Not all designs have the user's best in mind. Dark patterns are web design whose goal is to exploit, deceive and negatively affect the consumer. Based on this, the purpose of this study is to give consumers an increased understanding of how they can be affected by dark patterns in their everyday lives. The question "How effective are dark patterns in e-commerce in order to negatively affect consumers' decisions?" was investigated through the use of a web-based survey. Through this survey, the respondents answered questions about their habits and experiences regarding situations where dark patterns are common on e-commerce sites. The study has focused on dark patterns called hidden costs, hidden information, countdown timers, limited-time messages and low stock messages. The survey has revealed that hidden costs was the dark pattern that most effectively fulfills its purpose of negatively affecting the consumer. Limited-time messages were also shown to have a clear impact on consumers' decision-making when purchasing online. Countdown timers as well as low stock messages were shown to have low efficiency in affecting consumers, meanwhile, data regarding hidden information could not show reliable results and needs further research. / Inte all design har användarens bästa i åtanke. Dark patterns är webbdesign vars mål är att utnyttja, lura och påverka konsumenten negativt. Med detta som grund är syftet med denna studie att ge konsumenter en ökad förståelse för hur de kan påverkas av dark patterns i sin vardag. Frågeställningen "Hur effektiva är dark patterns inom näthandel i sitt syfte att påverka konsumenters besluttaganden negativt?" undersöktes genom användningen av en webbaserad enkät. Respondenterna har genom denna enkät besvarat frågor om sina vanor och upplevelser angående situationer där dark patterns är vanligt förekommande inom näthandelsidor. Studien har fokuserat på dark patterns vid namn hidden costs, hidden information, countdown timers, limited-time messages och low stock messages. Genom undersökningen har det framkommit att hidden costs var det dark pattern som mest effektivt uppfyller sitt syfte att påverka konsumenten negativt. Limited-time messages visades också ha tydlig påverkan på konsumenters beslutstagande vid onlineköp. Countdown timers samt low stock messages visades ha låg effektivitet i att påverka konsumenter, medan data angående hidden information kunde inte visa pålitliga resultat och behöver vidare forskning.

Le modèle de concordance de la cosmologie, appelé ΛCDM, est un succès de la physique moderne, car il est capable de reproduire les principales observations cosmologiques avec une grande précision et très peu de paramètres libres. Cependant, il prédit l'existence de matière noire froide et d'énergie sombre sous la forme d'une constante cosmologique, qui n'ont pas encore été détectées directement. Par conséquent, il est important de considérer des modèles allant au-delà de ΛCDM et de les confronter aux observations, afin d'améliorer nos connaissances sur le secteur sombre de l'Univers. Le futur satellite Euclid, de l'Agence Spatiale Européenne, explorera un énorme volume de la structure à grande échelle de l'Univers en utilisant principalement le regroupement des galaxies et la distorsion de leurs images due aux lentilles gravitationnelles. Dans ce travail, nous caractérisons de façon quantitative les performances d'Euclid vis-à-vis des contraintes cosmologiques, à la fois pour le modèle de concordance, mais également pour des extensions phénoménologiques modifiant les deux composantes sombres de l'Univers. En particulier, nous accordons une attention particulière aux corrélations croisées entre les différentes sondes d'Euclid lors de leur combinaison et estimons de façon précise leur impact sur les résultats finaux. D'une part, nous montrons qu'Euclid fournira d'excellentes contraintes sur les modèles cosmologiques qui définitivement illuminera le secteur sombre. D'autre part, nous montrons que les corrélations croisées entre les sondes d'Euclid ne peuvent pas être négligées dans les analyses futures et, plus important encore, que l'ajout de ces corrélations améliore grandement les contraintes sur les paramètres cosmologiques. / The concordance model of cosmology, called ΛCDM, is a success, since it is able to reproduce the main cosmological observations with great accuracy and only few parameters. However, it predicts the existence of cold dark matter and dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant, which have not been directly detected yet. Therefore, it is important to consider models going beyond ΛCDM, and confront them against observations, in order to improve our knowledge on the dark sector of the Universe. The future Euclid satellite from the European Space Agency will probe a huge volume of the large-scale structure of the Universe using mainly the clustering of galaxies and the distortion of their images due to gravitational lensing. In this work, we quantitatively estimate the constraining power of the future Euclid data for the concordance model, as well as for some phenomenological extensions of it, modifying both dark components of the Universe. In particular, we pay special attention to the cross-correlations between the different Euclid probes when combining them, and assess their impact on the final results. On one hand, we show that Euclid will provide exquisite constraints on cosmological models that will definitely shed light on the dark sector. On the other hand, we show that cross-correlations between Euclid probes cannot be neglected in future analyses, and, more importantly, that the addition of these correlations largely improves the constraints on the cosmological parameters.

Going beyond previous statements, a way is presented which allows statements about smallest possible black holes. It turns out that they exist (theoretically) and that they represent a new stable elementary particle (called G-boson in this work), which shows connections to dark matter and makes dark energy necessary to explain astronomical observations, independent of its existence required in macroquantum theory. This results in logical sequences in the Big Bang, which make it appear in a somewhat different context than previously known.:Table of Contents 1. Abstract 2. Introduction 3. Preliminary consideration on the basis of Planck units 4. The boundary force 5. Boundary force and black holes, the G-boson 6. Properties of the G-boson 7. Origin of the G-bosons, the dark matter and energy 8. What does this mean for the big bang? 9. Astronomical findings 10. Summary

Individer står dagligen inför olika valsituationer i både fysiska och digitala miljöer. Begreppet nudging innebär att med små medel vägleda och påverka individer att göra val som anses bättre. Dark patterns används inom nudging med syfte att istället manipulera individer att göra saker de inte avser att göra genom att använda nudging i ett omoraliskt syfte. Litteraturen lyfter fram ett antal etiska perspektiv som behöver tas i beaktning vid utformning av nudgar. Vissa perspektiv verkar det råda konsensus kring, dock finns det olika teorier som skiljer sig från varandra, vilket vi tolkar som att ämnet inte är färdigdiskuterat. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka etiska perspektiv inom nudging och hur dessa påverkar användarupplevelsen av digitala gränssnitt. Detta avser vi att göra genom en kvalitativ studie som undersöker etik inom nudging påverkar användarens upplevelse av autonomi och transparens. För att ta sig an detta utformades en undersökningsmodell som med hjälp av dark patterns undersöker hur dessa, genom autonomi och transparens påverkar användarupplevelsen. De kvalitativa metoder som användes i studien var användartest på ett gränssnitt som vi utformat, baserat på dark patterns. Detta test efterföljdes av intervju- och utvärderingsfrågor. Resultatet från datainsamlingen analyserades och där kunde vi identifiera vissa specifika känsloyttringar som kunde kopplas samman med de olika nudgar deltagarna blivit utsatta för, vilket sedan kunde spåras tillbaka till specifika dark patterns och i sin tur till autonomi eller transparens. Studien konstaterar att det framtagna gränssnittet begränsade både transparens och autonomi vilket kunde konstateras genom ett antal negativa känsloyttringar som deltagarna i studien formulerade. Resultatet av studien är att användning av denna typ av negativt påverkande nudgar i hög grad påverkar användarupplevelsen för de som blir utsatta för dessa. / Individuals face different choice situations on a daily basis in both physical and digital environments. The concept of nudging means using small means to guide and influence individuals to make choices that are considered better. Dark patterns are something used in nudging for the purpose of manipulating individuals to do things they did not intend to do by using nudging for an immoral purpose. Previous research highlights a number of ethical perspectives that need to be taken into account when designing nudges. There seems to be a consensus around some perspectives, however, there are different theories that differ from each other. We interpret that these differences means that this subject has not been fully discussed. The purpose of this study is to investigate ethical perspectives in nudging and how these affect the user experience. We intend to conduct a qualitative study that examines the ethics perspectives of nudging and how it affects the user's experience of autonomy and transparency. To address this, a survey model was created, combining dark patterns, through autonomy and transparency, and how this affects the user experience. We designed an interface based on dark patterns and used this to conduct user tests as a qualitative method. This test was followed by interview and evaluation questions. The results from the data collection were analyzed and we were able to identify certain specific emotional expressions that could be linked to the different nudges the participants had been exposed to, which could then be traced back to specific dark patterns and autonomy or transparency. The study states that the designed interface limited both transparency and autonomy, which could be ascertained through a number of negative emotional expressions formulated by the participants in the study. The result of the study is that the use of this type of negatively affecting nudge greatly affects the user experience for those who are exposed to these.

This thesis examines relativistic fluids. We have used the variational approach to develop tools for studying the dynamics of relativistic fluids to apply this to cosmological modelling. Studies like these go beyond the standard model in cosmology. Researchers believe that such extensions to the standard cosmological model are pivotal to resolving some of the long-standing cosmological problems. An example of such problems is the origin, growth (from quantum electromagnetic fluctuations to large-scale magnetic fields during inflation) and evolution of cosmological magnetic fields that exhibit as large-scale (cosmological) magnetic fields in late time. One other example is the coincidence problem. The standard approach in such studies is to use modelling in the form of the single-fluid formalism. As an alternative one can consider the single-fluid and multi-fluid formalisms that incorporate aspects of electrodynamics and thermodynamics, respectively in the context of the variational approach. This might help us make progress in trying to either resolve some of these problems or at least open up new ways of addressing them. In this regard, we have extended the well-known M¨ueller-Israel-Stewart (hereafter MIS) formalism to allow us to examine the effect on fluid flow in which the components of the multi-species fluids interact thermodynamically. We use the extension to the MIS theory in the context of interacting species to study the growth of dark matter and dark energy, and find that either interaction or entrainment involving dark energy and dark matter suggests a mutual relative modulation of the growth behaviour of the two densities. This may aid in resolving the coincidence problem. Our examination of inflation-generated, large-scale magnetic fields reveals a super-adiabatically evolving mode from the beginning of the radiation-dominated epoch to either much later during the epoch or probably extending far into the era of matter domination which may account for late time, large-scale magnetic fields.

Les travaux présentés dans cette thèse contraignent les paramètres d'un modèle de cosmologie, le modèle du galileon, et d'un modèle de physique des particules, le modèle du branon, qui sont des extensions des modèles standards. Ces modèles, qui supposent l'existence d'un champ scalaire additionnel et peuvent trouver leurs origines dans les théories à dimensions supplémentaires, offrent des explications élégantes aux questions de la nature de l'énergie noire et de la matière noire respectivement. La première partie de cette thèse présente les prédictions du modèle du galileon et les résultats obtenus par leur comparaison aux observations cosmologiques et astrophysiques récentes. Cette étude montre que le modèle du galileon a de sérieuses difficultés à reproduire ces observations, qui regroupent le fond diffus cosmologique, les mesures liées aux distances cosmologiques, et l'observation d'un évènement par ondes gravitationnelles et contrepartie électromagnétique. La seconde partie décrit la recherche de branons dans les collisions proton-proton enregistrées en 2016 par le Solénoïde Compact à Muons au Grand Collisionneur de Hadrons, à une énergie dans le centre de masse de 13 TeV. Des évènements qui présentent un jet de haute énergie, produit par un quark ou gluon ou bien par désintégration hadronique d'un boson vecteur, et de l'énergie transverse manquante dans l'état final sont sélectionnés et comparés aux estimations pour les évènements de bruits de fond. Aucun excès d'évènements n'est observé, ce qui permet de poser des contraintes sur les valeurs possibles des paramètres du modèle du branon. / This PhD thesis presents constraints on the parameters of a cosmological model, the galileon model, and a particle physics model, the branon model. Both are extensions of the standard models that include an additional scalar field and that can be built from extra dimensions theories. The galileon model propose an alternative to the cosmological constant as the nature of dark energy, and the branon model give a dark matter particle candidate. The first part of this thesis shows the predictions of the galileon model and the results obtained from their comparison with recent cosmological and astrophysical observations. The set of observations used contains the cosmic microwave background, cosmological distances measurements and the detection of gravitational waves along with their electromagnetic counterpart from the merger of a binary star system. The study shows that the galileon model has serious difficulties to reproduce these observations. The second part describe the search for branons in proton-proton collisions data at 13 TeV collected in 2016 with the Compact Muon Solenoid at the Large Hadron Collider. Events with high energy jets, produced by a quark, a gluon or a vector boson decaying hadronically, and missing transverse energy in the final state are selected and compared to background estimations. No excess of event has been found allowing for experimental constraints to be put in the parameter space of the branon model.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Beginning as a collection of short stories published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1978 and novelized in 1982, The Gunslinger is the first novel in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. This thesis explores the textual journey of the novel that serves as the foundation for a series that has left its mark throughout King’s broader fictional canon. After finishing the final three novels of the series, King revised The Gunslinger to bring it closer to the narrative essence of the series’ subsequent novels. Collation of all three versions of the text—the serialized Fantasy & Science Fiction stories, the 1982 novelization and the 2003 revised and expanded version—reveals a sometimes overlapping pattern of revisions to the novel. These revisions concentrate on character, the novel’s cosmological framework, and languages and dialects King uses later in the series. The impact of these revisions extends beyond the plot elements of the series itself, as a number of King’s most popular novels—The Stand, ’Salem’s Lot, and It among them—have plot arcs that bend toward the Dark Tower mythos. King returned to the novel’s three main characters—Roland, Jake, and the man in black—to refine their actions and clarify their motivations. This also gave him the opportunity to provide the reader with more of their interwoven histories, a strategy that established the background for the role each character plays later in the series. In addition to introducing details about the main characters of the series, King enhances and redefines the world of The Gunslinger; the revisions reveal connections both within and outside of the Dark Tower multiverse. King also uses revision to introduce a variety of languages and dialects Roland encounters on his journey through an endless path of worlds. Finally, the textual evolution of The Gunslinger documents King’s development of a theme central to his entire canon: the multifaceted theme of salvation and sacrifice. In controlling the evolution of the Dark Tower series, particularly with his return to revise The Gunslinger, Stephen King shows that he is capable of maintaining a complex saga with a great degree of literary vision and craftsmanship.

No description available.

When studying astrophysical structures with sizes ranging from dwarf galaxies to galaxy clusters, it becomes clear that there are vast amounts of unobservable gravitating mass. A compelling hypothesis is that this missing mass, which we call dark matter, consists of elementary particles that can be described in the same manner as those of the standard model of particle physics. This thesis is dedicated to the study of particle dark matter in astrophysical systems. The solar composition problem refers to the current mismatch between theoretical predictions and observations of the solar convection zone depth and sound speed profile. It has been shown that heat transfer by dark matter in the Sun may cool the solar core and alleviate the problem. We discuss solar capture of a self-interacting Dirac fermion dark matter candidate and show that, even though particles and antiparticles annihilate, the abundance of such a particle may be large enough to influence solar physics. Currently, direct and indirect methods are employed in searches for dark matter. In this context, we study inelastic dark matter, where a small mass splitting separates two dark matter particles and scattering takes one into the other. This affects the scattering kinematics, which in turn affects direct detection and solar capture rates. We also discuss the information contained in a direct detection signal and how it can be used to infer a minimal solar capture rate of dark matter. When comparing simulated dark matter halos with collisionless dark matter with dark matter halos inferred from observations, problems appear in the smallest structures. A proposed solution is self-interacting dark matter with long range forces. As the simplest models are under severe constraints, we study self-interactions in a model of inelastic dark matter. / <p>QC 20170309</p>

Sedan införandet av dataskyddsförordningen GDPR den 25 maj 2018 har internetanvändare i alla EU/ESS länder blivit mötta av en förfrågan om godkännande av cookies vid varje besök av en ny hemsida. Frågan ska enligt lag tydligt informera användare om att cookies används, i vilket syfte och hur länge de sparas. Beväpnad med denna information ska användaren sedan ha möjlighet att ta ett välinformerat beslut om hen godkänner webbplatsens användning av cookies och därmed insamlingen av hens personuppgifter. Denna lagstiftning gäller för samtliga webbplatser oavsett offentlig eller privat avsändare och avser att skapa ett skydd för varje individs digitala integritet. Cookies har använts i funktionssyfte sedan internets begynnelse men har under de senare åren använts med stor framgång primärt i marknadsföringssyfte i form av riktad marknadsföring av kommersiella webbplatser. Det finns stor vinning för många företag att användare godkänner dessa cookie-förfrågningar vilket gör att stor vikt läggs vid hur dessa förfrågningar designas. Dark Patterns är ett begrepp på former av konverteringsinriktad design som används för att få användare att utföra handlingar som ej gynnar dem i längden, men som skapar mervärde för aktören bakom. Dessa designval används flitigt över hela internet och har även identifierats i cookie-förfrågningar. Följande studie undersöker hur dessa cookie-förfrågningar är utformade, vilka dark patterns som finns att identifiera i deras gränssnitt samt användares inställning till 15 statliga respektive 15 kommersiella webbplatser. Data för studien har samlats in genom en kvantitativ enkätundersökning med 102 respondenter samt en kvalitativ innehållsanalys av samtliga webbplatser. Empiri från tidigare forskning har använts för att jämföra och styrka studiens slutsats. Användningen av dark patterns har identifierats på både statliga och kommersiella webbplatser men i en högre grad i den sistnämnda. Dessa designval har visats påverka användarens interaktion med förfrågan på ett sätt som är positivt för aktören. Studien har däremot även visat att en lika stor faktor för användarens medvetna beslut är det anseende aktören för webbplatsen har. Avslutningsvis visar studien att dagens internetanvändare generellt är trötta på konstanta förfrågningar med samma eller liknande information, och vad som var avsett att skapa en trygghetskänsla hos användaren har i stället bara blivit ett evigt störningsmoment. / Since the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on May 25th, 2018, users in EU/EEC countries have encountered cookie approval requests upon accessing new websites. By legal demand, these cookie prompts must provide information on the use of cookies, their purpose, and the duration of data retention. With this knowledge, users are expected to make informed decisions regarding their consent to the website's cookies and data collection utilization. This legislation applies universally to all websites, regardless of their public or private nature, to protect individuals’ digital privacy. While cookies have served functional purposes since the early days of the Internet, their recent substantial adoption for targeted marketing by commercial websites has provided significant advantages for many companies. Consequently, precise attention is placed on the design of these cookie requests themselves. Dark Patterns represent a form of conversion-oriented design tactics employed to impact users to perform certain actions that may not be beneficial in the long term but generate value for the entity implementing them. These design choices are prevalent across the internet and have also been identified within the context of cookie prompts. This study observes the design elements of such cookie prompts, identifies the presence of dark patterns within their interfaces, and examines user attitudes toward these prompts. The research analyzes 15 government websites and 15 commercial websites through a qualitative content analysis that uncovers hidden information. As a complement, an additional quantitative survey was formed by collecting data from 102 respondents. The study leverages empirical evidence from previous research to strengthen its findings and comparisons. Findings show that the use of dark patterns on both government and commercial websites is evident, with a more noticeable occurrence on commercial ones. These design choices have been observed to influence user interactions with the requests to favor the sender implementing the dark patterns. However, the research also demonstrates that the senders' reputation equally influences users' conscious decision-making process. In conclusion, the study indicates that contemporary internet users generally experience weariness due to persistent requests featuring repetitive or similar information. What was initially intended to instill a sense of user security has instead become an enduring source of disruption.