During the Covid-19 pandemic, students has been forced to spend more time studying alone at home, which in some cases has led to increased stress and anxiety. This thesis explores qualities in Slow, Calm and Persuasive technology, together with temporal concepts in theory and qualities derived from ideation, with the aim to explore which qualities should be considered while designing for supporting self-reflection on time spent while studying. The process in this thesis is explorative, moving from ideation, to digital and physical prototypes, with the authors reflections and experiences driving the process forward and experience sessions with participants that were used to ground the experience through their reflections and new perspectives. Through evaluating the reflections and experiences with tools and design principles, the work ends up with the four qualities flow, tension, unfolding and balance as suggestions to work with in future research on designing for supporting self-reflection on time spent while studying.

Although reducing eating rate is frequently advocated for control of food intake, empirical evidence is limited and inconsistent. The present study sought to address the methodological concerns inherent in previous studies that could account for these inconsistent results. In addition, it extended the results of a preliminary study coauthored by this writer (Azrin, Kellen, Brooks, Ehle, & Vinas, 2009) by obtaining two measures of satiation; the subjective sensation of satiation and the objective measure of food eaten. In the present study, 14 male participants consumed two meals, one meal at an instructed fast rate and one meal at an instructed slow rate. Slow eating was accompanied by enhancing the conditioned stimuli associated with eating (time spent chewing and savoring of taste). The meals were eaten on two consecutive days at the same time, in a counterbalanced order, in the participant's natural environment, and were characteristic of each participant's reported typical diet. Participants ate until reaching subjective satiation, i.e., the point at which they felt "comfortably full with no desire to continue eating". Consuming food at a slow rate was found to help participants achieve a greater degree of subjective satiation with comparable amounts of food intake. Participants consumed on average 37% more food when eating fast. These results suggest that slow eating enhances subjective satiation and reduces food consumption; and may constitute an effective means of weight management. A theoretical explanation is suggested as to why previous studies examining the effect of eating rate on satiation have produced inconsistent results.

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Syftet med studien är att beskriva hur specialpedagoger och klasslärare uppfattar kunskapskraven när det kommer till svagt teoretiskt begåvade elever som inte har rätt till anpassad grundskola (IK inom området 70-85). Syftet är också att beskriva hur specialpedagoger och klasslärare arbetar med dessa elever för att de ska ges möjlighet att uppnå kunskapskraven på lågstadiet. Avsikten är att försöka tydliggöra vilka upplevda konsekvenser kunskapskraven har i verkligheten för elever med svag teoretisk begåvning, med fokus på lågstadiet, och utgå från följande frågeställningar:● Hur uppfattar specialpedagoger och klasslärare kunskapskraven i anslutning till elever med svag teoretisk begåvning?● Vilka för- och nackdelar med kunskapskraven i skolan uttrycks av specialpedagoger och klasslärare i anslutning till elever med svag teoretisk begåvning?● Hur beskrivs specialpedagogers och klasslärares arbete för att svagt teoretiskt begåvade elever ska få möjligheten att uppnå kunskapskraven?Förhoppningen är att denna studie ska bidra till en bättre förståelse för skolsituationen för elever med svag teoretisk begåvning och öka kunskap om kunskapskravens tillämpning i verkligheten. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för studien är läroplansteori med fokus på Lindes tre arenor om läroplanens påverkan på undervisningen, Läroplansteori kommer även att kompletteras med de specialpedagogiska perspektiven, dilemmaperspektivet och bristperspektivet. Studien är kvalitativ, med en induktiv ansats och har ett tydligt fokus mot tolkning av andra människors upplevelser. Metoden är semistrukturerade intervjuer som har analyserats utifrån en tematisk innehållsanalys med inspiration från Ritchies ”framework”. Resultatet i studien visar att specialpedagoger och klasslärare främst upplever kunskapskraven som något som begränsar elever med svag teoretisk begåvning, men att kraven samtidigt ses som en guide för lärarna. Det framgår också att det kräver mycket kunskap och engagemang från lärarna och specialpedagogerna för att tillämpa kunskapskraven i undervisningen vilket också kräver samarbete mellan specialpedagogen och klassläraren genom till exempel handledarsamtal och kontinuerliga uppföljningar av eleven.

Patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) experience sleep disturbances, including disruption in slow-wave sleep (SWS). Slow oscillations (≤1 Hz), a brain rhythm prevalent during SWS, play a role in memory consolidation. Interestingly, patients with AD exhibit slow oscillations of low amplitude, which might contribute to their memory impairments. The mechanisms underlying slow-wave disruptions in AD remain unknown. Slow oscillations originate in the neocortex. Cortical neurons from all layers oscillate between UP and DOWN states during slow oscillations. Astrocytes are known to support neuronal circuit functions, and disruptions in astrocyte activity might contribute to slow-wave aberrations. Here, we investigated astrocytic contributions to slow-wave disruptions in an animal model of beta-amyloidosis (APP mice). First, we monitored astrocytic calcium transients to determine whether astrocytic calcium dynamics were disrupted in APP mice. Fourier transform analysis revealed that the power, but not the frequency of astrocytic calcium transients, was disrupted in young APP mice. This suggested calcium dynamic of astrocytic network was altered and might contribute to the disruption of slow waves in APP mice. Second, we used optogenetics to synchronize cortical astrocyte activity at 0.6 Hz to drive slow oscillations in APP mice. Our results showed that optogenetic activation of ChR2-expressing astrocytes at the endogenous frequency of slow waves restored slow-wave power. Furthermore, chronic optogenetic stimulation of astrocytes at 0.6Hz for 14 or 28 days reduced amyloid plaque deposition, prevented calcium overload in neurites, and improved memory performance in APP mice. These results revealed a malfunction of the astrocytic network driving slow-wave disruptions, and suggested a novel target to restore slow-wave power in APP mice, with translational potential to treat AD.

The world is moving at an increasingly rapid pace due to widening globalization. As a result of the technological development that has accelerated over the past decades, today, people are not only offered the opportunity to travel faster over geographical distances but also experience and achieve more per unit of time. This may cause negative consequences for humans and the environment, for example stress-related illnesses and an increased speed of climate change. The global slow movement has emerged as a response to this. Primarily, the movement advocates for valuing time higher than money, in order to slow down the speed of life. This thesis aims to investigate how members of the slow movement perceive the process of adopting a slow lifestyle within a fast-paced society. The aim is further to examine how identity can be constructed through slow principles. The study is based on interviews with seven individuals in Sweden, who all have made certain lifestyle changes in order to slow down. The result indicates that there are different motives behind the informants’ decision to adopt a slower lifestyle. These include environmental related reasons, health related reasons, and a common desire for increased self-determination in terms of being able to control one's own time. Furthermore, the result shows that the informants have slightly different experiences of the adopting process in terms of handling practical aspects as well as dealing with potential challenges such as financial uncertainty and lack of comprehension from the surroundings. In addition, the study illustrates that the informants perceive a connection between their lifestyles and a sense of identity. This is expressed by the informants’ ambition to change the surroundings, the way in which they manifest slow principles to others, and how they have experienced inner changes in relation to the slow living lifestyle.

Materials with resonant features can have a rapidly changing refractive index spectrally or temporally that gives rise to a changing group index. Depending on the wavelength of the input light, this light can see regimes of normal or anomalous dispersion. Within these regions, the group index can become large, depending on the optical effect used, and give rise to slow or fast light effects. This thesis covers two platforms that exhibit the use of slow and fast light. Slow and fast light are used to manipulate and enhance other optical effects in question. As the focus of this thesis, we examine a rotating ruby rod and spaceplates based on multilayer stacks, both considered as slow- and fast-light media. Light propagation through each platform is modelled and simulated to compare to the experiment. The simulation results for both platforms match well with the measured experimental effects and show the feasibility and utility of slow or fast light to manipulate or enhance optical effects. We simulate light propagation in a rotating ruby rod as a rotating, anisotropic medium with thermal nonlinearity using generalized nonlinear Schrodinger equations, modelling the interplay of many optical effects, including nonlinear refraction, birefringence, and a nonlinear group index. The results are fit to experimentally measured results, revealing two key relationships: The photon drag effect can have a nonlinear component that is dependent on the motion of the medium, and the temporal dynamics of the moving birefringent nonlinear medium create distorted figure-eight-like transverse trajectories at the output. We observe light propagation through a rotating ruby rod where the light is subject to drag. Light drag is often negligible due to the linear refractive index but can be enhanced by slow or fast light, i.e., a large group index. We find that the nonlinear refractive index can also play a crucial role in the propagation of light in moving media and results in a beam deflection. An experiment is performed on the crystal that exhibits a very large negative group index and a positive nonlinear refractive index. The negative group index drags the light opposite to the motion of the medium. However, the positive nonlinear refractive index deflects the beam along with the motion of the medium and hinders the observation of the negative drag effect. Therefore, it is deemed necessary to measure not only the transverse shift of the beam but also its output angle to discriminate the light-drag effect from beam deflection. This work could be applied to dynamic control of light trajectories, for example, beam steering and velocimetry. For the following two chapters, we will focus on a different slow-light platform. This platform focuses on optics that we developed and tested that compress the amount of free-space propagation using multilayered stacks of thin films known as spaceplates. We design and characterize four multilayer stack-based spaceplates based on two design philosophies: coupled resonators and gradient descent. Using the transfer-matrix method, we simulate and extract the angular and wavelength dependence of the transmission phase and transmittance to extract and predict compression factors for each device. A brief theoretical investigation is developed to predict resonance positions, spacing, and bandwidth. We measure the transverse walk-off to extract the compression factor of four multilayer stack-based spaceplates as a function of angle and wavelength. One of the devices was found to have a compression factor of $R=176\pm14$, more than ten times larger than previous experimental records. We increased the numerical aperture of one of the devices by ten times, and we still observed a compression factor of $R=30\pm3$, two times larger than the most recent experimental measurements. We also measured focal shifts up to 800 microns, more than 40 times the device size, typically 10-12 microns thick. The multilayer stack-based spaceplates we studied here show great promise for ultrathin flat optical systems that can easily be integrated into a modern-day imaging system.

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