This thesis deals with the design of a spark-ignition internal combustion engine with extended expansion. It explains the principle of extended expansion using the Atkinson or Miller cycle and the possibilities of achieving it. In addition, a design study and engine cycle is carried out. Subsequently, the course of the kinematic quantities and forces in the mechanism is determined. At the end, the strength analysis of the connecting rod of the designed mechanism is performed.

Heat treatment of different steel products have existed for thousands of years. It has always been an important tool to get the microstructure and resulting properties such as hardness and case hardness and it is even more important today than ever before. This project concentrated on the quenching process and means to decrease the distortion caused by this process. The effect of different oils, temperatures, agitation and if gas quenching could give better results were investigated. The results showed that Miller´s 75 quench oil was better than Park´s 420 at slow agitation and that the viscosity of the oils influenced how much changes in agitation speed and oil temperature affected the distortion. It also shows that gas quenching is an alternative to oil quenching if the microstructure can be improved. Otherwise using Miller´s 75 with low agitation in the Surface combustion furnace will give best results.

Asymmetric information in the management-investor relationship implies that the management’s actions will give signals to investors. According to the signalling hypothesis, an announcement of a share repurchase program is interpreted by investors that the management is putting its money where its mouth is, i.e. signalling that the stock is currently undervalued. Using the event study methodology to analyze share repurchases of listed Swedish real estate companies, we find significant short-term abnormal returns of 1,96% on the announcement day and cumulative abnormal returns of 2,32% (although not significant on conventional levels) for the ten first days subsequent to the announcement. At the most fundamental level of corporate finance theory, the Efficient Market Hypothesis stipulates that the whole value of the announcement should be discounted in the stock price immediately. On the other hand, it might be rational for investors to await certainty that the share repurchase program will be executed, before discounting its full value. We find indications of underreaction as the analysis suggests long-term positive stock price reactions to the announcement. The Jensen’s alpha approach utilized in the long-term analysis suggests an average abnormal return of 10,30%, although insignificant on conventional levels, the year following a share repurchase announcement. From a stock investor point of view, the results from this study suggest that buying real estate stocks that announce share repurchase programs can yield positive abnormal returns for investment horizons of 10 days as well as 12 months.

How did cinema influence the many writers who also constituted the first generation of moviegoers? In Spectatrices, I argue that early moviegoing was a rich imaginative reservoir for anglophone writers on both sides of the Atlantic. Coming to cinema from the vantage of the audience, I suggest that women of the 1920s found in moviegoing a practice of experimentation, aesthetic inquiry, and social critique. My project is focused on women writers not only as a means of reclaiming the femininized passivity of the audience, but because moviegoing offered novel opportunities for women to gather publicly. It was, for this reason, a profoundly political endeavor in the first decades of the 20th century. At the movies, writers such as Jessie Redmon Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, H.D., Dorothy Richardson, and Virginia Woolf developed concepts of temporary community, alternative desire, and discontinuous form that they then incorporated into their literary practice. Where most scholarship assessing cinema’s influence on literature is governed by the medium-specificity of film, my project emphasizes the public dimension of the movies, the fleeting and semi-anonymous intimacy of the moviegoing audience. In turning to moviegoing, Spectatrices opens new methods of comparison and cross-canonical reorganization, focusing on the weak social ties typified by moviegoing audiences, the libidinal permissiveness of fantasy and diva-worship, the worshipful rhetoric by which some writers transformed the theater into a church, and most significantly, the creation of new public formations for women across different axes of class, gender, and race. In this respect, cinema’s dubious universalism is both an invitation and a problem. Writers from vastly different regional, racial, linguistic, and class contexts were moviegoers, together and apart; but to say they had the same experience is obviously inaccurate. In this project, I draw from historical accounts of moviegoing practices in their specificity to highlight that whereas the mass-distributed moving image held the promise, even the premise, of shared experience, moviegoing was structured by difference. The transatlantic organization of the project is meant to engage and resist this would-be universality, charting cinema’s unprecedented global reach while describing differential scenes and modes of exhibition. Focusing on moviegoing not only permits but requires a new constellation of authors, one that includes English and American, Black and white, wealthy and working class writers alike. Across these axes of difference, women theorized the politics and possibilities of gathering, rethinking the audience as a vital and peculiar social formation.

The purpose of this study was to describe how gender was portrayed and to determine how gender roles were depicted and defined in a selection of Modern and Postmodern American plays. This study was based on the symbolic interaction theory of gender that suggests that social roles are learned over time and are subject to constant reinforcement. The significance of this study was derived from the broad topic of gender because gender issues are relevant to a variety of fields and exploring the effects of gender in one field contributes to the understanding of gender in another field. The plays in this study were Votes for Women, Robins; Trifles, Glaspell; Our Town, Wilder; Moon for the Misbegotten, O'Neill; The Glass Menagerie, Williams; Death of a Salesman, Miller; A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry; Funnyhouse of a Negro, Kennedy; Uncommon Women and Others, Wasserstein; Fefu and Her Friends, Fornes; spell #7, Shange; Fool for Love, Shepard; Fences, Wilson; Oleanna, Mamet; and How I Learned to Drive, Vogel. Two of the study's research questions explored the types of gender roles and behaviors that the characters presented. Two questions focused on considering if the time period or the sex of the playwright were factors in the presentations of gender. Gender behaviors were divided into four categories: Behavior Characteristics, Communication Patterns, Sources of Power, and Physical Appearance. Using narrative analysis techniques, the plays were analyzed for the specific traits in each category. The majority of the characters were assigned traditional gender roles and displayed traditional gender behavior traits. Based their gender roles and behavior in their roles, characters faced limitations that confined their actions and restricted their choices. Characters experienced consequences for their behaviors, and female characters received harsher punishments for deviant behaviors than male characters. Gender portrayal in Modern plays was more in keeping with traditional patterns than in Postmodern plays. Female playwrights presented more diverse roles for female characters and often explored gender as a major theme in their plays. Where applicable, race, in concert with gender, was an additional factor that governed characters' behaviors by further restricting behavior or possible actions.

This essay explores the dynamic landscape of Anthropocene fiction, using novels such as John Lanchester’s The Wall and Sam J. Miller’s Blackfish City as lenses through which to explore the aftermath of climate change. Both narratives tackle the question: what unfolds in the wake of environmental disaster? Focused on the consequences of flooding, these novels depict worlds grappling with diminishing resources and an acute scarcity of habitable land, intensifying the challenges of overpopulation. In response, the remaining governments resort to authoritarian measures, fostering oppression and control. This exploration unfolds through the lens of four primary Anthropocene themes: climate change, overpopulation, authoritarianism, and rebellion. By examining how these novels navigate these themes, the essay contributes to the emerging field of Anthropocene fiction. Moreover, it highlights the urgent need for addressing climate change while underscoring the social justice implications embedded in these narratives. John Lanchester’s The Wall and Sam J. Miller’s Blackfish City serve as vital contributors to this literary landscape, shedding light on the intricate interplay between humanity and the environment in the face of Anthropocene challenges.

A wise Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Freedom is never given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed (King 1)." For as long as men and women have shared the planet, sexism has been a universal issue in civilization. In a social justice context, American society has found ways to oppress people for centuries. The Oxford Dictionary defines sexism as a "prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex ("sexism")." Voting rights in America were established in 1790, but it took years of petitioning at various women's rights conventions before the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution stating "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex" was passed in 1920 ("Nineteenth Amendment"). Traditionally, men were supposed to be the strong, decisive, driven, courageous, money-making breed, while women were expected to be the nurturing, affectionate, weak subordinates. Today, we find men and women working in careers previously linked with sexism; men as nurses and teachers, women as CEOs and factory workers. Statistics show that today there are an increasing number of women providing the financial support in their families. As with sexism, people also have been oppressed by racism for centuries. According to The Oxford Dictionary, racism is defined as a "prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior ("racism")." It has been argued that African Americans have been one of the most oppressed groups in America. Even after they were emancipated in 1865, it was nearly one hundred years later that their rights were protected with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Before the act's passing, African Americans were denied equal education, employment, housing property, and a political voice. My interest in this topic was peaked right around the same time I became interested in performing on the musical theatre stage. I got my start in local community theatres, and up until college, was the only African American cast in the productions. I started playing multiple ensemble roles per show, and throughout the years advanced myself to "supporting character" but never the lead. Admittedly, there were times when I wasn't as talented as the women who snagged the leading roles, but many a time when I was just as talented or more qualified for the role, it went to another woman - most times of Caucasian descent. What did they have that I didn’t have? When I got accepted into The University of Central Florida as a BFA Musical Theatre student, I auditioned for the plays and musicals every semester, and each season I began to see the same patterns of who was cast for each show. Roles I thought I would get often went to White actors. I felt victimized in this modern-day example of racism. But racism goes beyond black and White. Internal racism between the light-skinned and dark-skinned African American women I was competing with became a factor as well. There were many times when an audition notice called for an African American woman; however, an unsettling trend became very apparent to me; if the casting description was for a maid, or something of that nature, larger, dark-skinned women would get the majority of the callbacks, which would lead to them getting cast. On the flip side, if an audition notice called for an African American ingénue type, more of the slimmer, lighter-skinned women were called back and later cast. Has American society cast a racial stigma for African American beauty?

This thesis investigates the impact of capital structure on the profitability of 58 Savings Banks in Sweden from 2014 to 2020, focusing on the balance between debt and equity. Utilizing panel data regression, the study examines how debt-to-asset ratios and equity ratios affect key profitability metrics such as net interest margin, return on equity, and return on assets. Key findings indicate a negative correlation between debt ratios and both return on assets and equity, suggesting that higher debt levels may impede profitability. Conversely, apositive relationship is observed between equity ratios and return on assets, while return on equity decreases as equity ratios increase. The study also explores the influence of bank size, finding a negative relationship with profitability, which highlights the efficiency of smaller, more regionally-focused banks. Additionally, macroeconomic factors such as GDP growth show a positive correlation with profitability, whereas higher unemployment rates tend to reduce profitability. The study and the results provide valuable insights into the financial strategies that can enhance the performance of Savings Banks, emphasizing the need for a balanced approach to capital structuring within the context of prevailing economic conditions.

This thesis examines the relationship between Cold War science fiction fix-up novels and social cycle theory. The study engages with textual, cultural, and comparative analysis to elucidate and analyze links between the fix-up novel format, a cyclical conception of human history, and the Cold War setting of the construction and publication of three SF novels. The objects of this study are three Cold War era fix-up novels with origins in World War II pulp science fiction magazine short stories: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, City by Clifford D. Simak, and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. The project examines these three novels alongside the reflective nature of the fix-up novel format, the authors' interactions with social cycle theory, and the Cold War cultural considerations of ideological instability and the threat of annihilation. By examining these works through the lens of retroactive continuity, social cycle theory, and the Cold War cultural imaginary, this thesis demonstrates the complex interplay between literature, culture, and history, and the ways in which SF authors have used their works to engage with the pressing concerns of their time. / Master of Arts / The Cold War era novels The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, City by Clifford D. Simak, and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. share origins in pulp science fiction magazine short stories. These authors consolidated and revised previously published short stories to produce these works, known as fix-up novels. These three fix-up novels interact with representations of human progress as cyclical or non-linear. This project examines how the Cold War setting of the authors may have influenced science fiction authors' conceptions of human progress as cyclical. This thesis studies how the revision process of creating fix-up novels combined with the transition from World War II to the societal anxieties of the Cold War may have impacted the cultural messages of these novels.

Acoustic Voice Placement has been in use in the United States choral ensembles since the mid-twentieth century, yet research on the topic is limited. Beyond the techniques of Weston Noble (1922-2016), who championed the practice in the United States from 1948 until his death in 2016, there is little known about methods of Acoustic Voice Placement. The purpose of this research is not only to deepen the information available for the reader, but to create a pathway for future research and debate which expands the knowledge about and the practices within the field of Acoustic Voice Placement. Drawn from multiple source types, an empirical analysis of the approaches, methods, and techniques of Acoustic Voice Placement used by three prominent North American choral conductors was conducted. The methods of Weston Noble, James Bass, and Joe Miller were observed and analyzed intent on capturing exemplary practices and detailed methodologies. When compared to Weston Noble's foundational techniques, modern Acoustic Voice Placement techniques showed both convergent and divergent trends.