Denna studie syftade till att få kunskap om hur elever i mellanstadiet kan utveckla sin förståelse för begreppet ”förbränning” samt hur dramaövningar kan skapa möjligheter för att synliggöra begreppet förbränning. För att undersöka detta iscensattes en lektionsserie med ett variationsteoretiskt perspektiv i en årskurs 6. Datainsamlingen bestod av elevtexter, intervjuer och videofilmning av lektionerna. Resultatet av studien visar att genom en dramaövning och medvetet iscensatta variationsmönster om begreppet förbränning är det möjligt för lärare att skapa lärandesituationer, där eleverna fördjupar sin förståelse för begreppet förbränning.

The aim of the study is to increase knowledge about how preschool teachers' different ways of communicating about scientific phenomena provide different conditions for children to create meaning from the content of the experiment. The study is part of a theoretical framework based on phenomenography and the sociocultural perspective. The data collection was carried out through qualitative observation, three observation sessions were carried out. On each occasion, a preschool teacher and three children aged 4-5 years participated. Altogether, nine children and three preschool teachers participated in the study. The data collection was carried out on a planned experiment focusing on the learningobject, gas and how it is formed. The results showed that the use of science and everyday concepts varied between preschool teachers, it also emerged that children's previous everyday experiences played an important role in their meaning-making of the science phenomenon. The results showed that the children experienced the material as well as the activity with their senses, linked to previous experiences. The results of the study also showed a change in the learningobject during the activity, the original learningobject branched out from all the experiments to new learningobjects based on the children's curiosity and interest. The conclusion from the study conducted is that the preschool teacher's choice of language use can affect children's ability to create the intended learning object. Another conclusion is that children's past experiences play a major and important role in their sense-making of new chemical phenomena.

Syftet med studien är att öka kunskapen om olika didaktiska utmaningar med att iscensätta kemiexperiment i förskolan med hjälp av drama. Detta undersöktes genom att se vad förskolläraren och barnen fokuserade på i sin kommunikation utifrån en observation av en aktivitet som behandlade ett kemiexperiment med drama som metod. Studiens resultat visade att förskolläraren fick lägga mycket tid på att svara på frågor barnen ställde. Frågorna var till stor del centrerade till ämnet drama. Utifrån analysen blev det tydligt att förskollärarens dubbla fokus hamnade på både lärandeobjektet och barnens perspektiv. Det fanns en viss skillnad i vad som var i fokus för förskolläraren och barnen sett till deras kommunikation. Förskollärarens pendlande mellan det dubbla fokuset blev ett faktum utifrån analysen kring hens kommunikation. Studien tar upp för- och nackdelar med att arbeta med kemiexperiment i förskolan med drama som metod, bland annat lyfts drama som en förutsättning att skapa nyfikenhet och intresse hos barn, medan arbete med experiment i förskolan lätt kan missa det primära när aktivitet runtom tar upp fokuset. Studiens bidrag utifrån resultatet är insikten att se till syftet med sin undervisning i relation till det lärande man vill förmedla. / The purpose of the study is to increase knowledge about various didactic challenges by staging chemistry experiments in preschool with the help of drama. This was investigated by seeing what the preschool teacher and the children focused on in their communication based on an observation of an activity that treated a chemistry experiment with drama as a method. The results of the study showed that the preschool teacher had to spend a lot of time answering the children’s questions. The questions were largely centered on the subject of drama. Based on the analysis, it became clear that the preschool teacher’s double focus ended up impacting both the learning objective and the children’s perspective. There was a certain difference in what was the focus for the teacher and the children in terms of their communication. The preschool teacher had to go back and forth between the dual focus to be clear with the children, based on the analysis of her communication. The study addresses the advantages and disadvantages of working with chemistry experiments in preschool with drama as the chosen method. By focusing on drama as a prerequisite for creating curiosity and interest for the children, experiments in preschool can easily miss the primary learning objective when a secondary activity takes up the focus. The study’s contribution is an insight to the purpose of your teaching but also take that into consideration when being a teacher and what you want to present.

Digitala läroböcker har ökat i skolorna efter Skolverkets nya riktlinjer 2018 om att skolorna skulle förstärka digitaliseringen. Läroboksförlagen erbjuder därför både traditionella analoga böcker, online- samt digitala böcker. I det här examensarbetet har jag studerat den digitala versionens potentiella påverkan på den kognitiva belastningen vid inlärning jämfört med den traditionella analoga boken. Studien har utförts enligt Swellers kognitiva belastningsteori (cognitive load theory) för att utvärdera hur den kognitiva belastningen påverkas utifrån några valda faktorer som enligt teorin belastar minnet och därmed inlärningen. Resultaten visar att det finns skillnader i den kognitiva belastningen mellan den analoga boken, boken online och den digitala boken enligt de variabler som studerades. Den analoga boken ger med stor sannolikhet den minsta kognitiva belastningen och därmed bättre inlärning för eleverna. Den digitala versionen ger i sin nuvarande form en ökad kognitiv belastning främst genom splittrat fokus.

A method to detect nitrated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (nitro-PAHs) in the air has been developed using gas chromatography with an atmospheric pressure chemical ionisation source, coupled to a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (GC-APCI-MS/MS). An attempt to create a GC method using negative chemical ionisation (NCI) and a high-resolution mass spectrometer, Orbitrap, (GC-NCI-MS) was made as well without success. Nitro-PAHs are a group of widespread contaminants considered as possible mutagens and carcinogens. They are formed from incomplete combustion of organic matter as well as secondary reactions between PAHs and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in the air. Three air samples (outdoor, in an air vent and indoor), both particulate and gaseous phase, collected in central Örebro during the spring were extracted and analysed for nitro-PAHs on GC-APCI-MS/MS and for PAHs on GC-MS in EI (electron ionisation) mode. Several studies have reported lower amounts of nitro-PAHs than PAHs in the air, which can be seen in this report as well. The levels of detected nitro-PAHs (1-nitronaphalene and 9-nitroanthracene) and PAHs (naphthalene, anthracene, fluoranthene and pyrene) in the different samples were 10.2-119 pg/m3 and 291-77700 pg/m3, respectively. Neither group of analytes were found in the particulate phase. The highest concentrations of both nitro-PAHs and PAHs were found indoors, suggesting that other sources than emissions from traffic are responsible.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are synthetic compounds that have beenaround since 1940. They can be used in a variety of products such as fire-fighting foam, food packaging and cosmetic products. Many PFAS have potential toxic effects on both humans and animals which poses a problem due to their wide distribution and persistency. Another problem concerns the remediation of PFAS, where the substances ends up circulating between the different disposal types (landfills, wastewater treatment and incineration). Active methods are therefore needed to remove or retain the contaminants. Some examples of these remediation technologies can be biomaterials, organoclays and more advanced methods such as activated carbon and ion exchange. The more advanced being suited for remediation of drinking water. In this study, the sorption efficiency of two pine bark fractions has been studied and also compared to the efficiency of activated carbon. The evaluation was done for both target analysis (PFAS-11) and non-specific analysis of extractable organofluorine (EOF) compounds in contaminated water from a hazardous waste management facility. The two pine bark fractions indicated similar sorption efficiencies, for both the PFAS-11 and the EOF compounds. The sorption efficiency ranged from 10% up to 75% for perfluorinated sulfonic acids (PFSA) and from below zero up to 40% for perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCA). A general pattern can be seen, the sorption efficiency increases with increasing length of the PFAS chain. The activated carbon had a higher sorption efficiency, where the majority of PFAS had an average sorption of 100%. In comparison, the PFAS-11 and total EOF analysis displayed high concentrations of unidentified EOF compounds. These compounds indicated a negative sorption, which might imply that non-targeted PFAS or other fluorinated organic compounds desorb from the bark. Therefore, the pine bark might be suitable as a rough remediation of long-chain PFAS (≥8C), but further studies on the sorption of unidentified fluorinated organic compounds are of interest.

Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle metabolites aresmall hydrophilic compounds that play crucial roles in biological species ranging fromenergy metabolism, immune homeostasis to cellular signalling. There is a need for reliableand precise quantification of these metabolites in biological matrices as they can providecrucial information of metabolic status and potentially be used as diagnostic biomarkersfor different pathological and physiological conditions. However, their retention andseparation in traditional reversed-phase system, without chemical derivatization, is oftenproblematic due to their volatile and hydrophilic characteristics. The aim of this studywas to implement a facile and effective derivatization method for the simultaneousquantitation of SCFAs and TCA cycle metabolites by LC-qToF-MS in negative ion mode. Inthis work, 3-nitrophenylhydrazine (3-NPH) was employed for preanalyticalderivatization to convert the compounds to their respective 3-nitrophenylhydrazones.Analytical standards and faecal samples were used to assess the linearity, matrix effect,accuracy, extraction efficiency, precision, retention-time shift and short-term stability.The compounds were successfully separated within 6 minutes on a reverse-phase C18column. All the compounds showed good linearity (R2≥ 0.97) in both solvent-only andfaecal samples. The matrix effect was minimal and did not affect the compoundsquantitation. The extraction efficiency ranged from 80% to 110% (CV≤9.7%, n = 6). Theaccuracy of quantitation was determined to be between 82.8% to 113.8% (CV≤9.0%, n =6). The intra-day (CV%) demonstrated good precision for all analytes, the inter-day (%)were more variable due to the derivatives’ chemical instability. However, most of thederivatives were chemical stable up to 5 days in the autosampler (10°C). The method wasalso applied to explore the levels of these metabolites in human faecal samples and mousebrain samples.

Microplastics are emerging pollutants in the marine environment, including a range of polymers modified by varying quantities of additives and sorbed pollutants, differing in size, colour, and shape. This study focuses on characterization and quantification through visual characterization of microplastics >300 μm in surface water and at 5-meter depth in the Gulf of Bothnia. A comparison between a reference area and an urban impact area was made to estimate if the water is more polluted near rural or industrial areas. The visual characterization was based on general guidelines provided by GESAMP to minimize the risks of identifying false positives. The concentrations of microplastics were found to be similar in the current study in comparison to other studies in the Baltic Sea. There was insufficient evidence to conclude a difference between the reference area and the urban impact area. A key finding in this study was that fragments, i.e. irregular shaped hard particles having appearance of being broken down from a larger piece of litter were the most abundant type of microplastics particles found. The vast majority of the identified polymers by ATR-FTIR (Attenuated Total Reflectance-Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) consisted of Polyethylene (PE) and Polystyrene (PS)

I detta arbete har elektrokemisk impedansspektroskopi använts för att producera reproducerbara impedansdata för katodmaterialet NMC811. Data som skulle kunna användas som basen för parametrisering och konstruktionen av en fysik-baserad modell. Dessutom har effekten av laddningstillstånd, temperatur, och historian av cellen på impedansen undersökts. Baserat på resultaten av preliminära test så har experiment konstruerats i vilka katodens impedans i en NMC811//Grafit cell har undersökts vid olika temperaturer och laddningstillstånd, både efter laddning och urladdning av cellen. Reproducerbara resultat kunde erhållas och det visades hur laddningstillstånd och temperatur har en stor påverkan på impedansen. Tyvärr så kunde inget sägas om hystereseffekten på grund av dålig stabilitet i lågfrekvensområdet av impedansmätningarna. / In this work, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy has been used to try and produce reproducible impedance data for the cathode material NMC811. Data that could serve as the basis of parameter extraction for the construction of a physics-based model. Furthermore, the effect of state of charge, temperature, and history of the cell on the impedance has been analysed. Based on the results of preliminary tests, an experimental cycle was constructed in which the cathode impedance of a NMC811//Graphite cell was measured at varying temperatures and state of charge, both following charge and discharge of the cell. Reproducible results were achieved, and it was shown how the state of charge and temperature of the cell had a major effect on the measured impedance. Unfortunately, no conclusions could be made about the history effect on impedance due to poor stability in the low frequency regions of the impedance measurements.

Coronaviruses have been responsible for several global disease outbreaks over the last 20 years, including the “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome” in 2002/2003, the “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome” in 2012, and the “Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID19)”. These viruses are highly contagious and can cause multiple medical disorders upon contraction, such as common cold or lower respiratory infections. SARS-CoV-2, the newly emerged coronavirus variant of 2019, has been confirmed as the cause of the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, which infected over 167 million people worldwide and, by the end of May 2021, has a death toll of over 3 million people. Even though several SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have made it to the market, no proven options have yet been discovered for treating COVID19 infections. The aim of this project is, therefore, to improve the potency of two active SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) inhibitors (ML188 and X77) by performing a structure-activity-relationship study where two specific sites of the inhibitors are altered. The inhibition activity of these compounds is then tested on isolated SARS-CoV-2 Mpro. The four-component Ugi reaction was utilized to synthesize the ML188 and X77 analogs, which were purified by column chromatography before testing. During this project, six pure analogs were successfully synthesized and will be sent shortly for testing. Inhibitors with good activity against SARS-CoV-2 Mpro will be further tested for their antiviral activity in cell-based infection assays. The results obtained from this study will later be used to perform a second structure-activity-relationship study to further improve the potency of the two inhibitors by developing a 2nd generation library.