This thesis explores how theories of immersion may inform the creation of a musical composition. The idea behind the thesis was to find what makes a piece of music engaging for the listener, and if it was possible to device a method for achieving this. A point of departure was to gain an increased understanding of what role flow has in music listening. I wanted to explore whether the theory of flow could be used in a composition process to understand and predict how the music is perceived by a listener. By doing this I wanted to create music experiences that were immersive and emotional. The method used in this thesis was to combine the theories behind flow and research about strong listening experiences to create methods, approaches, and tools for composition. I chose to call these my composition principle. The result of this thesis was the composition principle and a piece for chamber orchestra called From Ashes. In the final discussion I concluded that in this process, the composition principle was unsuccessful in creating immersive listening experiences, but partly successful in creating emotional listening experiences. I also concluded that, in this composition process, the composition principle was not helpful in the composition process but useful in learning about composition and music in general.

Organic solar cells represent a clean and renewable source of energy. They are cheaper and handier than conventional silicon solar cells, but have lower efficiency and shorter lifetime. This project was conducted to assist a two years' outdoor study on the lifetime of organic solarcells, in order to better understand the lifetime-affecting factors. An outdoor stand for the solar cells was designed, a partly working Python program for automatic measurement control was made and a stable link between all hardware parts in the setup was established. / Organiska solceller representerar en ren och förnybar energikälla. De är billigare och behändigare än konventionella kiselsolceller, men har lägre verkningsgrad och kortare livslängd. Detta projekt utfördes för att assistera en tvåårig utomhusstudie om organiska solcellers livslängd i syfte att bättre förstå de faktorer som påverkar livslängden. Ett utomhusställ designades för solcellerna, ett delvis fungerande Pythonprogram gjordes för automatisk kontroll av mätningen och en stabil länk upprättades mellan samtliga hårdvarudelar i uppställningen.

Adolescence is an exceptional period of life, not least in terms of social and brain development. Friends become increasingly important, susceptibility to peer rejection increases, and brain regions involved in social cognition are predicted to go through major changes. Adolescents’ social lives today may, to different extents, take place on social-media platforms online. This systematic review investigates how social-media use (SMU) affects adolescents’ brains. Out of 626 studies from the initial search, seven met the inclusion criteria. Out of these, five studies used functional magnetic resonance imaging, one study used diffusion tensor imaging, and one study used diffusion-weighted imaging. Functional findings suggest the reward circuit of the brain, as well as brain regions implicated in social cognition, to be involved in SMU. Activity in the nucleus accumbens was elicited by both giving and getting likes on posted pictures, whereas more SMU related to increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex during physical self-judgement. Structural findings indicate frequent SMU to be associated with more reward sensitivity in terms of increased white matter in reward-processing pathways. These studies provide an initial understanding of the neural mechanisms of adolescents’ SMU. Future research is needed to draw inferences about how SMU affects the brains of adolescents.

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Social media has become ubiquitous in modern society. Both as a way to connect with others and as a popular form of entertainment and relaxation. This dependency on social media can lead both to beneficial and adverse consequences. A common concern about social media use relates to how active or passive a user is, with some indicating that passive behaviours, such as absently scrolling through the feed are particularly harmful. Research that investigates social media’s adverse effect on the individual depending on the user’s engagement level currently suffers from problems with categorisation, methodology and philosophy. This thesis sought to fill this research gap. Its research questions were accordingly: “What motivates adult users to use social media at various levels of engagement?” and “What factors of social media use impact adult users’ adverse emotional outcomes?”   To answer this research question, the study utilised a methodology of focus group discussion with pre-existing social groups consisting of adults aged 20-30, a demographic with potentially unique insight into their relationship with social media. This was followed by thematic analysis which in turn was placed within a framework of Use & gratification theory and the networked public. These theories were chosen since the research adheres to concepts of the active audience and disagrees with conceptualisations of the social media user as passive. Instead, low to high levels of engagement is used to describe individual behaviours. 4 main themes (Level of engagement, Problematic use, category of use and regulation) were discovered as well as 13 sub-themes.     The study discovered that individuals would use social media at several levels of engagement simultaneously but that behaviours could be assembled into four archetypes: Consumption (low level of engagement which included behaviours such as mindless scrolling), Lurking (low level of engagement which included both private and public browsing), socialisation (medium to high level of engagement which included communication), and production (high level of engagement which included publishing content). Different levels of engagement were associated with different adverse emotional outcomes which commonly occurred when users failed to effectively regulate their use or encountered harmful content. It was discovered that users encountered these issues largely due to the platform’s incentivisation through subtle and not so subtle means such as media design and notifications.