The fate of tritium in the environment is a target of interest in many studies. However reported concentrations of organically bound tritium (OBT) in soil are not well understood. In this study, a supplementary non-biological process of soil OBT activation in the environment was explored. The vicinity of SRB Technologies (Pembroke, Ontario) was chosen as the sampling location because of a significant airborne tritium release prior to 2001 which resulted in groundwater contamination. Soil cores were extracted from the ground near the tritium-releasing facility stack in 2017 and split into 10 cm subsamples for HTO/OBT, total carbon and hydrogen, particle size, thermogravimetric, radiocarbon and 3He mass spectrometry analyses. Observed HTO profiles revealed elevated tritium concentrations still retained in the soil. The results indicated that clay bound tritium masks the OBT signal and cannot be easily distinguished. Multiple short-term sample rinses with tritium-free water have little effect on clay bound water removal. Therefore, clay bound tritium should to be addressed in any future research related to soil OBT.

Tritium is a radioisotope of hydrogen and a component of emissions from the nuclear industry. It is also a radioisotope of concern for human and environmental health. The near future could see an increase in tritium production as experimental fusion reactors initiate first plasma. The greatest risk pathway is human ingestion of edible plants grown near sites of tritium emissions as they can acquire high levels of organically bound tritium (OBT). Recent studies at a tritium Beta-light facility in Pembroke, Ontario, Canada characterized by tritiated hydrogen gas (HT) emissions have identified high OBT:HTO ratios that are not consistent with current tritium transfer models. This suggests that there is an unidentified physical, chemical, or biological mechanism generating OBT in plant tissue. Laboratory experiments have been undertaken using deuterium gas (D2) as an analogue for atmospheric HT in controlled plant exposure experiments, and compared the observations with short-term exposures at the SRBT facility. While the deuterium results did not uncover a hidden pathway or enrichment mechanism, the SRBT exposures showed elevated tissue free water tritium (TFWT) in stems and leaves in the presence of atmospheric HT, and lacking HTO in both soils and surrounding air. This study proposes that hydrogenase activity in microbial communities hosted within the laminar boundary layer on the leaf surface, are responsible for HT oxidation to HTO that contributes directly to leaf waters used in photosynthesis.

I detta examensarbete utförs en jämförande analys av metoder och verktyg för hantering och analys av data inom datalager. Med den snabbt ökande mängden data och utvecklingen av molnteknologier står företag inför utmaningen att navigera bland olika metoder för att välja den mest lämpliga för sin specifika datahantering och analysbehov. Rapporten belyser metoden One Big Table (OBT) samt verktyget Data Build Tool (dbt) och undersöker deras för- och nackdelar i datalagermiljöer. För att få en djupare förståelse för deras funktion och effektivitet jämförs de i olika användarfall genom prestandatester på latens och samtidighet med hjälp av verktyget Hyperfine. OBT implementeras med hjälp av Google BigQuery såväl som Google Cloud SQL för PostgreSQL där latens och samtidighet för analytiska målsättningar utvärderas genom användning av Python-skript med SQL-frågor respektive med dbt-modeller. Skripten och dbt-modellerna körs mot BigQuery samt PostgreSQL och de båda implementerar OBT. Resultatet visar att SQL-skripten uppvisade lägre latens än dbt-modeller när de exekverades mot både BigQuery och PostgreSQL. Ett annat fynd är att latensen för SQL-skripten var lägre i PostgreSQL jämfört med BigQuery, medan dbt-modellerna istället uppvisade högre latens i PostgreSQL jämfört med BigQuery. I båda datalagermiljöer visas det även att SQL-skripten presterar bättre än dbt-modeller vid samtidiga körningar. / This bachelor’s thesis presents a comparative analysis of methods and tools for data management and analysis within data warehouses. With the rapidly increasing volume of data and the development of cloud technologies, companies face the challenge of navigating various methods to choose the most suitable one for their specific data management and analysis needs. The report highlights the One Big Table (OBT) method and the Data Build Tool (dbt), examining their advantages and disadvantages in data warehouse environments. To gain a deeper understanding of their functionality and efficiency, they are compared in different use cases through performance tests on latency and concurrency using the Hyperfine tool. OBT is implemented using Google BigQuery as well as Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, where latency and concurrency for analytical purposes are evaluated using Python scripts with SQL queries and dbt models. The scripts and dbt models are run against BigQuery and PostgreSQL, both implementing OBT. The results show that the SQL scripts exhibited lower latency than the dbt models when executed against both BigQuery and PostgreSQL. Another finding is that the latency for SQL scripts was lower when run against PostgreSQL compared to BigQuery, while dbt models showed higher latency when run against PostgreSQL compared to BigQuery. The SQL scripts also performed better than the dbt models in concurrent executions in both BigQuery and PostgreSQL.

Utvecklingen av tekniken sker i snabb takt vilket gör att människors vetskap om OBA inte alltid hänger med, inte heller lagar och regler som ska skydda deras integritet. Därför är det intressant att undersöka hur effektiv marknadsföringstypen OBA är beroende av konsumenternas medvetenhet om fenomenet. Syftet är att analysera hur hög, respektive låg medvetenhet hos konsumenter om online behavioral advertising påverkar deras köpintentioner, med fokus på Generation Ys uppfattningar. Denna studie visar på samband mellan lägre medvetenhet om OBA och högre köpintentioner. Lägre medvetenhet om denna typ av marknadsföring förknippas även med en högre oro kring integriteten. / The development of technology takes place at a rapid pace, which means that people's knowledge of OBA does not always keep up, nor laws and regulations that supposed to protect their privacy. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate how effective online behavioral advertising is as a marketing strategy, based on consumers’ awareness of the phenomenon. The purpose is to analyze how a high and a low level of consumers’ awareness about OBA affects their purchase intentions, focusing on Generation Y’s perceptions.This paper reveals a connection between lower awareness of OBA and higher purchase intentions. Even a higher concern about integrity in the context is associated with lower awareness about this type of marketing.

As the automotive industry advances through technology integration, components are designed to operate at increasingly higher frequencies. Consequently, there will be an increasing demand for automotive electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) testing. Testing and certification institutes, such as RISE Research Institutes of Sweden AB, thus face an urgent need to develop innovative solutions that can effectively address this growing demand. This master thesis work concerns one EMC test method in particular - the On-board Transmitter (OBT). This is a test which mainly serves to test the immunity of vehicles to electromagnetic disturbances originating from hand-held devices. The conventional test is performed in an anechoic chamber and the methodology requires a substantial amount of time. The intent with this work is thus to evaluate the potential of a novel OBT method where the concept of a reverberating chamber is applied inside the vehicle compartment. Initially, the conventional method was examined from two mock-ups of idealized cases, and it was observed that the electromagnetic field in the near-field region of the transmitter is highly erratic. It was also concluded that the test setup is particularly sensitive to the polarization of the transmitter. With these findings in mind, the accuracy of the conventional method was deemed questionable. Evaluation of the proposed Reverberating On-board Transmitter (ROBT) method proved that the electromagnetic environment inside the vehicle did not resemble a perfect reverberation chamber. Which was expected as the absorbing material such as seating and upholstery likely prevents a field distribution similar to that in a reverberation chamber. Still, the intent of the project was to find a test method superior to the conventional method and it can be stated that the ROBT method is an adequate option due to its capacity to expose the electronics to isotropic radiation. This was found from two measures which this thesis introduces: expected isotropicity eiso, a relative measure of the electric field components and DDoF, a quantification of the spatial distribution inside a reverberation chamber. / EMC VERifiering av Autonoma fordon i modväxlad kammare (EMCVERA)