinguish between surface precipitation and surface complexation, direct spectroscopic investigations of the U(VI) complexes on the Ca-bentonite surface were performed with site-selective TRLFS and EXAFS. The occurrence of luminescence line-narrowing and the frequency of the total symmetric stretch vibration obtained from the site-selective TRLFS emission spectra, indicate the presence of two U(VI) surface complexes. Also EXAFS spectroscopy confirmed the presence of two independent U(VI) sorption species on Ca-bentonite at pH 8-13. With increasing pH, the nature of the retained U(VI) complexes shifts from bidentate inner-sphere surface complexes with an overall equatorial coordination of five adsorbed on aluminol or silanol edge sites to surface complexes with a 4-fold equatorial coordination, resembling the aqueous species UO2(OH)42−. For the first time, a 4-fold coordination in the equatorial plane of U(VI) was univocally proven with the help of a multiple-scattering feature originating from the strong symmetry of the complexes, and without the need for error-prone shell fitting. The lack of scattering paths from the substrate and the comparatively high value for the total symmetric stretch vibration indicate that the high-pH-component is an outer-sphere complex. Concerning the character of the second sorption species at very high pH it was hypothesized that the anionic uranyl hydroxide complexes are mediated to the surface by calcium cations. It was found that calcium sorbs strongly on Ca-bentonite between pH 8 and 13. Also zeta potential measurements showed a partial compensation of the strongly negative surface charge of Ca-bentonite due to adsorption of calcium. U(VI) sorption on kaolinite and muscovite was strongly reduced in the absence of calcium at pH > 10. An increased retention upon addition of calcium proved the sorption enhancing effect of calcium at pH 10-12. Site-selective TRLFS allowed the spectroscopic observation and identification of calcium-induced U(VI) sorption complexes on muscovite. The obtained spectra correspond to the outer-sphere species found on Ca-bentonite. Combining the findings from batch sorption, zeta potential, TRLFS and EXAFS suggests that calcium adsorbs to the mineral surface in the first place, displaying locally positively charged sites which enable an electrostatically driven attachment of anionic uranyl hydroxides. The same effect could also be demonstrated for Np(VI) sorption on muscovite, which was also strongly enhanced in the presence of calcium at pH 9-12. ISA leads to a mobilization of U(VI) at (hyper)alkaline conditions only when present in very high excess of U(VI). A reduction of sorption on Ca-bentonite and the formation of aqueous U(VI)-ISA complexes, detected with TRLFS, occurred at an U:ISA ratio of 1:100,000. Such conditions are not likely to be found in deep geological repository environments. Based on these findings it can be concluded that under certain alkaline repository conditions, where precipitation does not occur (due to very low concentrations or kinetic restraints), U(VI) and Np(VI) are still effectively retained in argillaceous minerals and rocks by adsorption despite the anionic character of prevailing aqueous species. Repulsive forces between the actinide species and the mineral surfaces are overcome by mediating Ca2+. This finding is of great relevance, as also the migration of very small amounts of uranium or neptunium out of waste repositories could lead to a hazardous accumulation in the long term. The achieved knowledge gain concerning radionuclide retention at environmental conditions helps to take the next step towards realistic long-term safety assessment of nuclear waste repositories.

I denna studie utreder jag om hur branded content mottas av målgruppen för digitala tidskrifter inom populärkultur genom en framträdande teknik in webb-personalisering, hyper-personalisering. Målgruppen för denna studie är unga opinionsbildare som konsumerar innehåll från digitala tidskrifter som exempelvis Nöjesguiden. Branded content, sponsrat innehåll, är innehåll som skapas för att ett varumärke skall förknippas med en kreatörs målgrupp. Alltså kan ett varumärke be Nöjesguiden skapa redaktionellt innehåll som bör tilltala målgruppen för den digitala tidskriften, och på så sätt skall målgruppen få en ny uppfattning eller fortsatt positiv syn på varumärket. Hyperpersonalisering är en teknik som appliceras för att kunna rikta innehåll, tjänster eller produkter mot individer inom en målgrupp med träffsäker relevans. Tekniken kräver en stor mängd insamlad social data och det blir därför intressant att föra en diskussion kring hur målgruppen reagerar på att man kan genomföra en sådan enorm insamling av data. Även en etisk diskussion kring tekniken förs i rapporten. För kunna besvara om mottagligheten för branded content genom hyper-personalisering är god eller ej genomfördes en kvantitativ studie i form av en enkät och en kvalitativ studie med ett användarexperiment. Enkäten besvarades av 87 personer från målgruppen och fyra personer från målgruppen fick vara med och uppleva användarexperimentet. Valet att genomföra ett flertal metoder grundar sig i att kunna ha möjlighet till en bred diskussion kring problemformuleringen. / In this study I am investigating how branded content is received by the target audience for digital periodicals in popular culture through a prominent technology in web personalization, hyper-personalization. The target group for this study is young opinion builders who consume content from digital periodicals such as “Nöjesguiden”. Branded content is content that is created for a brand to be associated with a creator’s audience. Thus, a brand might ask “Nöjesguiden” to create editorial content that should appeal the target audience for the digital magazine and so should the target audience get a new impression or a continued positive view of the brand. Hyper-personalization is a technology applied to target content, services or products to individuals within a target audience with accurate relevance. The technology requires a large amount of collected social data and it will therefore be interesting to conduct a discussion on how the target group reacts to that you can implement such an enormous collection of data. An ethical discussion about the technology is held in the report. In order to answer the susceptibility of branded content through hyper-personalization is good or not, a quantitative study in the form of a survey and a qualitative study with a user experiment was conducted. 87 people answered the survey from the target group and four people from the target group were taking part of the user experience. The choice of having a multiple number of methods was fundamental for having a broad discussion about the issue.

Compact Habitat Adapt looks towards an urban development, which can re-establish relevance into the core of cities, through functionality and holistic sustainability. Cities in South Africa share a complex history, one that is conserved in its architecture. The preservation and conservation of the built fabric have formed an assertive role in suburban sprawl and decentralization. The cities are left stagnant-unable to adapt or change to the needs and problems faced today, and very concerning problems predicted in the future. Vacancy and urban decay have become the identity of these cities as paradigm shifts occur. The obsolescence caused by the pursuit of a former identity of South Africa. The dissertation looks towards an architectural realm of the future, where architecture can no longer serve as an object, but an adaptable habitat. One that does not become obsolete in time, but grows and transforms with the changing city. It does not follow the principles of new and standing alone but merges with the existing. It becomes a collection of components, much like a machine, filling in the spaces between. Repurposing and reinventing the existing towards spatial, social, and environmental sustainability relevant to the present and future needs. Church square in the city of Pretoria translates the concerns of an urban fabric that has in some terms become irrelevant. The area shows an opportunity for further investigation of an architectural intervention that questions the current state of the city and its development policies. / Mini Dissertation (MArch (Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Architecture / MArch (Prof) / Unrestricted

Världen har genomgått stora förändringar de senare åren, liksom sättet på vilket vi interagerar och relaterar till den. Ankomsten av sociala medier har gett upphov till ett fenomen varigenom åberopandet av den spridande fitnesskulturen har möjliggjort för ett beteende bestående av publicerandet av allt mer sexuellt utmanande och explicit material att få fotfäste och normaliseras bland unga svenskar idag. Syftet med denna studie är att utforska meningsskapandet bakom och den bärande logiken för personligt uttryck och publikationen av personligt material i den moderna digitala världen av sociala medier. Jag ämnar göra detta genom att kombinera de teoretiska perspektiven framförda av Thorstein Veblen och Jean Baudrillard med Norman Faircloughs tredimensionella modell för kritisk diskursanalys. Denna metodologiska ansats, en sammanvävning av teori och metodologiska riktlinjer, kommer att tillämpas på det moderna svenska fitnessfenomenets uttrycksformer och emanation på sociala media-plattformen Instagram. Genom att studera bilder och deras associerade bildtexter är målet att bena upp och försöka förklara de diskursiva relationer och villkor som bär och ger liv åt detta beteende, och tillåter det att normaliseras. Tolkningarna av resultatet indikerar förekomsten av ett slags diskursivt maskerande av en underliggande strävan efter social validering genom förvärvandet av socialt kapital. Genom att åberopa fitness som legitimerande faktor transformerar diskursen verkligheten som omger dessa publikationer från någonting som hade betraktats som opassande, till att utgöra en del av ett beteende mer i linje med existerande sociala normer. / The world has seen some rather significant changes in recent years, and with it the way we interact and relate to it. The advent of social media has given rise to a phenomenon in which the invoking of the spreading culture of fitness has allowed a behavior consisting of the publication of increasingly sexually explicit and provocative material to take hold and become normalized among Swedish youth. The purpose of this study is to explore the drive and reasoning governing the concept of personal expression and the publication of personal material in the modern digital age of social media. I aim to do this by combining the perspectives outlined in the works of Thorstein Veblen and Jean Baudrillard respectively, with the three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis as created by Norman Fairclough. This methodological approach, combining theory and methodological guidelines, will then be applied to the modern Swedish phenomena surrounding fitness and its emanation and expression on the popular social media platform Instagram. By studying the images and their related captions the aim was to decipher the discursive relations and conditions that maintain and sustain this behavior and allow it to be normalized. The resulting interpretations indicate the occurrence of a discursive masking of the underlying strive for social validation through the acquisition of social capital. By invoking fitness as a legitimizing factor the discourse transforms the reality of these publications from something which would otherwise be frowned upon, into a behavior more in line with existing social norms.

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In engineering, materials are often assumed to be homogeneous and isotropic; in actuality, material properties do change with sample direction and location. This variation is due to the anisotropy of the individual grains and their spatial distribution in the material. Currently there is a lack of communication between the design engineer, material scientist, and processor for solving multi-objective/constrained designs. If communication existed between these groups then materials could be designed for applications, instead of the reverse. Microstructure sensitive design introduces a common language, a spectral representation, where both design properties and microstructures are expressed. Using Hill bounds, effective elastic properties are expressed within the spectral representation. For the elastic properties, two FCC materials, copper and nickel, were chosen for computation and to demonstrate how symmetry enters into the methodology. This spectral representation renders properties as hyper-surfaces that translate through a multi-dimensional Fourier space depending on the property value of the hyper-surface. Property closures are generated by condensing the information contained within the multi-dimensional Fourier space into a 2-D representation. This compaction of information is beneficial for a quick determination of property limits for a particular alloy system. The design engineer can now dictate the critical design properties and receive sets of microstructures that satisfy the design objectives.

My final thesis exhibition, Fashionable Art, opens up a link between art and fashion. I used clay as my primary medium to create hyper-realistic handbags in the style of Trompe l'oeil. I am interested in placing art in fashion settings and fashion in art settings. In the show, I placed many purses on pedestals for a gallery setting, in a glass case for a purse shop setting and also placed large photos in a fashion photo shoot setting. I am concerned with creating an environment that celebrates the handbag from just an accessory to an art object. By using clay as my primary media, the purse becomes a more permanent representation. I am able to freeze in time a small piece of our cultural timeline. I am interested in creating these hyper-realistic works because I want the viewer to be led into thinking these are real purses and to explore the idea of fashion being more than just a piece of clothing or accessory, but also the history and affect it has on each of us, big or small.

A polymer laminate consisting of multiple layers of proprietary blends of Ethylene Vinyl Alcohol (EVOH) and Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) and used in the construction of air bladders was evaluated for hygroscopic effects driving delamination and multiple layer fragmentation. These air bladders are observed to suffer delamination during a manufacturing process that involves immersion in an alcohol/water solution. A plausible underlying mechanism is differential swelling and absorption by the laminate constituents. Both room and elevated temperature swelling tests were carried out to find the absorption and swelling coefficients of the constituents. These coefficients served as input into a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) model used to predict laminate failure. The diffusion coefficient for EVOH could not be obtained because the material did not reach saturation within the available timeframe of the experiment. The diffusion coefficient of the TPU was found to be 4.09E-12 [m^2/s] at room temperature and 1.26E-11 [m^2/s] at 40°C. The diffusion coefficient for TPU was an order of magnitude larger at elevated temperature and the TPU reached saturation much quicker than the EVOH, suggesting that the diffusion coefficient for the TPU was significantly greater than that of the EVOH. The swelling coefficients were 1.03E-3 m^3/kg and 9.97E-4 m^3/kg for the EVOH at room temperature and 40°C respectively, and 1.16E-3 m^3/kg and 1.09E-3 m^3/kg for the TPU at room temperature and 40°C respectively. The swelling coefficient was very close across materials and within the margin of error across temperatures. These results are required for future FEA simulations to confirm that differential swelling is the driving mechanism behind debonding and laminate failure. Tensile testing was done on laminated sheets used in production to identify cracking and layer separation at strains of 20%, 40%, and 100%. Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) imaging was used to understand damage initiation and accumulation in the layers.

Jediism is a new religious phenomenon where fictitious material is used as religious source material. The phenomenon is called hyper-real religion because the fictitious source material being used in the real world makes it ‘hyper-real’. This study explored Jediism and its usage of Star Wars as a religious source material.  Semi structured interviews with participants from the two largest Jedi communities were conducted: Temple of the Jedi Order and Force Academy. The informats only answered about the Light Aspect of the community, which means that there is still more to be explored in Jediism as it has sides primarily focused on the Dark and the Shadow Aspects of the ‘Force’. Furthermore the phenomenon of Jediism is put in the context within the theoretical approaches of secularization, sacralization and post secularity by Liselotte Frisk and Peter Åkerbäck. By using this theoretical framework the questions regarding who the people are that are looking for this kind of religion, why they chose to be part of it and how the informants from Temple of the Jedi Order and Force Academy speak of Jediism in terms of religious ideas and praxis were explored.     It is argued that Star Wars is the main source material for the studied communities and that it's part of a larger religious movement in Europe and the U.S through the processes of secularization, sacralization and post secularity. Jediism and hyper-real religion, as is shown by this study, should be included in the larger religious landscape that has been shaped by other forms of New Age religion.