In this thesis, an integrated flow sensor for an optogalvanic spectrometer is studied. Optogalvanic spectroscopy can be used for carbon isotope analysis when, e.g., searching life in space. At the heart of the spectrometer is a microplasma source, in which the analysis is performed. This master thesis examines the possibilities to integrate a flow sensor inside the microplasma source, to be able to improve the isotopic analysis. The report covers design, manufacturing and evaluation of both the device and the experimental setup. The device was manufactured by milling and lamination of printed circuit board, in which both the plasma source and sensors were incorporated. The final results shows that the sensor had a linear and reliable flow response in a range between 1-15 sccm, and, quite surprisingly, that is simultaneously could measure the pressure in a range between 1-6 Torr. In other words, not only one but two sensors were integrated in the spectrometer at once. The work has been done at the Ångström Space Technology Center - a research group within the Department of Engineering Science at Uppsala University.

Tanken med denna uppsats är att försöka få en inblick i vilka funktioner musiken fyller i TV-dramat. Det finns en del studier att tillgå om filmmusik men ytterst lite om just musik inom TV-serier. Mitt syfte är således att undersöka vad för slags musik som används i TV-dramer, i vilka sammanhang den förekommer och dess relation i förhållande till det som utspelar sig i bild. Utöver det tar jag delvis upp diskussioner om huruvida vi ska uppfatta filmmusik medvetet eller inte. I och med det har viss vikt lagts vid att studera eventuella skillnader i upplevelsen och användandet av instrumentalmusik och populärmusik.   Till mitt arbete har jag använt mig av tidigare forskning kring filmmusik och gjort en jämförande analys av polisserierna Miami Vice och Life on Mars. Åtta avsnitt ur varje serie har studerats och därefter har ett representativt avsnitt från respektive TV-drama valts ut för en fördjupad analys. Min uppfattning utifrån studien är att instrumentalmusik och populärmusik i de flesta fall används i liknande sammanhang. Dessa kan exempelvis vara att ge en känsla av atmosfär, understryka en karaktärs känslor, ge tittaren information som inte kan utläsas utifrån enbart bilderna och bidra med kontinuitet. Populärmusik kan i somliga fall vara ett bra alternativ till instrumentalmusik för att vi ska hålla kvar vårt fokus på bilderna. Men populärmusikens främsta funktion i de undersökta serierna är som tidsmarkör för den period handlingen utspelar sig i.

<p> </p><p>Tanken med denna uppsats är att försöka få en inblick i vilka funktioner musiken fyller i TV-dramat. Det finns en del studier att tillgå om filmmusik men ytterst lite om just musik inom TV-serier. Mitt syfte är således att undersöka vad för slags musik som används i TV-dramer, i vilka sammanhang den förekommer och dess relation i förhållande till det som utspelar sig i bild. Utöver det tar jag delvis upp diskussioner om huruvida vi ska uppfatta filmmusik medvetet eller inte. I och med det har viss vikt lagts vid att studera eventuella skillnader i upplevelsen och användandet av instrumentalmusik och populärmusik.</p><p> </p><p>Till mitt arbete har jag använt mig av tidigare forskning kring filmmusik och gjort en jämförande analys av polisserierna <em>Miami Vice</em> och <em>Life on Mars</em>. Åtta avsnitt ur varje serie har studerats och därefter har ett representativt avsnitt från respektive TV-drama valts ut för en fördjupad analys. Min uppfattning utifrån studien är att instrumentalmusik och populärmusik i de flesta fall används i liknande sammanhang. Dessa kan exempelvis vara att ge en känsla av atmosfär, understryka en karaktärs känslor, ge tittaren information som inte kan utläsas utifrån enbart bilderna och bidra med kontinuitet. Populärmusik kan i somliga fall vara ett bra alternativ till instrumentalmusik för att vi ska hålla kvar vårt fokus på bilderna. Men populärmusikens främsta funktion i de undersökta serierna är som tidsmarkör för den period handlingen utspelar sig i.</p><p> </p>

Tracy K. Smith's Pulitzer Prize winning collection of poetry, Life on Mars, has been celebrated and analyzed as an elegy to Smith's father by many reviewers and scholars. And while this reading is valid and has been openly endorsed by Smith herself, our understanding of this collection and Smith's father is incomplete without Smith's treatment of motherhood and religion, two previously unexplored fields in relation to Life on Mars that complete our picture of Smith's father. Smith uses her own new role as a mother and her religious questions about the afterlife and her father's fate to address her father's passing. This paper first discusses the previously hidden role of Smith's unborn daughter Naomi, specifically hearkening to poems in the fourth section of Life on Mars which describe Naomi's conception and the painful process of giving birth. This is followed by an analysis of Smith's father and mother and their interconnected relationship to both Smith and her child. The third section of this paper complicates Smith's more idyllic depictions of her family members with universal examples of violence, specifically violence towards women that can lead to unwanted motherhood like rape. The final section of this paper takes previous discussions of motherhood, parenthood, and violence to describe Smith's interest in the living and the dead and how the poems in Life on Mars tie together these disparate groups through the shared experience of loss and gain. This blurred boundary between life and death culminates in Smith's vision of the future, a future Earth which will be incomplete and "hollow" without children, just as Smith's past would be empty without her familial relationships. This link between the deceased and unborn makes Smith's imagined future meaningful and invites further scholarship on Life on Mars, asking for scholars previously interested in only Smith's father to include Smith's descriptions of motherhood and religion in their analysis of Smith's work.

Heterotrophic protists, consisting largely of the Cercozoa, Amoebozoa, Ciliophora, Discoba and some Stramenopiles, are a poorly characterized component of life on Earth. They play an important ecological role in soil communities and provide key insights into the nature of one of life’s most enigmatic evolutionary transitions: the development of the complex unicell. Soil ecosystems are crucial to the functioning of global biogeochemical cycles (e.g. carbon and nitrogen) but are at risk of drastic change from anthropogenic climate change. Heterotrophic protists are the primary regulators of bacterial diversity in soils and as such play integral roles in biogeochemical cycling, nutrient mobilization, and trophic cascades in food webs under stress. Understanding the nature of these changes requires examining the rates, diversity, and resiliency of interactions that occur between soil organisms. However, soils are the most taxonomically diverse ecosystems on Earth and disentangling the complexities of dynamic and varied biotic interactions in them requires a unique model system. The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, one of the harshest terrestrial environments on Earth, serve as a model soil ecosystem owing to their highly reduced biological diversity. Exploring the functioning of heterotrophic protists in these valleys provides a way to test the applicability of this model system to other soil food webs. However, very little is known about their taxonomic diversity, which is a strong predictor of function. Therefore, I reviewed the Antarctic literature to compile a checklist of all known terrestrial heterotrophic protists in Antarctica. I found significant geographical, methodological, and taxonomic biases and outlined how to address these in future research programs. I also conducted a molecular survey of whole soil communities using 18 shotgun metagenomes representing major landscape features of the McMurdo Dry Valleys. The results revealed the dominance of Cercozoa and point to an Antarctic heterotrophic protist soil community that is taxonomically diverse and reflects the structure and composition of communities at lower latitudes. To investigate whether biotic interactions or abiotic factors were a larger driver for Antarctic heterotrophic protists, I conducted variation partitioning using environmental data (e.g. moisture, pH and electrical conductivity). Biotic variables were more significant and accounted for more of the variation than environmental variables. Taken together, it is clear that heterotrophic protists play key ecological roles in this ecosystem. Deeper insights into the ecology of these organisms in the McMurdo Dry Valleys also have implications for the search for complex unicellular life in our universe. I discuss the theoretical underpinnings of searching for these forms of life outside of Earth, conclude that they are likely to occur, and postulate how future missions could practically search for complex unicells.