In Sweden spent nuclear fuel is planned to be placed 500 m down in the bedrock. The spent nuclear fuel will be contained in copper canisters. The reason behind the selection of copper is its thermodynamic stability against corrosion in the depository. The copper will be exposed to mechanical loading and will be plastically deformed due to creep. The canisters will be sealed by friction stir welding. Since the canisters have to survive intact for many thousands of years, the properties of the welds are critical. Oxygen free P-doped copper (Cu-OFP) is selected for its excellent creep ductility properties and corrosion resistance. In this thesis work creep ductility behavior of friction stir welded copper chosen at different areas of the weld is evaluated by using the test slow strain rate tensile test. Samples are chosen at different weld areas namely weld, cross weld and HAZ. A sum of 21 specimens is tested. These tests are achieved at three various strain rates and each rate are carried out at three different temperatures. The strain rates used for tests are 1e-4, 3e-6 and 1e-7 [1/s]. The samples are strained until rupture, 20% and 5% of the gauge length. Yield strength and tensile strength are usually decreasing with increasing temperature and at higher temperature the material can be easily deformed. Few strange behaviors are also observed for the samples from HAZ areas at strain rate 1e-7[1/s]. The experimental results are justified by using the Knock-Mecking model. The parametersand ω were evaluated by curve fitting method.

Over the course of his fifty-year career, Mexican writer José Emilio Pacheco has almost habitually written poetry about environmental themes especially those related to pollution, extraction, deforestation, and other related themes of destruction. Simultaneously, his work has engaged with questions of temporality, namely the passing of time and the inherent violence of such questions. In this essay, I examine a selection of Pacheco's poetry from the 1970s to the early 2000s, demonstrating Pacheco's marrying of the two concepts: environmental degradation and time. This marriage results in a provocative synthesis of eco-apocalypse, a phenomenon that details a paradoxical end that never actually arrives, but only consistently worsens. I illuminate Pacheco's work by incorporating Rob Nixon's concept of "slow violence”, which informs my reading of the poetry by calling to its imaginative power. This power allows it to depict that which is imperceptible, either because it moves too slowly or too broadly to be witnessed by the human observant. In short, Pacheco's poetry addresses human-perceived time and natural or deep time in light of the ongoing apocalypse, which, despite the morose tone of the poetry, obliquely urges the reader towards an awareness of eco-apocalypse.

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The exploration of my topic grew out of curiosity of growing up and living so close to nature, arguing that being in nature have many positive health effects for both body and soul. Nature experiences also have an important social significance. The project evolved into exploring the value of the local elders knowledge and narratives connected to the local nature around Växjö - stories that are a subtle power of culture that shaped landscapes. What is unknown and what is unseen and how much do we really know about our local nature in Småland? Nature is not static, it is always changing and so is our society, and as a reminder of the natural world, this project is about generating a tangible meeting point between human and mind and portraying the individuals connection to nature inspired by local narratives, which in turn can inspire those who are unfamiliar with the region of Småland wilderness. The aim with my project investigate how to find new ways to interact with local nature through storytelling. The design is therefore a research method that empowers the elderlies generation stories about local nature.

With the increasing demand of compact and lightweight wireless devices, there is a significant need to miniaturize the antennas, which are one of the largest radiofrequency components. The radiation performance of antennas degrades as their physical size becomes smaller in terms of operating wavelength [1]. The key challenge in antenna design, therefore, lies in the compromise between size and radiation performance. This challenge becomes critical for low frequency antennas such as for the RFID band. The Antenna-in-Package (AiP) concept, where the antenna is realized as part of the package along with the driving electronics, provides some console in terms of size as the antenna does not need any additional space. In this approach, the package becomes a functional module along with its primary job of protecting the components from the environment. This work aims to investigate various miniaturization techniques for a UHF RFID tag on package. Firstly, a dipole is given a 3D shape by carefully folding it over a package, in a manner that the currents on different segments add constructively. Secondly, the package material (which acts as the substrate for the antenna) is chosen to have a dielectric constant of 5.3 which further helps in size reduction. Finally, loading of slow-wave structures, comprising of inductors and capacitors, is used to achieve further miniaturization. The Artificial Transmission Line approach is utilized to determine the required values of the lumped components, and its location is optimized by analyzing the current distribution of the antenna to maintain a good efficiency. The RFID chip with a large capacitive impedance is conjugately matched to the antenna without an external matching network. This is done by carefully selecting the values of the lumped components as well as by adjusting the trace width of the antenna. The package has been realized through a low-loss filament (𝑡𝑎𝑛(𝛿) = 0.004) with the Raise3D Pro2 printer, and the conductor has been realized by copper tape using laser patterning technology with the laser platform PLS6MW. At an operational frequency of 866 MHz, a 𝑘𝑎 of 0.26, a read-range of 2.7 𝑚, and a radiation efficiency of approximately 32% is achieved.

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Simply Wood is a collaborative inquiry into the topic of all wood joints for industrially produced furniture through engineering and the culture of care for and with furniture through Design+Change. This thesis is written in collaboration with the product development and communication wings from IKEA of Sweden, as the external tutors and supervisors. The design part, called the Kinship of Care, focuses on the culture of care between IKEA’s fast furniture and its user. This research, Kinship of care, consists of slow design principles reveal, expand, and reflect that serve as a cyclic timeline through the design process. Reader, the new caregiver is at the beginning introduced into the field of Slow Design and what does it mean to be the agent of change in today’s world. As the thesis unfolds, the section Reveal expresses challenges IKEA is facing when it comes to the culture of care. These challenges serve as a foundation from which this thesis builds its shape. The notion of care is highly abundant in meanings, and the understanding of furniture is quite narrow and static. The sectionReveal reframes the idea of care in collaboration with other caregivers in the form of a Caregiver manifesto for Living in Times of Social Distancing. The notion of furniture is revalued during an intervention walk Beyond Furniture that reveals hidden connections to furniture in the forest. Once the concepts of furniture and care are reframed, they are brought together and reimagined in the next section Expand. Expand uses tools of bisociation to combine seemingly unrelated notions together. All this information is transformed in conclusion into seeds for caring with furniture that serves as carative guidelines, guidelines that motivate caregiving behaviour in one’s household, and guidelines for imagining caring furniture. In the last section Reflect, the reader contemplates the life of furniture and learns to let go for sustainable disposal practices through the Love and the Breakup letters. This section also contains an interview with a caregiving practitioner, a furniture upholsterer. In conclusion, seeds for caring with furniture are introduced in the form of a moving zine. This thesis, Simply Wood, encourages the reader, fast-furniture user, and fast-furniture producer, to become a slow caregiver in this fast-changing society and offers tools for re-conceptualizing rooted notions of care and furniture.

Water shortages are a recurring problem in the western US. As much as 70% of yearly municipal water consumption may be used to irrigate urban landscapes. Significant water savings can be realized by installing low water landscapes, where turfgrass is replaced by low water trees, shrubs, grasses, and perennials. Intermountain West (IMW) native trees and shrubs are excellent candidates for low water landscaping. However, due to their slow initial growth, many native trees and shrubs are simply unavailable to consumers, as they are not cost effective for nursery growers to produce. In an effort to accelerate the yearly growth rates of two IMW native species, Pinus monophylla and Mahonia fremontii, the potential of two growing methods was evaluated. A 30% reduction in radiation by shading and stabilizing root-zone temperatures with potin- pot were employed in an effort to decrease the extreme environmental impacts of temperature and intense sunlight. Shading caused a significant increase in the growth of M. fremontii when grown aboveground. P. monophylla growth was not affected by the use of shade. Neither species showed improved growth when grown pot-in-pot. The use of shade is effective in accelerating some native plants and not others. However, for plants such as M. fremontii, shading is beneficial and can be used to significantly accelerate nursery production.

In this research, a household water treatment system was built and evaluated as a trial for improving the drinking water quality of the Nile River for the low-income communities. The system consisted of household-scale slow sand filters, and transparent polyethylene terephthalate-bottles for solar disinfection. The evaluation of the system depended on the removal/inactivation of some surrogates for the reference pathogens, and turbidity. The reference pathogens are pathogens specified by the World Health Organization to evaluate the efficiency of the household water treatment options. They were chosen to represent the classes of pathogens in water (bacteria, viruses, protozoa). The surrogates used in the evaluation of the system are Escherichia coli (E.coli), Clostridium perfringens and Escherichia coli bacteriophage (MS2). The candidate surrogates are also specified by the World Health Organization. The designed household-scale slow sand filter was very efficient in removing the different turbidity levels to ≤0.4NTU. The evaluated system is classified as highly protective because it was able to achieve higher than 4 log removal for E.coli and Clostridium perfringens, and higher than 5 log removal for MS2.

Research suggests that the linguistic environment of the expressive language delayed child is different from that of his peers. Does this difference actually exist and if so, what are its characteristics? The purpose of this study was to describe the linguistic characteristics of mothers' input to children with normal language acquisition and those of mothers of expressively delayed toddlers; and to identify any differences between these groups. Though considerable research exists in this area, few studies have dealt specifically with large groups of expressively delayed toddlers.